Gravestone, Kazimierz Dolny, Poland

It’s getting on to that moment we’ve all been waiting for… Hillary’s election, right? There is the annoying surprise of Weiner and Abedin’s nonsense, or his nonsense and her awful position and then all those emails. Jeez. What next? And then the retraction. I cannot wait for an ending to the suspense… but the shock is that there is any suspense. That the man who will remain nameless would garner a fraction of the attention he’s gotten is astounding. I will be speechless if he actually wins the election. Beyond that, I cannot go.

I’ve just returned from a trip to Italy, France, and Poland. Not the usual triumvirate of destinations but a good trio for my particular circumstances… Amalfi for a family vacation with a two year old, France to reunite with cousins, first and once removed, and Poland for a genealogical pursuit. I searched the internet for a good guide and scored one with a PhD in history, with a special interest in genocide of all varieties… couldn’t be better.

Off we went to learn more than I ever wanted to know about the history of Poland and specifically the period between and during the two World Wars. Research is always useful for writing and art, but planting oneself down in the geographic locus of a monumental historical moment that changed the course of millions of lives, not to speak of one’s own itty bitty piece of the action, is an unexpected dose of reality. Yes, there is a difference between hearing stories over decades, and then visualizing in real locale with concrete evidence, or lack of concrete or graves or cemeteries as evidence, the wholesale eradication of millions of human beings.

There were 3.2 million Jews in Poland before the Second World War, and now there may be 10,000. Don’t get me started on recent research describing contemporary anti-Semitism in Poland, but it won’t be a surprise given the current climate in Europe as a whole. It has increased… 90% of young people surveyed in one study had never met a Jew, and were thrilled to have that be the case. Hell, many folks there believe there’s a conspiracy of Jews to run the international banking system and the media, not to mention that Jews killed Christ and drink the blood of Christians in their religious rituals. Okay. Okay. I won’t go on. And on.

The trip ended appropriately at Auschwitz and then a visit to the new Museum of the History of the Polish Jews… along with Schindler’s factory tacked on. To use the word overkill would be tasteless and disrespectful, but I ended up flattened as if steamrolled and then curled up like a rug, and shipped home. It left me speechless… what is there to say that hasn’t already been said? But clearly the timing couldn’t be more apt.