Day 4: God, where were you?

Today we visited the Ninth Fort in Kaunas where 50,000 Jews were massacred. I am overwhelmed by the pain and anger after seeing the Memorial at the Ponari Forest yesterday. I keep asking God, "where were YOU???"

So, I approach my new friend, Harriet, and ask her how she's feeling.

Me: Harriet, how are you coping with all these sites we’ve visited and the atrocities that occurred?

Harriet: It’s very disturbing. But I remember that I am alive and it’s my duty to learn and make sure future generations never forget. What about you?

Me: Well, I’m not Jewish, but I am very emotional and filled with rage. But I will not allow it to consume me. My duty is to make sure my students become the upstanders of their generation. 

We hug and cry together.

We visited the Kovno Ghetto and stood at the gate entrance to the Kovno Ghetto AND on the very streets that Ilya Gerber wrote about in his diary, highlighted in Alexandra Zapruder’s book, Salvaged Pages. Lots of tears today.

Even in the midst of inhumanity there are helpers and rescuers and hope givers. Sugihara Chiune was one of those people. As the Japanese consulate in Kaunas, he helped 6,000 Jews transit to Moscow then to Japan. Wow.

He has been declared “Righteous Among the Nations” for his heroic deed.

Audrey Lichter, another Jewish colleague on the trip told me about Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sachs who once said, “I don’t question where was God. I question where was man?” In the end, God does give us free will, so what is humanity doing with it?

I may be in Lithuania, but I still hear, read, and see what’s going on at the border camps, in Puerto Rico, and with our administration.

Where will YOU stand?

With Harriet Cutler. I affectionately call her my Jewish Mami.

Memorial at Ninth Fort. Left statue represents pain, far right, death, and the middle symbolizes hope. 

If you zoom in you can see the faces and fists.

Ninth Fort built under czarist Russia and used by Nazis

Entrance to Ninth Fort

Ninth Fort. It's chilling to enter.

This could be you and your mother.

These were people with lives to live. 

I wept at all the photos of people that perished in Kaunas. I lost it when I saw photos of children.

Examples of upstanders and rescuers. They’ve been recognized as Righteous Among the Nations. I was moved to see nuns and priests who defied the Nazi regime even though they were required to show allegiance to the Third Reich above God. I look forward to when the Vatican opens the secret archives on Pope Pius XII, head of the Roman Catholic Church during the Holocaust, to see what really occurred at that level.

Family items from the Kovno Ghetto

Names and faces of murdered children. Never forget their names.

Where Jews were chained during the day. As many as 200 were forced into this one tight quarter. 

Commemoration Mural

Entrance to the Kovno Ghetto where Ilya Gerber lived.

 Ilya Gerber wrote about these streets in his diary. 

Office of Japanese diplomat and rescuers of 6,000 Jews, Sugihara Chiune.

Sugihara and his family.

Outside the former Japanese Embassy, now the Sugihara Museum.

Holocaust Educators' last night in Vilnius. Off to Poland tomorrow.