3/7

Sunday 3/7.

Went on a tour of Ludz. It was warmer today and the streets were wider and less creepy than in Warsaw. We learned about Rumkovsky (the head of the Jewish army at the ghetto) and the ghetto at Ludz. It is an interesting story and it is not clear if Rumkovsky was a hero or a villain. On the one hand he played god and decided who would be sent to Auschwitz and Treblinka. On the other hand, 8,000 jews from the Ludz ghetto survived the war-more than anywhere else (including Warsaw where there were 500,000 jews). The occupants of the camp really resented this man because, in order to make quota he sent all of the children and elderly to the death camps. In 1944 the final occupants of the Ludz ghetto were sent to Auschwitz and Rumkovsky did not survive-there are several theories about his death (1. he was killed by the Ludz Jews on the train 2. The head of Auschwitz gave him a personal tour of the camp and then escorted him personally into the gas chamber or 3. The Ludz jews working at the crematorium put him in alive…not pleasant I know). We are currently on the bus watching the end of the Pianist, which has taken on all new meaning now that I have been to Warsaw and seen the places that inspired the film. Our next stop is the hometown of the grandfather of one of the other students on the trip.

Now that the sun is out it isn’t so miserable in Poland and I am really enjoying (well maybe not enjoying...appreciating may be more accurate) the stories that accompany the sites.