Last night my wife and I left Poland. We flew from the airport in Warsaw to Israel. We had a final dinner together with our incredible guide. By the end of the trip, the experiences of the trauma of the past had fully embedded themselves in me. You cannot go to death camps and mass murder sites and abandoned Jewish cemeteries and desecrated Jewish cemeteries and synagogues that exist without Jews and plazas from which Jews were deported to their death and regional museums with photographs and ritual objects that attest to a once thriving Jewish community without becoming traumatized.

We had to take a bus from the airport gate to the plane. The bus was packed with travelers. There was no air conditioning, and it was hot. We didn’t know how long we’d have to stay on the bus. Finally we got off and there was a narrow staircase that led to the airplane. We had to be careful not to step on people in front of us. The airplane too was hot, no air moving. The flight was full. The plane was old, probably from the Soviet era. The leg room was minimal, less than on any flight I’d taken for some time. Our seats were in front of the emergency exit and so did not recline. Once in the air the person seated in front of me had his seat fully reclined, almost on top of me. Still no air conditioning. It was all too much. The experiences of the past week welled up in me. Tears trickled down.

These feelings didn’t vanish once we landed in Israel. But, as the Sabbath nears, I feel better. I rested at my cousin’s home.  I spoke with my cousin’s husband’s mother. She survived Auschwitz. She was one of the “Mengele twins” on whom he and his minions conducted so-called “medical experiments.” I recounted our visit and she asked questions, calmly, interested in our journey. She herself has been back to Poland three times. Her presence, her demeanor, comforted me.

Here are my wife and I with her and my cousin, her son and two of her grandsons. (Her great grandson was sleeping). A photograph of life.