Joe’s May 2008 Trek Thru Israel, Eastern Europe & The Balkans En Route to Auschwitz Along the Same Rail Transport Lines my Ancestors Rode to the Death Camps

I have experienced a wide range of emotions on this trip.  The sadness, outrage, thrill and the joy all converged to create the perfect storm of a lifetime experience. 

A lengthy trip on my own to learn about my ancestry was an invaluable lesson for me.  Traveling through so many countries starting with Israel which grew so much because of the Nazi experience; walking the streets of Thessaloniki Greece with guides who were so well versed in the rich history of Sephardic Judaism in that part of the world; understanding the motivation of the City of Thessaloniki who wanted the centuries old cemetery removed for the expansion of the University; the actions of the Nazi leadership to win over the city by desecrating and removing the cemetery; the 19 train transports that took 50,000 Jews of Thessaloniki to their demise; Hitler poisoning the King of Bulgaria when he refused to turn over the Jews of Bulgaria; the brutality of the Hungarian people to the Jews of their Country, the very very long train ride to Poland that I did in comfort of a seat on the railcar, but knowing my ancestors were crammed into cattle-cars with no sanitation, heat, ventilation or humane treatment in the four or five day train transports to the death camps; the inhumanity of Auschwitz-Birkenau; and the complete eradication of 3,200,000 Polish Jews.  The absurdity in Krakow, Poland of making the Old Jewish Quarter into a huge tourism industry and their celebrating all the Jewish Holidays and festivals without any Jews remaining in the Country. 

I have seen and learned so much.  The Holocaust education that I received is one that I want my adult children and all my friends Jew and non Jew alike to experience and grasp.  Everyone must see what really happened to perpetrate a psychosis that thrived on such a massive scale.  I think that dealing with the Holocaust is a lot like Ground Zero of the World Trade Center.  Most people in California and likely everywhere else outside of the immediate area of New York City that have not seen the World Trade Center before, and now the huge hole in the ground will ever truly grasp the destruction of 9/11 that resulted in the death of 3,500 people.  I feel based upon comments that I heard from people about my trip, that they have a better understanding about 6,000,000 Jews and many others who were Russians, Poles, Gypsys, Homosexuals and others that perished under the Nazi Psychosis in their quest to prove their crazed concept of Arian superiority. 

Going back to Israel on the second trip back in the same month certainly hardened me to the way of life in Israel.  It is not an easy life in Israel when so much of the world faults them for everything they do.  The wars they fight to defend themselves are accused of responding with disproportionate force, the politics of the world always voted against this little country and the oil weapon used against them force Israel to get their oil from a crazy guy in Venezuela.  The Israeli people know their history is rooted in the Holocaust which is not the end of their fight for survival.  Israeli people cope with the pressures of being surrounded by hate of their enemies that will only be satisfied if these enemies can push every Israeli in the sea.  You feel very safe in major cities like Haifa and Tel Aviv, but there are guards at the entrance of every restaraunt, cafe, hotel and shopping mall on the lookout for terrorism.  Its a hard reality of life, but a spectacularly beautiful country that blends high tech and modern city life with the old world.  This is a country that gets half of the hi-tech funding dollars that is allocated to the entire eastern hemisphere comprised of all of Europe, the United Kingdom, etc.  A country so tiny, but an incubator for outside of the box thinking and invention.  It is really over insurmountable odds that this tiny country has a thriving economy as cars pull into gas stations to pump $11 per gallon equivalent gasoline. 

