What I did on my summer vacation--Part I

Those of us who teach recognize the end of July as the end of summer.  We're not obligated to be in the classroom for another month plus, but this is the time to finalize course preparation.  That said, I have to acknowledge that this has been a wonderful summer.

I was fortunate to be able to teach an online class during May term, a very brief  but productive three weeks.  Once that was over, we were invited to my daughter's housewarming party.  Little did we know that it was actually a surprise 30th wedding anniversary party for my husband and me.  My daughter had arranged for her out-of-town siblings to fly in from Tucson and Corvallis, Oregon.  We were absolutely delighted by it all.

I should mention that my dear daughter outdid herself.  Just the previous week she had hosted a bridal shower for her dear friend Amanda.

She accomplished all of this in the midst of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra's return to work.

The week after our anniversary, my friend Fran and I flew out to Tucson to collect furniture she had purchased from Craig's List for her new winter home.

In addition to an arduous and super hot day of moving furniture from four Phoenix suburbs to her new home, we also managed to have ourselves a fine time including a lovely Saturday evening at the Desert Museum.

The most memorable part of the trip for me took place the night before we returned.  We decided to spend a night closer to Mesa Gateway Airport, so we booked a hotel.  We left Tucson around 2 with an ETA of 3:30.  As we had done after collecting all of the furniture the previous (miserably hot) Wednesday, we decided to stop at DQ for an ice cream treat.  We made it to our hotel in excellent time and got out of the car, only to discover that my purse was not in the backseat where I thought I had placed it.  Absolutely panicked, we got right back in the car and headed back to the DQ in Casa Grande where we had stopped for the treat.  As I drove, Fran got out her trusty smart phone and started trying to find a phone number for the DQ in question.  Much to our surprise, she found a DQ App!  She started making phone calls with the aim of checking whether or not anyone had turned in my purse.  After a couple of wrong numbers, she hit pay dirt.  She told the person who answered the phone, "My friend and I just visited your store an hour ago and she thinks she left her purse in the bathroom."  The person who answered said, "Was that the women's restroom?"  After checking, the clerk came back with a negative.  By that time, I had pulled in to the parking lot.  Just on a whim, I said "Fran, would you call my cell phone?"  You guessed it...  My purse had been wedged in a great tightness underneath the seat that whole time.


July started with a terrific week-long course on the Holocaust in European Memory at UMTC and a concert at the Minnesota Zoo.  While we enjoyed the evening, it was probably the most monochromatic experience I've ever had.  You can fill in the blanks.

The very next week, my husband and I embarked on our road trip west to Corvallis, Oregon to visit our oldest son. We decided to take the southern route along I-90 so that we could explore South Dakota--something neither one of us had ever done.  The first full day of travel happened to be my birthday, and we managed to hit all of the South Dakota highlights.  We started at the Corn Palace in Mitchell (home to Senator George McGovern, may his memory be for a blessing).  Our expectations were very low, but we were very pleasantly surprised by how interesting it was.

Of course, there was plenty of kitsch to go with the genuinely interesting information about the role the Corn Palace played in the development of South Dakota agriculture and commerce.

The murals on the exterior walls of the corn palace make use of 13 different shades of corn, including red, brown, black, blue, white, orange, calico, yellow and green.  The murals on the outside of the building change every August, so we got to see the beginning steps of changing the murals.  Workers were busy removing the rye and dock and setting up the replacement grains.

This month, they'll change the murals themselves.

It was an hour's worth of fun, and we felt the time was well spent.

We were back on the road by 10, headed to Wall Drug for lunch.  This time, the kitsch was overwhelming.

I'll give them this--they know how to process a crowd.  There were hundreds of people there and I don't think anyone left hungry.  We had a fairly unremarkable lunch and decided that one visit was sufficient.  Five cent coffee just isn't enough of a draw.

Mt. Rushmore is not too far from Wall Drug, so within an hour we were at a worthwhile venue.

