Thursday, April 4, 2013

Day 2: April 4, 2013

Today was the first day of actual extermination camp exploration and my first time ever setting foot in another country. The first stop was a cemetery in Warsaw which was both shocking and interesting. Although I knew this would be a trip full of statistics and numbers I never thought about the actual amount being said. Walking through an endless and heavily forested field of headstones representing people who had made some difference in the world was both breath taking and shocking. There was, however, an interesting juxtaposition between the death and destruction and the beautiful soft snow gliding down to the tops of the massive black and gray stones.
The stop at Treblinka, our first extermination camp, was more difficult to get through. The idea that where I stood today and heard complaints from my fellow participants about how cold it was, was the same place that thousands of people were slaughtered was a harsh change in my perspective on what actually matters or should be cared about. Nothing today was more difficult than holding back tears in a winter waste land among 17,000 stones representing the most people killed in one day at the camp.

-Dan Steinberg 




Dan Steinberg in Treblinka Extermination Camp 



Israeli flag Treblinka



Warsaw Cemetery 


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