Editors’ Introductory Remarks /Einführende Bemerkungen der HerausgeberInnen

Andrzej Krajewski

Having served the Bearing Witness Retreats at Auschwitz-Birkenau for so many years I can’t claim that the experience remains the same as it was at the beginning. But likewise I can’t say that it is very much different … Every time this experience is a powerful, dynamic and an astonishingly transformative process.

The world around us is constantly changing. So are we and so is the retreat – yet the three steps we are taking there remain the same: the Three Tenets – Not-Knowing, Bearing Witness, Taking healing Action …

When we started this retreat twenty years ago, we came as children of the war and the Holocaust survivors. Today, much of our retreat is composed of the third generation – grandchildren of survivors. The personal trauma we as representatives of our generations carry and share is changing and evolving. Now we seem to be reflecting more on the impact of the war on our own lives than on the fate of our parents and grandparents – whether Jewish, German or Polish …

Retreat staff, who maintain the collective memory of the last twenty years of retreats is growing older, growing white hair … And this wonderful tool, this Bearing Witness Retreat, is now being handed over to those who also need to grieve and reconcile – to Rwandans, American Indians, Bosnians. We have to remember that Auschwitz is still going on in the world under different local names.

I feel the pride, both big and humble, that we – in this most terrifying place on Earth – have worked out a tool, a process that can be of help to people in want of deep healing and true reconciliation, transforming despair and hopelessness into hopefulness and love.

This written mala of ash pearls is preserving words, so volatile by nature of our sharing in Council{1}, that otherwise would be gone with the breath …

It’s unusual to see them written black on white – and it is great! This book is manifesting the spirit of the retreat: the many voiced oneness of Life.

Thank you!

Andrzej Krajewski, Co-Editor, Auschwitz Retreat Coordinator& Spirit Holder, Warszawa/Poland, July 19, 2015

Nachdem ich dem BearingWitness-Retreat in Auschwitz-Birkenau nun so viele Jahre gedient habe, kann ich nicht behaupten, dass die Erfahrung dieselbe ist wie am Anfang. Aber gleichzeitig kann ich auch nicht sagen, dass sie sich sehr unterscheidet … Jedes Mal ist diese Erfahrung ein wirkmächtiger, energiegeladener und erstaunlich transformativer Prozess.

Die Welt um uns herum verändert sich ständig. Dasselbe gilt für uns und für das Retreat – trotzdem bleiben unsere drei Schritte die gleichen: die Drei Grundsätze – Nicht-Wissen, Zeugnisablegen, aus beidem heraus heilsam Handeln …