Jesuit Churches -- They Keep Finding Us

By Elise Wilson

We had hoped to find at least one Jesuit church on our trip, but we just keep stumbling upon them. We first saw one in Warsaw which we quickly recognized because of the IHS emblazoned across the front of the church. It was a modest church right in the middle of the old town. We had found our Jesuit church!

A couple of days later, and after our horrendous train ride we arrived in Krakow. We were not planning on spending much time in the city itself as we wanted to concentrate our energies on Auschwitz. When we got back from Auschwitz and finished with the Schindler museum, we then decided to take a unique opportunity from our hotel. Our hotel was situated along the Vistula and they offered complimentary boat cruises. I had wanted to ride down a European river at some point, so we seized this opportunity. We thought the boat was a round trip on the Vistula, but to our pleasant surprise, the boat pulled over near Krakow’s old town and the driver said we could ride back to the hotel or get off here. We wondered around the old town and came across a towering old church. The twelve apostles graced the front of the church and we learned that it was St. Peter and Paul’s Church. We looked more closely at the facade and saw a figure with a book and inscribed was Ad Majoriam Dei Glorium, another Jesuit church. Organ music began to stream from the church doors so we decided to check it out. We saw a figure wearing green vestments at the altar and realized that a Mass was just beginning. We were wondering how we would attend Sunday Mass since we did not know what time churches had masses. This was truly providential! Even though we do not speak Polish, one of the beauties of a Catholic mass is that you can still follow along because it is so universal. The church was breathtakingly beautiful.

When we arrived in Prague we decided to see the Prague castle since that is what everyone does when they go there. When we were looking at the map to see which tram line we should take I noticed a church called St. Nicholas right on the way. We stopped in and paid a few crowns (Czech currency) and entered. As we were walking around looking at the opulent Baroque style of the church we saw many statues. At one of the side altars I recognized the figure of St. Ignatius. Could this be another Jesuit church? I looked around and sure enough I found that one of the statues that I had so quickly taken a picture of was St. Ignatius right on the main altar . I had never seen Ignatius portrayed in such a way. According to our guide he was slaying a hereza. (see picture)

The Jesuit influence in eastern Europe surprised me and Ms. Guiney. We cannot seem to escape the Jesuits, but at the same time, finding these churches made us feel like we were being watched over and protected.

Pax vobiscum

Terezin

Hitler and the powers that be sat down and discussed "final solution to the Jewish question" and their answer came in 1942 with the plans to "exterminate" the Jewish population of Europe. Terezin, an established Jewish ghetto about an hour from Prague in the Czeck Republic, became an integral part of that plan. Terezin started as a ghetto for elderly Jews (over 65), Jewish veterans from World War I, and artists that SS men felt would be of help in running the camp. However, as the "final solution" was implemented, Terezin became a sort of rest stop on the way to death camps that had not been completed for their deadly plans. Jewish transports from Germany, Austria, Holland, the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, Hungary, and Slovakia all spent time in the Terezin ghetto before being deported to concentration camps. Terezin originally housed around 12,000 Jewish inhabitants, but in the final push for "extermination" the walls of the Terezin ghetto contained up to almost 60,000 inhabitants, which caused numerous problems in sanitation and diseases. Terezin is most known for its appearances in propaganda films portraying Jews playing soccer, performing in a concert, and living "normal" lives. These films were made during a scheduled inspection from the Red Cross, during which the Red Cross saw only the "beautification" of this camp and not the reality.


Mrs. Wilson and I visited Terezin during our trip to Prague. It was about an hour bus ride from our hotel and we arrived just as the rain began. I thought it was an eerie coincidence that it rained during our trip to Auschwitz as well. It's true that the weather fit our mood here too. Terezin Museum is based out of what was once the home for boys, ages 10-15. Many of those in Terezin fought to keep their education and culture as a daily part of their lives. Teachers continued teaching, musicians continued performing, artists continued drawing, and the children of Terezin thrived because of them. Much of what is left behind in Terezin is the work of the children. Their artwork, their performances in plays, their published literary magazine, and the palpable hope in all of this for them to one day be free. Unfortunately, along with most of those interned at Terezin, the children too were deported to death camps and perished there. We learned that most of the inhabitants of Terezin were deported to Auschwitz, the deadliest of the camps. We looked at so many pictures of these children, we read their words and looked at their drawings, and I was struck with how much talent these children had and what beautiful things they might have accomplished, if only they had been allowed to live. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside the walls of Terezin, but I will remember the faces of the children the most.

