What you see and learn about Auschwitz and camp 2 called Auschwitz-Birkenau

 Holocaust Memorial Day is in January, recalling the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland, where the larges concentration camp was situatedarn and the huge majority died. Our guide told us that although we were tired after touring several barracks buildings and the forecourt were the roll call was held and poeple were hanged, we must go on to Birkenau down the road. 

In Auschwitz you see te railway track which brought the trains from all over Europe. In Auschwitz, you see the receiving room where those who were kept alive were given numerical stamps on their arms, and you see the before and after photos, inlcuding one girl I recall. 

After 3 months the inhabitants were so thin and haggard they were not recognizable from photos and needed numbers. Then in other blocks you see the suitcases with names, then the children's shoes, the eyeglasses. The underground cells for the priest who took the place of a prisoner and was held until he starved to death or was killed.

When you reach Birkenau with the gas chambers, you go from the individual horror to the horrifying scale of the tragedy. You see the fields surrounded by tennis netting and watch towers. 

Your guide, who usually has a connection such as a relative who died there, is a guide for a set time and then needs a break from the emoitonal strain. Your guide says, this field held the French, the next field held the Italians, the next field held the Greeks, the next field held ..." Jews and other prisoners from the whole of Europe, transported here, en masse, and exterminated.

All the more remarkable are the ones who got away, some just before the war, or after the war started before the killings. Plus discoveries of items buried at concentration camps or elsewhere. And new reserachers, seeking grandparents or other relatives as the internet expands the numbers of people doing family research.

For more about the survivors and Prince William and Kate see previous post.

Interesting Websites

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz_concentration_camp

https://holocaustlearning.org.uk/learning/untold-stories-for-key-stage-2/

 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9192831/Survivors-Britain-escaped-Nazi-Germany-mark-Holocaust-Memorial-Day.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-9189127/ID-tags-children-aged-6-12-murdered-discovered-Sobibor-Nazi-death-camp.html

About the Author

Angela Lansbury is teacher of English. (Advanced English and English as a Second Language or English as a Foreign Language, French and other languages, an aspiring polyglot.)

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Member of many toastmasters  speaker training clubs, and speaking contest judge.

Angela Lansbury, the author of 20 books including Wedding Speeches & Toasts, and Quick Quotations, has lived in the USA, Spain and Singapore. 

She  has several blogs and writes daily on at least two of the following:

travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com

dressofthedayangela.blogspot.com

translateforfun.blogspot.com

 Please share links to your favourite posts.

Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland - why you should visit, or at least investigate, and what to see

What do we all know and like about Poland, and Polish Jews? Poland is the land of the bagel! Brought to London and New York and eventually worldwide, originally by Polish Jews. The Russians expelled the Jews who moved west to Poland; and those Jewish travellers who could afford it travelled on, some via the UK, to the USA.

And warm filling red beetrot soup, called Borsht.


From Ukraine, Russia, Poland, restaurants in London, England, jars in the supermarket. And on menus in the restaurants in Krakow.

Bagels and borcht. Filling food to console you, after the horrors of Auschwitz. For years I did not visit Poland, for fear of the compulsion to visit Auschwitz. It was everything I feared. Unforgettable. Is there any light relief?

Yes. We have mostly heard of the music of Chopin, and films such Polanski's The Pianist, and Schindler's List, based in Krakow (pronounced Krakov).

 Let's start with the flag of Poland which you might see on brochures and websites and planes even before you reach the country. It has a plain white band above red. The white of the flag is hard to see on a white background, so I have shown you a picture of the flag flying against a blue sky.

The Polish flag is similar to several others. (More for you on flags in next post.)

Now, where is Poland?


Map of Europe showing Poland, from article on Poland in Wikipedia.
In more detail from the Poland Portal in Wikipedia.


Auschwitz is in south Poland, just across the border, outside the pretty, historic small, ancient capital of Krakow.



Krakow was near the border and small, so the Germans were able to quickly surprise, invade and capture it, thus saving the beautiful buildings from destruction. (Unlike larger and more central Warsaw, which resisted invasion and was destroyed by the invaders.)

Krakow
So the quaint, pretty capital of Krakow (pronounced Krakov), perfectly preserved with its cathedral square, and wrought iron signs, is your happy home base, before visiting the horrors of Auschwitz.

Hotel Base
On a side trip from the captal, Warsaw, we visit the former capital, Krakow. We stayed in a small boutique hotel overlooking the main square of Krakow. Larger modern hotels with more amenities are around the outskirts, but it is easy to walk around the whole area including the former Jewish quarter and Jewish museum.


Auschwitz
Huge with masses of coaches including Polish schoolchildren for whom it is a required visit where they learn what was done on their territory, not by Poles but by Nazi Germans to Poles and a greater numbers of Jews, Romanies, homosexuals, political prisoners and others.



