Osh-vien-sheem
Historical context, place, time
Fearless reporting, a behind-the-curtains look at how journalism is made — and an unabashed point of view. Welcome to Chills.
I set off for Poland the day after Palestinians launched an invasion of Israel. But I didn’t just set off for “Poland” — I specifically got on a plane to a plane to a train to a train to a cab to a Hilton hotel in Oświęcim. I came here specifically to attend a journalism symposium on Auschwitz. The trip was 5,400 miles.
Now, a little bit about Polish pronunciation. I know zero Polish, but a number of very kind young women I met on the trip over here pronounced “Oświęcim” for me. It’s something like “Osh-vien-sheem.”
Aka it’s Polish for “Auschwitz.”
That’s right, there’s a whole town called this and I’m sitting in it, in a stylish navy blue but very uncomfortable desk chair in a Hilton hotel room that has one of those irritating European showers that is only half encased in glass. In the town that holds Auschwitz. My brain — which, I’ll admit, has had only a few hours of sleep in the past couple days — is insistent on the repetition.
On the way to the hotel from the train station, I saw apartment complexes with plants and laundry on terraces. Cafes. I mean, it’s a town.
But I also saw a lot of things that felt like quivering, indecipherable sound waves that vibrated my bones because of what I know of this place’s past. (And the symposium and tours haven’t even begun yet.) I’ve really only ever felt this way when visiting Rwanda on the 20th anniversary of the genocide. I was at a memorial in Kigali, reading stories of how children were killed — brutally. One little girl’s death sent me running from the building. And this genocide, this one is personal.
The feeling of simply riding the Polish train today into this place made me feel ill.
I watched old, surely war or pre-war dark-brick buildings fly by as we rode. My eyes held on to each parallel railroad track that led into woods; were they new or old? Then there were the woods themselves: I couldn’t help but think about all the Jews who had escaped death by running from a cattle car and then hiding in those woods — between the birches and oaks and poplars — with nothing but their wits, for months, or sometimes years.
Before I left Seattle, my ex-brother-in-law (who is essentially my brother) reminded me that his father’s father grew up in Oświęcim. My family, however, is more ambiguous.
I know that my father’s father was from then-Bessarabia, now Moldova and part of Ukraine. I also know that when it comes to our family and the Holocaust, I don’t know much. But I do know that my family was murdered in the Holocaust because not many of them came over to America after it. Every Jew knows this. We — me, my brother, my father — we are the survivors or people who had ties to people who were later killed. But this wasn’t, and still isn’t, something Jewish families much talked about.
As I traveled over the past 24 hours from the New World to the Old, I thought about the nightmare unfolding in Israel and the Palestinian Territories. So much bloodshed and intolerance.
I also thought about the fact that former president Trump recently said that undocumented immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.” Welcome to eugenics, 2023.
The irony of traveling to Auschwitz and then going on to Ukraine right now to report was and is not lost on me. As Israel and Palestine continue their blood feud, as men like Trump offer racist, divisive fodder on the regular, I’m beginning to start to understand why I’m here.
Don’t get me wrong — I have stories I want to tell while here. I want to continue to show the pain of the Ukrainian people as they are met with war crimes because of their ethnicity. (Don’t get me free-diving into the convoluted deep hole that is the similarities between genocides and the dark past between Ukrainians and Jews. I’ve gone there in my work, and plan to continue to do so, just not here, now.)
I want to rebuke what Trump said in the strongest terms. It is statements like his that have killed millions upon millions in the world, not least of whom were Jews in Eastern Europe.
It’s what keeps up the discordance between Palestinians and Jews.
I don’t have answers. But I am beginning to see the confluence of all these things, which, I am okay with hoping, will begin to open windows of thought for me as I document my travels and work with you.
A few hours ago, as I trudged through Heathrow exhausted, sweaty and hungry, a few words spelled themselves out in a bold billboard in my mind: Historical context, place, time.
I can sit in this navy blue, uncomfortable chair and wonder what it all means, or I can get down to work, which is exactly why I came all these 5,400 miles — in order not to forget the past or be doomed to repeat it. But also to do more than that. I want to make sure we understand what came before us and how similar hatreds are playing out around the world right now so that we can stop them before they infect too many of us to come up with a cure.
I’m going into this trip with my eyes and ears and pores and toes open. I may need to keep some sutures over my heart, however, to maintain the blood supply necessary to investigate such terrible things. I’ll do my best.
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I appreciate what you are doing. In New Zealand, we have a saying about our people who traveled across the world to fight for freedom. "We will remember them." The saying is echoed all over the world, and yet man continues to be inhumane, if that is in fact logical. My mother rang me today, and said she had been in tears for much of the day. Her grandmother was murdered in Sobibor and my mother suffered as a child in Amsterdam and experienced things no child should experience. She has good friends who are in Israel at the moment and she is terrified for them. The anguish and the fears stay with you forever one way or another. My father who also suffered much in the war wouldn't tell me about his experiences, other than some stories he wrote in his autobiography, like https://leocappel.substack.com/p/journey-to-somewhere because he didn't want me to have nightmares like he did for much of his life. But remembering them, honours those who lost their lives.
I’ve been thinking of you the past couple of days. Sending you strength and love from Seattle. Thank you for doing this work. ♥️