At the beginning of the trip for the SMU Human Rights Tour in Poland, there was a warning from Dr. Rick Halperin that each of the 20 participants would have a moment when the impact of the Holocaust during World War II would be felt. It would be different for each.
For some it may have been the killing wall at Auschwitz between blocks 10 and 11, where some 30,000 victims, mostly political prisoners, were lined up and shot. For others it may have been in the solitude of the remote forest at Chelmo where special vans drove as many as 300,000, mostly Jews, to their deaths. Chelmo is a killing field rarely visited, even by Poles. The victims were crammed into the backs of trucks rigged to take in the engine exhaust, killing by carbon monoxide poisoning. Or maybe it was the massive rock quarry at Gross-Rosen outside Wroclaw. It was not an extermination camp, but about 40,000 died from the backbreaking labor in the worst conditions possible with inadequate food and clothing.
Or for some, the moment may have come at Majdanek, a former concentration and extermination camp on the edge of Lublin, in the southeast part of the country. The city and the camp offer fascinating insights into the murderous events of the Holocaust as well as some of the ongoing issues that linger into the 21st century. The group toured Majdanek on a still, bitterly cold Christmas Eve morning. Heavy boots crunching a thin layer of snow made the only noise as the group moved from barrack to barrack and then up the hill to the crematorium and memorial.
Personal effects taken from the victims are a standard display at some of the sites. One of the barracks at Majdanek is filled with containers with nothing but shoes. There were 800,000 pairs of shoes found at the camp when the Russian troops entered the facility in the spring of 1944.
In one bin near the door there is a woman’s shoe that, despite the effects of more than 60 years of temperature and humidity changes, still draws one’s attention. It is an elegant shoe with finely detailed leather, patterned in black and tan with a heel of medium height. Little imagination is needed to understand at least something about the stylish woman who wore the shoe and the tragedy of her life ended under such horrible conditions. She was no doubt a young woman, perhaps a mother of young children.
Lublin is a tragic example of the success of the Holocaust. In the 1930s, Lublin had a thriving Jewish population of more than 40,000, about a third of the city’s population. There was also a renowned yeshiva for religious learning. Today Lublin has a population of 300,000 but only a handful of Jewish families. Only in the last year has a synagogue reopened in the city.
Many of the Jews from Lublin ended up murdered at Majdanek. The camp today is considered the best-preserved Holocaust site in Poland. Much of the facility, including barracks, gas chamber and part of the crematorium, exists just as it did when the Germans fled the facility before approaching Russian troops.
Lublin and Majdanek also serve as an example of what remains an emotional debate over the number of victims of the Holocaust. Recent literature from the museum at Majdanek indicates the number of victims at about 80,000.
“This is just the ongoing attempt to deny or at least minimize the effects of the Holocaust,” Halperin said. “It’s outrageous and it’s offensive.”
Halperin said he plans to consult with proper historical bodies to discuss the reduced numbers being publicized at Majdanek. He said evidence at the camp as well as historical documents indicate a minimum of 250,000 victims.
The tour began on Wednesday, Dec. 19. After arriving in Europe and changing planes in Frankfurt, the group gathered in Gdansk, in the north of Poland on the Baltic Sea. Over the next 10 days, the group traveled by train and bus some 1,100 miles. The tour included five cities and more than a dozen different Holocaust sites. Among the nine former camps visited were the notorious Auschwitz-Birkenau complex outside Krakow and Treblinka outside Warsaw. Among the famous sites were the Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw and the Krakow factory run by Oskar Schindler in which he protected more than 1,000 Jews from the nearby Plaszów camp. This story was made famous by Stephen Spielberg’s 1993 movie “Schindler’s List.”
Auschwitz is the most visited of the camps in Poland. Like most of the other sites, it started as a concentration camp for forced labor. Beginning in 1942, it became the largest of the killing camps and the central location for shipping prisoners from German-occupied locations all over Europe. Current estimates are that 1.4 million were murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau, with 90 percent of those being Jews. As at other Nazi camps, others killed included dissidents, political prisoners and some religious leaders.
Among those accompanying Halperin on this trip were 14 SMU students, two faculty members, one staff member and two area schoolteachers. It is the largest group to accompany him on a human rights trip since he first brought a group to Poland in 1996. Halperin said the mixture of the participants in this group, the chemistry and the commitment of the students made this the best trip he has led.
“For this many students to give up their holidays with family and friends and come on a trip like this shows how serious and committed they are,” he said. “It’s an extraordinary group, and it was a pleasure to be with them.”
Several of the students are participating in the new human rights minor at SMU, part of the SMU Human Rights Education Program started with a grant from the Embrey Family Foundation in Dallas. Halperin serves as director of the program. The program is less than two years old, but it has already made an impact on the SMU campus and beyond.
“In my dreams, this program is what I hoped it would be, but I’d be lying if I said I honestly believed it would happen,” he said in describing the status of the program.
Halperin leads three human rights tours a year. In 2008, the spring break trip will be to Holocaust sites around Prague, Munich and Vienna. In August he will take a group to Argentina. The December trip will be to Poland, as usual.
He is committed to the tour of Poland annually, always in December to create maximum impact on the students about how the harsh Polish winter added to the suffering of the victims. As a human rights activist, Halperin has visited numerous killing fields of the 20th century including Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda and Chile.
“The Holocaust and World War II created a paradigm shift in warfare, human rights and accountability,” Halperin said. “The goal of the Holocaust was to rid a continent of the Jewish people. We had never seen anything like that before. Any human rights activist owes a debt to those who perished, and that’s why I keep coming back. It’s important for me to pay my respects. But these trips are also about an extraordinary will to live. Thousands of people survived these horrible camps, and it’s also about honoring them.”
On the final evening of the trip, Halperin challenged the participants with bearing witness to what they had seen. He said that if any of them ever heard a doubt about the Holocaust or its impact, there was an obligation to communicate the truth.
“These students now have an experience that enables them to become human rights educators and activists,” he said later. “That’s what this program is about.”
Tony Pederson is professor and Belo Distinguished Chair in Journalism and a member of the board of directors of the SMU Human Rights Program. More information is available on the SMU Human Rights Program at smu.edu/humanrights.
