Ride To Remember Europe 2014

We moved over to the blown up crematoria to complete our final mission at Auschwitz-Birkenau. I had my Drift HD helmet camera with me. This is the same camera that was affixed to my bike throughout our long ride in Europe. I attached it to one of the barrier retaining vertical pegs using the quick clamp that normally fastened it to the bike. After our episode with the anti semite and then the soothing encounter with the Rabbi, our emotions were pretty drained. The highs and lows spanned an exceptionally wide range but the anger of our earlier encounter kept us focused on reaching out to the almighty to uplift the souls of our families and indeed all the people who met their brutal end here. The Kadish prayer we say is actually just that...a request to G-D to keep and uplift the souls of the departed closer to him. It is not an ode to the individual or group in the form of mourning but really a blessing in deep praise of G-D to fulfil our request in regard to those that have passed on. Unfortunately the sound volume in this video is quite low due to our distance from the camera. Turn up your volume please or watch on a phone. With the saying of this Kadish prayer we had completed our mission in the death camps of Poland that were highly relevant to both our families. There are too many other camps and mass graves throughout this country and indeed many others throughout Europe and Russia. My final words in the video were in Yiddish, basically saying the perpetrators of these crimes should burn in hell for all they did to our families and all the Jewish people. The last phrase..."The Jewish people live". All that was important was the Jewish people had survived this horrendous genocide and built a future with Israel. We will always be a target but at least now we can defend ourselves and continue to insist...NEVER AGAIN.

As I've said previously, I do not believe in coincidences. What are the odds we would see and talk to a Rabbi in Auschwitz-Birkenau? Well I would say that would not be so unusual. Rabbis from around the world make the trek to this hell hole regularly. Many are bringing members of their congregations, many are coming to say prayers for the departed, many come to learn more like many regular people. From our perspective this Rabbi was here for an additional reason. This was not by chance or a simple coincidence. He was here to provide us with guidance and direction in the face of our total deflation and anger after being verbally assaulted by a blatant anti semitic tour guide. We approached the Rabbi because we were so forlorn in seeking some form of justice from this Polish Pigs actions. This Rabbi set us back on the path to harmony and satisfaction in just a few moments of coming in contact with us. As I mentioned in the previous video, he diffused the anger and disbelief we had in what had just happened to us by forcing us to cast the episode aside and look at the positive of all of us being free to be here together. He reiterated how fortunate we all were to be able to stand together on this blood soaked piece of G-D's earth and that we should rejoice this fact and not be diverted away from this reality by the one negative caused by the anti-semite in our midst. The Rabbi smilingly rejected the foolish tour guide as an irrelevancy and an obstacle we needed to overcome to attain our true goals while present here. This was truly a man of wisdom and his ministry to us was greatly appreciated. It certainly saved our harrowing day of witnessing first hand the depravity, evil and perpetual unjustness of these two camps in Oswiecim Poland. Of course this was not the end of the positive interaction we had with this Rabbi. Sol asked the Rabbi where he was from and of all places, he came from Amsterdam with some of his congregant friends to visit the camps. Sol took the Rabbi's details. Why? well you never know when you might need a Rabbi in Amsterdam. Particularly considering Sol's eldest daughter was now effectively betrothed to her partner of several years and both lived and worked in Amsterdam. They would be needing a local Rabbi to assist with their future Jewish homemaking and more. It was no coincidence of course that once Sol and I were home after our sojourn in Europe and then another month in the U.S that Sol's daughter in passing, while speaking to Sol on the phone, posed the question..."Dad, do you know a Rabbi we can speak to here in Amsterdam?" Sol of course said..."yes darling, I know a Rabbi in Amsterdam and will have him contact you both right away". Amazed, the young lady said..."how would you know a Rabbi from Amsterdam?" Like I said, there are no coincidences. In this short happy video, the Rabbi and his friend simply told us in Yiddish..."Be well". We all repeated the Rabbi and his friends words and were now ready to say Kadish.