Double area. The barracks where people were confined, photographed on arrival and numbered on their arms on arrival because three months later they were so thin and haggard they were no recognizable from the first photos. Stacks of suitcases with names on the sides, children's shoes.

Stories of personal horror. Underground prison cells where a priest offered to replace another prisoner. Quad where roll call was taken to witness hangings.

Birkenau
Must see the second area, Birkenau, half a mile down the road. The killing area where areas the size of football fields, with electrified tennis netting and guard towers. Yes, miles of fields, each area the size of a football field for a different nationality and language group, going on for as far as the eye can see, so you realise the sheer scale of the deaths, and the significance of those railway from all the countries of Europe, crossing Europe, all leading here. America has Jews in every city. But Europe? hardly any. Now you know why so many European cities have a Jewish Synagogue with a list of names, a tiny congregation. Nothing left. Where did the people go? Here.

I had been to Dachau, outside Europe, and seen the map of the railway lines, and shrugged. A map of railway lines. So what, I had thought.

To visit Auschwitz and realise that trains from all over Europe end here, puts the sheer scale of the holocaust in perspective.



Who survived? A person who survived was a translator. Because even with a machine gun, its useless to shout to people to stand, or march out, or lie down, or take your clothes off, if they don't know what you are shouting.

Anne Frank, hidden for most of WW2, was one of the last to arrive at Auschwitz. She survived, put to work, surviving on the rations of food donated by her mother, who died. As the Russians arrived to liverate Auschwitch, and the Americans and Allies were on the brink of invading Poland, the Germans retreated, taking Anne Frank to Bergen-Belsen in Germany where she died.

Schindler's List
Returning to Krakow, on a brighter note, you can visit the museum on the site of the factory featured in the film Schindler's List. Schindler kept them all alive, just a short drive away from Auschwitz. As you may recall from the film, he entertained the German Nazi officials, and saved so many. I spent ages watching the videos, every testimony and praise and thanks to him and stories of incidents involving his kindness and ingenuity you can see on video film.

Useful Websites
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poland
https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Search?q=auschwitz
.uk/Attraction_Review-g946539-d284154-Reviews-Treblinka_Memorial-Treblinka_Mazovia_Province_Central_Poland.html#REVIEWS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagel
https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/main-characters/edith-frank/

About the Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
I have many more posts, on Treblinka, the film Song of Names, German Language, and destinations around the world. Please share links to your favourite posts.

Yemen - travelling there through Ten Days Before the Wedding and On The Internet

I saw two great films on Singapore Airlines -  Ten Days Before the Wedding; The Song of Names

This post is about how Ten Days Before The Wedding inspired my research into Yemen.
As you see, from the advertisment from the film, the country is devastated. Like London in my childhood. I remember driving past bomb sites.

It is interesting to see the people walking about past the bomb sites, engaged in conversations or arguments about their wedding. 

Only when they go to see cheap flats, possible new homes, do they start to make comment such as, 'this place has no electricity, this place has no water supply, I would not want to live here!"

Since I am reading the subtitles in translation. my version of the gist of what was said is as good as theirs.

Travel Information
Yemen
The major war may be over but it is not yet a safe tourist destination. The films inspired me to research on the internet. In addition to the amusing film, and the dramatic denoument, a view of Yemen, I enjoyed seeing how the different generations and sexes have different opinions on how much single, engaged, married women, women in general, should cover up when walking in the street, escorted, or unescorted, just like the different generations in London, England, and elsewhere.

London

Poland
Treblinka
Auschwitz
Later post is on the other film I saw about Jewish musicians in London and WWII Poland. 

Warsaw

Flag of Yemen.

Holocaust Love Story At Auschwitz - to read Before and After Visiting Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia or Melbourne - Background Reading on Auschwitz

Problem
In Poland you inevitably learn about the Holocaust. You will hear about the holocaust from a guide on even a standard city tour as you pass a museum or site, or the guide us asked by fellow tourists about the other tours. A trip to either the capital of Poland, Warsaw, or the pretty, small, historic city of Krokov, where the Nazis quickly invaded from nearby Germany and set up their capital in the small city which they preserved, whilst bringing in Jews from all over Europe, just across the border to Auschwitz.

A recently published book tells the love story of the Jewish tattooist of Auschwitz, "Lale" Sokolov (1916-2006), who fell in love with a girl called Gita from his home country, Czechoslovakia, now the Czech Republic. They both survived the camp - he sent food to her.

After the war, he searched for her. They found each other, married, and emigrated as far away as possible. They lived the rest of their lives peacefully in Melbourne, Australia.

Sokolov was the surname which Lale adopted when he lived in the Czech Republic, under Russian rule. His birth name had been Ludwig Eisenberg. He was forever the survivalist, inconspicuous.

