Journey to Auschwitz 2015 Documentation
My feeling awareness expands
What really stayed with me after this week in Auschwitz with our group of 19 is a much stronger ability to confront myself with reality. It feels like the space inside myself, that is needed to face what is going on around me, “out there” in the world, is much bigger than it has ever been before.
No, I still can´t face the whole range of what happened in Auschwitz. But the ability to look at the photos, pictures, films, the places where “it” (mass murder, extreme cruelty, etc) all happened, grew. My feeling awarness seems to expand.
I´m much more interessted in what´s going on in the world right now. I´m much more in an emotional contact with what I´m reading in the newspaper, listening to on tv. Not fully, but closer.
After being at that place, where the dark side of being human is so enormous, I´m not willing to shut down again, close my eyes. And, suprisingly, i felt closer to “god”, more connected with the people, who went on that trip together with me, than before. The darkest shadow and a very strong experience of light, that´s what Auschwitz means to me.
I´m deeply touched and grateful for the people in our group and every single person that went there with on open, feeling heart. My protctive shield melted, my heart feels broken in a good way. There is pain and a deep trust in life at the same time.
Introduction
The trip to Auschwitz was a life-‐changing experience for me. I was born in 1950, five years after the end of World War II and the Holocaust. In recent years, I’ve felt more and more connected to this near past. My mother’s family was Jewish from Warsaw, Poland. My mother, aunt, and grandmother were born in Warsaw, but migrated to the US in 1927 to join my grandfather, who had been here a few years. Everyone else in Warsaw—and it was a large family—were murdered or died in impossibly difficult circumstances.
(My father’s family was Jewish from Lithuania, but the American branch had been in the US for some time and didn’t hold the same connection to their European relatives. They were and are a group that fights and separates. There is more anger, confusion, and division in this line than in my mother’s. So far, I’m cut off from them despite my efforts to connect in both the external world and the inner world.)
As far as death camps go, my mother’s family would have died at Treblinka, not Auschwitz, because that’s where people from Warsaw were shipped. My sense is that my dad’s family lived mostly in villages and were murdered by the Einsatzgruppen. My mother’s family was very loving and very close. The women were especially strong, including my grandmother. Penetrating into the subtle, I’ve learned that my grandmother’s youngest sister was a person of great love, clarity, and inner strength. We have some photographs of this woman. Her name was Tsesha. She had a husband and two children.
Even though my family doesn’t have a direct connection to Auschwitz, I feel that Tsesha was with me there and through her presence so was the weight of my mother’s family. I wasn’t alone at all. We were witnessing with our collective heart.
I spent months preparing for the trip, reading books and watching documentaries, trying to understand, wondering if I would be overwhelmed. Somehow in the background, I deepened my connection to and respect for my German companions. I knew they were doing the same kind of preparation. Our group calls before the trip confirmed the connection. I had faith in my companions. I knew we’d do this together. And, honestly, I say with gratitude, they radiated a beautiful grace to me. There were 19 of us, and this was the strongest container I’ve ever been part of.
Subtle Field, Mind States
Auschwitz is an incredibly powerful place. If you open yourself at all, you feel yourself walking in a potent subtle field in the Present. Everything is there. Witnessing myself and others, I came to think that the living who walk through Auschwitz with any openness are like magnets attracting energies to their field (either what’s dominant in their field or what’s there for that particular visit).
In one of the first days we were there, I was speaking in English with one of my companions. We were just at the entrance to Birkenau, near where there are several standing barracks that had housed slave workers and that visitors can walk into. An older man came rushing out of the very first barrack. He was distraught. Energetically he looked like he was pulling his hair out. He stopped by us and said, “You speak English. I have to tell somebody this. How can they do it? How could anyone do the kinds of things that were done here? What kind of human beings were these? I don’t understand?” We tried to be present with this man, to console him, but we couldn’t. In the course of our few minutes of exchange, he told us that he had been born in Poland, the youngest child in a very large family. All had perished; only he survived. He eventually got to New York. He said he could get down on his knees and kiss the American ground. He had a family. His kids and grandkids were successful. Bless America. But how could this happen! How could people do this! And he ran off, his mind beyond our touch. He lasted five minutes at Auschwitz.
I also saw many groups of adolescent Israelis making their pilgrimage. Lots of these kids had tied the corners of an Israeli flag around their throat so that the flag draped across their back with the blue Jewish star prominent in a field of white. Older men would lecture to them in Hebrew and younger men would stand at a distance, vigilantly scanning the environment for signs of threat. I noticed that the Ethiopian Jews, of which there were almost always a few, stood toward the back of the group or trailed along when the group moved. To my American eyes, this really sucked and felt like a huge failing. I watched these knots of blue and white move, insulated and isolated within their own fearful and aggressive world (or so it seemed to me).
