Final Day

Many people believe that every victim of the Holocaust was tattooed and cataloged, but the reality is, the vast majority remain nameless and faceless.  Their identities will never be known as they were led out of cattle cars directly to their death in gas chambers.  My mother’s father Juda Leib Windman, and her grandfather Luzer Israel Windman were two men who made it past the initial selection process.  

Luzer only lived 4 days after arriving in Auschwitz and being sent to the infamous Block 11 on October 25 1941.

Juda Leib lived for 483 days after his arrest in Paris France on May 15, 1941 until his murder on September 8, 1942.  

The only survivor was Juda Leib’s brother, Wolf Windman, who went on and was instrumental in creating the Holocaust Memorial in Miami Beach, Florida.  

All other relatives are believed to have perished.

Perla Wajsman, my grandmother, lived until she was 91, letting us never forget her story.  Perla lost all but one of her 6 siblings, both parents, and all extended family.

Jacquline Schupper, my mother, lived to the age of 74.  The emptiness that she felt was never truly gone, but she spread joy to the ones closest to her.

We keep our story alive today with George Santayana’s quote in our minds.  “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” 

We want to thank everybody who followed along with our journey.  We are proud to tell our story and honored that there are people who care deeply enough to listen to us tell it.  We want to thank the people from Beaufay, France for welcoming us with open arms and we want to thank Witek our driver/guide for being such a valuable resource in Poland.  None of this possible without them.

Day 6

No matter how much I write in this blog, I will never be able to fully explain what we have felt today.  Our morning routine was no different than any other beautiful day that we have spent here in Europe.  A shower, some coffee and something small to eat.  The minute we left our hotel, things were different.  We were not talkative, we were not jubilant, we were focused.  At 7:30 A.M and 100 yards from our hotel, we were faced with the metal sign, “Arbeit Macht Frei” or “Work will set you free”.  We were the first two people in the camp on the 75th anniversary of Juda Leib Windman’s murder, and as we walked silently through the camp, we tried to adjust to the feeling we had, but the adjustment never came.  We made our way through Auschwitz I, the original camp, building by building.  Each building served a different purpose, some as offices, most as themed exhibition halls.  A building dedicated to Polish Jews, one to French Jews, one to children and so forth.  We saw the face of evil.  Silently, we made our way through a gas chamber and crematorium where thousands upon thousands of lives were taken from people who did nothing but be themselves.  We saw beds made of straw and bunk beds that were shared by up to 6 people.  We saw medical rooms where phenol was shot straight into the heart of prisoners just to see what would happen.  We walked past gallows where 12 Jews who helped several prisoners escape were hanged in front of the whole camp as an example.  We saw the ground where everyday, twice a day, the entire camp was counted during roll call, sometimes lasting more than 12 hours.   Building by building, we followed the stories of what happened in this land of evil.  Armed with the knowledge of our family, we made our way to Block 11.  Known as the prison block within the camp, resistance members, political influencers, prisoners with outside contact, or anybody that the Nazi’s felt was a threat to their plan was sent to Block 11 for a “trial” and sentence.  These trials would last about 10 minutes before the sentence of death was delivered.  Some prisoners were sent to the gas chamber, while others were sent to the Execution Wall, where we assume Luzer Israel Windman was executed mercilessly.  The physical sensation inside the camp was terrible, as we felt like there was not enough oxygen to breath in no matter where you were.  Once we left Auschwitz I we traveled three minutes down the road to Auschwitz II/Birkenau.  The immense landscape, about 450 acres, was so desolate and baron that there was no mistaking what happened here.  This place was used for nothing more than exterminating humans.  Between the barracks, crematoriums, and fields used to burn bodies, we thought there was not a single shred of hope there.  We walked the entire killing complex, and as we made our way to the farthest point in the camp, we found ourselves alone.  With no warning or sound, a single feather fell directly in front of our path, but there was no bird in sight.  Someone, or several people were watching over us as we passed through Auschwitz, and with that we knew our trip had been completed.  Those before us had thanked us for bringing some type of closure to the atrocity that happened in Auschwitz.  We finished our night with a traditional dinner in the Jewish Quarter of beautiful Krakow.