Everybody will share the understanding of the love story and man's feeling of guilt and fear about the controversy over a potential accusation of collaboration.

In addition, what stands out for me, as I am a keen polyglot, is the vital life-saving factor, the tip, that he survived because he spoke so many languages.

He spoke many languages, like the late relative by marriage of mine who also came from the Czech area. The tattooist was a clever man, but also living in the Czech area surrounded by several other countries. He had to speak other languages to be understood by foreign visitors. Also he had the outgoing personality which impelled him to learn languages, as well as the native wit which allowed him to learn languages. If he had not spoken all those languages, he would not have been chosen to do that job, as a tattooist which saved his life in two ways. It kept him off the lists of those who would be gassed. He was given extra food.

The newspaper account also includes one sentence which makes no sense: 'he died before learning that his parents had died". He could not learn after he died. Do they mean 'without learning' or 'before he could learn', I presume so.

I see that the writer of the article has a European name, Ritu Prasad. Maybe the bilingual translator confuses before and after, gets the time sequence wrong, meaning, 'after learning' or 'just after learning' which implies that the shock of the news hastened his death.

My last thought is that the writer means 'before we/they i.e. the researchers learned'? Such errors and ambiguities are increasingly frequent nowadays.  You don't have to be foreign to confuse a clause, attach a description of the subject as an afterthought, after the object of the sentence. In this case, two whole sentences are linked.

What's wrong with the sentence structure? Lack of a sub-editor? Cost-cutting? Carelessness? Race to publish first?

Grammatically, a case of a missing subject, attaching a sub-clause which appears to belong to the subject of the sentence, he, instead of the missing subject of the attached second sentence 'we learned instead of learning).  If you have to read a sentence twice it's badly written.

However, you may be interested in both the BBC article and the book:

Helpful Websites:
http://www.bbc.com/news/stories-42568390#_=_

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, teacher of English and other languages.

Poland's Points of Interest: A-Z Auschwitz to Warsaw: try Chopin's favourite food, gingerbread

Problem
Flying into Poland's current capital, Warsaw, first you must see Poland's two major cities of Warsaw and then smaller Krakow, the former capital.  We flew from Warsaw to Krakow to save time. Then what?

Answers
Start with the monument to Chopin in Warsaw, and end by eating one of his favourite foods, gingerbread, in Torun.

Warsaw - the huge capital city, with museums and monuments - and music.
A city tour will take you past the
1 Chopin monument,
2 Jewish Museum,
3 WWII museum,
4 Old quarter, walls and reconstructed streets of boutiques, restaurants, many arched roof cellar restaurants. Eat Borsht, beetroot soup.

A big city, concert halls and massive WWII monuments and memories: on a general tour our guide talked about Poland versus Russian occupation, the Katyn massacre, Jews in the Warsaw ghetto. On my second day I took a Jewish tour and visited a Jewish cemetery and the Jewish orphanage, still in use, with the statue in the front garden of the orphanage director who could have escaped when the orphans were taken to Auschwitz but chose to stay with them and accompany them and comfort them on their last journey.

If you have a third day:
5 Fryderyk Chopin Museum in O Castle

The Fryderyk Chopin Museum in Warsaw, Poland, established in 1954 and dedicated to Polish composer Frédéric Chopin. Wikipedia

Address: Pałac Gnińskich, 00-368, Okólnik 1, 00-368 Warszawa, Poland.

Krakow
Second city you must see is quaint little Krakow with its pretty medieval cathedral square. It's in the south, just over Germany's northern border.  The Nazis captured it quickly and made it their HQ so it was preserved. Walk to the old Jewish quarter and Jewish museum. Next day take a tour to Auschwitz.

Recover eating an Ashkenazi Jewish favourite food, which is a national Polish dish, borsht, beetroot soup. The Polish version is rich and thick and creamy and filling, unlike the Russian version which is a clear soup.

Borsht. Photo by Dmitri Dzema in Wikipedia.

Beauty and the beast. Every school in Poland and almost every brochure includes trips to:
1 Auschwitz and Birkenau;
2 Schindler Museum; and the
3 Salt Mine.

Why do you have to see the sister site of Birkenau after Auschwitz? Auschwitz is compact, like a boarding school with a series of houses. Each room has exhibits explaining something different.

One room explains why Auschwitz was the camp where people were tattooed after being photographed. Those 'lucky' few who were kept alive to work had shrunk and wizened with hollowed cheeks so that after three months the second photos shows they were unrecognisable. Therefore prisoners were given identity numbers on their arms.

See suitcases with names painted on the outside, a pyramid of shoes, a mountain of children's toys - a small, dirty torn teddy bear.

Auschwitz gives you claustrophobia. Birkenau gives you agoraphobia.

Birkenau is a huge empty space surrounded by barbed wire. Walk inside two or three reconstructed aircraft size hangers, with tiered wooden bunks, no bedding, rebuilt by survivors who had built the originals.