I confess I got angry at the Israelis, the way they tried to take space, the righteous victimhood, the closed circle. I think I’m angry because I love them and I fear for them. I fear that they are suicidal, and I don’t want to look at it. I also noticed a couple of groups of older American Jews who were listening to lectures from younger men with feint Hebrew accents. The Americans were different from the Israelis, more secure feeling, but nonetheless moving within and reinventing a group energy of victimhood and (fear-‐ powered) pride. Their pain is my pain and weighs heavy on me. This was the most difficult part of the Auschwitz trip for me, the strong current of the unhealed.
“Red Energy”
While we were still in Berlin before taking the train to Auschwitz, we visited the Topography of Terror, a museum built over the ruins of the buildings that had been the Nazis’ institutional power center. It’s was the Core, the place where the Architects of Evil went to work every day, made their plans, hung out and chatted. I sat with a companion sipping tea in the museum café. We felt a little guilty that we weren’t looking at the photos, descriptions, and other reminders of the horrors. But, we felt into where we were. I could feel the “masculine” energy, the unbounded confidence that “we rule the world; we can do whatever we want.” What a sense of power among the top guys and their strutting lieutenants! When I tried to feel their attitude toward others, the imperious (herrisch) disregard, the cruelty, I couldn’t get there. The yuck factor was too great for me.
Nonetheless, this opened the possibility for me to get a more complete picture of how the Reich was experienced by Germans. I understand that the usual response for generations since the War is guilt and shame and sympathy for the victims. I’m happy that our group also explored, the “positive” side of the Reich experience, the energies of power, confidence, idealism, joy, and immense creativity. For example, young people excitedly volunteered to go to newly-‐conquered Poland to set up German schools and otherwise promote “German” culture, or men and women enlivened by Eros found a new freedom and confidence to give themselves to sexual experience. This is the release of an energy and experience of personal power and freedom, sometimes called “red energy.”
I am here! I have arrived! I am unfettered!
I’ve been reading a great book about Israel. It’s called “My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel.” It recounts and reveals multiple facets of formative events in Zionist and Israeli history. In one passage the book describes an action in the late 40’s where young Zionists drove the Arabs out of the city of Lydda. They pounded on the Arabs’ doors and loudly commanded them to grab their belongings, to leave immediately. The Jews were armed: the Arabs had no recourse and were marched out of town in a long column. Meanwhile, their homes were looted and the women were considered for spoils. The young Jewish men were spun into an ecstasy of power. Fortunately, in some cases during the Lydda action, the Jewish leaders calmed the men and limited their excesses. (The scene is very familiar, of course, except that a few years earlier the families of the perpetrators would have been the victims.)
Personally, I got in contact with red energy from the victim side when we were doing an activity at Auschwitz. We decided to stand in women’s and men’s lines for some amount of time at the exact spot where the transports came in and emptied out the Jews, who were forced to line up by gender and then promptly selected by Nazi doctors for immediate death or for slave labor and slow death. As I stood with the other men in our group and looked at the women lined up at a distance from us, I thought/felt, “Fuck this, fuck you Germans, I am going to survive. Whatever it takes, I am going to survive.” I felt such determination. I believe I attracted an energy from the abundance of possibilities in the subtle field of Auschwitz. I felt the energy and it was strengthened within my system, maybe more so because I was conscious of it.
This energy of personal power can be present in unhealthy ways, such as the way it was sucked up into a juggernaut (Riesenlaster) of organized, murderous cruelty in the Nazi years, or the way it showed itself amongst the young Jewish men at Lydda. The energy of personal power can also be suppressed, which is not healthy either. I’ve heard many times how German men push down this energy in themselves (for obvious historical reasons). And, many Eastern European Jews, or those carrying the culture such as myself, have had a tendency to lay low and act non-‐offensively to avoid being targeted as a member of a despised group. I think it’s valuable and courageous for Germans (and me, too, apparently) to look at the power and creativity of the Reich so these energies can be freed for healthy expression. It’s an include and transcend opportunity.
Healing
As I said, I didn’t feel alone at Auschwitz. There were my companions in the group who were steady, courageous, and gracious; there were some number of people who were aware of what we were doing and supporting us energetically; there were the inner beings or energies from my mother’s family who were blessing me with a golden glow of love; and there were the energies of those who had died at Auschwitz and come to peace, as well as others who had come from places of light to offer their healing intent.
Most of my Auschwitz experiences were positive, and sometimes extraordinary. Early on, we meditated as a group in a grove of trees near Crematorium 5, a secondary killing facility. I don’t normally see light when meditating, but this time the light was bright. The day was cold, rainy, and miserable, but there was so much light in my inner experience that I kept wondering if the sun had broken through. I’d open an eye, but, nope, it would still be dreary gray. After we sat, we shared our experiences in groups of four or five. Sitting with my group, I felt much lighter than usual. I was less dense, more present, more loving, more confident, clearer and happier.
