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| Marian Kolodziej |
Wednesday. I can’t believe it’s already Wednesday. Today
we saw an art exhibition of drawings by Marian Kolodziej. Marian was a Holocaust
survivor who was a prisoner in the concentration camps, including Auschwitz for
5 years. The exhibition was designed in the basement of a church all carefully
laid out and positioned by Marian himself. Upon entering you are right away
presented with words written in Polish by Marian. "(...)it's not an
exhibition, not art, not pictures, but words encapsulated in drawing. Art. is
helpless when facing what people did to people. (...) Please read my words,
drawn, which emerged also from the longing for the clarity of criteria, for a
clear separation of good and evil, the true from the false, art from its
pretence. It is also my discord to the world of today. It is also about us,
about what we did to our humanity."
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| Drawing of Auschwitz |
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| One of the many rooms filled with drawings |
Upon reading this I knew right away it wasn’t going
to be like anything I ever saw. Before I talk about his drawings I will give
you a background on Marian. He never really talked too much about his
experiences during the Holocaust for the years following liberation. Later on
in life, he suffered a stroke that left him paralyzed and the doctors tried to
rehabilitate him. He was able to wrap a pen to his hand and then he began to
find rehabilitation in drawing. From then on for the next and final 15 years of
his life he drew and drew, until his passing in 2009. This was personally
touching to me because a stroke is what left my Grandma paralyzed so to see
that he was able to overcome it and have find a passion was amazing. And the
fact that he was able to survive for 5 years in concentration camps was another
miracle. However, it became clear from his drawings that the things he
witnessed and experienced during those times have continued to haunt him for
the rest of his life. The images he drew were so dark and compelling. I thought
there would only be one room filled with pictures but the exhibit continued room
after room with huge murals, to small pictures all over the walls, floor and
ceiling. Common themes could be seen in the pictures having to do with the struggle
of good and evil, justice, the haunting of the demons he faced, the memories of
prisoners faces and numbers, his camp experiences, and how he saw himself (past and present). Overall,
this exhibition was moving and I would really like to learn more about Marian
and watch the film about him. I wish I could have had the opportunity to meet
him and hear him explain the drawings.
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| Use of scales to weigh good and bad |
We
went back to Auschwitz for an hour to enter some of the blocks, this time
without a guide. It was a very scary moment when we were in a block dedicated
to the memory of “The Roma” people (or gypsies) right before its closing when
the lights were shut off on us, leaving us in pitch black in the building to
find our way out.
We
also had two excellent lectures today, one from Jonathan Webber and the other
from Fr. Manfred. Jonathan Webber talked about how to memorialize the
Holocaust. He made so many interesting points and displayed pictures of what
remains in Poland of Jewish culture. He is a co-founder of the Jewish Museum in
Krakow which we will visit on Friday. Fr. Manfred talked about his biography of
the first commandment of Auschwitz, Rudolf Hoess. As horrible as it is to even
want to hear about the life of a man responsible for so many deaths, I felt it
was important to have this understanding and perspective. No matter what went
on in his life I don’t think anything would be justifiable enough to commit the
acts he did.
I
really enjoyed today. I feel like I learned a lot and as each day goes by I am
learning more and more news things about the Holocaust, Poland and the
Jewish-Christian relations.
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