The guide tells you: "This field is not the whole area. It's just the crematoria and the hangers housing Dutch people whose relatives have been gassed. This field for the men. The next field for the women. The next was for the French. The one after that for the Germans. The one after that for the Greeks. The one after that for the Romanians. The one after that for ..." All surrounded by watchtowers and barbed wire, for miles.  I may have got the countries in the wrong order, but you get the point, the horror of the sheer scale.

Why so much Jewish memorabilia in Poland? The Russian ruler, after the assassination of his father, pushed out the Jews over the Western border. So more Jews lived in Poland than any other European country. The Jews were forced from the continent-size area of Russia into the smaller country of Poland.

A century before Auschwitz, a small number of organized Jews set up textile factories and built mansions, whilst the poorer ones were the tailors, workers, scholars, painters and writers.

Anne Frank was in Auschwitz, and survived. Anne's mother passed her small rations to her daughters to keep them alive. The Germans retreated back to Germany, dropping off the skeletal Jews into Belsen, where the Red Cross food parcels were stored outside the camp. Inside, the prisoners starved to death or died of disease, like Anne after her sister. Some survived, you will know if you watch interviews with survivors in the documentary film Shoah, by eating dead bodies.

The Russians liberated Auschwitz in a cold January, celebrated, solemnly, as Holocaust Day. The Americans and British arrived in Belsen.

(The Jewish Museum in London has archives of photos available to historians but photos are not displayed because it is too upsetting for descendants. Instead the museum shows jollier exhibitions about happier, later times, such as designers, and singers such as Alma Cogan, Amy Winehouse in their heyday.)

Why is no mention made of Anne Frank in Auschwitz? Because she is already well demented where she lived in Amsterdam where she is a Dutch heroine. Her memorial wooden name marker is in Belsen where she died. Poland prefers to tell the story of Poles, such as the Polish priest who took the place of a man condemned to die, and not of one individual already so well documented elsewhere, when no trace of her is in Auschwitz. (I presume they have her photo on arrival at Auschwitz?)

What other cities and sights can you see and admire in Poland?

Answer
Here's an A-Z of cities' highlights:

Bialystok
In the nineteenth century it was home to many cultures and languages. Inspired the creation of Esperanto by Ludwig Zamenhof.

Bydgoszcz
1 Museum of Soap and the History of Dirt (Museum Mydla I Historii Brudu)

Gdansk - known for its
1 Amber Museum, and
2 Neptune fountain landmark in the old town.

You see amber everywhere in Poland, the shops along the streets of Warsaw. Little red yellow and green ovals set in 925 silver - or maybe silver plate, for under £100, in the UK.
Gdansk adjoins Sopot.

Amber Story
In the UK watch out for cheaper pieces which are very pretty but probably fake amber. I saw a bargain in a window in the UK. I asked for it to be shortened to fit my wrist. The shop did not charge for the time spent chopping and re-attaching the clasp, but kept the bit cut off to sell it.

I asked the shop for a receipt saying it's amber, for insurance - at a jewellery shop in Hay on Wye in Wales. After some reluctance, the shopkeeper wrote the receipt.

I grabbed the receipt and ran off to catch my coach. Later I read the receipt and found my bargain amber was described not as real amber but synthetic amber. Now you know why you are being asked to pay higher prices for larger pieces on pendants in the top hotels in Poland. (If it's beyond your budget, or you can't decide between two or more pieces, try to bargain for a reduction on buying two or more.)

Lodz
Physically, geographically, the heart or centre of Poland. Sad stories of WWII.

Lublin
Read The Tailor of Lublin - a short story in a collection of stories in  book of the same name by Isaac Bashevis Singer, was a Yiddish tale of a tailor, immortalised by a prolific author who went to the USA and wrote nostalgically about the characters from his former home in poorer areas of Poland.
That's why you feel you have heard of Lublin, and feel warmly towards it, even if you know nothing else about it. (Check for copies of The Tailor Of Lublin on Amazon if you like to read a proper paperback or hardback book.)

Olsztyn
1 Landmark St James's Basilica, is a bishop's seat, and towers over the town.
2 Astronomer Copernicus lived in the city as a church official. See his astronomical instruments in the castle.
3 Astronomical Observatory and Planetarium.
4 Gothic and art deco buildings and lakes.


Poznan

Rzeszów
Southeastern Poland. See the
Rzeszów Cellars (Rzeszówskie Piwnice) under the main square. The cellars were used for storage by merchants and under wartime attack as a place of refuge.

Sopot
Sopot seaside - part of the Tri-city with Gdansk and Gdynia
1 Poland's most photographed building is Sopot's Crooked House, a wonky pub, part of a shopping centre, in a pedestrianised outdoor street.

