The first full day of Part 3 of the J-R Legacy Tour. We’ve gone from about 80 people for the PAT 8 to the last 40 or so diehards for the third part. Only the ultra-rich are left now. (That’s a joke, people, and like all jokes it’s just a selected portion of the truth. Actually you should listen to some people’s stories about how money for these trips has manifested for them over the years.) We hit the small village of St. Jean Pied de Port, and we hit it hard, filling the narrow streets as we always do. They’re ready for us though, because the village is a major stop on the famous pilgrimage route called the Camino de Santiago de Compostela. More quaint cobblestone streets, more picturesque ruins, more cafés, more shops where the savvy pilgrim can buy anything she needs for her pilgrimage.

John does a blessing in a church and we say goodbye to Marcos who’s returning to Spain. Then the day gets really gloomy and rainy, perfect weather for a visit to a concentration camp. The Gurs camp is now a cornfield and forest, with some memorials, reconstructed barracks and remnants of railroad tracks to show what it was like. (I have always known that my grandmother was in a concentration camp for a while but wasn’t sure which one. When I call my dad that evening I find out that it was actually Gurs. She was the only one of my Jewish family who got caught as they were fleeing from Germany through France. My mother, who would have been around 19, and my aunt and uncle, managed to avoid being captured. Luckily the Vichy government was letting some people emigrate at the time, and my grandmother got out just a couple of weeks before everyone in the camp was sent to Auschwitz where they were all killed.) There’s a solemnity in our group, we’re wet and cold, and John does another light column and short talk, and gets us to sing a bit to clear the air: “What the World Needs Now.”

I felt some sadness at the camp, but back on the bus, warm and dry, I’m grateful to be a postwar baby. Normally I can’t stand conditional gratitude. It’s like conditional love, something for the pagans to run after. I’m going for the unconditional gratitude. With the conditional gratitude your ego feels all cozy for a little while until you forget again, and ultimately it’s unsatisfying and addictive. It works much like food or sex. It sure is a great way to condition people, though. I heard lots of holocaust stories as a kid in the well-meaning attempt to teach me, but like all kids I was smart, and saw the game for what it was, although like all kids I wasn’t strong enough to circumvent it completely. There’s still a lingering melancholy in me when I talk or write about my family and the holocaust.

Then it’s another excellent Basque dinner at the hotel. I’m grateful to have good food instead of chewing grass like my grandmother did (“just to have ze feeling of something between ze teeth,” she once told me in her German accent). I guess I’m still roped in to history and conditioning, but what can you expect when one of your parents is a first generation immigrant from Hu-rope? One of the people in our group, who has what I would say is the most American personality of any of us, felt only the beauty of the forest where the concentration camp was, and tells me about it at dinner. That’s what I aspire to.

For dessert there’s a birthday celebration for Ann Tormo, who, along with her husband Bernard and daughter Gabrielle, has been one of the hardworking assistants on our tour. I’m grateful for all their work.