I enjoyed looking at the "heads" (as my sister-in-law refers to them), but the background information was what was really interesting.

When we returned to Minnesota, we learned that while serving as a CCC doctor in the 1930s my father-in-law (may his memory be for a blessing) met the artist, Gutzon Borglum.

As impressed as we were by the monument, our next visit was that much more inspiring. 

Seventeen miles south from Mt. Rushmore is the Crazy Horse Memorial.  We had been warned that this site was much more expensive.  The parking fee at Mt. Rushmore was $11, but there was no entrance fee.  It's $10 per adult, or $27 per carload to get in to the memorial site, but that's how this site makes money.  Korczak decided not to take any government money to support the project.  Instead, the project has been funded by admission fees and tips.

After encountering his award-winning sculpture of Polish composer Ignacy Jan Paderewski at the 1939 World's Fair in New York, Lakota Chief Henry Standing Bear, commissioned Korczak Ziolkowski  to sculpt the memorial to the spirit of Crazy Horse. Ziolkowski had also come to South Dakota to work with Borglum on the Mt. Rushmore Monument. 

Ziolkowski served with honor during World War II and didn't begin working on the project until 1948.

The site includes The Indian Museum of North America, the Native American Educational and Cultural Center and Korczak's home and studio.  Additionally, visitors may pay a small fee to ride a school bus up to the mountain for a closer look.

These images represent 65 years of work.  Best estimates suggest it will be another 100 years before the work is complete. 

Beyond the sculpture, Korczak's vision was focused on the Native American people of the area.  According to the Memorial's website, "The Memorial’s mission is to honor the culture, tradition and living heritage of North American Indians.  Korczak’s vision extended beyond the mountain carving. In 1978, Korczak began a scholarship program with just $250 to start the educational portion of the dream. In 2008, the program has reached the $1 million mark in scholarships, mostly to Indian students attending South Dakota school."

At the end of the afternoon, we continued on our journey west.  We had a rather mediocre dinner in Sundance, Wyoming, and landed at Gillette,Wyoming for a night's stay; we didn't really mind though because it had been such a full day.  All in all, it was a great way to spend my birthday.

Auschwitz

This is the post I've been dreading.  As a 21st century woman of privilege, I feel humbled and inadequate to address the subject of Auschwitz, but the truth is Auschwitz was really the centerpiece of our trip.  When we talked to our friends about making this trip, they often replied that it was not a trip they wanted to take.  We knew it was going to be a difficult experience, but this was something we were both committed to doing and I think we were both glad to be making this trip with each other..

Cindy made arrangements for us to have a private guide, which proved to be a very wise choice.  I highly recommend doing this as I have participated in many group tours and I know how easy it is to lose important points the guide is making when you end up at the back of the pack.  This site really demands intense focus, and being in a group of three facilitates that kind of concentration.

Our driver met us outside our hotel at 9 a.m. and drove us to Oswiecim in his minibus.  During the drive we saw a monastery on the top of a hill.  Our driver revealed that it had been used by the Nazis during World War II.  Today it is a restaurant and popular wedding site.  We were both struck by that.  How does one knowingly schedule a wedding at a site with that kind of taint?

We saw a Bactrian Camel (two humps) outside a restaurant called the Flamingo--in the snow, mind you.  I also saw stars of David in graffiti on the walls of a building.  Neither Cindy nor the driver noticed them.  These sights were disconcerting in wildly different ways, but I was particularly bothered by the graffiti.  Did I imagine it?  Was this what I was expecting to see?

Once we arrived, our driver took us to the welcome center while he went in search of our guide. 

 The center had an iron curtain quality to it.  It seemed a bit rundown and anachronistic. 

Our guide was named Jacek, a young-ish (late 30s/early 40s), very intense and knowledgeable young man.  If I remember correctly, he held an important position at the Auschwitz educational organization.  He wasted no time in starting the tour.  The dreariness of the morning seemed apt as we walked through these infamous gates.