From the point of view of our whole Europe trip, I think there is no question that visiting the murder factory known as Auschwitz-Birkenau created the most apprehension for both of us. When we left our boutique hotel in the old section of Krakow we both knew we were heading into hell on earth that our forebears died in and the very few that survived from there ultimately gave us life. The real question for both of us was...why are we even going there? What advantage for us was available there to justify such a visit? I suppose for Sol it was an important part of his re-living and re-enacting his father's journey of ultimate survival. He had promised his father he would do so once his father passed away. For me there was no such motivation. My sole purpose in this visit was to acknowledge to all the family I lost as a result of this genocide that we the Jewish people live. We will continue their legacy and will ensure our undivided support of the only Jewish State in the world, Israel. Our future survival rests heavily on the success and viability of Israel. We learned that the rest of the world, although sometimes sympathetic, has no vested interest in ensuring Jewish survival. As G-D tells us..."I will help those that help themselves". My own personal visit was about telling the spirits of my family members that I will always remember them. I will always love them and there was no question in my mind and my heart that they were present with us on the whole journey, not just in places like Auschwitz, Majdanek and Treblinka. When I discovered my families home address in Parczew Poland I was basically instructed through this knowledge to do this trip. There are no coincidences and I firmly believe in the fact that our lives are a planned event.

After our guided tour of Auschwitz I several conclusions and observations were made in our short video blog. We made the video while waiting for the small bus to take groups the short 1.5km distance to Auschwitz II or Auschwitz-Birkenau. Our tour guide in Auschwitz I was a young local Polish woman whose grandfather had worked in the camp as an electrician/maintenance person during the war. The Germans kept him on the same job he had been doing prior to the war when he performed the same role on site when the camp was actually a Polish Military Barracks with troops based there. We had actually had enough of guided tours and planned to simply enter Auschwitz-Birkenau and do our own exploration in that camp. Having had no idea if this was feasible given the mandatory guided tour requirement in Auschwitz I, we hoped this would be possible in Auschwitz II, the largest mass murder centre ever devised in all of human history.

Our arrival at Auschwitz I saw us get in line for a guided tour of the facility. At the time we were visiting there it was mandatory to take a guided tour. Individuals or groups were forbidden from wandering around without guides. Sol and I joined an English speaking group and were led around the various camp features by a young Polish tour guide. I personally have never seen someone as knowledgeable about the true facts relating to the facility she was showing to us in great detail. She was a no nonsense person who told it like it was and did not sugar coat any facts even those damning towards her Polish compatriots. Her great advantage of course was the fact that her grandfather and later her father both worked in this camp as electricians and general maintenance personnel. She relayed the fact that her grandfather had worked there prior to and during all the war years. With such an in house knowledge base her facts were accurate and quite stunning. More importantly, the way she relayed her information was with a blunt truthfulness that belied any potential for criticism of her information. She was a true conveyor of truth and frankness rarely seen in todays world. There was no holding back from criticizing her own Polish countrymen or the Allies who supposedly were on the right side of evil. Her conclusions were so powerful and emotive it was frankly very difficult to ever again believe the rhetoric fed to us through history books and biased commentators. We got the real story from her and it was so obvious she was as honest as the day is long. Both Sol and I were blessed to have had this young person guide us through this depraved rat hole rather than some fool who had an agenda on behalf of someone or some organisation disseminating a false narrative to simply deflect from the real truth. It was like she was speaking from her grandfather's heart in relaying the truth about what went on in this place. We had been privileged to hear her words and it will always remain one of the most important memories of our entire European visit.

After a long hard ride from Lublin some 340kms we arrived in the Old Town section of Krakow. Krakow is literally less than 100 kms from the Slovakian border. We had heavy rain and cold conditions within an hour of leaving Lublin despite leaving in sunny, warm and dry weather that we had experienced in Majdanek. That's what happens as you are covering longer distances quickly. You either leave the bad conditions behind you or you catch up to the bad conditions from good weather early on. The latter was the case on this day. When we arrived in the Old City section of Krakow late afternoon the weather was sunny and warm. Hotels were expensive and Sol went looking for something more reasonable than the large major hotels asking 500-700 Euro a night. He walked the streets looking while I remained with the bikes. A boutique old place was full but directed him to a sister hotel a little further along. It was actually a beautiful old multi story building with modernised large rooms and great amenities. The bikes had to remain in the street but the chains and covers went back into place to hopefully secure them for the evening. We walked to the old commercial section which still had signs showing Jewish stores from the pre-war era. Of course there are no Jews left here, they were after all only 70kms from our destination the next day...Auschwitz (German name) or in Polish the town was know as Oswiecim. My mother spoke of this town often when she refused to call it by its German name unless she referred to the hell camp in that town. This video shows the final 10 minutes or so of our long 70km ride from Krakow the next morning to the edge of the Auschwitz I Death Camp. Fortunately the day was magnificent. The cold winds of the previous day had morphed into a sunny even balmy day with temperatures in the 25-28 degrees C as the day progressed. In the morning as we were preparing to ride out of Krakow a curious German tourist walked up to me and began blabbering in pig latin German. He was interested in the bikes and our port of origin. Of all the days for me to hear that gutteral German accent right in my face. I looked at him and simply put on my helmet. Sol was a little more polite, I didn't want to know him. As the tourist walked off I flipped my helmet up and asked Sol..."are you ready for this?" We were both in distress and visibly nervous at what we were about to see on this day.