Everything is crooked, curved. The roofline is like a boat or spoon. The top edge of the windows dips. The doors curve in like a waist - not just the door but the whole, large centre section of the building. You wouldn't think it could stand, but it does.

Indoors are illustrations by the (Jewish) artist who inspired the building. His tombstone, which you can see on the internet, is dramatic.

 Sopot's other claim to fame is
2 Europe's longest pier. The pier extends back to a town square which becomes an
3 Ice rink in winter.
Spot adjoins Gdansk.

Szczecin (Pronounced Stetchin, hear it in Wikipedia)
1 Gingerbread biscuits with sea symbols such as sailors, ships, and anchors. Eat them.
2 Buy them as gifts or souvenirs They can be used to decorate Christmas trees.

Tarnów
Tiny Tarnów is warm, with narrow streets. In addition to
1 Jewish sights: trail: cemetery gates with stars; graves with blue ribbons and blue railings; plaques on walls; brick bimah (pulpit) in street mini park with inscription and protective roof. (Photos in TripAdvisor.)
2  The Ethnography museum has 'Europe's only exhibition on the Romanis', says the Poland Cities guidebook. (I thought Romania had something. I must check.)

Torun - Birthplace and home of astronomer Copernicus. World's capital of Gingerbread.
1 Copernicus Home Museum. Muzeum Mickolai Copernica.
1 Amber Museum, and
2 Neptune fountain landmark in the old town.

You see amber everywhere in Poland, the shops along the streets of Warsaw. Little red yellow and green ovals set in 925 silver - or maybe silver plate, for under £100, in the UK.

Amber Story
In the UK watch out for cheaper pieces which are very pretty but probably fake amber. I saw a bargain in a window in the UK. I asked for it to be shortened to fit my wrist. The shop did not charge for the time spent chopping and re-attaching the clasp, but kept the bit cut off to sell it.

I asked the shop for a receipt saying it's amber, for insurance - at a jewellery shop in Hay on Wye in Wales. After some reluctance, the shopkeeper wrote the receipt.

I grabbed the receipt and ran off to catch my coach. Later I read the receipt and found my bargain amber was described not as real amber but synthetic amber. Now you know why you are being asked to pay higher prices for larger pieces on pendants in the top hotels in Poland. (If it's beyond your budget, or you can't decide between two or more pieces, try to bargain for a reduction on buying two or more.)

2 Cosmopolis Fountain.
3 Gingerbread Walk Of Fame in Old Town Square. Brass plaques in the shape of gingerbread biscuits. Make gingerbread in shop's workshop.
4 Actors in 16th century costume walk the old town at night.

Wiki says: The precocious 15-year-old composer Frédéric Chopin stopped over in Toruń, where he  sampled the city's famous confection and grew so fond of it that he wrote a letter about it to his friends and colleagues. He even sent some to Warsaw. In honor of this, Poland's largest producer of Toruń gingerbread, the Kopernik Confectionery Company, has created a special heart-shaped gingerbread called Scherzo, bearing Chopin's likeness on the wrapper.

Toruń holds an annual celebration of gingerbread called Święto Piernika (the Gingerbread Festival). It's in
June.

Wroclaw
Wroclaw had the tallest and the smallest.
1 The tiny dwarves, statues, only knee high or smaller, beside little doorways or other delights. You can take a guided tour or buy a guidebook.
2 Salvador Dali sculpture, in front of the Sky tower.
3 The Sky Tower, Europe's tallest skyscraper.

Easy To Learn Polish Words
Polish - English
aquarium - aquarium
historii - history
i - and
Muzeum - museum
mydla - soap
stary - old (remember as old as the stars)

English - Polish
and - i
aquarium - aquarium
history - historii
Museum - Museum
old - stary
soap - mydla

Useful Websites
Pl at the end of the website name stands for Poland. EU stand for the EU or European Union.
en stands for encyclopaedia.
www.akwarium.gdynia.pl
www.planetarium.torun.en
www.poland.travel/en
www.rzeszow.pl
www.szczecin.eu/en / www.seaofadventure.eu
www.torumtips.com
www.visittorum.pl

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. See my later post on the dwarves. Please share links to your favourite posts.

News On Babi Yar Nazis and Auschwitz survivor, Eva, one of the twins

Eva Mozes Kor, one of a pair of twins who both survived Mengele's experiments at Auschwitz. She is author of a book about her life and on forgiveness. Photo from Wikipedia and Flickr, courtesy of CANDLES Holocaust Museum and Education Centre, Indiana, USA 

Two people are accused of being part of a group involved in the events in Babi Yar in WWII, but others say there is not sufficient evidence the accused were involved.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4930280/Suspected-members-Hitler-s-death-squads-identified.html

How much relief is awarded by bringing people to justice, and how much relief can be found by releasing the hatred and resentment and forgiving?