The Beauty of Prague

Prague

Today we spent our last day in Prague. It is an absolutely beautiful city with amazing views from every vantage point. Mrs. Wilson couldn't stop taking pictures and I just walked around in awe!


Our first day here we walked around Old Town and visited Prague Castle which is the oldest medieval castle in the world and has the most amazing view of the Prague out almost every window. I have to say that while I liked walking around the castle, I much more prefer to see it from a distant in the back-drop of Prague. It looks so impressive taking up the skyline.




That first day we also found St. Nicholas's church- a Jesuit church. We have found so many Jesuit churches or I guess I should say they have found us! (I will have to elaborate later on that) As for St. Nicholas's- it is an extremely ornate church with so much to see and even with so many tourists running about snapping pictures, it is able to hold it's holy ground and remain foremost a place of prayer. We found one alter dedicated to St. Ignatius and spent time here taking photos, saying a prayer, and thinking of our BC high connections to a place so far away from Morrissey Blvd.




The last place we spent a good deal of time at was the ghetto/camp at Terezin, which is about an hour from Prague. I need a little more time to put my thoughts together on this moving memorial, but will blog later about what we learned there.

All in all, I am sad to leave Prague. It has been a magical place to discover. Mrs. Wilson and I wandered up and down streets, alleys and of course, the Charles Bridge. It has been a wonderful part of our trip.

Surprise in Krakow

A surprise for us in Krakow was the Schindler Museum which was only a couple of blocks from our hotel. The purpose of the museum was to show the history of Krakow during WWII. This museum was amazingly well executed as it was highly visual and interactive. As a whole Poland has AMAZING museums. Like the Warsaw Uprising Museum you can see the pride the Polish have of their history. I learned a lot about life under the Nazis. The Poles were looked down upon as a whole and the Germans made every effort to eiradicate Polish customs and culture. Everything was Germanized, and one way the Poles resisted was through educating its people in secret about Polish culture. But Jewish Poles had the worst of it. One thing that struck me at the museum was one account of the building of the Krakow ghetto. On Passover, a time when Jews celebrate their ancestors' freedom from the Egyptians, the Nazis started to build the ghetto walls imprisoning them. Additionally, the walls were formed in the shapes of graves as a foresight to their futures.

Overall this museum was a pleasant surprise as I was not impressed with the city which looked run down. Thanks goodness we went to the old town after the Schindler museum because that was charming and in the end, Krakow was a good place to visit.

Overwhelmed at Auschwitz-Birkenau

Our trip to Auschwitz and Birkenau was so important for me to do as a social studies teacher who teaches about the Holocaust. One can read facts and figures in a book, and one can even read stories from witnesses, but until one sees the fences and walks the grounds one cannot truly connect to the history. I walked away from these camps with a better understanding of how the camps were run. The kids always have questions about how the camps worked, what happened there, and what they looked like. Well, I feel I can better answer their questions and bring them my experience as well. We saw Auschwitz I which was a concentration camp where prisoners there worked outside the camp, but there were also medical experiments, firing squads, and the first gas chamber and crematorium. Then we went to Auschwitz II-Birkenau. This camp stirred some strong emotions. The immensity of the camp was astonishing. The shear size was impressive, I had no idea how large the camp was and it was overwhelming. Again I probably had read the figures, but to see how expansive it is, how small you feel standing there, and then realizing how many people it could accomodate makes you realize how much devastation and destrcution occured. The conditions there were worse than Auschwitz I. The barracks are wooden structures that were crammed full of people waiting to die. Everything was so well planned out by Himmler, that it frightens me that humans can do this to other humans. I cannot fathom what it must have been like to be awaiting your fate there. I pray that we have grown as humans, but then I return to the hotel room and watch CNN or BBC, and I wonder if we have. I will continue to pray and teach because it is so important for my students to learn how important it is to love each other as human beings.

Beware of Polish Trains --Slice of Life

For those of you who are familiar with our Writing Workshop last year we wrote slices of life. This is my slice of life on a Polish train. (This is why it is longer than a normal blog entry.)