This series of still photos highlights a few of the geographic features of this heinous death camp. The prisoner barracks are mostly gone. They have restored a section of these barracks to provide visitors an idea of the conditions contained therein. We were more focused on the crematoria and what they represented...mass murder on a mechanised scale required a viable efficient waste disposal system. The crematoria filled these rolls perfectly. They belched smoke 24 hours a day. When Sol and I entered the main oven room in this crematoria we were immediately overcome with a smell that we will never forget. This was the unadulterated smell of burnt human flesh. We could barely believe our sense of smell as the odour permeated the floors, walls and ceilings. It was quite obvious that they were unable to rid these walls, floor and ceilings of these odours. We literally could not stay in the crematoria confines for more than barely two minutes. We were both overcome and felt a nauseous, sickening sensation which left nothing to the imagination. As I was taking more photos after our failed attempt to complete the Kadish prayer a security guard seemed to spring from nowhere and asked us to remove the bikes from this area. I told him we would leave when we were ready to leave. We eventually began to ride away, very slowly following the same route along the road containing the insidious guard towers and the barbed wire fences. A short 500 meter ride took us to the actual car park and archives building. We entered and were greeted by a female attendant. We provided her with names of family members we knew had been interned in this camp hoping to have her go through her archives and find any information relating to their arrival and ultimate fate. After sitting in the small front office for more than 20 minutes the woman returned and told us no information about any of the people we had listed for her was available. Basically, she had simply gone to the locked rear section where the archives were supposedly situated. She probably had a coffee break and then left us with nothing. We knew this was impossible. The Russians had liberated this camp before the nazis had the opportunity to destroy anything. The gutless Germans and collaborative Poles ran for their lives as the Red Army stormed in. I suppose we could have offered her a big bribe to provide us with the information we were hoping to uncover. But frankly, we knew that would have been a big waste of money. She would have taken the money and given us the same answer we got. Her demeanor and disdain for us told us the whole story.

I asked Sol..."where are we?" He replied "Majdanek". His voice was subdued as he reflected on his father's time here in disbelief. He said it was..."beyond the pale". What he eluded to was the fact that the camp was so visually obvious, out in the open for local residents to see, hear and smell. Until you are on this sacred ground you will never understand the gravity of the atrocities these nazis and their Polish collaborators actually perpetrated. Sol was standing directly in front of the concrete memorial which was shaped like a large urn. It contained huge volumes of human ash from the souls that were brutally murdered in this place. This place was incomprehensible from a movie, a photo or a documentary. You have to stand here to fully just begin to appreciate what happened here. Even then, for those of us visiting it will never be totally real. We can only imagine and feel the spirits of the lost souls because we did not live this as they did. Nevertheless, we were here to be on the sight of our families fate to let them know along with all the others that we care and that we will never forget this happened. Today the Polish Government maintains these camps because there is a large demand by past generations to visit and do as we were doing. There is also a viable tourist trade in offering tours of places like Majdanek. In reality they are good money spinners for the local economy. I'm afraid my cynicism does not bode well for all of Europe, the Americans and the British. Time and time again they had been told what was being done in these camps. Their reply was most commonly one of disbelief despite the fact they all knew the truth. Those Governments were all complicit by tacitly refusing to take any steps to disrupt any of these mass murders. If you were a Jew like both Sol and I who were directly affected by this inaction, you will need to forgive our complete mistrust of these Governments, even to this day and beyond.

As is traditional we wanted to say Kadish (Jewish prayer for the departed) here in Majdanek. Interestingly Kadish does not mention the dead but praises G-D and affirms the value of life and much more. Something the nazis and their proxies are diametrically opposed to. As we had done in the cemetery of Omaha Beach in Normandy France our Kadish could not be completed. The emotion eventually set Sol off into painful cries which in turn broke me down to a blithering fool incapable of completing the task. We at least attempted the task in the shadow of one of the camps crematoria. The difficulty was exacerbated by the fact we had just walked out of viewing the crematoria internals and its still fully functional equipment.

