In This Place, but in Another Time

The Place: Mỹ Sơn, Quảng Nam Province, Central Vietnam
The Time: 04-Apr-2012
Another Time: 1965-73 The Vietnam or American War, depending on perspective

In this place, but in another time,

Jungle paths, My Son

A callow youth I could have been

(But for an accidental of place of birth),

Armed to the teeth with guns and fear,

Might have peered, myopic before his time,

Into the dark tangle of alien thorns

And wondered if death was being dealt that day.

I photographed a butterfly and moved away.

The Knight butterfly, Lebadea Martha (I think)

The Place: Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina
The Time: 25-May-2012
The Other Time: 1992-5 Bosnian War

In this place, but in another time

The former front line, Mostar

The baleful rat of nationalism was freed to run.

Former friends and neighbours set to killing with a will,

And once this sixfold harvester of souls had turned

Mosques, churches and cathedrals into rubble,

They shelled the link that had bound them all.

Then, knowing they had gone too far, they stopped, the rat was fed.

I photographed the rebuilt bridge and shook my head

The Old Bridge, Mostar (2012)

The Place: Auschwitz II-Birkenau, Poland
The Time: July 2002
Another Time: 1942-45 The Holocaust, World War II

In this place, but in another time

Just part of the Birkenau camp

Men and women, counting themselves civilized,

Denied the humanity of others, not so different from themselves,

(A difference found and magnified simplifies this trick).

The tourist throng I stood among,

Well-fed and wearing bright-coloured, comfortable, casual clothes,

Shifted from foot to foot and made no sound,

I photographed the railhead then stared at the ground.

The Railhead, Birkenau
The half destroyed gas chambers and crematoria are just to the right

The Place: The Choeung Ek Killing Field, Phnom Penh, Cambodia
The Time: 17-Feb-2014
Another Time:1975-9 The Cambodian Genocide

In this place, but in another time

Human Bones in the path, Choeung Ek

To recreate a nation’s Golden Age

‘New People’, City dwellers, teachers, wearers of glasses, intellectuals all,

Found incapable of change, had to be removed.

Brutalised child soldiers brought them to this field,

Hacked adults to death, bashed out their children’s brains upon a tree.

Now every rain unearths a crop of bleached bone,

I photographed a grave, men, women, children, all unknown.

Mass grave, Choeung Ek killing field

The Place: Somme Department, France
The Time: 06-July-2009
Another Time: 07-July-1916, The Welsh Division Attack on Mametz Wood, Battle of the Somme, World War I

In this place, but in another time

The Welsh Division Memorial and Mametz Wood

An army of young men I could have marched among,

(But for an accidental date of birth),

Strode down the open slope where now our Dragon stands

To storm the hill of mud and stumps beyond.

Machine guns spat their welcome.

The Dragon tore at the cruel wire, but death must have its say.

I photographed a poppy and slunk away

Poppies, Mametz Wood

All text and photographs © David Williams. No reproduction without permission

Heartfelt thanks to Lucinda Wingard, for giving me the title (in a comment on the Mỹ Sơn post) and for subsequent encouragement.

Synagogues in Krakow, Kochi (Cochin) and Sofia

Three Synagogues, One Each in Poland, India and Bulgaria

Synagogues are different from the other places of worship I have written about (see the Religious Buildings Page - soon). Churches, mosques and temples may be dedicated to the glory of God, but they are most usually built by the powerful to demonstrate their wealth and power. Other than in present day Israel, Jews have always been a minority. Synagogues have not been built by the powerful, and there has always been a feeling, even in times of security, that an ostentatious synagogue would be a hostage to fortune.

We have come across surprisingly few synagogues in our travels, and even fewer that welcomed visitors. We have been inside only two (two of the three in this post) and neither were functioning synagogues. But this little thread on religious buildings would be incomplete without them, and they so often have interesting, or terrible, stories to tell.

The Old Synagogue, Kazimierz, Krakow, Poland

In medieval times Jewish and Polish citizens of Krakow lived together peaceably. Relations deteriorated in the 15th century and in 1495 the Jews were expelled from Krakow and sent to the nearby city of Kazimierz. The Old Synagogue, built soon after, is the oldest surviving synagogue in Poland. Damaged by fire in 1557, it was promptly reconstructed in Renaissance style.

Lynne outside the Old Synagogue, Kazimierz

Krakow expanded and absorbed Kazimierz, which became a Jewish suburb. Co-existence was sometimes more, sometimes less peaceful, at least until 1939.

The Old Synagogue is now The Museum of History and Culture of Krakow Jewry. It charts a steady progress from the middle ages to the early 20th century. The later pictures show prosperous and confident people, pillars of Krakow society. The people in the pictures had no idea how the story would end, those of us looking at them could think of little else.

