On-site Jewish Ghetto Freewrite

“Who is there to help me?” begged the haunting eyes of the Holocaust victims. Their piercing gaze vividly plagued my vision as I recall my day at the Jewish synagogue. Doors of train carts crashing against metal locks punctuated images of innocent souls trapped in a nightmarish ride that some never awoke from. Who heard your cries? Where was your savior then? The horror after the train stopped, unbeknownst to its ill-fated passengers, morbidly unraveled beneath my eyelids. For a moment, I was a silent witness to screams of a forsaken people.

That video shook me in ways I leave you to imagine. Feel the borders, walls, gates, and doors—metaphorical or physical enclosures of alienation, misunderstandings, hate, and ethnocentrism erected by humans. You must be categorized and perfectly placed in a group. We mark you, sewing a yellow star onto your chest. You can’t escape. The macabre crimes against one race are walls of unrelenting hatred. It is a border of persecution against a people termed as the “other,” the “unknown.” Guilty murderers: blind conformers of ignorant mobs. Innocent victims: young Anne Franks with untold diaries. The fences of Auschwitz sealed the Holocaust victims from the world, a fence meant to exclude and erase remnants of the “other” race. A tragic end awaited all inhabitants within those walls. The walls created an inferno on earth, a literal furnace burned bones to ashes. No traces reminded.

Now I traverse through the ancient but modern cobbled alleyways of the Jewish Ghetto with Gabriella leading the way. She recounts the history of her people. I listen. I ask, “Why does the Pope refer to Israel as the Holy Land but doesn’t acknowledge it as a country for the Jews?” She explained: the Popes historically have never acknowledged that Israel belonged to the Jewish people. This barrier of separation, an enduring mentality of us against them, when or will it ever end?

Jews, historically persecuted, now build gates to the synagogue, seemingly to shield themselves and their faith from foreign brutality. It vigilantly guards the path to its inner realm that protects fragmented pieces of memories of a bloody, but rich past—never to forget, and always to cherish. Message to outsiders: stay away. A slip of red paper granted my entrance into this secret world. The gates symbolize a threshold that leads to a refugee, sanctuary, and even heaven for the designated insiders (the Jewish people). These ancient wanderers finally found a home, yet they raise more walls. Despite the paramount differences in the two aforementioned gates (terror within Auschwitz and solace within the synagogue), both are walls of isolation that defines the insider from the outsider. The walls are everywhere, forever circling your past, future, and your ever glorified present. The walls may never fall, or you may say it’s my cynicism.