We were fortunate to finally have great weather. The ride from our hotel to one of Europe's most tragic and brutal killing camps was literally less than 10 minutes including a number of red traffic lights. Majdanek is located openly in down town Lublin. It is not hidden in any way at all. It was obvious to all the local inhabitants who heard gunfire all day. They saw smoke belching 24/7 from the crematoria. The smell of death was a constant that residents for many kilometers surrounding the camp were subjected to. Many locals simply continued on their lives with full knowledge of the on-goings in this small slice of hell on earth. When we were actually in visual view of the camp from the highway and stopped at the last traffic light before the camp entrance, I felt physically ill looking at the remnants of the barrack buildings and the large stone memorial monument in the center of the camp fields. My mother's family were transported here from Parczew in the latter part of 1941. I have no idea how many of them died here. I know that my mother, her older sister, their mother and possibly two other older sisters with children were eventually sent from here by cattle car to Auschwitz Birkenau. The fate of the rest of the immediate family is unknown. Except for my uncle Avram who we know was transported to and was murdered in Auschwitz. He was separated from my mother in Majdanek and they never saw one another again. Sol's father was eventually rounded up after his Treblinka escape and ended up in the Majdanek hell hole as well. He did leave this sewer only to be sent to many more disastrous places of mass murder. In it's early inception Majdanek was designed to house and kill Russian prisoners of war, Jews from the surrounding towns and cities even as far away as Warsaw. The camp was built with these unfortunate inmates slave labour in the later part of 1941. The method of killing was quite simple. Work people beyond their physical limits, starve them and keep them working till they die of hunger or disease. Those who lingered on without the mercy of finding death were simply shot. By the time the camp was fully operational there were numerous crematoria for disposing of the dead bodies. There were a number of gas chambers where the first use of German Chemical giant I.G Faben's famous pesticide gas...Zyklon B was used. The following is a quote from the United States Holocaust Museum. It gives creedence to the savagery of this place we were just entering. "On November 3, 1943, in Operation "Erntefest" (Harvest Festival), special SS and police units dispatched to Lublin specifically for that purpose shot 18,000 Jews just outside the camp. At least 8,000 of the victims were Majdanek prisoners; the remaining 11,000 were forced laborers from other camps or prisons in Lublin city. During the operation, music was played throughout the camp over loudspeakers to drown out the sounds of mass murder. As part of Operation "Erntefest," the November 3, 1943, massacre at Majdanek was part of the largest German-perpetrated massacre of the Holocaust". As we rode through the entrance gates and pulled up to the small office a young woman came out and charged us for the vehicle parking. It only cost 2 Zlote for each bike to enter. As I commented to Sol..."my mother didn't have to pay anything to get into this place".

After a depressing, emotional and physically draining day in Treblinka and then Parczew we arrived in Lublin at around 6.00pm the same day. Lublin was the heart of the Jewish Lubavitch movement in south eastern Poland. The city had a rich history of extensive Jewish life for many hundreds of years. The nazis knew this fact very well. Many of the surrounding smaller towns like my mother's Parczew were essentially satellite town of the Lublin Jewish hub. Our ride took a little over an hour from Parczew to the city center of Lublin and an older Novatel Hotel which came up on my Garmin GPS. There was no underground parking here so we parked close to the stairs leading to the main entrance. We booked a room as we did each day and promptly shlepped our hideously heavy bags into the foyer and ultimately to our room a number of floors up in the lobby elevator. After being thoroughly worn out we had showers and crashed straight into bed. We spoke a little about the days events and realised more and more that we needed to gather our strength for the next morning when our excursion was to only one destination. The plan was to leave the hotel early so we could spend time exploring a place of unspeakable horrors. Then return to the hotel to pick up our bags, check out and continue on to the next leg of our journey in Poland. In the early morning the sun was warming our bike covers. It had rained a little over night but the roads were dry and our bike covers were almost dried from the early morning sun. A very friendly front desk receptionist at the hotel knew we were from Australia and spoke excellent English. She offered me a variety of day tours to ensure she would receive her kick backs from the individual tour operators. There are indeed many very tourist worthy destinations in the city of Lublin so her attempts at luring us to undertake one of the many tours was impressive. She was doing her job very well and in some ways I respected her for that. How was she to know the purpose of our stop in Lublin? She realised very quickly what that was when I interrupted her sales pitch and asked her for directions to the Death Camp Majdanek.

