Monday, June 19, 2017

Auschwitz: Industrial Genocide



Yesterday, I left Prague on the morning train heading for Warsaw to go from there to the Baltic Republics. I thought my planned visit to Auschwitz would have to be on the way back from Russia instead of on the way.  Then the sign on the train that announces stations said the next stop would be Katowice, Poland, just 30 miles from Auschwitz.  We were still 160 miles from Warsaw. If I got off the train, there would be no way to get to St. Petersburg by the date on my Visa.

I got off the train. In a moment like Lot's wife, I looked back at the train, but did not turn to a pillar of salt. So I changed money, got coffee, found a place to stay, then headed for Auschwitz.  The ride was south on rolling hills through beautiful forests and villages.  I crossed a railroad bridge then entered the city of Oswiecim, where the Auschwitz museum and the Birkenau camp are located.  The Holocaust sites are on the north side of town so as soon as I entered the town, I was close.

I went to Birkenau first. The site is largely preserved, still ringed with barbed wire fences and guard towers and many of the buildings are still standing. The camp is a square kilometer in a flat field with a narrow road running next to the fence.  The buses park at a museum 300 meters from the camp gate so streams of people in randomly colored tourists clothes are walking back and forth from the parking lot to camp.  It is odd to see tourists trooping in lines through a place of so much suffering and death.  It was odder still to see life being so normal around the camp.

To get the size of the place I rode the perimeter. So many hundreds of barracks meant so much suffering, but the entire place was not that big.  The Auschwitz and Birkenau camps are about a mile apart. Inmates marched between them to work and then back to suffer the tortures of the night. The two camps and the road between them brought back many images from Primo Levi's book "Survival in Auschwitz." I think most often of the World War I veteran Levi wrote about. He won an Iron Cross for gallantry under fire and probably thought decorated veterans would not be despised by the Nazis who claimed to value courage and patriotism.  But racism eclipsed nationalism and even a man who earned the nation's highest honor in war was killed for being a Jew.

Between the two camps was, for me, the saddest site.  A small sign on the road between Birkenau and Auschwitz pointed to the "Judenrampe." The tiny road through a residential neighborhood was too narrow for buses, to VW bugs could not pass on this road.  With no bus traffic there were almost no tourists.  As I rode up I saw someone pushing a wheelchair back to the road.

The site is two old boxcars on a rusty rail siding. Two signs explain the site.  This rail siding is where Jews were unloaded from the boxcars and sorted into groups for work, death, medical experiments, and whatever other horrors their captors could inflict.  As I read the signs and looked at the boxcars wondering how horrible it was to be stuffed inside them, I heard kids laughing.  Behind me was a row a fir trees and a fence that separated a gated house from the Judenrampe. Kids were playing in a pool from the sounds.

It made me think how horrible it was for the people of Oswiecim that the Nazis chose their town to inflict this stain on all of humanity.  Hotels grow up around the site and people make money providing tours and selling stuff to tourists.  And the laughing kids grow up next to those boxcars.

Just as the American form of slavery was the worst of its kind in the history of the world, Auschwitz represents the impersonal extreme of genocide. The Nazis did everything they could to take every shred of humanity from the inmates before killing them, especially extinguishing hope. American slavery, unlike slavery in the ancient world or indentured servitude, also took away hope.  Slaves could never get out except through escape or death. Nor could Auschwitz inmates until the Nazis were defeated.

My next stop, if possible, will be Lviv, Ukraine.  For me, Auschwitz and Lviv have been the extremes of the Nazi genocide horror.  Auschwitz was the most industrial,
Lviv is the most personal. The people of the city joined with the Nazis, abetted the Nazis and killed their neighbors on the streets and in their homes.

Racism can begin with words, like the horrible Birther lie that was the basis of the Donald Trump's ascent to power. But when racism goes past words into action Auschwitz, Birkenau, Lviv, Sarjevo, Rwanda, and the slave market of New Orleans is the result.



Thursday, June 15, 2017

My Top Shelf Trip to Budapest

   I am on the train from Belgrade to Budapest. When I walked up to the platform the conductor gave me The Look. The universal FU look that says "Not on my train!"  