My views are indeed proud of the accomplishments that both Israel and the world have made since the horrors of the holocaust.  But it is a sad realization and should elicit a sense of outrage that the hatred and the genocide continues with mass murders under the guise of nationalistic feelings in the former Yugoslavian breakaway republics of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia ten years ago.  And even worse is that it has been going on for more than the past five years continuing now in the Darfur region of The Sudan in Africa.  That same ethnic cleansing is happening and we are not doing enough to express our outrage.  Chinese merchant ships are finally turned away for the first time from The Sudan when it becomes evident that the ships are delivering weapons from China, but there is no outrage about the mass exterminations going on there now.  This is a genocide emergency with hundreds of thousands killed, and more than 2.5 million displaced from their homes.  Those weapons will find their way back into the troubled areas.  And where is the true pressure on Iran who openly acknowledges their working at a furious pace to complete their nuclear program which will be the culmination of their intentions to dominate the Middle East and follow through on their threats to eliminate Israel as a Country.  And what about these others places like the City of London where the Mayor there now wants all references to the Holocaust removed from the public school curriculum.  What have we really learned as an educated society?

Why can’t we learn from these lessons to be outraged enough to make a dent in the evil still going on today.  We all need to be more articulate and proactive to stop the hate and genocide going on right under our noses.  Get mad and do something to express that outrage.  See the attached website which Darfur is a major focus of the United States Holocaust Museum:

http://www.ushmm.org/conscience/alert/darfur/pdf/darfur.pdf

Picked up by taxi at my hotel at 4am.  Flight is on El Al, so you need extra time to make it through security checkpoints (plural).  Do y0u know the translation of “EL AL”?  It means don’t screw with us.  Security is very intense and thoroughwhich is the reason that they have never been hijacked.  When I flew Olympic back to Israel from Athens, the security consisted of an x ray machine and have a good flight.  The only thing El Al has in common is the scanner.  When I arrived at El Al in Ben Gurion Airport, the first stop is the psychological screening.  What are you doing in Israel.  Have you ever been here before.  Who did you visit.  Do you speak hebrew.  Do you have relatives here.  How old were you when you were Bar Mitzva.  On and on.  You can’t really fault them because they are doing their job and do it well.  Then my bags were x rayed in a different checkpoint and they referred me to an inspection station where they had the larger plasma screen forwqarded to them elecronically with the scan of my bags.  Because I had pottery in my bags, they wanted to ask me about the bags and asked me if they could inspect.  I agreed, but instead they only swabbed the zipper of hte bag with bomb swab and asked me where I purchased the pottery.  I answered and they never opened the bags.  Then it was on to the hand baggage screening after passport control.  Actually, the Israeli security is very efficient given the very detailed physical and psychological process.

My first flight was Tel Aviv to Zurich Switzerland.  Beautiful terminal.  Next flight was Zurich to London.

London was the usual.  Cold, grey and rainy at the end of May.  I checked one bag into storage at the airport and then I took the Heathrow Express train to Paddington Station and walked the few blocks to my hotel.  Given that the British Pound is equivalent to 2 U.S. Dollars, things are awfully expensive.  Anyway, I got to my hotel by 4pm and was out walking the city by 5.  I stayed in the Westminster area of London given my 24 hour layover.  I am really amazed at the changes so rapidly to the Westminster area of London.  The amount of Middle Eastern people and the rows and rows of arabic restaraunts is impressive.  I had a great dinner at an Iraqi Restaraunt.  The KaBobs were spectacular.  Every block has so many restaraunts and 5 out of 6 are Arabic, leaving the one British pub on those blocks as the sore thumb sticking out.  It was absolutely amazing to see the number of people sitting outdoors smoking hookahs!  Dozens of hookahs ablaze at every cafe. 

wow.  Anyway, went back to my hotel and was awakened at 1am with the sound of water dripping.  It was raining so hard that the ceiling leaked and caused a huge puddle in my room.  By 3am I ended up moving to another room because of the annoyance.  You can believe I got my 50% discount when I checked out.  At first they said no adjustment and upon my promising them I would spend the day telling people walking in about my experience, the Manager relented and offered the 50% reduction which I gladly accepted.  What a dump.

 I took the Heathrow Express back to the Airport, checked my bags and took a non stop flight back to LA.  Great to finally get back home!  Its been quite an adventure.