As I was rummaging around the remnants of the old turn of the 20th century home I heard a voice. I was behind the store which was numbered No.7A and saw the old building behind the pathway which was part of a more modern sub division. They had obviously demolished most of this house which was actually No.7 Zabia Street. The most rear section stood right on the edge of the property adjacent to a small stream running directly behind it. You could clearly see where the room had been totally bricked shut with more modern bricks. I knew instinctively that this was the actual remnant of the original home and would have to be No.7 I was beside myself with anger while filming when I heard Sol yell out... "there's a biker here to help us". I immediately commented how the bikers were always our helpers and was gladdened that a selfless biker had stopped to offer assistance to two other bikers. I was filming with my phone at the time and as Sol and the biker walked towards me Sol asked the biker if he could confirm if this was indeed No.7 To this he said yes, this is 7. I lowered the phone but left the recording of the video running. I did not want to put this man in the firing line like a paparazzi photographer confronting and putting someone on the spot. I merely wanted him to listen to me and then see his reaction. When I told him "my mother was born here" he looked a little more serious. When I told him that my mother was taken from here and sent to Auschwitz he turned bright red as he repeated the word Auschwitz. He got the message loud and clear. My mother was born here and was taken to Auschwitz with the rest of the family and only my mother and her older sister survived. He was actually gutted. I didn't really at that point understand why he was so shocked but I was glad he knew what had happened. Of course we had no idea that this biker was on the job. Sol and the biker walked back to the street while I continued to look around the old house and its surrounds. I filmed a little more and began venting to myself wondering what might have been had the nazis and their Polish collaborators not been there to destroy the whole Jewish population of Poland. When I walked back to the street I saw Sol and the biker talking and exchanging pleasantries. I was facing the biker and was in no mood for any more talking when the biker suddenly put his official cap on. He looked at me and said..."you know I must tell you that I am a local Policeman". He was surprised as I began laughing. Sol cringed and said nothing. I walked right up to the cop and patted him on the right shoulder saying..."can you do me a favour and go into the store at No.7A and tell them that I am not here to take back my families property". The look of relief on his face was something I will never forget. I further told him..."I do not need this property and only came here to see the place where my family lived before the war". With a smile on his face he ran into the store. Minutes later a very tall man came out smiling and approached me with his hand outstretched. I shook his hand and he thanked me. The story was obvious. When I had entered the store after seeing the No.7A on the stores door, I motioned to a young woman in the store after covering the letter A on her doorframe. I pointed to the 7 and shrugged my shoulders in a questioning motion as if to ask "where is No.7?" She immediately dropped any eye contact from me and ran into the rear of the store. When the cop spilled the beans about the fact that he was a local Policemen I realised immediately what had occurred. This woman called the cops and probably told them the Jews are here looking for a property. The cop was sent out to do some reconnaissance to determine our intentions. Both Sol and I realised the tension needed to be diffused or we may be in line for more than a traffic ticket in this remote town in south east Poland. The fact is, of the 5100 Jewish souls who had lived in Parczew at the outbreak of the war, all but just under 200 survived the war. The next fact is that some 60 of those survivors returned to the town in 1946 to reclaim their homes. All but a handful of those returnees left Parczew with their lives, the rest were murdered by locals who had taken their properties and were not going to give the Jews anything back. I was aware of all and many other facts about the locals here in Parczew so telling the cop I didn't need our family property was a self preservation move. I will leave you with one last fact. As my mother and her Jewish neighbors were being marched down Zabia St. towards the Parczew train station to take them to Lublin by the nazi SS scum and the Polish police, she told me many of their Polish non Jewish neighbors stood on the footpaths (sidewalks) on both sides of the street and were clapping gleefully.

This part of our ride story is best told by the video itself which shows a series of still photos of our final ride into Parczew, the eventual discovery of the family home and the repercussions of interacting with the locals. Most importantly here I go into the very reasons for taking this trip in the first place. Some of these details are important to gain an understanding of the motivations for doing the trip and the need to finally have some geographic origin point in relation to my forebears. This information I'm hoping will provide my younger generations with some valid proven facts about one part of their familial heritage.