The Story of Twin Eva Mozes Kor
I saw a striking video about Eva, a woman who was one of twins, experimented on by Mengele in Auschwitz. In the video she describes how she asked a former Nazi to write and sign a document describing what he saw. Later she wrote and said she forgave him, and she said that she felt much better, empowered afterwards.

After watching the video on Facebook I discovered that not only did she meet a camp attendant who used to watch the people dying in the gas chamber, she adopted as a grandson a descendant of camp commander Höss.

Further searches revealed that she had written a book and set up an educational foundation in Indiana, USA. She grew up in Transylvania in Romania.

https://candlesholocaustmuseum.org/book/surviving-the-angel-of-death.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eva_Mozes_Kor

Author Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

News in Brief:- Babi Yar gravestones display planned - and light relief from Kiev metro

Reading a poem about Babi Yar. Photo from Wiki, public domain, I presume because it was taken at a public place and public event, photo from US library, author unknown, from an article on poems by various authors on the subject of the Bai Yar massacre of more than 33,000 people, almost the entire Jewish population of Kiev, the biggest group in Europe, plus other local people who also died at the ravine.

Problem
Today was national poetry day in the UK. The 2017 theme was Freedom.

Just after I read about this I opened a page of news about Babi Yar. I remembered the poem about Babi Yar where so many died. It starts, No monument stands in Bab Yar ... You find several version of it, depending on how the translators have chosen to translate each word. It is no Monument stands, no gravestone stands, no stone stands, no memorial rises, no grave reminds you. Depends how you think it translates best, evoking the emotion, whether you think it should be sadness, or anger, or shock, or chill, stillness, ghostliness, fear, desolation, protest.

Postage stamp issued in 2011 to commemorate the 1941-43 massacres at Babi Yar outside the capital, Kiev. Photo from Wiki. Public domain.

Is there anything to see at Babi Yar near Kiev in the Ukraine? It is the place where Jews were massacred. Thousands. September. Yevtushencko wrote a poem about the lack of acknowledgement at the place and in Ukraine contrasts with Auschwitz in Poland.

Auschwitz seems to be on every brochure of tours which you pick up in Krakov, as well as numerous films. Polish schoolchildren are taken there.

Would Babi Yar in Ukraine upset me? I have been to Dachau and Auschwitz + Birkenau, assorted Jewish museums, Anne Frank House.

What is there to see at Babi Yar? They are planning to relocate gravestones retrieved from a cemetery as well as items found in the ravine. But what is there to see now?

I found pictures on
Jewish News
Babi Yar Website
Find a grave
Wikipedia.

I could identify several monuments. The most interesting and memorable monument and story was the personal story of the heroine of the Jewish Resistance. She is shown by a statue.

You can plot a walk past the various monuments. I was expecting to see a museum, but the site seems to be a website in two languages. To find this photo I looked in Wiki for this statue of the young woman (member of the Jewish resistance, imprisoned and killed aged 22). To learn about her I used the links to the other websites.

Menorah, seven branch candle stick lit on the eve of the Sabbath, with candles reparenting th seven days of the week. Monument to Jews killed at Babi Yar in 1941.

Monument to children on the site of the Babi Yar massacre, now a public park. Notice the date 1941. photo from Wikipedia in Ukrainian.

I noticed that one of the photos of Babi Yar was copied from the Ukrainian Wikipedia. I never realised there was one. I suppose there must be a wikipedia in many other languages. Although I don't speak Ukrainian, and it would take a while to copy every sentence or paragraph from different areas into Google Translate, I thought it would be worthwhile to look and see if they had more photos of Babi Yar. Sure enough they did. You have to type in something which their website will recognise. I typed in babi dar, found a page with that in a caption of acknowledgements for a photo. I clicked on that site with what looked like Ukrainian (similar to Russian, Cyrillic script) and there were the photos I wanted. I have not yet had time to translate all the captions and acknowledgements. If yu want them please go to the Ukrainian wiki. Go to the UkrainianWikipedia. You will find more photos of Babi-yar.

Grand station in Kiev with chandeliers. Photo from Wikipedia in Ukrainian.

Delightful Stations
In contrast to this sadness, see the delightful underground railway stations of the three train lines (more lines planned). The stations, like the ones in Moscow and St Petersburg, are designed as People's Palaces, with statues, giant historical paintings, chandeliers, pillars of different colours, with light bands around the top, like giant colourful torches, arches like cathedrals with patterned edges, trains painted blue.

https://nationalpoetryday.co.uk
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babi_Yar_in_poetry
https://new.findagrave.com/memorial/5913027/jewish_memorial_at_babi_yar

I have written a guidebook to Jewish sites worldwide. I have written about ten books on popular subjects (such as How To Be The Best Man) published by mainstream publishers and ten more of minority interest self-published including a Poetry Workbook. For a selection of my books, see Amazon and Lulu.com

Angela Lansbury

Elie Wiesel Station Named After Him In Romania In 2017

Problem
Where can I see sights connected with Elie Wiesel?

