Poland Day 5

The stone I placed on the bottom left-hand corner
of the first stone I uncovered

Today was our last day in the cemetery which was very bittersweet. We worked for about two hours then we stopped and said goodbye. Judaism has a tradition where they leave stones on a gravestone in remembrance of that person, so our faculty gathered a bag of stones, and we were able to take a few and place them where we wanted. I chose to leave mine three stones on the first headstone I found, the headstone of the professor from the second day, and the last stone I worked to uncover. My experience over the two and a half days that we were able to work at the cemetery is difficult to put into words. I was overwhelmed with so many different emotions, but overall, I felt at peace and honored to be a part of what I was able to contribute to the relatively small area we were working on.

Our field on our last day!

The first day was impactful because we uncovered an absurd number of headstones, that I was just jumping from one to the next after reading each name I could. To me, it felt almost as if I was trying to "save" as many headstones as I could, hoping to leave no headstone covered by vines and dirt. There were a few times I felt as if I was cleaning off a child that played in the mud, thinking "oh, look how messy you are, let me clean you up." The second day brought a different sense of responsibility. From seeing various fields, I was able to see the damage that trees and their roots do to the gravesites, causing tombstones to crumble, rise, or fall. It was seeing that that prompted me to search for and pull as many saplings as I could. Finally, today I did as much as I could. I pulled saplings whenever I found some and was on a hunt to uncover as many remaining headstones as I could find, again, trying to leave no stone covered with dirt. The cemetery was peaceful and very bright. One of the German women working in the cemetery at the same time had a very sweet dog that came to visit us during our time there and it was very precious.


After leaving the cemetery, we had a book discussion on our class memoir, Night by Elie Wiesel, which is the autobiography of his Holocaust experience. The book went through some really intense situations and really showed the loss of humanity on so many levels during that time. While we discussed it, others were mentioning the very evident theme of religion and his trust/belief in God throughout this time, which was not something I had connected as deeply as others had. The discussion really helped me get into Wiesel's head, understanding deeper than just the words printed on the paper.

After our discussion, I got sushi with two other students and one faculty member. It was pretty good and very filling. There was a lot of very good conversation where I was able to learn more about the people I was with and the administrative side of our college. Once we got back from dinner, we left for the Synagogue and sat in on a Shabbat service. It was a really great service, and I read the Latin spelling of Hebrew as best I could and there was one part where we danced, which was also very fun. After the service, I went with a group to buy Polish Paczki's and oh man were they good!

Tomorrow at 8:30 we leave for Krakow. This city is supposed to be very different from Wroclaw so it will be interesting to see the differences over the next four days. Then we'll be heading to Warsaw, another very different city! I'm very excited for the rest of the trip!