Before the Polish cop came down to "get rid of the Jews" I explored the home or the remnants of the home I knew was my family home in Parczew Poland. Both Sol and I walked around the area taking photos. I tried to come to terms with the fact that this was the only linkage I had to my ancestral families past. It's very difficult to swallow that a bunch of murderers could come into this town and uproot more than half the inhabitants condemning nearly all of them to brutal treatment followed by a brutal death. Consider also that most of those peoples families had lived in the town for decades and probably even several centuries. Their crime was the fact that they were Jews. In this video I was angrily waffling on and in the end I spoke the following in "Mama Loshen" (Yiddish)... "may they all be burned to a crisp, the Germans and the Poles and may they all be completely wiped out for what they perpetrated". After the Polish cop came down and revealed his identity. After I cooled the situation with the property owners to the satisfaction of all, the Polish cop asked..."what are you doing now?" Sol expected me to tell him we are now leaving for Lublin. I told the cop I want to go to the Jewish Cemetery in Parczew. Sol was freaking out a little knowing it would be best if we just left. He was correct of course but something was telling me to press the issue a little further. The cop immediately said you can follow me, I will take you there. So we did. We followed this Polish pig to a large Christian Cemetery. He had taken us somewhere I definitely did not need to see. Was it done purposely? I'm sure it was. When we arrived there he asked me..."Is this OK?" I told him yes this is fine. I gave him a small token of our appreciation, a small wrist band with an Australian flag on it. I wanted him to remember us. I wanted him to remember the Jews still live. I wanted him to know we are everywhere despite the nazis, despite the collaborative Poles. I told him thank you for your help but we need to head out to Lublin. Talk about being escorted out of town. As I rode away from Parczew with Sol behind me I began crying in my helmet. My mind simply said "you are leaving the family behind". Irrational thoughts purveyed my consciousness but I had no control. This was the first of many such outbursts of tears and regret that accompanied me on this harrowing but important journey.

The very fact that I made it here is a miracle in itself. I do not believe in coincidences. I believe in a divine guiding hand. Fact is I would never have come to Europe or Poland had I not been guided by events some five years earlier. A guiding hand directed my actions and as we approached the outskirts of Parczew the roads once again seemed to worsen in quality and disrepair. This seemed to be a very fitting precursor to what we were to experience here.

The demoralising Treblinka visit still weighed heavily on both of us. Probably more for Sol than for me. I did not know and probably never will know if any of my family on both my mother's side and my father's side actually ended their life journey in that depraved sewer of murder. After negotiating the absolute worst roads I have ridden approaching and then leaving Treblinka, things in that regard eventually improved. The weather conditions were the best we had so far encountered on this entire trip. It was actually approaching 20 degrees C and the sun was breaking through the whole time as we rode the 170kms from Treblinka to Parczew. My defence at this stage was anger. I was clearly looking forward to seeing my mother's home town. I was hoping to actually see remnants of the original family home although I knew this was not possible. Why? During my planning of the trip in Australia I had used Google Maps to isolate the actual home address. The address was Zabia St. 7 or as we would call it...Number 7 Zabia St. Parczew. Google Maps stupidly had shown the incorrect location for number 7 although we did not know this till we actually arrived there. In the Google street view there was a commercial building which appeared to be a plant nursery and next to it a hairdressing salon. Obviously this was no longer a family home built in the early part of the 20th century. When planning the trip I was OK with that and at least I would find the location where my family had lived.

Trying to ride out of the Treblinka maze was a challenge. We eventually found our way out of that pretty forest where the souls of a million people were stolen from life on earth. The souls however are with G-D and not the possession of the Nazi murderers. Those murderers bought themselves a future in the darkness forever. We stopped on our way out to reflect on the railway transport line left there for those of us who know what it had been a part of. Looking out on the countryside it was quite obvious that the locals knew exactly what was going on here. With Treblinka I the murderous gunfire would have been incessant. With the final completion of Treblinka II the first fully mechanised killing factory was commissioned. The smoke stacks from the gas chambers went on 24/7 so the locals could smell it, could see it and could not avoid the obvious. It wasn't the more cost effective gassing method using Zyklon-B a pesticide developed by the chemical company in Germany known as I.G Farben. No, in Treblinka II the gas chambers utilised the 500bhp diesel engines removed from captured Russian T-34 tanks. There were a number of these mass carbon monoxide poisoning chambers fueled by the exhaust fumes of the Russian Tank engines. The gassed bodies were then thrown into mass graves. As we left this horrific place of mass murder we encountered the disgustingly unrepaired roads of the region. This was a stark contrast to the beautiful Polish highways we had travelled till Warsaw. The road surfaces were so bad that often we had to slow right down to under 60kph to avoid the bone jarring pot holes. At one point the bikes video camera shook completely loose in its very strong mounting and I was forced to stop to re-tighten the mount fasteners. This was extremely hard on the tyres and our bikes suspension components but with the weather remaining dry we needed to continue. Our next stop some 165kms south east was my mother's home town of Parczew. The apprehension and anger began to grow inside my helmet.

