Why Auschwitz?

Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp, was never on my list of go-to places. There were plenty of other places I was hoping to visit. And yet, I went to Auschwitz. I was one of the people that Bernie was talking about when he referred to those who didn’t see the point of traveling “halfway around the world” to sit in silence. I could sit at home. I could travel once or twice a week from Staten Island to Yonkers to sit with Bernie. That was enough of a schlepp. But I went anyway, to Poland, to eat and sleep at Auschwitz and to walk each day to sit zazen in a circle around the Birkenau tracks where the cattle cars emptied their cargoes, Jews and Gypsies, homosexuals and socialists, the physically handicapped and the mentally ill, all my people.

I didn’t think I needed to travel halfway around the world to connect with their suffering, but I went anyway because Bernie was – still is, actually, six years after his passing – my teacher, and I was learning to surrender some of my “how smart I am” so that Bernie could nudge me toward the inner peace I’d been unable to find on my own. I went, and as I sat in silence on the Birkenau tracks, a gentle snow settled on my shoulders and on the elegant curve of the precast concrete posts which held the barbed wire, and above me, on the guard tower. It was weirdly peaceful at Birkenau that morning.

It was then that my eye opened. I was not just the Jewish mother with her daughter, waiting her turn to enter the gas chamber, not just the socialist organizer or the priest awaiting execution. I was the guard in the tower. I was shocked. I was a good guy. My whole career was in service to those my mother called “the less fortunate,” those who were living in ghettos and reservations and psychiatric hospitals, not so far as we liked to think from the gas chambers. I was one of the lucky ones. I grew up in a suburb, went to an elite college and to graduate school. I’d never gone without although I’d learned to live with less. I’d been lucky with my choice of parents, lucky with the moment of my birth. A different role of the dice and I could have been the guard in the tower. I was the guard in the tower looking down on the circle of sitters in the snow, Jews and Buddhists, Catholics and Muslims, Hindus and atheists.

We are one. I’d had a glimpse the evening before when we gathered at Auschwitz together to share our experience. It was a large group, and only the brave spoke. I was not one of the brave, but I listened. Having shared their stories, the son of Auschwitz survivors and the daughter of an SS officer embraced. On the tracks the next day, I experienced it. We are one, the good guys and the bad guys, the Jews and the Nazis. It is unthinkable, but it can be experienced.

I experienced it again in the days following 9/11. In downtown Manhattan, walking past the World Trade Center site toward the Staten Island Ferry terminal, breathing that air, still filled with the particles of destruction, I knew it wasn’t good for my health. Walking down Church, as I crossed Cortlandt, I recalled something I’d read – I think by Deepak Chopra – that our bodies are made up of molecules that have been part of every human who ever lived. I thought, I am breathing in molecules of all the victims of the terrorist attack.  And as I continued walking, I realized that I was breathing in molecules of the terrorists as well. Victims and terrorists were now my body. You can’t get much more we-are-one than that.

Why Auschwitz? Go to Auschwitz to find out. The Zen Peacemakers have been sponsoring annual Auschwitz retreats for 30 years. Are you ready for this plunge? Check it out.