Jan. 24

USA----TEXAS:

SMU Human Rights Tour of Poland


At the beginning of the trip for the SMU Human Rights Tour in Poland,
there was a warning from Dr. Rick Halperin that each of the 20
participants would have a moment when the impact of the Holocaust during
World War II would be felt. It would be different for each.

For some it may have been the killing wall at Auschwitz between blocks 10
and 11, where some 30,000 victims, mostly political prisoners, were lined
up and shot. For others it may have been in the solitude of the remote
forest at Chelmo where special vans drove as many as 300,000, mostly Jews,
to their deaths. Chelmo is a killing field rarely visited, even by Poles.
The victims were crammed into the backs of trucks rigged to take in the
engine exhaust, killing by carbon monoxide poisoning. Or maybe it was the
massive rock quarry at Gross-Rosen outside Wroclaw. It was not an
extermination camp, but about 40,000 died from the backbreaking labor in
the worst conditions possible with inadequate food and clothing.

Or for some, the moment may have come at Majdanek, a former concentration
and extermination camp on the edge of Lublin, in the southeast part of the
country. The city and the camp offer fascinating insights into the
murderous events of the Holocaust as well as some of the ongoing issues
that linger into the 21st century. The group toured Majdanek on a still,
bitterly cold Christmas Eve morning. Heavy boots crunching a thin layer of
snow made the only noise as the group moved from barrack to barrack and
then up the hill to the crematorium and memorial.

Personal effects taken from the victims are a standard display at some of
the sites. One of the barracks at Majdanek is filled with containers with
nothing but shoes. There were 800,000 pairs of shoes found at the camp
when the Russian troops entered the facility in the spring of 1944.

In one bin near the door there is a woman's shoe that, despite the effects
of more than 60 years of temperature and humidity changes, still draws
one's attention. It is an elegant shoe with finely detailed leather,
patterned in black and tan with a heel of medium height. Little
imagination is needed to understand at least something about the stylish
woman who wore the shoe and the tragedy of her life ended under such
horrible conditions. She was no doubt a young woman, perhaps a mother of
young children.

Lublin is a tragic example of the success of the Holocaust. In the 1930s,
Lublin had a thriving Jewish population of more than 40,000, about a third
of the city's population. There was also a renowned yeshiva for religious
learning. Today Lublin has a population of 300,000 but only a handful of
Jewish families. Only in the last year has a synagogue reopened in the
city.

Many of the Jews from Lublin ended up murdered at Majdanek. The camp today
is considered the best-preserved Holocaust site in Poland. Much of the
facility, including barracks, gas chamber and part of the crematorium,
exists just as it did when the Germans fled the facility before
approaching Russian troops.

Lublin and Majdanek also serve as an example of what remains an emotional
debate over the number of victims of the Holocaust. Recent literature from
the museum at Majdanek indicates the number of victims at about 80,000.

"This is just the ongoing attempt to deny or at least minimize the effects
of the Holocaust," Halperin said. "It's outrageous and it's offensive."

Halperin said he plans to consult with proper historical bodies to discuss
the reduced numbers being publicized at Majdanek. He said evidence at the
camp as well as historical documents indicate a minimum of 250,000
victims.

The tour began on Wednesday, Dec. 19. After arriving in Europe and
changing planes in Frankfurt, the group gathered in Gdansk, in the north
of Poland on the Baltic Sea. Over the next 10 days, the group traveled by
train and bus some 1,100 miles. The tour included five cities and more
than a dozen different Holocaust sites. Among the nine former camps
visited were the notorious Auschwitz-Birkenau complex outside Krakow and
Treblinka outside Warsaw. Among the famous sites were the Jewish Ghetto in
Warsaw and the Krakow factory run by Oskar Schindler in which he protected
more than 1,000 Jews from the nearby Plaszw camp. This story was made
famous by Stephen Spielberg's 1993 movie "Schindler's List."

Auschwitz is the most visited of the camps in Poland. Like most of the
other sites, it started as a concentration camp for forced labor.
Beginning in 1942, it became the largest of the killing camps and the
central location for shipping prisoners from German-occupied locations all
over Europe. Current estimates are that 1.4 million were murdered at
Auschwitz-Birkenau, with 90 percent of those being Jews. As at other Nazi
camps, others killed included dissidents, political prisoners and some
religious leaders.

Among those accompanying Halperin on this trip were 14 SMU students, two
faculty members, one staff member and two area schoolteachers. It is the
largest group to accompany him on a human rights trip since he first
brought a group to Poland in 1996. Halperin said the mixture of the
participants in this group, the chemistry and the commitment of the
students made this the best trip he has led.

"For this many students to give up their holidays with family and friends
and come on a trip like this shows how serious and committed they are," he
said. "It's an extraordinary group, and it was a pleasure to be with
them."

Several of the students are participating in the new human rights minor at
SMU, part of the SMU Human Rights Education Program started with a grant
from the Embrey Family Foundation in Dallas. Halperin serves as director
of the program. The program is less than two years old, but it has already
made an impact on the SMU campus and beyond.

"In my dreams, this program is what I hoped it would be, but I'd be lying
if I said I honestly believed it would happen," he said in describing the
status of the program.

Halperin leads three human rights tours a year. In 2008, the spring break
trip will be to Holocaust sites around Prague, Munich and Vienna. In
August he will take a group to Argentina. The December trip will be to
Poland, as usual.

He is committed to the tour of Poland annually, always in December to
create maximum impact on the students about how the harsh Polish winter
added to the suffering of the victims. As a human rights activist,
Halperin has visited numerous killing fields of the 20th century including
Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda and Chile.

"The Holocaust and World War II created a paradigm shift in warfare, human
rights and accountability," Halperin said. "The goal of the Holocaust was
to rid a continent of the Jewish people. We had never seen anything like
that before. Any human rights activist owes a debt to those who perished,
and that's why I keep coming back. It's important for me to pay my
respects. But these trips are also about an extraordinary will to live.
Thousands of people survived these horrible camps, and it's also about
honoring them."

On the final evening of the trip, Halperin challenged the participants
with bearing witness to what they had seen. He said that if any of them
ever heard a doubt about the Holocaust or its impact, there was an
obligation to communicate the truth.

"These students now have an experience that enables them to become human
rights educators and activists," he said later. "That's what this program
is about."


(source: Tony Pederson is professor and Belo Distinguished Chair in
Journalism and a member of the board of directors of the SMU Human Rights
Program. More information is available on the SMU Human Rights Program at
smu.edu/humanrights-----Southern Methodist University Daily Campus)