Around Bialystok

Friday, September 21
 
Thanks to Vicki, we had a list of places to visit on our final day in the area around Bialystok.  As it turned out, we were able to see just some of intended destinations before time ran out this afternoon.

Today’s first stop, Lopuchowo, will likely be among the most moving of our entire trip.  In a forest of towering pines outside this town lies the spot where Tykocin’s 2500 Jewish residents were massacred. After being gathered in Tykocin’s main square by the Nazis for “relocation”, the men were marched, while the women and children were trucked, into the forest.  Three large pits had been dug, and the Jews were executed, their bodies thrown into them, and buried.  Another account has the victims thrown into the pits and buried alive.  Regardless of how the horrific scene played out, the end result was the same: Jews had lived in Tykocin for 17 generations, and in one day, the 18^th disappeared.  Today, there are no Jews in Tykocin.

The idyllic setting of the memorial is a stark contrast to this barbaric event.  From a roadside parking lot, there is a lovely walk through the pines on a wide path.  The distance is long enough to leave the 21^st century behind and travel back to that day in August, 1941; it was all too easy to sense the sights, sounds, and intense emotions of that day.  At the site, there are several “official” memorial plaques and many more items left by visitors: Israeli flags, tree boughs laid on the ground in the form of Stars of David, written messages, votive candles, stones and shells lining the top rails of the graves’ enclosures.  My eyes were also drawn upward to the forest canopy, where the perimeters of the rectangular pits were mirrored in corresponding breaks in the foliage, allowing views of today’s beautiful blue sky.  Perhaps, too, an echo of the passage of so many souls…

After taking some time to re-group back in this century, we headed to some nearby spots Vicki had pinpointed for us.  Though we knew the storks had departed for the coming winter, Vicki wanted to see the Pentowo Stork Village, where the storks' huge nests sit atop chimneys, roofs, and specially erected posts.  Then, it was on to the tiny farming hamlet of Sierki, where some of Tom’s Polish ancestors had been born for a quick drive-through.

We finished the morning with a visit to Bialystok’s open air museum, were a collection of cottages, outbuildings, and equipment from various areas and eras of the country have been collected.
We returned to Bialystok for another lunch on the main square and a pleasant midday break before dropping Jamie for his train back to Warsaw in advance of his flight home to Chicago tomorrow morning.  We very much enjoyed having him with us on this trip, and know it meant the world to his mother to share her experiences with him.

We remaining four headed to the town of Suprasl in hopes of visiting a Greek Orthodox Monastery and a museum of icons.  Unfortunately, both were about to close for the day when we arrived, so we were disappointed.  However, there was a silver lining.  As we were at the museum, we ran into our guide to Bialystok and Tykocin, Anna -- pretty much the only person we know in this entire country! What are the chances??

We decided that if the monastery and museum could call it a day, so could we, so we headed back to Bialystok and plan our return to Warsaw in the morning.  Though some of  today’s to-do list went undone, we were happy to have seen all that we did.