He motioned that I had to fold the bike and put it in the luggage rack. My bike is a Surly so I could. In five minutes I had the bike in pieces. Then the conductor said "Dva!"  And pointed to the next car. He let me take the bike apart before telling me I needed to go to the next car. So I carried the pieces to the next car and loaded them in the upper luggage rack. 


Ten minutes later he collected my ticket. He just said "Dobrey" and moved on. 


Nice to know I can quickly break down the bike. I will now know to break it down at the correct car. 

Wednesday, June 14, 2017

Trip Begins with Errors





This trip began with joy, sleep deprivation and a $500 error.  I booked the trip as if I were immune to making mistakes flying. Over decades of flying on business, I have never missed a flight, so why would I start now?

Jet lag is different at 64, at least for me.

Instead of booking a direct flight, I took the cheaper route of booking a flight to Paris, then a second flight to Belgrade. I worried that my bike would not make it, but the bike arrived in the Paris baggage claim before my bag.  All I had to do was check in, wait six hours and fly to Belgrade.

My flight had a layover in Amsterdam. There were two flights to Amsterdam at 6:30 p.m. from Terminal 2 at Charles DeGaulle Airport.  I went to the wrong gate and fell asleep. When I woke up, my bike had been removed from the correct flight.  And the cheap ticket was cancelled. I could get a flight through Frankfort for $1100 or wait and book on Air Serbia--where I should have booked anyway.

So I arrived in Belgrade at 1 p.m. a day later.  I planned to put the bike together in the airport and ride to the hotel.  But I was missing a skewer nut, so I put my partially assembled bike in a cab, went the hotel then went on a walking search for a skewer.  A previous post tells that very happy tale, but the day which was to be a ride to Romania was a walk around town.

I did get the bike put together, rode in Belgrade then succumbed to jet lag.  It turns out I cannot push myself as hard as I could 20 years ago. This should not be a surprise.  But it was.

So I was a day behind schedule and the next day would be the shorter of the trips to neighboring countries: Croatia, and maybe Bosnia.

Tuesday, June 13, 2017

Bike Trip Became a Trip with a Bike


In the next few days as I have time I will write more about my trip so far: the people I have met, the places I have been, the things I have seen, and the mistakes I have made.

When I first thought about this trip it was going to be the kind of head down trip I have made riding to NYC in a day or to Canada in two.  I was going to ride from Odessa to Helsinki in honor of my paternal grandfather. He walked from Odessa to Finland in 1914-15 to avoid being killed by the Tsar's army.

The original route I dreamed up three years ago was more or less straight north, assuming grandpa had no way to navigate except the north star.  Then the political situation along the straight north route got bad.  Civil war in Eastern Ukraine included artillery duels. Artillery is very bad for bicycles. Then the political situation in Belarus got worse.  So my route moved further and further west into Poland and the Baltic states.

Then the trip got bigger.  I decided I could start in the Balkans and maybe ride in 20 countries on the way and even add a side trip to Israel.  As I added stops and changed the route, I did not make the trip longer.  My wife has math conferences in late July and early August, so I had to be back to take care of the boys while she travels for her real joy in life.

Today is June 13. My Russian visa says June 22-24. I have to get to St. Petersburg in nine days. So yesterday I got a car. For three days I will drive to and ride in several Balkan states, maybe Greece, then go back to Serbia and take trains north to the Baltic states, then Russia.  I am planning to ride in Poland and the Baltics on the way to Russia. I am also planning to ride some on the way back to Darmstadt, Germany, where I will visit my friend Cliff on June 29.

The 1,500 miles I was planning to ride will surely be less than a thousand.

But instead of riding past everything and making maximum mileage per day, I have visited two museums, eaten in lovely restaurants, walked and rode slowly in the cities I visited, and talked to people.

And finally, as I travel the former Yugoslavia, every country I ride in has been conquered by the Nazis the subjugated by the Soviets.  With freedom came the slaughter of the mid 1990s.  Everywhere along this route, racism led to mass slaughter and death.  Grandpa escaped Russia the first time when the Cossacks were killing Jews at the turn of the 20th Century. He escaped the second time when the Russian Army was using Jews to clear minefields and provide targets for German machine guns.