Next day we went to Auschwitz; you can read about that here. We revisited Kazimierz that evening. The Jewish community numbered 70,000 in 1939, today there are 150. With Krakow’s tourist boom Kazimierz is enjoying a renaissance and restaurants serving Jewish food surround the old square. We sat outside the Café Ariel eating jellied carp and tcholent stew. It was Friday and men wearing yarmulkas strolled in the square greeting friends. As dusk fell they drifted towards one or other of the two remaining synagogues. I wondered why they had stayed in Krakow, but I had neither the language nor the impertinence to ask. Even in the worst days there were oases of sanity, the factory of Oscar Schindler lay just across the river from where we sat.

Outside the Café Ariel, Kazimierz

As night fell children danced outside the synagogue singing traditional songs in a joyous affirmation of the survival of an ancient culture.

The Pardesi Syngogue,Kochi, Kerala

Matancherry lies immediately south of the old colonial Fort Kochi. It contains the rather understated Raja’s Palace, the largely redundant Kochi International Pepper Exchange – spices are now traded on-line - and the Pardesi Synagogue.

Matancherry, Kochi

Built in 1568 and rebuilt in 1664 the synagogue is famous for its richly decorated interior with its hand painted blue and white Cantonese tiles. Sadly photography is not appreciated inside.

The Pardesi Synagogue, Matancherry

This may be a synagogue unconnected to the Holocaust, but that does not mean that Kochi maintains a thriving Jewish community. It was never large and somehow, over the last century or so, Kochi’s Jews have either drifted away – often to Israel– or become assimilated by the local community. They have left their synagogue as a reminder of their presence.

The Central Synagogue, Sofia, Bulgaria,

Having sidestepped the Holocaust for number 2, there is now little option but to return to it. I could have written about the slaughter in the Baltics and included the last surviving synagogue in Vilnius, or the chilling preserved remains of the Great Synagogue in Riga, burnt down in July 1941 with over a hundred worshippers inside. Instead, I have chosen a different Holocaust story.

Sofia’s central syngogue is a large, solid building; a construction of confidence and permanence. There was some justification for the confidence, but permanence was not to be.

The central synagogue, Sofia

The Bulgarians chose the wrong side in World War Two, though less out of conviction than political necessity. Jews had always lived peacefully in Bulgaria and even the fascist government saw no good reason to change that. When ordered to round up and deport Bulgaria’s Jews to the death camps they prevaricated, prevaricated again and kept on prevaricating until the war was over.

The communist regime that followed proved less than sympathetic so after watching the Holocaust sweep round them but not over them, Sofia’s Jewish community upped sticks and set off for Israel. There is enough of a community left to maintain and look after the building, but not so many that it can remain a functioning synagogue.

Auschwitz

Lynne and I visited Poland in July 2002 and I wrote this soon after and adpated it for this blog in Jnauary 2011. I don't claim any new insight - I doubt there are any left - and Auschwitz has been written about many times before by people better qualified and more eloquent than me, but I could not visit such a place and walk away like it was a country house or a museum; I had to write something, if only to try understand what I had seen.

Kraków

Like all tourists in Kraków we walked up to the castle and the cathedral, strolled along the Vistula, lingered in the magnificent old square and photographed the seminary where Pope John Paul II trained as a priest.

Wawel Cathedral, Krakow

Oświęcim/Auschwitz

The next day we drove fifty kilometres east following signs to Oświęcim. Oświęcim? The name is hardly familiar. Why make a special journey to this small industrial town?

Every part of Poland has spent long years under foreign occupation. Every Polish town has at some time been Russian or German or Austro-Hungarian and has acquired different names in different languages. ‘Oświęcim’ is pleasantly obscure, but its German name is known throughout the world. Oświęcim was once called Auschwitz.

Auschwitz (I)

Today the camp is a museum administered by the Polish government. Beyond the modern visitor centre, we passed beneath the words ‘Arbeit Mach Frei’ in wrought iron and entered the camp itself. All around us shoulders hunched, faces took on thoughtful expressions and conversations hushed in half a dozen languages. I was probably not the only one wondering why I was there. Had our visit any more moral validity than slowing down to gawp at a motorway accident?

Entering Auschwitz under Arbeit Mach Frei in wrought iron

At first sight Auschwitz does not seem terrible. Well-built two storey red brick barracks stand beside neat gravel streets lined with shady trees. I had read that the birds no longer sing here; that is not true.

Auschwitz
Once a barracks for the Prussian Army, it was not built to be a place of horror

Entering a building we were faced with photographs stretching the length of the corridor – portrait sized versions of the camp mug shots. They look back at you, some terrified, some defiant but most with carefully guarded expressions. At first the roughly shaven scalps rob them of individuality but moving down the line you begin to see real people staring out from a living hell. Beneath each photograph is a name, an occupation - lecturer, shoemaker, engineer - a date of admission and a date of death. For older men these are often days apart, but generally it took perhaps six months to work a man to death.

