MARIAN KOŁODZIEJ No. 432 Auschwitz Survivor

Every November since 1995, an interfaith retreat is held at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camps, in Poland. The sites of the Holocaust become a place of prayer, introspection and meditation. American Zen Buddhist Bernie Glassman began these retreats after his own visit to Auschwitz and his sense that the place needed to be experienced in a deeper way and could become a place for people to actually bear witness to what happened there. Each year the retreat brings together people from all over the world to pray and to mediate together. In November 2006, the retreat group met and listened to the testimony of Auschwitz survivor Marian Kolodziej and Halina, his wife.