Synagogue in Sighet, by Vberger in Wikipedia.

Answer
1 USA Washington DC's US Holocaust Memorial Museum, which he founded.
2 Romania, his childhood home, now a museum, in Sighet, now called Sighet Marmatie.
3 Plaque in Sighet's railway station, renamed in September 2017, Gara Elie Wiesel.
4 Poland Auschwitz-Birkenau, where he was sent with his family amidst 15,000 other Jews, where his mother and younger sister died. His other two, older sisters survived.
5 Buchenwald, where his father died, and where Eli Wiesel was liberated by the US army.
6 Nobel Peace Prize - Scandinavia. Oslo, Norway, Peace Museum; also Stockholm, Sweden.

Story
Today there are 7,000 Jews in Romania. I had hoped to visit the museum in Romania, but I was with a group. I saw the lovely exterior of the synagogue in Brasov which is described in my other posts on Romania.

Romanian Language
As you can see from the word Gara for station, Romanian has many words similar to Italian and French.

He spoke several languages including Romanian, Yiddish, French and English. He wrote 57 books including Night which was about his time in Auschwitz and Buchenwald. He was on the Oprah Winfrey show and went with her to Auschwitz. Other well-known people he met, as you can see from photos, included US President Obama, and the Dalai Lama.

More Information
www.duolingo.com - learn Romanian for free on the internet on your computer, laptop or smart phone.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Elie_Wiesel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elie_Wiesel
Romanian Tourist Board:
www.romaniatourism.com

https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g608955-d3458082-Reviews-The_Elie_Wiesel_Memorial_House_The_Museum_of_the_Jewish_Culture_in_Maramures-Sigh.html
http://auschwitz.org/en/ (The Polish might pop up first. No flag of the Union Jack. The English translation is obtained by finding the word English across the top of the page.)
https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g190479-d579345-Reviews-The_Nobel_Peace_Center-Oslo_Eastern_Norway.
https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g187426-d8590907-Reviews-Buchenwald_Memorial-Weimar_Thuringia.html

You Tube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9PuCf9zmts (His family and his time in the camps.)
https://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=166354255 (No interesting gravestone but a good little summary of his life.)

http://time.com/4392279/elie-wiesel-dead-life-pictures-photos/ (Excellent series of pictures, shows amongst other illustrations:
The famous picture of Buchenwald you will probably recall, of emaciated men lying on three level of bunk beds - with a circle showing which is Elie Wiesel;
Elie Wiesel meeting one of the Russian liberators of Auschwitz, General Vasily Petrenko;
Elie Wiesel with President Bill Clinton at the dedication ceremony for the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington DC;
Elie Wiesel being hugged by President Obama who presented Elie Wiesel with a medal.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. See my other posts on Romania and the Romanian language. Please share links to your favourite posts.

Remembering Three World-Famous Romanians: Dracula; Eli Wiesel; Nadia Comaneci

Dracula's Castle, Castelul (Romanian for Castle) Bran. Picture author Kye Thayer from Wikipedia. Walkway of castle interior.

Problem
I was going to Romania and could not think of a single Romanian.

Answer
I started to check landmarks, lists of Romanians, too many and mostly not known to me. But I know three.
1 Dracula - major landmark, Dracula's castle.
2 Eli Wiesel, Nobel Prize winner. See the Jewish Museum in Bucharest, the capital of Romania.
3 Nadia, the darling of the Olympics.

Stories
1 The real life story of any leader and any war can be harrowing but Dracula's was worse than most. However, we have inherited beautiful buildings and castles from kings, tyrants and dictators which are now available for everybody to admire form the outside, and enjoy the inside and be free lo leave and move on geographically and mentally and physically back to the current century. The good old days? When were they? Maybe before the war. Not during the war, except for the small proportion who survived.

2 In London my family was delivered a copy of a free A5 magazine My local PINNER news, May 2017, issue 36. It is delivered every month.

The magazine features the story of a Romanian survivor of Auschwitz. Leslie Kleinman, (the surname is German for small man) was imprisoned in Auschwitz camp in Poland aged 15 and lost his mother and six younger siblings on arrival and when he was released April 23 he learned that he had also recently lost his older sister. Despite that, he has lived another 72 years and reached the age of 87.

On Holocaust Memorial Day, April 23rd, he told an audience of 350 people about his experiences. The event organiser quoted the words of another, well known Romanian survivor, Elie Wiesel, "Anyone who listens to a witness becomes a witness."

Translating the Hebrew, Yom Hashoah, yom is Hebrew for day, ha is the, shoah is the Holocaust.

