I was fortunate enough to have already taken classes with both professors who led our trip, Anna Muller and Jamie Wraight. Professor Muller is a native of Gdańsk; her love of Poland and desire to show us everything it had to offer was evident. Dr. Wraight is a Holocaust historian whose work in the Voice/Vision Archive at UM-Dearborn enhanced the information he was able to tell us while touring concentration camps on the trip. Both of these professors brought something different to the table for all of us to learn from, and it offered an opportunity for students who had different interests to chase them and look to the professor who might offer them the best insight into the topic they wished to pursue for the trip.
Having just finished a semester studying the Holocaust with Dr. Wraight, my focus on the trip was initially just that, with emphasis on the design of the concentration camps which was what my research paper for his class was on. I immediately discovered, though, that there was a much larger story to be told in these places. Much of our trip was focused on the Jewish-Polish history and relationship, something that continues to change even today. We toured many of the Jewish ghettos: Porgorze near Kraków and those in Lublin, Łódź, and Warsaw. In these places, it is evident that the people who eventually had their lives taken in the concentration camps or extermination camps had stories.
As our guide at the Bełżec extermination camp told us, “Although we do not know the names of the people who came here, we have to remember they were people. For so many, this is where their story ended; but we cannot forget they had a story before the war.” I’m obviously paraphrasing. I tried to write down what she said in a note on my phone but I’m not nearly fast enough. What she meant was clear, though; and it was echoed by our guide in Łódź when we visited the cemetery that was within the ghetto there at the time of the war. She said, “There are 150,000 graves here. That means there were 150,000 people. That means there are 150,000 stories.” Over 43,000 of those stories ended in the ghetto – but they still have something to say. In the Jewish cemeteries we visited, trees and grass have begun to overrun the graves and shape a new landscape. To me, this was almost a sign of life in places that people had been forgotten or abandoned. Groups spend time cleaning these graves throughout the year. Our guide in Łódź said that when she and her friends clean a grave and finally see a name, they talk about who this person may have been; what their story might have told. In Lublin, we went to an archive where the workers are trying to piece together a history of the city by documenting who lived in each of the buildings. Their task seems almost impossible because for some places, they do not know the full names or where the people went. If only the walls could speak, I suppose. The walls of the houses and of the ghettos, the trees in the streets and the trees around the camps we visited – all six of them – are the silent witnesses of the history we learned.
Again, if only they could speak.
That’s not to say our entire trip was rooted in the losses from the Second World War because they are seemingly impossible to ignore. It’s easy to forget that a country whose landscape was completely decimated by total war had a story beforehand. The streets are rebuilt, although changed to be more modern. In Warsaw, communist buildings dominate many areas – and you can imagine the jokes we made about our hotel which was in one of these buildings. It is also easy to look primarily at a Jewish history so easily intertwined in the story of the Polish people. Because what is Poland and who is Polish? A country whose history is so complex from its infancy can struggle with that question – and so can the people who study it. When we were in Zakopane, a small city which I equated to Poland’s own Gatlinburg, we talked about how such a place can become the focus of study for what is “Polish.” It’s a place left untouched by war and partitions. It was able to grow with its own culture. It is “Polish.” But so are many other things.
Some of us had the opportunity to meet Lech Wałęsa, who was the leader of the Solidarność movement that began in the shipyards of Gdańsk in 1980 (which to some – and certainly to him – is the real spark of the down fall of communism in Europe) and the first post-communist president of Poland. Although his political beliefs have not always remained popular, he said many things that I believe ring true for all of us. He told our group and a group of German students that his generation fought communism so we would not have to, so we could have more opportunities than their generation could ever dream of. It is now our job to use those opportunities to change the world. He said that he was able to be successful with Solidarność because he believed in it with his whole heart; and if there is something we are so passionate about, we should do everything within our power to achieve it. I wanted to ask him if he ever imagined the impact Solidarność would have on the world. It was lost in translation and I think became more of a question if he ever imagined the impact he would have. He spoke about the movement like a chain. Some links can carry more weight than others; but you have to be careful not to give one link too much or it will break and run away; every link is needed for the movement to be successful. He just happened to be the first link. The most valuable thing he said, I think, was that when we try to make these changes to our world, we have to listen to everyone around us. The opinions of everyone need to be heard before it can be decided what is “best” for us. He said that is what they did in Solidarność. They had to compromise and work together, forgetting their individual differences for the sake of the progress of the group. It was truly inspiring to hear words that are so applicable today, and surely will be in the future as well.
It was funny when I left to go on this trip and I would have people ask, “But why Poland?” I think it’s clear in what I have written here “why Poland.” There is still so much more I would love to write here, like why Łódź is so comparable to Detroit or why there was controversy on how to rebuild Gdańsk. I would love to recount all the museums we visited and people we met, the artifacts we got to see up close and personal without any glass barrier at the Museum of the Second World War. My best advice would be to see it all for yourself. Because no matter how little or how much I thought I knew about things like the Holocaust or Solidarność, this trip challenged me to see things in new ways and question the things I thought. Again, perhaps I am only speaking for myself but I really believe some of my classmates would echo my sentiment.
Our experiences with a language barrier, different currency, public transportation, and new kinds of food certainly changed our perspectives. This was truly the trip of a lifetime, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.
Katrina Stack is a history major with a minor in political science, and also pursuing secondary teaching certifications in social studies and history.
She is the Historian for UM Dearborn's chapter of Phi Alpha Theta, the national history honor society, and is also the Media co-chair for UM's figure skating team in Ann Arbor. She will be graduating in 2016.
To learn more about the Poland study abroad trip, and to read other student blog entries, visit:
http://polandstudyabroad.weebly.com/home.html
Our experiences with a language barrier, different currency, public transportation, and new kinds of food certainly changed our perspectives. This was truly the trip of a lifetime, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.
She is the Historian for UM Dearborn's chapter of Phi Alpha Theta, the national history honor society, and is also the Media co-chair for UM's figure skating team in Ann Arbor. She will be graduating in 2016.
To learn more about the Poland study abroad trip, and to read other student blog entries, visit:
http://polandstudyabroad.weebly.com/home.html