So the trip I am taking now will not be anywhere near my grandfather's route, but will take me to the places where racism used to hold sway, but for now civilization has come back.

Saturday, June 10, 2017

Missing Nuts

 
Top: Skewers with and without nuts
Above: Vladimir 


I am starting small in the story of my bike trip. Smallest! A missing nut. When I arrived in Belgrade I took the bike out of the box to ride it to my hotel in the city. 
Except I couldn't. Somewhere on the trip the nut on the Skewer fell off and out of the box. The skewer holds the front wheel on. So I put the bike mostly together then got a cab. 
I walked to the nearest bike shop, but it was actually a bike tour company. No parts. But the owner, Vladimir, walked me over to a shop that sold me a new skewer. As we walked we talked about touring.  He has ridden from St. Petersburg to Barcelona!  And he is hoping to join a group riding from Cairo to Cape Town! Wow!
Thanks to Vladimir my front wheel is attached to my bike!

Tuesday, June 6, 2017

Riding in Fog: Every Sound Grabs My Ears


On the eve of my bicycle trip across Easter Europe, I was thinking about riding in fog. Of all the places I have ridden in the world, the thickest fog I ever rode through was on Mount Tamalpais, just across the bay from San Francisco in Marin County.

I was at a conference in San Francisco. Every morning for four days, I got up at 0530 and rode to the top of Mt. Tam and back. The 50-mile, 3-hour round trip from downtown to the peak began on city streets, then bayshore, then across the Golden Gate, through Sausalito and Marin, then the 11-mile climb up the mountain.

The third morning the legendary San Francisco fog was everywhere. It was thickest on the slopes of Mt. Tam. By five miles up I was starting to think I could grab the fog. Wisps of clouds clung to me. I was soaked. The air felt weirdly thick. I saw ghosts rush past as the white wisps took shape in the air. But the strangest sensation was sound. Since I could barely see two bike lengths in front of me, I heard everything. A chipmunk ran across the road. I would swear I heard his claws grip the pavement. Was that a pine cone dropping on the road? The climb is not steep so I was not breathing hard enough to wipe out other sounds. I felt water drip down my neck as the fog condensed on me. Did I hear it drip off me?

Then the sun blazed everywhere. One moment I could barely see. The next I was on an arid mountain in hot sun drying as I climbed the long grade.  After the next switchback I was facing south, looking where the city should be. San Francisco disappeared under a thick, white quilt of clouds. The piers of the Golden Gate raised their red arms through the fog, as did the radio tower on Mount Bruno. Nothing else was visible.

By the time I got to the top of Mt. Tam, turned around and rode down, the fog was thinner and lower. By the time I was back in the ground-level cloud I could see 100 meters ahead, important at downhill speeds.


Thursday, June 1, 2017

Tanks are Symphony of Roars and Rattles


The M60A1 Patton tank that was my home and weapon in West Germany was a symphony of sound I could never quite describe in prose, so I tried poetry:


M60A1, On the Border in Fulda, October 1976

Growling, howling, eighteen hundred cubic inches
Of diesel engine roars, belches smoke and launches
Fifty-seven tons steel and rubber and flesh across a
German field.

While the engine roars, end connectors grind in the
Sprockets, center guides screech as they scrape
Aluminum road wheels lined with steel. Ammo racks
Rattle, White Phosphorus rounds in the Ready Rack shake.

Torsion bars creak, flexing over rocks and ruts. 
Ratchets, wrenches, track tools, clasps,
Hinges, and locks jangle and ring on the fenders.
Jerry cans clang in their tie downs on side of the turret

Hydraulic motor screams as the commander swings the
Turret over the driver. A cacophony of track blocks,
Bolts, rack handles, the coax ammo box,  
Cupola ammo doors, the tanker bar and Little Joe,

Assails the ears of the crew as they scan the horizon.
Across the fence, squat Soviet T-70s track the
Trundling Pattons as they parade north, roaring,
Rattling and ready to rain ruin in a moment.


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Not So Supreme: A Conference about the Constitution, the Courts and Justice

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