Plant Medicine from a Concentration Camp — On the difference between remembering and healing
One warm afternoon, we stopped into a funky, plant-laden coffee shop near the old Jewish Quarter in Krakow. We were attending a panel put on by a group of artist-activists exploring the nuances of contemporary Jewish Polish life through their annual event, Festivalt.
Over kombuchas, they raised a provocative question I’ve been chewing on for weeks now about the difference between *remembering and healing.*
A number of years previous, they’d begun a memorial project of sorts at Plaszow, a “small” forced labor turned concentration camp (only 5000 people killed compared to over a million at Auschwitz). It was just three miles from where we sat.
This land is controversial to begin with…
Aside from a few pieces of signage, you wouldn’t know that there used to be not one, but two Jewish cemeteries there, and that the buildings and barracks of the camp, housing up to 40,000 people, were built right on top of them. The Nazis destroyed nearly all the buildings on their way out.
And now… It’s a sprawling park.
People playing frisbee. Folks walking dogs. A Dad and daughter flying a kite.
That’s a whole other conversation — like, is that even ok given what happened here?
But what I noticed even more was how over the past 80 years, the earth had reclaimed the space…
And it actually felt quite peaceful.
Beautiful rolling hills, healthy trees…
And medicinal herbs — everywhere.
Plantain, yarrow, nettle…
So what did these artists do?
They made medicine out of them.
Tinctures, salves… from plants known to staunch bleeding, reduce pain, inflammation and infections…
They did this not necessarily to use the medicine, but to open a conversation.
Should we/can we/will we ingest these medicines…???
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(I’m so curious how it lands for you right now — would you spread the salve on your skin or take a dropper-full of tincture?)
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But like any good question, there are many answers, and no right or wrong.
And ultimately, it’s personal. Your answer to the question of whether it’s “ok” to use these medicines depends on your tradition, your framework for understanding life and death, and your own intuition or deep listening.
I certainly don’t have *the* answer, but I do know that the earth has a great healing capacity. It can hold a lot.
And, land can be traumatized too.
I also believe that intentional planting, cultivating, tending, and harvesting can be a healing act for the earth — for all of us.
My herbal medicine teacher believes that plants root themselves in places that need their particular healing medicine. I love this idea.
And, what I felt to be true at Plaszow… as I sat near the remnants of old tombstones in the bulldozed cemetery, looking on at the flowers of these wild medicines, was…
“Not yet.”
I had this feeling that the plants were doing their job. I felt the earth as healthy and alive.
But still with work to be done.
But that at some point, possibly with enough prayer, tending, rituals… the earth could heal.
And then perhaps I could take that medicine.
As I would find myself doing in so many other places on this trip, I sat in that spot and sang El Na Refa Na La over and over — the Jewish prayer for healing.
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The next day, we visited Auschwitz. It was different there. At Plaszow, there is no hard evidence left of death.
At Auschwitz, dozens of buildings still stand, refurbished as museum exhibits. There’s a crematorium intact beneath a huge mound of earth. Barbed wire.
The land did not feel as peaceful and welcoming.
And yet… flowers and medicinal plants EVERYWHERE. In greater numbers and variety than at Plaszow. Not to mention beautiful big trees on a perfectly mild and sunny day.
How bizarre. How dissonant.
In the few free minutes we had there after our tour, I attempted to sit on the land and feel myself, feel the earth. It was dry and scratchy and uncomfortable, and I got up.
But I was surrounded by all these flowers… and they simply called at me to pick them. I chose one of each species I could find, clover, morning glory, buttercup, yarrow, mallow…
But as I walked away with my little bouquet, it was clear they were not coming with me through the gates.
This land felt so far from healed.
I left them on a stone in front of a demolished crematorium at Birkenau as an offering.
On my way into the camp, I’d seen a large sign with a black and white picture of emaciated Jewish men digging a sewage ditch. These people built the camp they would die in.
On my way out, I walked along those ditches that today are filled with an astounding collection of beautiful wildflowers.
El Na Refa Na La.
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Of all the things I learned and experienced in Poland, this relationship between land, ancestors, and healing is what draws me in most deeply.
How land heals and how people heal… How ancestral healing relates to earth healing…
At what point would it be ok for Plaszow to just be a park… for folks to simply enjoy?
What about the thousands of other cemeteries, schools, synagogues that were destroyed? We can’t make monuments for everything…
And, how do we go beyond remembering to healing?
I circle back to this question because we do a lot of remembering in Judaism. We tell stories again and again, and we have incredible technology for mourning and processing grief.
But I wonder… by just telling the stories, or by going through the motions of our mourning rituals (or skipping parts), are we simply touching the pain on an annual schedule, or are we with the pain in a way that it can ultimately heal, and allow us to truly move forward.
I want us, as a Jewish community, to dwell less on the Holocaust and more on the 1000 years of Jewish LIFE that came before it in Poland and Eastern Europe.
But to do that, we need to actually process the grief, and not just say, “Don’t ever forget!!”
Instead of only teaching facts about the Holocaust or being bombarded with information on concentration camp tours, we could also teach about these tragedies — and the deep-seated fear they’ve instilled and the trauma responses they’ve engendered — in an embodied, ritualized, prayerful way that promotes real healing.
Healing of our hearts, healing of our ancestors, healing of the land.
If we can do that, then we can transform — individually, and collectively as a people, and start to shift our focus away from the horrors, and toward the vibrancy of Jewish life, past, present, and future.
Video of the draining ditch wildflowers at Birkenau.
More on Festivalt’s work here:
https://festivalt.com/en/videos/medicinal-plants-of-plaszow/
*Thanks to an anonymous person in the audience at that panel who framed the concept of remembering vs healing. I’ve used this frame many times since that moment. And thanks to my teachers and friends who I’ve bounced this off of in the past few weeks.
