The director of our senior hall tells us to trust that she
picks engaging speakers for the monthly Life Learning Lecture Series and to come
even if the topic doesn’t sound particularly interesting. I’m glad I took that
advice this week. I’ve been in a ‘down mood’ lately with no discernible explanation
for feeling that way so I was afraid that listening to a recounting of personal
experiences about living in Nazi prison camps might add to my melancholy. But it
didn’t. In fact, afterward I was intrigued with exploring the unanswered questions posed at
the lecture: “How do you survive surviving something as heinous as the Holocaust?
How are people able to accept the past injustices and put faith in humanity
again?
The lecturer, a medical anthropologist, wrote a well-researched
book based on her mother’s personal accounts. The back cover summary reads: “Jadwiga
Lenartowicz Rylko, known as Jadzia (Yah’-jah), was a young Polish Catholic
physician at the start of World War II. Suspected of resistance activities, she
was arrested in January 1944. For the next fifteen months, she endured three
Nazi concentration camps and a forty-two day death march, spending part of this
time working as a prisoner-doctor to Jewish slave laborers. [The book] A Polish Doctor in the Nazi Camps
follows Jadzia from her childhood and medical training, through her wartime
experiences, to her struggles to create a new life in the postwar world.”
Barbara Rylko-Bauer gave a spell-binding lecture and if you
get a chance to see her, don’t shy away. She’s been traveling all over the country on a book tour and has even been invited to speak in Paris this summer. The book has won many prestigious awards, has gotten a lot of media attention and I can't believe Barbara lives close-by. The lecture was more than just another survivor’s story.
It showcased a unique mother/daughter experience, of a woman who didn’t talk
about her wartime years until late in her life, of the two of them going on a pilgrimage
back to Poland and Germany to retrace and document Jadzia’s life including her time spent
working for the U.S. Army after the war helping to treat concentration camp survivors. That's where she met and married another Holocaust camp survivor before resettling
in Michigan. She was 100 years old when she died.
One thing that the author stressed throughout her lecture is
how people in the camps found ways to “resist” and increase their odds of
surviving and to hold on to their own humanity. For example, at a slave labor
work camp the women would smuggle sewing thread they were making for German
uniforms back to their barracks where they would braid it into chains that they
used to crochet socks. In that same work camp she slept in a 10’ x 10’ room with
thirteen other women, sleeping on a straw covered floor “like sardines in a can.”
And the ‘crime’ that got her arrested and imprisoned in the first place? She belonged
to a small group of friends who listened in secret to a radio which was against
the law in occupied Poland.
After the lecture I went through Mr. Burger’s take-out line
to pick up some lunch. It’s green shakes season in honor of St. Patrick’s Day
and after that thought-provoking lecture I needed some comfort food. (Who am I
fooling? I always want/need comfort food.) I took my lunch over to a place that
overlooks a contributory river to Lake Michigan. My husband and I used to go there
often after he became wheelchair bound so the place weeps with widowhood memories. Its serenity
made it a perfect place to reflect on how people survive surviving heinous
life experiences. Where does the strength come from to pick up the pieces and
go on? And if they can do that, surviving ordinary life experiences should be a
piece of cake.
The ice on the river was gone, the current was strong and it
carried a large fallen tree along at a fast pace. Spring is here and I realized that’s
the source of half of my melancholy. I don’t even have my wintertime To-Do list
done and it’s almost time to roll out a spring list. Why do I (we?) get caught
up into micromanaging life to the point that not doing something like cleaning the kitchen cabinets can make me feel like a failure or lazy or old? Why do
I turn stuff like that into a big, mood-alternating deal? And, for me, that’s why
going to lectures like the one I heard on Thursday is important. They’re a good
kick in the butt for getting lost in the minutia of life. No one is going to
die if I don’t throw out my outdated vinegar or donate the biscotti pan I never
use. No one cares what I do or don’t do…and that’s the source of the other half
of my melancholy. Woo is me and shame on me at the same time. I’ve got some
broad-brush, important things going on in my life like good health, freedom and
financial security and if there are missing pieces---oh, well, I'll find them when I find them. The human spirit is amazingly renewable. ©
If anyone is interested in an in-depth review of A Polish Doctor in the Nazi Camps click this link: The Boston Review The author's website is here.
