Dear friends, if you are considering attending the Bearing Witness Retreat in Auschwitz-Birkenau, now is the time to register and make your travel plans. Join us!
“When we bear witness to Auschwitz, at that moment there is no separation between us and the people who died. There is also no separation between us and the people who killed.
We ourselves, as individuals, with our identities and ego structure, disappear, and we become the terrified people getting off the trains, the indifferent or brutal guards, the snarling dogs, the doctor who points right or left, the smoke and ash belching from the chimneys.
When we bear witness to Auschwitz, we are nothing but all the elements of Auschwitz.
It is not an act of will, it is an act of letting go. What we let go of is the concept of the person we think we are. It’s why we start from unknowing. Only then can we become all the voices of the universe — those that suffer, those that inflict suffering, and those that stand idly by. For we are all these people. We are the universe.
The famous prayer about oneness, the Sh’ma Yisrael, begins with Listen: Listen, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.
Not only does oneness begin with listening, but listening also begins with oneness.
And Zen Peacemaker Order’s Buddhist service begins similarly: Attention! Attention! Raising the Mind of Compassion, the Supreme Meal is offered to all the hungry spirits throughout space and time, filling the smallest particle to the largest space.
Listen! Attention! Bear witness!”
— Bernie Tetsugen Glassman
Join us.
Bearing Witness Retreat in Auschwitz-Birkenau
November 15-21, 2026
Oświęcim, Poland
Zen Peacemakers from all over the world and all walks of life will gather again in Auschwitz-Birkenau this November to bear witness to the joy and suffering of life together. We invite you to join us.
Learn more and register here
support the retreat and the scholarships for those attending by donating here
Zen Master Bernie Glassman was a world-renowned pioneer in the American Zen Movement. He was a spiritual leader, published author, accomplished academic and social entrepreneur. Roshi Glassman was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1939. His parents were immigrants from Eastern Europe and he grew up in a Jewish family with a strong socialist orientation. After graduating from Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, he went to work for McDonnell-Douglas in California in 1960 as an aeronautical engineer, concentrating on interplanetary flights, and obtained a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from UCLA in 1970. Roshi Glassman spent decades teaching Zen and working in Socially Engaged Buddhism, founding Zen Peacemakers in 1996 and developing Bearing Witness Retreats. He passed away in Massachusetts USA on November 4th, 2018 from natural causes.
From “Why Bernie Kept Going Back to Auschwitz-Birkenau” article adapted from a blog post written by Zen Peacemaker’s founder Roshi Bernie Tetsugen Glassman.
Read the full article in the Peacemaker Journal