Beware when riding Polish trains! Our train ride from Warsaw to Krakow could have only been made worse if we had had our luggage stolen. We rushed to the railway station in Warsaw planning to take the 2:15 train to Krakow only to find ourselves stuck at a ticket window with a woman who spoke no English. She told us we could not take the 2:15. Were there no more tickets? Was the train cancelled? Did we read the timetable incorrectly? Did she know what we wanted to do? Clearly irritated by us she barked at us to go to the international window up the stairs. As we ascended the staircase we were enveloped by many different ticket windows and Polish words. Our eyes darted everywhere as we searched for an international window but we could not see one clearly labeled. We saw an information line and proceeded to get in what we thought was the line, but after a while we realized we were not actually in the line. We then spotted a sign that had in English “Information” so I went over and tried to ask the people in line if this place will help us to buy tickets. I got no where with that. We resigned ourselves to taking a later train and found another ticket line and after a few minutes, finally I spotted the long international line which the lady told us to go to. We waited there for a while and some men who also spoke English asked us if this was the right line to buy tickets to Krakow. We told them we were not sure, but that we were also looking to go to Krakow. They continued to ask others and we followed them with our attentive eyes and ears hoping to catch a bit of information. They found a Polish woman who spoke English and she said that this line was only if you were going out of the country. They caught our eyes and told us to change lines. The men left and we asked the woman why the other ticket lady would send us to this line when she knew we were going to Krakow. She guessed it was because the woman thought that these ticket sellers would speak English.

Confused and filled with trepidation that we would not get a ticket, we decided to go back to the original ticket line and try to buy a ticket for 3:15. The Polish lady volunteered to come with us and aid in purchasing the tickets. We told her that was too much trouble on her part, but she insisted. We descended the stairs and got back in line. When we approached the window, this time with a different woman, the Polish savior did all of our talking, and then we had to pay. Of course they only take cash and we did not have that much on us. I raced to the ATM which was about 20 feet away and got 200 zlotys. I came back to the window to confirm a 3:15 train to Krakow. We got our tickets, thanked the Polish lady who gave up her time to help us and went back up to wait for our train.

We sat down finally feeling more at ease. But when we looked at our tickets, it looked as though our departure time was for 5:15 not 3:15. In despair I left Ms. Guiney with our bags and went back down to the ticket line and got to the window with the original ticket lady. I wrote on a slip of paper Departure 15:15? I wrote departure in Polish, or at least what I thought was Polish based on what was on the ticket, and she shook her head. She then proceeded to put the tickets through a machine, stamp them, take out new tickets, she had me sign something, and then she handed back tickets along with 111 zlotys. Why was I getting money back? Did she understand me? “15:15 to Krakow?” I asked. She nodded. “Receipt?” She shook her head, and I left.

So I went eagerly back to Ms. Guiney and we surveyed the tickets. Where was the departure time? What platform were we supposed to go to? We looked at each other with desperate looks in our eyes. I then heard a man speaking to his family in English with an American accent. I asked him if he knew how to read the ticket and he gladly tried to help us. Another man who spoke English also came to our group to see if he could help. In the end none of us could figure out the ticket. Then the American man took out his notebook and wrote out in Polish what we should ask the lady at the information window. It turns out he is a professor from Ohio and was here in Poland for two years doing research. I waited in line at the info booth, and handed over the message to the lady, and she told us our platform.

At the appropriate time we headed to our platform and asked 3 people if this was the train to Krakow. Well, it was more like pointing to a track and saying, “Krakow?” The train arrived and there was a mad rush to the doors. We each were carrying suitcases that weighed at least 40lbs and small bags, and purses. People kept squeezing by us. We turned into the first car and it was the dining car, so we kept going, but people stopped all of a sudden in front of us. We looked around and soon realized to our chagrin that the train was full and there were no more seats! The train was hot and we were standing with all of our luggage in a small space right at the doors between cars. In the end we ended up standing or sitting on the floor for 3 hours. We could not eat, rest, read, nothing. It was the worst train ride we could imagine. We asked each other what we could have done to avoid this, but there was nothing. So, when traveling in Poland, beware of the trains, and rush to the doors when the train arrives so that you get a seat.

Auschwitz

My desire for this trip started with last year’s 8th grade class. As we began reading the Elie Wiesel’s autobiography Night, these particular students bombarded me with questions. As this was only my second year teaching this book, and I can in no way say that I know it in the way that I know To Kill a Mockingbird, their questions made me anxious. Each day we would read a little and then the questions would begin.