More on
www.mynewsmag.co.uk

I then went on to research Romanian born Elie Wiesel who lived from 1928-2016 and was also a survivor of Auschwitz because at the age of 15 on the day he was admitted another prisoner warned him to claim to be an adult in order to survive the gassing of children.

The remarkable parts of his story included the account he wrote of his time in Auschwitz, which he never intended to publish, at least not for ten years. In 1954, until as a newspaper journalist he interviewed the famous Catholic writer Francois Mauriac, who had been awarded the Nobel prize for literature two years earlier, in 1952. Wiesel listened as Mauriac repeatedly talked about the suffering of Jesus. Wiesel finally burst out with the complaint that children had died less than ten years ago, he had seen it with his own eyes, and nobody talked about their suffering.

Mauriac followed Wiesel out and told him to write about what he witnessed.  Eli Wiesel did what Mauriac suggested. His first book's title was changed to the simpler one word Night. Mauriac wrote a forward to the book.

Over the course of the rest of his life Wiesel wrote numerous books and a play, published posthumously (after death). His words are inscribed on a Holocaust museum in the USA. He was awarded the Nobel prize.

After researching Eli Wiesel, I turned to the next famous person on my list, an active person, in sport.

3 I could not remember the name of a famous Romanian Olympic winner but I was sure there had to be one. Were they all Russians? I recalled the name Olga Korbut. I looked her up and found an article which also mentioned Olga, who came from Belorussia, and Nadia Comăneci, who was Romanian born and was representing Romania.

Nadia Comăneci

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nadia Comăneci
Nadia Comăneci at the 1976 Olympics
Personal information
Full name	Nadia Elena Comăneci
Nickname(s)	Nadia
Country represented	Romania
Born	November 12, 1961 (age 55) Onești, Romania[1]
Height	5 ft 3.5 in (1.61 m)[1]
Discipline	Women's artistic gymnastics
Gym	National Training Center
Former coach(es)	Béla Károlyi Márta Károlyi
Choreographer	Geza Pozsar
Eponymous skills	Comăneci salto (uneven bars)
Retired	1984 (official)
Medal record[hide] International gymnastics competitions Representing  Romania Olympic Games 1976 Montréal All-Around 1976 Montréal Uneven Bars 1976 Montréal Balance Beam 1980 Moscow Balance Beam 1980 Moscow Floor Exercise 1976 Montréal Team 1980 Moscow Team 1980 Moscow All-Around 1976 Montréal Floor Exercise World Championships 1978 Strasbourg Balance Beam 1979 Ft. Worth Team 1978 Strasbourg Team 1978 Strasbourg Vault European Championships 1975 Skien All-Around 1975 Skien Uneven Bars 1975 Skien Balance Beam 1975 Skien Vault 1977 Prague All-Around 1977 Prague Uneven Bars 1979 Copenhagen All-Around 1979 Copenhagen Vault 1979 Copenhagen Floor Exercise 1975 Skien Floor Exercise 1977 Prague Vault 1979 Copenhagen Balance Beam Summer Universiade 1981 Bucharest Team 1981 Bucharest All-Around 1981 Bucharest Uneven Bars 1981 Bucharest Vault 1981 Bucharest Floor Exercise

Nadia Elena Comăneci (Romanian pronunciation: [ˈnadi.a koməˈnet͡ʃʲ] ( listen); born November 12, 1961) is a RomanianOlympic gold medalist who, at the age of 14, became the first gymnast to be awarded a perfect score of 10.0 in the Olympic games during the 1976 Olympics in Montreal.^[2] She would eventually go on to receive six more perfect 10s in Montreal as well as three gold medals. Four years later, she won two gold medals at the 1980 Olympics in Moscow. She won a total of nine Olympic medals and four World Championship medals during her career.

Comăneci is one of the world's best-known gymnasts and is credited with popularizing the sport around the globe.^[3] In 2000, she was named as one of the Athletes of the 20th Century by the Laureus World Sports Academy.^[4] She has lived in the United States since 1989 and is married to American Olympic champion.

That's an amazing, impressive list. Not just once, but year after year of dedication.

If you should get into a conversation about Romanian history with somebody from Romania, somebody in Romania, or somebody who is interested in Romania, you have three world-famous Romanians you can talk about.

If you learned English and Latin at school as I did, you will find many Romanian words sound familiar. You can learn Romanian, which is similar to Italian - the name Romanian gives you a clue, from DuoLingo.

www.duolingo.com

Conclusion
You and I know already know, or can easily get to know about, three world-famous Romanians. If and when we visit Romania we can fly into Bucharest where we ca visit the Jewish Museum and take a side trip to Dracula's Castle.

Author of picture of Dracula's Castle, in Romanian Castelul (castle) Bran, is Florin 73m.From Wikipedia.

Author

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. I have several more posts on Romanian travel sights and learning Romanian.

Please share posts.