Before signing off for today, I want to take a moment to thank the man who has truly done the heavy lifting.  My dad, Robert, has been working on this project for almost 5 years, collecting information from hundreds of sources, and sorting through paper after paper to trace our family’s history.  He has run into dead ends, called people across the world, and spent late nights on the computer to find anything he can, but he never stopped working.  I was lucky enough to be on this trip with him, but he deserves every ounce of credit for bringing this together.  We traveled, step by step in our ancestors footsteps, because his attention to detail and attitude of never giving up.  He is my role model and I hope he inspires others to connect to their roots.  We all come from somewhere and it can be easy to forget those who walked before us.  I pray he finds some closure in our trip, and I know my grandmother Jacqueline and great-grandmother Paulette are smiling down.

Day 5

Our day started with a quick breakfast in Radom and a three hour trek to Częstochowa, in the south of Poland.  Our first stop was a place that will be hard to forget.  20 minutes outside of the city is the third largest cemetery in the country and is devoted strictly to the Jewish faith, yet the last burial to take place there was in 1970.  With almost 5000 bodies buried there, the size of the cemetery is immense, but the factor of eeriness comes from the condition of this land.  After being desecrated during World War II, there are headstones strewn about while an incredibly alive forest has formed here.  Moss has filled in the engraved names and tributes, trees have uprooted more headstones, and bushes have formed around mausoleums across this still consecrated area.  As we walked through, we were overcome with a feeling of peace, yet it was still hard to grasp the amount of death that was around us.  After we left we traveled to the site of a mass grave where 2000 Jews were killed and thrown into a grave and covered by concrete.  The bodies have since been removed, but small headstones remain the remember the site.  Following that, we traveled to the memorial site for Jews transported out of Częstochowa to Treblinka.  The memorial, on the site of the old train station, was created by the only Treblinka survivor from Częstochowa, and was formed with brick and the rails of the train tracks that transported these souls.  We then traveled to the site of the Ghetto Uprising, commemorated by a small plaque in the Old City Square.  Our final stop after the sights we planned, was Jasna Góra Monastery, a pilgrimage site for Catholics around the world.  The still functioning monastery is the home of Our Lady of Częstochowa, better known as Black Madonna of Częstochowa.  The incredibly decorated holy site is also a site where thousands come, looking for divine healing from above.  Tonight we have arrived in Oświęcim.  As soon as we stepped out of the car, our noses were filled with a smell of something that has been burned.  We have had no other interaction with the city other than that.  Tomorrow will bring us as close as we can be to those that we lost 75 years ago.  We have no expectations for tomorrow, but we know that we will be changed forever.

Day 4

Not even Paris could make a 5:00 AM alarm pleasant, but thats how today started.  We boarded our plane at Charles de Gaulle airport and 2 hours later we were meeting our guide/driver, V, for the first time.  We traveled 100 km to Radom, the first of our destinations in Poland.  It was here that we met Jakub, our resident Radom historian.  Our first stop with Jakub was the site of the Radom synagogue, which was built in the mid 19th century, vandalized by the Nazi’s, destroyed in 1946, and created into a monument in 1950 by the stones that had survived demolition.  We then traveled to the site of the Radom Ghetto and witnessed the building that the Wajsman family was forced into before meeting their demise.  The next stop was the Bata Shoe Factory where several of our relatives were slave laborers, followed by a stop at the local Radom exhibition, The Trace, to remember the Jewish plight that took place in this city.  Our final stop with Jakub was at the old Jewish cemetery, where until recently there were no headstones.  After turning the cemetery into a more convenient place to murder and leave bodies, the Nazi’s stole all of the headstones and used them to build roads and other construction projects.  It was not until recently that through road repairs and other public works, that headstones began resurfacing.  Numerous groups including the Polish and Israeli Prison Systems and the 1000 Club UK created a symbolic graveyard with a number of recovered headstones placed in the ground and along the perimeter wall that they created.  A monument was also constructed with granite headstones that were recovered from a local stone worker who was going to reuse them for other headstones.  The toughest pill to swallow today was the clear attempt to eliminate any sign of Judaism in Radom, the home of the Wajsman blood line, under the regime of the Third Reich.  We finished our day at a dinner of traditional Polish foods with V.  The acknowledgement of this town’s history through Radomers like Jakub is how the legacy of this city will continue live on, so that history does not repeat itself.

Day 3

Before we post, we wanted to apologize for the delayed post.  We experienced technical difficulties last night (French Internet) and today was a travel day starting at 6 AM.

