Poland Day 3

Me in the process of pulling a sapling

Today was very similar to yesterday. We woke up and went to the cemetery, came back and relaxed for a little bit, and then went to dinner (only this time as a group). The weather was much warmer today than it was the past two days which was nice. The main focus of today's work in the cemetery was more of the groundwork, so I spent the vast majority of my time pulling saplings (oak and maple) and picking up branches, with the occasional spotting of a headstone or plot that I was able to uncover. As I was working, I started thinking about the amount of time and effort I was putting into finding these saplings and whether my time would be better spent clearing the brush and looking for more covered gravesites. It wasn't until one of our faculty said that it's the trees that do a lot of the damage in the cemetery because the roots will push the stones up or cause them to break completely that I realized this simple job is just as important as uncovering and clearing the plot. By pulling the saplings, I was preventing those roots from damaging other gravesites that are still fully intact, and I thought that was very special. As I said, I did stumble across a few headstones as I was

Clearing one of the headstones I found

pulling the saplings, which was very special. The ones I found were buried at an angle and took a lot of work to fully dig out (I didn't mention before but we have very few tools at our disposal), but I couldn't knowingly leave a headstone without exposing as much of it as I could. Over the past two days working, I caught on to a pretty general trend that if a base or a plot line was found, the headstone shouldn't be too far from it.  This trend helped me find the additional stones today as I worked, one of which was a professor, which was very special to me because that is what I would love to do as a career.  I found myself comforted and asking myself what he could have been a professor of, something that I'm hoping Google can help me out with over an upcoming break.

A small area of our plot on day two in the cemetery

I found myself feeling overwhelmed with gratitude during today's work, just for being able to have this opportunity to help restore this small plot. Our faculty was telling us at the end of the day how many other trips have worked in this cemetery and we have worked in 11 of the fields, in addition to clearing all of the plots and donating a lot of equipment. Albion has made a really significant impact on this cemetery, and I feel very honored to be a part of this tradition. I can't remember the exact number of trips Albion has had, but it has been every other year since I believe the mid-2000's. Another one of our faculty members found the following poem and read it to us before we left and it is almost describing word for word what we are doing on this trip:

A Jewish Cemetery in Germany by Yehuda Amichai          

Me with the uncovered headstone
of the professor

On a little hill amid fertile fields lies a small cemetery,

a Jewish cemetery behind a rusty gate, hidden by shrubs,

abandoned and forgotten. Neither the sound of prayer

nor the voice of lamentation is heard there

for the dead praise not the Lord.

Only the voices of our children ring out, seeking graves

   and cheering

each time they find one--like mushrooms in the forest, like

   wild strawberries.

Here's another grave! There's the name of my mother's

mothers, and a name from the last century. And here's a name,

and there! And as I was about to brush the moss from the

name--

Look! an open hand engraved on the tombstone, the grave

   of a kohen,

his fingers splayed in a spasm of holiness and blessing,

and here's a grave concealed by a thicket of berries

that has to be brushed aside like a shock of hair

from the face of a beautiful beloved woman