“What did Auschwitz look like? How big was it? Were there just Jews in concentration camps? Did the people in surrounding towns know about these camps? Why did they get on those trains? Why didn’t the inmates try to escape the camps? What did they eat? Where did the sleep? Did Hitler ever come to Auschwitz? What happened after they survived? After they died?”

Each day had me on edge, I knew some of these answers, but many more that I did not. I also knew that my vague answers were not good enough for the boys. They wanted so much from me and from our unit of study that I needed a way to get it to them. I did so much research and reading in the last year about Auschwitz-Birkenau (where Elie and his family are sent), but mainly what I needed was a visual. The boys didn’t want to hear me say, “Auschwitz was located 30 km from the city of Krakow...” They wanted to see it! I found some great websites that gave us interactive maps showing how large Auschwitz, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Auschwitz-Monowitz were (Auschwitz, though commonly referred to as one camp, was actually separated into three camps- Elie Wiesel spent time in all three sections). I was so proud of myself for finding these maps and photos, but when class was over there was still this sense of something missing. They hadn’t gotten their fill of information; they wanted (no-needed) more. But how do I get more? How much more reading can I do? So when Mrs. Wilson and I heard about the Winchenbaugh grant generously donated to teachers looking to travel to enhance their curriculum, we knew that a trip to Europe studying sites of the Holocaust and World War II would greatly benefit both ourselves and our students.

Yesterday, that desire became a reality, as Mrs. Wilson and I toured the death camp, Auschwitz and Auschwitz-Birkenau. The Nazis destroyed much of the Auschwitz section when they heard troops were coming in, so much of it was burned to the ground, in hopes of concealing their deeds. The Auschwitz museum has built replicas in its place, but used the artifacts that could not be concealed. The Nazis burned many of the records of those kept at Auschwitz, yet they did not destroy the luggage with the names of the victims, the millions of shoes (both adult and children), or the pounds of human hair the Allied armies found in storage bags. All of this was on display in the replicas of bunkers. We saw the infamous bunker 11 where the Nazis perfected their use of Zyclon B- later used to gas the one-million Jews that died at Auschwitz-Birkenau. We saw cell 18 in Bunker 11, where Fr. Maxmillian Kolbe was sent to die of starvation in a retaliation punishment. Some of you know his story- he offered himself to the Nazis for this punishment in place of a Polish man who cried when they started to take him. Fr. Kolbe bravely took his place, and lasted 14 days without food or water. The SS men were tired of waiting for him to die and gave him a lethal injection to the heart-later claiming he died of a heart attack. In his cell, Pope John Paul placed a candle (one of four he placed in the country of Poland). We also saw the gallows where many inmates were hanged for trying to escape, or for taking extra food, or simply used as a reminder for other inmates to “behave.” The same can be said for the wall of execution, where the SS men took the inmates from bunker 11 and shot them in the head. The inmates were lined up and brought out one by one to the wall. From there we went to see the gas chamber and first crematorium used on the site of Auschwitz. Because the room was small and there were only three ovens in the crematorium, they could only kill about 300 inmates a day. That upped the need for a more efficient way of killing for the Nazis and so they created a mass killing center at Auschwitz-Birkenau (camp 2).

When we arrived at Birkenau, the first thing to see is the railroad that goes nowhere. It was all a trick to get the Jews to think they were at a checkpoint before going on to Krakow, their final destination. However, this was their final destination. Mrs. Wilson and I saw yesterday, the spot where SS men forced the Jews to disembark their train cars and line up for selection. Some were sent left, some were sent right. Some lived and some died. What struck both of us the most at Birkenau was the sheer mass of the site. I have read the dimensions, I have calculated the number of deaths, I have seen the pictures of huddled inmates, but I was still unprepared for the blocks of barracks that went on for what seemed like forever. There are only 22 barracks left standing, but hundreds of chimneys (for a heating system that wouldn’t work, but looked good to the Red Cross) left that showed where more bunkers once stood. It was an amazing site to behold.


I am still anxious about the questions that I will get this year when I read Night with my new set of 8th graders, but I can provide so much more than pictures, maps and statistics now. For now: I have walked the dirt road of those who suffered, I have touched the walls where they once leaned, and I have prayed where they once prayed. I know I speak for both Mrs. Wilson and myself, when I tell you that seeing this place has changed us, as teachers and as human-beings. I feel so grateful to be here to bear witness to such a place.