Unforgettable Poland Impressions

Just returned from a 9 day trip to Armenia so the blog will be updated regularly going forward.

I’d like to offer a few thoughts about this past weekend’s pilgrimage to Poland, but I hardly know where to begin; it was a time that is as difficult to describe as it was to experience. I suppose I will just begin with what we did and then work in my own impressions, thoughts, emotions, etc.


We drove all through the night and arrived Friday morning at the shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa in time to see the unveiling of the Black Madonna image (done every morning at 6am with trumpets and drums and gongs). The devotion of the Polish people to Our Lady of Czestochowa I can only compare to what I experienced several years ago at the shrine to Our Lady of Guadalupe - grown men weep and the elderly and crippled fall to their knees before this sacred image, so much a part of their heritage and faith. Visitors circle past the image on their knees and the marble floor is worn smooth in two tracks by centuries of pilgrims doing this same, reverential gesture.


I felt moved to tears by the devotion I witnessed - the peace within the walls of the shrine and the utter abandon of the pilgrims to their mother - the Black Madonna. The holiest and simplest of men have prayed there (Pope John Paul II being one of them) and you can feel it in the walls, in the air - see it in the eyes of the people around you. It is a beautiful, humbling thing to behold. And there, sitting mere feet from the image that has survived so much so miraculously, we celebrated Mass: how does one describe that? Only as heavenly, I suppose.




Our next journey was very different, though - in the afternoon we went to Auschwitz-Birkenau. The emotions there ran no less deep, but in such a striking, aching way, I'm sure you realize. Silence was the only proper response as we walked through gas chambers and blocks and rooms where prisoners were tortured, experimented upon, sterilized, raped, robbed of any scrap of dignity to which they had managed to hold. The inhumanity of it all disgusts you when you look at piles of human hair - waiting to be sold, made into nets or lampshades. As you look at rooms of shoes, no larger than your little finger, once belonging to the children who were the immediate victims of the gas chambers because they were not useful - not able to slave and mine and work and starve to a skeletal state before their deaths.



One block is filled with pictures of prisoners and the basic information the Nazis gathered at first - occupation, date of arrival, date of death - before they stopped keeping records altogether. You walk past, looking into the eyes of each, knowing they are dead long before you do the subtraction - 1 month, 1 week, a few days, a year or two for the luckiest...but the luckiest, you start to think, are the ones that died right away - who didn’t suffer this inhumanity, this horror for longer than a few weeks. You start to hope that the dates will be close together - that the man or woman whose picture you are looking at died quickly. It mixes up the soul to see such things.



But the stories of the heroes help - they restore your faith in humanity, remind you what each life is worth, of the dignity even the Nazis possessed because it is the dignity of personhood - a mystery and a gift, in my eyes. For I saw the starvation cell where St. Maximilian Kolbe spent his last days and I knew then that it is true what Holocaust survivor Victor Frankl wrote in his book Man's Search for Meaning: "Love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire...The salvation of man is through love and in love..." And as for mankind - I understood, at last, what he meant when he wrote: "Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips." It changes you for the better and demands you change the world.



A friend of mine said to me as we watched a car drive by the camp: "Imagine driving past this every day on your way to work." I said: "I can hardly imagine." But I can, can't I? In America, we drive past abortion clinics and think so little of the fact that we are treating humans the same as the Nazis. We are no better than Nazis if we imagine for one moment that human life can be rationalized away – the Nazis reasoned that for the good of the German people, the Jews must die; and we reason that for the good of the mother, the child must die. But doesn't this scream of un-truth? Love is the only answer;l we are too blinded (by culture, by politics, by our own ideas) to try.



Our next visit was to the Shrine of Divine Mercy and Sister Faustina's convent. How do I even start to explain that peace? There is no way to do so. It is a home for Love, itself. The grace and forgiveness and mercy there are tangible - they touch your heart and lift it out of your chest and wring it out. Then you sit back and soak in joy and love like you've never felt before.



All the while I was reminded of our last festival of praise when the FOP leader told us a quote from a saint who in a state of ecstasy asked Jesus what He did with Judas and to whom Jesus replied: "If the world knew what I did with Judas, they would abuse my mercy." Being there at the Shrine of Divine Mercy, located just miles away from Auschwitz (coincidence? - no way!) put everything back in order for me - I felt like I could understand how God can forgive and love mankind even after all we have done, and all the evil that remains in the world. It was an intensely emotional weekend – a pilgrimage that demanded much of us pilgrims – yet for many students it was the highlight of the semester so far, and I am sure I speak for all who went to Poland when I say that what we experienced there will remain with us and in us for the rest of our lives. Difficult to explain and describe, but no less life-changing for that – the Poland pilgrimage was truly all grace and blessing and I am sincerely grateful for the entire experience.



Blog post written by Cara Weiss, Fall 2009