Poland Update

September 26 – October 3, 2005

Contact Persons:

Lee Majewski - litka1@sympatico.ca

or
Dr. Imelda Devaki McCarthy - 353 (0) 87 243 8153 / imeldamccarthy@iol.ie

The following is an E-mail Update from Poland of Sri Vasudeva's visit

- Friday 30th September 2005

This update will describe Sri Vasudeva’s visit to one of the infamous concentration camps of Europe. After a brief visit to the Tatra Mountains in the south of Poland, we drove north again towards Krakow. The plan was that we would stop and visit the site of one of World War 11’s darkest sites. This was the death camp at Auschwitz. It seemed we had miscalculated the time and feared we might not gain admission as we arrived ten minutes prior to closure. However, Lila organized it all and we visited for two and a half hours.

For most of that time we were entirely alone there as we visited the sad museum and witnessed the legacy of the terrible inhumanity of the time. One million people lost their lives in this place between 1939 and 1945. At one point, it was estimated that 10,000 people per day died, through starvation, exhaustion, execution or in the gas chambers. It was heartbreaking to see the piles of empty cases that had once accompanied the inmates to their final destination in these places of death, in one room there were thousands of spectacle frames, in another, children’s shoes and yet another held thousands of adults shoes. These were the sad remainders of the lives which ended here.

Lila bravely brought us through the infamous gates with the words Oarbeit mach frei {which means Owork makes free}. It was through these gates that Christians, Jews, Roma people, homosexuals and others who were deemed undesirable in the creation of a pure Aryan race poured in to meet abject misery, torture and in most cases death. For the most part it was Jews who perished in the greatest numbers in this Holocaust. As we went from one house of memory to another the photos of those who perished lined the walls.

Even if their lives were to be obliterated they were never the less documented and kept. Now they stand to remind us of those brave people who once walked these grounds. For all of us this was our first visit to such a place, a place where the scars of contemporary Europeans have their origins. For Lila it was a particularly painful trip as her own uncle had died in Auschwitz. We remembered also the family members of friends who had died here.

A somber group, led by Sri Vasudeva finally left at dark. We were the only car left in the car park. It had been a memorable and heart rending visit. Sri Vasudeva talked of the souls that had ascended and that the energy now was of the compassion and love of those who came to remember and to pay their respects. I think none of us quite expected the peace we found there it had become a very sacred space and a reminder of what human beings are capable of both in the face of evil and goodness.

In loving remembrance of all those who died in Poland and elsewhere.

The Blue Star team in Poland