Let’s get classy! I’m beginning a monthly residency at the Bucks County Cabaret, a beautiful and intimate dinner-theater space in New Hope, PA that opened just this month. My first performance will be at the end of March, and each show in the series will be different. So reserve your tickets and come inaugurate this great space with me (and stay to celebrate with me after the show).
Saturday, March 26 Bucks County Cabaret, New Hope PA
RESERVE TIX
What does it take to tell your story of survival, to retell and relive those memories? Does it get easier or harder with each visit?
It has become more and more clear to me just how much my grandfather distanced himself from what happened, how he separated and blocked out this earlier part of his life, and how he protected his family from any trauma that he endured. I’m grateful to be able to accompany him as he comes back to Auschwitz, to tell his story. I’m grateful for the platform he is given. He is doing the world a service. The living testimony of survivors is the most important way to understand what happened here.
My grandfather is the strongest human being I know.
We drove back in to Birkenau as the sun was setting. The opening event of the conference would be a panel featuring 5 survivors of the Auschwitz concentration camp, including my grandfather. The topic: The Impact of the Camp Experience on Post-War Life. I’ve heard him speak many times now in recent years. But something happened on the way in to the panel. We pulled up to one of the prison buildings known as the Sauna, where prisoner clothing was sent for cleaning and delousing. We were walking towards one of the entrances, as my grandfather was remarking about a certain tree. He remembered that tree. We turned a corner. Someone opened a certain side door to the building. And my grandfather stopped cold.
He told the room just a few moments later: “As a prisoner of the camp, I worked exactly in this room for one and a half years. When we moved from the old sauna, I worked here until the evacuation. Somewhere at the back was an office, where I worked. I have been here a few times after the war, but never exactly entered this area. I could not bear it, and today I started crying. I cried for the first time in 70 years.”
[Photo & Quote courtesy of The Auschwitz Museum. Read more about the panel, the survivors’ testimony, and the conference: HERE]
Everything in my family always involves The Meal. Major celebrations revolve around dinner. Family reunions are meal plans with unspecified activities in between, usually snacks. It’s pretty typical to discuss where we are having our next meal while we are eating our current one. So ending the day gathered around the dinner table with all of the participants of the conference felt comfortable and necessary.
Besides, my grandfather is in his prime around people. He is never not happy to meet someone. He is a man who truly celebrates being in the presence of others. He is The Grand Master Schmoozer. After a day of intensity, the company of family, friends, strangers who become friends, is important. Even now, spending time in Auschwitz, revisiting this history, we are able to laugh and joke and relax. Just take your cues from my grandfather. Life goes on.
I only know how to say 3 things in Polish. The first thing is: Nie mówią po polsku = I don’t speak Polish. The second thing is a phrase my grandfather taught me that I’d rather not repeat here. And the third is very important, so important that I made sure to know it and commit it to memory before i left: smażony kurczak. It’s not really a traditional Polish dish, but you’d be surprised how much smażony kurczak can be found in Poland, when it’s the only thing you can ask for.
When my grandfather and I attended the 70th Anniversary Event commemorating the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp back in January, I had no idea that it would bring us back to Auschwitz just a few months later. We have been asked to return by the Auschwitz Memorial Museum to attend the inaugural International Conference on Education about Auschwitz and The Holocaust: Remembrance Has Not Matured In Us Yet… “The idea of the conference refers to the commemoration marking the 70th anniversary and the appeal of the Survivors to take action against hatred and anti-Semitism. The conference agenda will include panel discussions, workshops and presentations and will be held at various places within the Auschwitz Memorial Site. It focuses on issues connected with education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust.”
As we travelled from Warsaw to Auschwitz, watching the green Polish country-side pass by, I could not ignore that I was tracing my grandfather’s journey so many years ago, following his evolution from a child of Warsaw to ghetto resident to concentration camp prisoner. I felt it every step of the way. Because there he was, by my side, shadowing his own experience at the same time.
Travel writer Khadijat Oseni asked me to guest blog for her series Jetsetter Problems, based on my previous trip to Auschwitz with my grandfather. Her blog offers a variety of perspectives from travelers and the places they visit, and how those places affect them. My entry set a much different tone than many of her other essays. But i’m grateful that she asked me to contribute and that she felt this specific story was an important one to share. It’s a small sample of what we experienced, and also a sense of what was to come. CLICK TO READ.
