Journeys to Auschwitz with groups since 2014
Our next retreat will take place in October 2023 and is part of a year long training in witnessing transgenerational and collective traumata and our responsibility now.
Witnessing in Empathy: Approach to the Holocaust
Are we at home in our collective past, even if it was horrible? Cognitively everyone knows lots about the holocaust, but when it comes to emotions our systems often shut down in the face of the inconceivable, un-nameable horror. After many years of training in subtle competencies with Thomas Hübl a team formed to explore a different approach. We wanted to confront ourselves with visiting the former Nazi death camp Auschwitz and staying despite of the emotional shut down, giving ourselves to whatever happens there, whatever energy turns up, whatever emotion arises. With time we realised opening up again – for tears, for rage, for fear, for shame, for arrogance, for love, for courage.
Out of those moving experiences group retreats in Auschwitz were created and are held by the team since 2014. The approach is simple, but deeply human: witnessing in empathy. Since it is often hard to bear, it's essential one is not alone. Together we witness the place and the energy and we witness what happens in ourselves, supported by the group as a strong container.
The approach proves to be challenging and deeply rewarding at the same time. Strong emotions come up and can be contained. Going there together, with an open heart and allowing our vulnerability, enables us to feel our human connection at this very place of dehumanization. We all bring our family history, be it Jewish or non-Jewish, German or non-German, victim or perpetrator backgrounds. It can be very painful – and yet we end up meeting one another barely human, and touchingly pure and honest.
One effect of this is, that often frozen parts of our family histories are touched and start melting again. Blind spots in ourselves, and unconscious family patterns become visible and can be transformed. No-one can “heal” the Holocaust, but we can make ourselves available to witness the wounds, and offer our humanness to address these transgenerational and collective traumata.