After a day filled with emotion, yesterday was our first and only day with nothing to do other than experience Paris.  Once we had finished our breakfast, we set off to the Louvre only to find it was closed today.  Naturally, Tuesday is the only day they are closed, yet without even going inside, we were able to experience the beauty it had to offer.  The enormous surrounding structure, Perrualt’s Colonnade, with its intricate detail across every inch of the building, kept us more than happy.  We left and walked through the Jardin des Tuileries to the Grand Palais, a little more than a mile away.  Regardless of the Louvre being closed, we were able to take in historic French art and relax a bit.  We proceeded to the Champs-Élysées for lunch and people watching.  It was hard to process all the history that happened in the city we were standing in.  This city has been bustling longer than the United States has existed, and when you take a minute to take it in, the adoration and respect for Paris becomes such a prominent thought.  Tomorrow is on to Poland during this whirlwind trip, but our perspective on Paris, and France itself, will forever be altered.  There will always be a place in our heart for the people that we met here and the city that we got to know over our three days.  Voilà.

Day 2

This morning we woke up early as we had to travel quite a bit.  We started our day in Pithiviers, the town that was home to the French Internment camp, le Camp de Pithiviers where my grandfather was imprisoned for more than a year before he was sent to Auschwitz.  There is a small memorial to the people who were deported to their deaths from the camp.  The structures of the camp are long gone but the train station was just rediscovered and will be turned into a memorial.

We got back in the car for a two plus hour ride to Beaufay, a very small town near Le Mans.  My mother was hidden there by my grandmother and they were eventually reunited on the farm during the Nazi regime.  The town historian, George BIGOT and I have been in contact for many months and he helped put together an unbelievable day.

We started at the actual farm house where my mother was hidden.  Some structural work has been done since that time but the old house on the property was identical to the pictures that I found in my mother's safe deposit box.  People from all over town joined us as we had coffee with the owners, Patrick and his family.

We then went to Le Mans and toured the old city and the cathedral.  The group then went to the Le Mans racetrack and Museum.  We had to rush through as we were meeting a group of over twenty people at what seemed to be the only restaurant in a village of 1400 residents.  The group asked that I tell my family story with two translators.  I showed them pictures of my mother and grandmother on the farm called "le Jarrier".  The historian, George, introduced us to a woman who knew the family that who owned the farm and spoke fondly of them.  After Jonathan and I were interviewed by a reporter, the people of the town gave us a beautiful gift to remember our visit.

We ended the day in front of the Eiffel Tower, taking in the light show.

This day was extraordinary!  The people of Beaufay are incredible and we thank them for everything that they did for my mother, grandmother and us.

Day 1

After barely sleeping the night before our flight I stayed awake the entire flight watching movies. We landed at 7:05AM Paris time or 1:05AM Central PA time.  Jonathan's suitcase was one of the last bags to come through the luggage carousel.   We grabbed our rental car and pryed ourselves into the peppy little Opel with stick shift.  Afteer figuring out how to get of the parking lot we drove to the hotel and dropped off our bags, grabbed a coffee and a cab.

The cab driver dropped us off at 4 Rue Goncourt in the 11 Arrondissement, the apartment building that my grandparents shared in Paris.  After taking some pictures of the front of the building we followed the steps that my grandfather and grandmother took on the way to the address where my grandfather had to report so that he could have his "situation evaluated".  We walked for quite a while on Boulevard Voltaire until we reached the destination, the Japy Gymnasium at 2 Rue Japy. We wondered how long the new prisoners had to wait for all of their loved ones to return with their provisions.

We next went to the Gare d' Austerlitz train station where the prisoners were put on trains to be sent to their assigned internment camp.

After a visit to Norte Dame we stepped around to the back of this incredible structure and visited the Memorial des Martyrs de la Deportation which tells the haunting story of the deportation of the Jews from France to the infamous death camps. 

Following a quick lunch We headed over to our next stop, the Memorial de la Shoah.  It is very surreal to see a member of your family's name on a Memorial of such a horrific event in history.  Jonathan and I went to the research department where they were able to provide us with some documents that we have never seen surrounding my grandfather's arrest by the French police and an information card from the camp in Pithiviers.  I showed one of the woman working in the department the information that I had and she asked if we could share items as they do not have any copies of the documents and pictures tha I have.

To finish off the day we walked down the Champs Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe.   It is now 8:10PM and I am falling asleep.

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