Zen Buddhist Pilgrimage -
Traces of Tears
Budapest, Hungary to Bergen-Belsen, Germany with Claude AnShin Thomas
15 Aug - 30 Oct 2002
This Pilgrimage retraced the death marches during the 3. Reich from Budapest to Bergen-Belsen with Zen Buddhist Monk Claude AnShin Thomas
Claude AnShin Thomas facilitated a pilgrimage from Budapest, Hungary to the former concentration camp Mauthausen, Austria continuing to the former concentration camp Bergen-Belsen, Germany.
During the entire period of the 3. Reich numerous death marches were done. In the last part, just shortly before the liberation from the Hitler-Regime, once more several hundred thousand Jews and others were sent on these kind of marches; most of them without destination. As the Eastern front came closer and closer, the Nazis began to move the prisoners of eastern concentration camps. They sent them on the so-called death marches on which the prisoners had to walk hundreds of kilometers under unimaginable conditions by foot. Hundreds of thousands of them did not survive these painful and agonizing marches; they died of exhaustion, starvation, frostbites and thirst, were shot or tortured to death.
In the year 1944 Hungarian Jews were forced to march from Budapest to the concentration camp Mauthausen and from there to many other camps. There is not much known about most of the marches but about this one there is a map that exists and there are reports from survivors.In remembrance of the war and its anguish, Claude AnShin Thomas retraced during this walk the path of some of the death marches from Budapest to Mauthausen. He then carried on to the concentration camp Bergen-Belsen in Germany.
Time and again Claude AnShin reminds us that the war has not ended because it has its roots in the individual. War is still happening; in many different places in the world as well as in families, our communities and our societies. As a result of this reality, Claude AnShin continues to remind us that If we want the world to be different then we have to live differently. We need to wake up to our own suffering, to our own violence and learn to live differently, to deal differently with it. War is a collective expression of individual suffering and can only end if we (individually) live different. Claude AnShin Thomas shares the reality from his personal experience that "Violence is never a solution."
For more information, see contact information belowLast Updated March 5, 2004
