We walked slowly through the hills of Plaszow, a former concentration & forced labor camp turned vast park-like memorial, with two guides.
One, a memory activist and director at @festivaltkrakow, a Jewish arts & activism org that’s worked with the site and the neighboring community for years to engage locals and mediate tensions around the commemoration of the space — that until recently, served as a recreation area.
🌱 The other, an ethnobotanist, who taught us about the medicinal plants proliferating at Plaszow and then helped us harvest and make tinctures and oils from them.
Not your typical Holocaust tour.
There are many ways to memorialize. Stone monuments and museums have their place. And, we seek to go beyond learning and remembering, to healing. One way is by interacting with the earth itself, and exploring — how might the earth itself heal a place? How might that heal us? And can we harness that power for societal healing?
Because despite its brutal history and current political tensions, the earth abides. It has reclaimed this place. Old, healthy trees and medicinal herbs — everywhere.
That day, we saw, among many others… Comfrey, Plantain, Yarrow, Nettle, Red Clover, Wild Carrot, Muellin, and harvested Agrimony and St. John’s Wort for medicine. These plants have healing qualities ranging from mending wounds & lifting mood to calming the nervous system & energetic protection.
A plant teacher once shared with me that plants root themselves in places that need their particular healing medicine.
So instead of teaching only facts about the Holocaust, retraumatizing people with visceral Holocaust or 10/7 reenactments, or politically weaponizing Holocaust trauma against Palestinian people — what if we grieved and metabolized historical trauma in an embodied way that offers the potential of healing?
Healing of our hearts, healing of our ancestors, healing of the land, healing of the world.
PS — Would you use the St. John’s Wort oil and Agrimony tincture we made?
PPS — Gratitude to Deatra Cohen and Adam Siegal, authors of Ashkenazi Herbalism for teaching us before we left about how our ancestors use these plants!
PPPS — We’re opening registration in a couple weeks for 2027. Email juliewolk [at] gmail.com to get on the notification list.