Dense forest, cobblestone roads. A secluded setting for mass murder. We didn't really need to see a camp. We really didn't need to see memorials. We really didn't need to see tour guides or tourists As we entered the small Museum and paid an entry fee we really didn't need to see the model of the Treblinka II camp. We really didn't need to see the old Jewish grave headstones on display. Those were used by the Poles and the Nazis as road making implements. Why not, they were strong granite and other rock materials, they cannot be wasted on a bunch of old dead Jews. I really didn't need to see any more. I was certainly never going to sign the visitors log inside the Museum where Sol signed on behalf of his father, who was the sole survivor of Treblinka I known as the "pits".

Sol had a very good summary of the roads and surrounding country leading to the death camp site of Treblinka..."no wonder the Nazis put Treblinka in this area. No one would dare go this way considering the horrible condition of the roads leading to the camp". The fact is the location was exactly what they wanted. Secluded, very sparse local population, heavy forests reducing visibility and useful for noise suppression. One however must ask oneself..."Who in G-D's name would not hear the repetitive sounds of constant gunfire day in day out as the murderers were shooting people for 12-14 hours a day month after month".

While others in the small street in the farming hamlet looked at us, sneered and were uneasy with our presence, a lone Polish woman realised we needed help and waited for us to approach her so she could guide us to our destination. Our guardian angels were at work once again. As we looked back over the years we knew there was no way the people we were to meet were not coincidences, they were put in our path for a reason...to save our sorry hides.

As we left the main highway headed further north we veered east into some of the prettiest forest areas in rural Poland. The two way dual lane carriageway was in great condition and we were making very good time. Nevertheless, what one is thinking in ones helmet is apprehension and an ominous realisation that what we are fast approaching is nothing like the pretty forests surrounding us now. It's very difficult to describe the emotion one constantly feels during this journey of remembrance and discovery.

Beautiful weather, great roads, light traffic. Things were looking good as we sped north east towards Treblinka. Temperatures were still cool but the riding conditions were perfect. This is something we had rarely to this point of out trip been able to say.

A further leg on good roads ended with such abruptness it was very difficult to fathom. All of a sudden we were on the worst roads we had frankly ever ridden on anywhere. How was this possible? The GPS eventually began having spasms and heart attacks in response to our location. It was as though we were being led to a dark uninviting place. Regardless I followed the instructions and took a left turn onto a dirt road which eventually led to a sealed road with farms and residential homes along the full length of the road till we hit a dead end. We'd noticed people walking around on their properties glaringly taking note as we the invaders interrupted the calm and quiet of the little country hamlet. Frustration set in, anger set in and a sense of "we don't really want to be here but we know we have to, so where the hell is our destination?" After hitting the dead end of the street we turned around and pulled over to assess our next move. It's interesting if you take note, we were travelling on the left side of the road as we do in Australia or England. The opposite is true in Europe and indeed Poland but doing it here just felt right. Sol began relating his father's experiences in a nervous anger..."my father was in Treblinka I known also as the pits". This was early days for the Final Solution where Jews were sent by train from Warsaw and many other parts of Poland to be stripped of clothing, all their belongings including suitcases and more. The Nazis and their collaborators had dug large pits using slave labour Jews and other political prisoners. The hero Nazis and their Ukranian buddies sent a number of Jews into the pits, shot them and immediately covered the bodies with lime and sand with shovel loads. The next group of victims was then summoned and shot, day in day out. More pits were dug, more victims murdered and so on. Sol related that his father had escaped when he hid in one of the trains destined to return to Warsaw where more Jews would be loaded into the cattle cars for a similar fate in the Treblinka pits. Sol's father however jumped from the train early on in its return journey to Warsaw while several of his comrades who had also jumped from the train were machine gunned by Nazi guards sitting on the roof of the cattle car. Sol's father survived and indeed was the ONLY survivor of Treblinka I because he had jumped in the opposite direction to his friends. They had basically drawn straws as to who would jump where. His father made his way back to Warsaw at night time for many weeks of walking by foot where his life was really worth very little if he came across the wrong people during his journey. He was meant to live. For us, on our powerful motorcycles riding in 2014 Poland the risks were minimal and indeed almost zero in comparison to what the "greatest generation" had to endure during this war. Our guardian angels smiled on us once again. As Sol and I were exchanging profanities about the local Poles coming out of their houses to see who was disrupting their calm I noticed a woman in a farm house several hundred meters from where we had stopped to talk. I was nasty and angry at this stage saying "let's ask the fat Polack for directions". We rode up to the woman and turned off our engines. My whole demeanor changed when I looked into her eyes and saw a very genuine, kind looking person with a large Christian cross around her neck. We don't speak or understand Polish but I motioned to her "Treblinka Camp?" I also closed my eyes and tilted my head so she would understand I was looking for where people had passed away. She immediately understood and began talking so much that we were overwhelmed. I understood a few words when she mentioned and number and the word kilometers. She had motioned us to go left at the end of her road where we had actually come in off the road. She also pointed to her cross and opened her arms as wide as possible. We didn't fully understand but believed there would be some sort of cross at the location we were looking for. I thanked her and waved goodbye as we rode off. She was put in our path to help us find our destination, of that I am 100% certain. Her face told the story perfectly and her kindness was something I will never forget. I felt terrible that I had been disrespectful even though we never did this to her face to face. I learned a valuable lesson that day. Don't let your anger or feelings cloud your judgement about individual people till you actually interact with them. This is something I have always done, but on this occasion I had not followed my own rules and regretted it deeply.