Other blocks are as they were in 1944, straw the only bedding, toilet facilities cruelly inadequate. We entered the ‘Death Block’ past the bullet-pocked wall against which those who displeased the authorities were shot. In the basement, where Cyklon B gas was first tested on Russian prisoners of war, a party of Spanish teenagers listened uneasily as their guide explained the events of sixty years before.

Everywhere the shaven headed photographs stared down. Some of the hair was spun into cloth - a bolt of it sits in a glass case at the top of a flight of stairs – but much was stored. It now occupies a gallery in one of the huts. Behind a glass wall is the hair of tens of thousands of human beings. It is impossible not to stare open mouthed. It is impossible not to walk the whole length of the gallery though every step offers the same pitiful view as the step before. When I entered the camp I thought I might grasp some understanding of the suffering endured here, after this I knew I never could. In another hut is a gallery of shoes: men’s and women’s shoes, labourer’s boots and city loafers, broken and lace-less each one a public witness to a personal tragedy. There is a gallery of suitcases stencilled with names and the addresses they would never return to. There is a room of brushes - hairbrushes, shoe brushes, shaving brushes, toothbrushes. There is a mountain of spectacles and a sad display of prosthetic limbs.

Outside there is another world of trees and singing birds. It is hard to decide which world is real. Passing the hospital where Josef Mengele performed his perverted experiments we reached the crematorium. Auschwitz was a work camp, not an extermination camp but for most death was the only release. As the Red Army advanced, the Nazi’s blew up the ovens as though trying to pretend nothing had ever happened.

Auschwitz (II)/Birkenau

If Auschwitz is terrible, a two-minute drive took us to a place that is even worse. We approached Auschwitz II, better known as Birkenau, across flat Silesian farmland.

Outside the gates of Birkenau life goes on

The gate-tower and forbidding entrance are familiar from flickering newsreels.

The gate tower at Birkenau seen from inside the camp

We climbed the gate-tower and scanned the vast camp, but it is the railway that attracts the eye. Bisecting the camp it leads a quarter of a mile into the distance. At the end of the line are the gas chambers and crematoria. To the west only the brick chimneys and floors of the wooden huts remain...

The railway and the destroyed huts as soon from the gate tower, Birkenau

...but to the east a section of the huts have been preserved and look much as they did in 1945, except that grass is neatly mown and the people are tourists - well fed and brightly dressed.

Preserved huts, Birkenau

We descended and walked through the camp. A fox strolled past us, as though everything was completely normal.

Fox, Birkenau

We entered one of the huts. If the barracks in Auschwitz could have been comfortable under a different regime with a different purpose, these were designed for misery. At night the inmates huddled on dark wooden shelves, the small stove pathetically inadequate in the vicious Silesian winter.

Inside one of the huts at Birkenau

Birkenau was purpose built for the extermination of the Jewish race. Killing was on an industrial scale. As trains arrived those who could work were taken to the camp where they might survive for weeks or months while the rest - the old, the infirm, mothers with children - went to the gas chambers. If the camp was full whole trainloads were gassed on arrival. In eighteen months two million people were killed. As at Auschwitz the gas chambers were destroyed as the Russians advanced. As at Auschwitz it remains obvious what they were.

The Railhead, Birkenau
The gas chambers and crematoria are just to the right

How did all this happen? The camp forces visitors to face deep questions about the nature of humanity and the presence or absence of God. It would be inappropriate to attempt to deal with such serious topics in a few sentences here.

Kasimierz

Back in Krakow we visited the Kasimierz district, home in 1939 to 70,000 Jewish people.

Lynne outside the Old Synagogue, now a museum, Kasimierz

Today 150 live there but with Krakow’s tourist boom Kazimierz is enjoying a renaissance and restaurants serving Jewish food surround the old square. We sat outside the Café Ariel eating Jellied Carp and Tcholent stew. It was Friday and men wearing yarmulkas strolled in the square greeting friends. As dusk fell they drifted towards the synagogue. I wondered why they had stayed in Krakow. I had neither the language nor the impertinence to ask but I knew that for centuries Poles and Jews had lived here in harmony. Even in the worst days there were oases of sanity, the factory of Oscar Schindler lay just across the river from where we sat.

We dined at the Ariel Restaurant, the square in Kasimierz

As night fell children danced outside the synagogue singing traditional songs in a joyous affirmation of their ancient culture; proof enough that the ‘final solution’ had failed.

I cannot say that I enjoyed visiting Auschwitz, but it was an experience I will remember and it finished with children singing, a note of hope at the end of a dark day.

...and finally

This was not the world's first nor its last genocide; events in Cambodia and Rwanda were the re-emerging tip of an iceberg that will not go away.

Our 2014 visit to Cambodia produced five posts, among them Phnom Penh (2) Killing Fields and Torture Chambers, in which we looked at the events of the 1980s and their aftermath.

None of this makes cheerful reading (or writing), but it is important