There was so much to learn; it was hard to take it all in while confronted by these horrific sites and devastating data. 

There were many useful informational signs throughout the camp which offered facts I hadn't known previously.

There were architectural features which took me by surprise as well, such as this guard shelter.

I was also struck by this sign, which says, "the corpses of prisoners shot while trying to escape were displayed here as a warning to others."

There were numerous signs which were reminders of well-known details about life (such as it was) at the camp.

It is appalling to read about the expansion efforts by the SS.  I was surprised to read that they added eight buildings to the original 20 in Auschwitz I, as well as a second story to 14 other buildings.  As we all know from many sources, the guards beat their prisoner crew at the slightest provocation, and sometimes completely without provocation.

Most people know well the reputation of Auschwitz as the worst of the Death Camps.  This graphic emphasized the scope of its power, indicating the transit camps which transported prisoners to Auschwitz.

We saw the expected displays of shoes, luggage, toys and hair.

Even though I thought I was prepared for them, it was still difficult to encounter them in this venue.  The hair, in particular, upset me.  The piles of hair were in nearly colorless heaps.  A friend of mine said, "What did you expect?  Of course the hair was without color.  Hair color fades with time."  I thought about that and realized that what really got to me were the occasional bits of colored hair--a swatch of red or blonde, black or distinctively brown.  It was those spots of color which touched my heart because they represented life.

The display of the prosthetic limbs and crutches was also particularly moving.

I've spent the summer reading Holocaust books.  As I've read the various testimonies, especially those of Auschwitz survivors, I have been struck in a more palpable way than before I visited the camp, by the reality of their stories.  I find myself faced with a much clearer sense for what people experienced.  It is easier to place myself at the scene as I read the stories of those who described the daily humiliations and acts of torture.


I think I understand with greater intensity what it meant to have to strip naked before the enemy while menstruating and to be deprived of all sense of one's own humanity.  I perceive what it must have been like to subsist on three sips of ersatz coffee and bits of bread.

As we walked through the camp, visiting this or that building containing various displays, I felt the horror building.  It was probably intentional for our guide to bring us to Block 11 toward the end of our visit to Auschwitz I.  There we saw the standing cells where prisoners were forced to stand through the night after having worked all day and consumed only the barest of meals, only to be returned to this cell day after day for upwards of twelve days.

Not everybody could withstand this torture.

We saw the wall of death where prisoners had their hands cuffed behind their backs and were then hanged from their raised arms, a most painful posture leading to death.

We saw the shooting wall,

we saw canisters of Zyclon B and noted where it had been tested on Russian POWs.

Our final stop at Auschwitz I was at the perimeter of the camp, in front of a hanging gallows, within view of the Commandant's home/villa.

Jacek told us that Hoess had been hanged right there in the camp.

I asked if it had been a public, private or secret hanging.  He said it had been secret, which was no surprise.  What did surprise me was my reaction.  It was at that moment that my emotions overtook me.  I was vibrating I was so upset.  Through tears of anger, no...hatred, I said, "I would have paid good money to see that Son of a Bitch hanged."

Our tour continued at Auschwitz II-Birkenau, the women's camp, a short trip by minibus.  By the time we got there, the clouds were clearing.  The contrast with Auschwitz I was remarkable.  Auschwitz II-Birkenau was enormous.

Most of the buildings have been leveled, but there are enough structures still standing to give a clear sense for what that place was like.  The railroad tracks divide the camp, and you can still see the outline of the selection place.

The gas chambers and crematoria have been leveled, but the rubble remains.  It was blocked off giving the impression of a toxic waste site.

We walked through one of the barracks and also the latrine and washrooms.  We saw the building where evil doctors did their experiments on the women.

Some of the buildings were propped up because they were in danger of falling down, they had been so poorly constructed.

It was an overwhelming experience.  Recollecting what what we saw and how I felt, has not been easy.  I am glad I went.  I felt as though my visit was a way of paying homage to the victims, however poor a gesture it might be.