After a good rest the previous night, we loaded the bikes after breakfast and prepared to head out of Warsaw. We saw the buses full of Israeli soldiers and contemplated following them on their journey out of Warsaw. We actually would have done so had we be been quicker to prepare and leave. We also rationalised that their leaders would probably not be so pleased to have a couple of kibbitzers hanging around on their important journey. Our journey was just as important so as we headed out of town we stopped at the sight of the Pawiak Prison ruins. We had seen this on a tourist flyer in the hotel highlighted by one of the brochures. Unfortunately, once again very little credence was given to the Jewish contribution in the Ghetto fighting and in the assistance Jews provided in the various partisan groups fighting the Nazis in Poland. We headed out of town with no cops impeding our progress as we headed north east some 115kms to the first death camp we would visit...Treblinka. I made a mistake in the video voice over mentioning the distance to Treblinka was only 60kms when in fact is was roughly double that distance.

The video tells you enough about the walk we took to find the Warsaw Ghetto memorial area about 20 minutes or so walk from the Hotel. A very depressing site for more reasons than merely remembering the disaster that befell most of the inmates of this terrible place. From our perspective, this so called memorial is a sick joke. If you are commemorating nearly half a million Polish Jews fate in this place and then consequently the fate of those that survived here only to then be transported to the fully mechanised killing camps all around Poland. As a memorial of this, the Government of Poland should be condemned for their omission in providing a true historical record and more importantly recognition of the brave uprising against the Nazis that occurred here. A relatively small band of young Jews with a meagre supply of smuggled in small arms like rifles, handguns, ammunition and some small amounts of hand grenades and explosives. These heroes basically agreed that their ultimate fate was death by starvation, disease, shooting or worse in the death camps so they chose to fight and if necessary die with some semblance of dignity. This uprising was the first of its kind in any city throughout Nazi occupied Europe. The Germans said they would put the uprising down in a day or two. It took them over a month and with many losses of their own. It's very interesting how German reports of their casualties during the month long battle are only about 110 while we know for a fact that over 7000 of the Jewish fighters died. The fact is, plenty more German and Ukrainian (Nazi sympathisers) soldiers died in the fierce hand to hand battles fought in typical Guerrilla Warfare fashion than the Nazis would ever admit to. After all, how could a bunch of Jews defeat or even delay the powerful Nazi juggernaut. Well, when Sol and I walked into the Novatel Hotel lobby and saw a large number of Israeli soldiers emblazoned with their Star Of David insignias we became elated and euphoric. We later spoke of..."if only this army existed when our people were being rounded up and butchered". Our Guardian Angels were once again at work, saving our day and providing us with the strength to continue on our mission.