We drove down to Auschwitz from Warsaw in a private van with one other passenger, Zofia Posmysz. Even though we could barely communicate, I liked her from the moment we picked her up. When she got in the car, she took off her awesome vintage 1920’s hat and gave me a Werther’s Original. Zofia had become a prisoner of Auschwitz some time before my grandfather, arrested for handing out leaflets for the Polish Underground resistance. Germany was intent on taking over Poland, and many in Poland were determined to put up a fight. Although Zofia was held in a different part of the camp with other Polish nationals and political prisoners – away from the Jews and other undesirables, my grandfather asked her a few names, to see if they knew similar people. There was some vague overlap, but nothing too revealing. Auschwitz was a huge camp, and I imagine it to be a monumental task to try and unearth faces and names from over 70 years ago, from an era that you spent so much of your life trying to block out. But, for orientation, there is always Your Number.
Halfway through the ride, we stopped along the road for pierogies and chicken soup (extra hot). We were the only ones in the restaurant: me, my grandfather, Zofia, our driver Marian, and Klaudia a volunteer from the memorial museum. As we received our coffee (very hot), the Survivors rolled up their sleeves and began to compare. Zofia: 7566. David: 83526, though only the curve of the 6 remains, the rest having been removed. They spoke in Polish, at first serious, and then pointing to their tattooed numbers and laughing. As we walked back to our van, I asked my grandfather what was so funny. He told me: after he came to the United States soon after the war, people would often ask him what the number on his arm was. They had no idea. It was not something you talked about. ‘Eventually, I just started telling people it was my phone number.’ He was telling this to Zofia. ‘Me too!’ she said.
We have been indulging in Polish cuisine: pierogi, kielbasa, cabbage, kluski, and soup. Hot soup. Scalding hot soup. If the soup is not on the verge of boiling, my grandfather will send it back.
Soup is a part of his identity. It is one of the things he remembers most about life with his family, celebrating Shabbat as a little boy growing up outside of Warsaw. For as long as i’ve been around, it has always been one of his greatest joys to prepare his own chicken soup on Friday nights for all us Wisnias.
All of that is to say, i just had some incredible pasta bolognese. CUD MIÓD is known for its fresh ingredients, and we were marveling at the giant produce displayed at the front of the restaurant. Zucchinis a foot long, cabbages bigger than your head, tomatoes that you can barely palm. On our way out, one of our servers came over and just gave us one of their big, bulbous tomatoes.
Making friends wherever we go.
My Polish Wisnia was not feeling well today, and we let him sleep in. Still, the show must go on, and people must know there is a show going on in order to attend the show that will be going on. Off to Polskie Radio.
Polskie Radio is like the Polish NPR (My Polskie friends, you may correct the analogy here). My grandfather was very politically aware as a child, always interested in the conversations and political opinions his father would have. He remembers listening to Polskie Radio to get the current events. He was listening to Polskie Radio when Germany attacked Poland on September 1, 1939 – the day after celebrating his Bar Mitzvah. It is disappointing that he did not have a chance to speak for himself on the same radio station he used to listen to, but at least his voice was heard. They played 2 recordings from his old synagogue in Trenton NJ where he was featured as a soloist, backed by full choir and organ. They also played my newest recording, Sky Blue Sky, which made its Polish Radio debut. Rivka talked about the role Beit Warszawa had in hosting us and putting the concert together, and I was asked about my link to my grandfather’s music and the influence he has had on me.
I grew up surrounded by liturgy and Jewish music, hearing my grandfather sing and teach as a cantor and congregation leader. When he sings, it has weight. Everything sounds of sadness and strength. He is always comfortable on stage, always happiest in front of a crowd. I never had any desire to be a cantor, but i can’t deny that my grandfather has shaped me as a musical performer.
Our concert will be a sort of bridge between the old and the new; this is also what these trips have turned into for me. Experiencing my grandfathers story of pain and loss and understanding how it continues to play out; experiencing a new Jewish Poland emerging from the one my grandfather knew which was decimated; experiencing how my path has taken me in a different direction from my tradition but still trying to hold on to it at the roots; understanding the past and claiming it, and finding out how to carry it into the future.
