Bernie Glassman: What happens when we bear witness in Auschwitz-Birkenau?
Join Zen Peacemakers in Poland this November
From Why Bernie Kept Going Back to Auschwitz-Birkenau article adapted from writing by Zen Peacemakers founder Bernie Glassman about his returning to Auschwitz-Birkenau year-after-year, and the purpose it has served for both him and other peacemakers.
Every year since 1994, Zen Peacemakers have traveled to Auschwitz-Birkenau for a Bearing Witness Retreat. We spend a week sitting by the train tracks in the death camp, meditating and reciting the names of people who died there.
There, we practice three Core Tenets: letting go of our fixed ideas; bearing witness to joy and suffering, and loving actions.
At Auschwitz, it is not hard to let go of fixed ideas
The place itself, with its endless gray skies overlooking miles of barbed wire and crumbling extermination compounds, is so terrifying that no matter how much we prepare for the visit, no matter how much we’ve read about it or pondered, it overwhelms us.
Even if you’ve seen the exhibits more than once and have even walked several times down the endless railroad tracks that once brought so many to their end, there’s one thing you can still count on:
Your expectations, your preconceptions, your most basic belief systems concerning love and hate, good and evil, will be annihilated in the face of Auschwitz.
In fact, after seeing the endless photographs of dying camp inmates and the high piles of their belongings pillaged by the Nazis, and after visiting Birkenau and viewing the remains of that meticulous technology developed for the purpose of mass extermination and genocide, we stop thinking altogether.
As writers and philosophers have already said, there’s no language for Auschwitz.
I can only add, there are no thoughts, either. We are in a place of unknowing.
After walking through Auschwitz and Birkenau, there is an end to thought. We are numbed. All we can do is see the endless train tracks on the snow, feel the icy cold of a Polish winter on our bare hands, smell the rotting wood in the few remaining barracks, and listen to the names of the dead.
At Birkenau we don’t sit in silence, we chant names. First, we sit in a large circle around the railroad tracks, at what was once the Selection Site, directly opposite the crematoriums. A shofar blows to start the meditation period, and then four different people, each sitting at a different point on the rim of the circle, begin to chant the names of those who’d died at Auschwitz. The names come from official lists compiled by the SS. They’re also provided to us by various retreat participants, obtained from memory, family, and friends.
We are a global group, so the names are chanted by American, Irish, Dutch, Italian, German, Swiss, Israeli, Polish, and French voices. The names themselves are also from a multitude of languages. Everyone gets their turn.
Across the large circle, we hear the names. Sometimes one resembles the name of a co-worker back home, or of a friend. Sometimes the chanter pauses. She’s come across a name that’s exactly like her own. For telling names is like telling stories.
When we recite the name out loud, dead bones come to life, the bones of men, women, and children from all over Europe. They lived, some grew up, some married, some had children, and all died.
Their names become our names, their stories, our stories.
That is what happens when we bear witness.
~ Bernie Tetsugen Glassman
Join us in Bearing Witness this November
This year, Zen Peacemakers from all over the world and all walks of life - Jews and Poles and Germans, Palestinians and Israelis, Buddhists and Christians and Atheists, descendants of victims and descendants of perpetrators - will gather again in Auschwitz-Birkenau to read the names, hear the stories, and bear witness to the joy and suffering of life together.
Scholarships are available to support those from a wide range of backgrounds and means in attending.
We invite you to join us.
Bearing Witness Retreat in Auschwitz-Birkenau
November 15-21, 2026
Oświęcim, Poland
Learn more and register here
READ THE FULL ARTICLE IN THE PEACEMAKER JOURNAL:
i read and sit with anguished tears i cannot see through
I can only imagine what it must feel like to be there and to bear witness to all those souls. My heart hurts for them. May they all be at peace and may we never forget. Namaste~