I think it was the morning of our last day at Auschwitz that we sat as a group in a grove of mature, stately oak trees near the gas chamber of Crematorium 2. We were maybe 30 to 40 meters from the ruins of this mainstay facility where hundreds of thousands of people had been processed and murdered. Apparently, it took no more than a couple of hours to move from the train to smoke. (I say this without being able to fully comprehend it.)
Our plan was to sit for an hour and then stay in the vicinity of Crematorium 2 for a second hour. I spent most of the second hour backed up near a remaining barbed wire fence that separated the crematorium area from where the slave labor barracks had been. The ruins of Crematorium 2 were in front of me, situated in a larger space surrounded by trees. The trees that we had just sat among were to the right and other stands of big trees were behind the crematorium at a distance. Off to the left, also at a bit of distance, there were more trees.
Within the expanse bounded by the trees, I began to sense what felt like a very refined energetic mist steadily rising from both the ruins and the surrounding grounds. The energy was streaming up. In time, I wanted to join with this energy. I’ve practiced quite a bit of tai chi and know how to move with energy. I began to move gently, letting my torso turn, my arms extend, then my hand, then my fingers. I was very subtle. I wasn’t interested in drawing attention to myself. I simply followed as I moved in energy. It was a soft, joyful release.
Afterward, the group as a whole gathered and stood in a circle. We looked around at each other. I made eye contact with one person and then another and experienced the thought “who am I as an inconsequential and disposable Jew to look straight at the unassailable power of Germans.” More than once, I have doubted myself in similar circumstances, in these moments of deep contact with sincere and open Germans in a shared Holocaust space. However, at Auschwitz, as before, my Aunt Tsesha arrived with supportive energy to encourage and stabilize me. “You can do this, Russell.” As before, I deepened into the presence of the moment.
Not long after, I heard words sounding with sharp clarity in my awareness. “I am healed.” Then, as I looked at the Germans in our group I felt a strong impulse accompanied by the words, “I will do anything to help you.”
I didn’t experience the “I” in “I am healed” as the usual me, the one who might think, I will now brush my teeth. It was a profound statement, delivered with resonance in presence and clarity, like someone planting a flag on the moon. I am healed.
What Might Healing Mean
Since returning from Auschwitz, I’ve been contemplating who this other “I” might be that proclaims itself healed. It’s not so much the ego (the one interested in dental hygiene). It’s more like a consciousness that was born into a momentary opening and opportunity in the flow of my mother’s family stream. Behind my ego, there is this consciousness and set of potentials that is uniquely me, which at the same time swims in and is filled with the current of the ongoing family. Apparently, in the healing, some of the stuck structures in the larger family flow opened, at least to some degree. Now, the stream is less captive to its history and its pathologies. Now it is freer, and I am freer, too.
As this larger family presence releases and flows more easily, it seems to attract similar Jewish energies that are readying for healing, including some that have been in the field at Auschwitz.
I’m also curious who the “you” is in “I will do anything to help you.” I don’t think this you is limited to bodies and egos. It’s no secret that there is shadow and pathology in German family streams and the larger aggregated German collective. I think it is possible to realize a large perspective that somehow sees the immense human context of the Holocaust, Jewish and German. This perspective holds healing potential.
This perspective has been realized by the being (or energy presence) that enters my life as “Aunt Tsesha.” She seeks to open her larger perspective through me. Tsesha is a magnifier and converter. She attracts potential energies from further up the family stream, primarily if not exclusively from the women. As I mentioned, I was born into an opportunity that opened in this stream. It is my role in my generation to shine this perspective and its energy into life.
This perspective can see what’s unhealed from the Holocaust, including the huge wound in Germany, which is especially clear in those present-‐generation Germans who choose (or are chosen) to open up. Looking at these Germans, this “I,” now sufficiently freed of its own pathologies, looks with compassion and healing intent toward those beings who share the same historical context and fate, and it desires their freedom.
If I have this at all right, then the next step for me is to give my Yes and let the energy open inside and into life and lead me. In Thomas’ terms, it’s agreeing to and acting upon the whisper.
— end —
I wrote the following not long after our trip. It’s a shorter, more intense version of the above.
I was surprised that during the days we spent in Auschwitz I didn’t descend into the horrors, either through mental pictures or by being swamped in emotional seas. My experience was mostly a feeling of mutual support and solidarity with my German companions, whether they felt pain, shame, or the powers of the perpetrators. God bless them. They went where they had to go and they brought me along with grace. Mostly, I felt Light, Joy, and a resolute determination for life, all of which are qualities that I believe to have been nascent in my energetic stream. Auschwitz/Birkenau is an incredible place or energy field. So present, palpable, powerful. The whole range is there, low horrors to high holy. When the soul walks through this vast field, it attracts to itself the energies that either complement its existing fortified beliefs or inspire its vibrant potential. I’m so blessed because angels surrounded me and supported me—my flesh and blood companions, as well as beautiful, generous, singing souls who only wanted me to see with an open heart and to find my own greatest Joy. Russell, descendant of the dead, inheritor of the holy.