Blog - Israel 2019

Wow...there’s a lot to cover here. Since this is undoubtedly going to be a long blog entry, I’ve divided it into multiple parts. I’m sorry for the lack of punctuality on my part in writing this entry and I hope everyone understands the historical and cultural significance of the Shoah. This is a sensitive subject.

Opening Thoughts

Learning about something factually drains the significance from it. My teachers in elementary and middle school didn’t feel comfortable discussing the Holocaust from any other point of view, so I was stuck with a bunch of statistics and facts that didn’t really convey the true horror of what happened. Sure, I can hear the number six million, and think to myself that that’s a huge number, but without learning about the individual journey each and every Jew went through, how will I experience the Shoah from anything other than a complete outsider’s point of view? On the day I’m writing this, actually, my group heard an account from a survivor, Rena Quint, and I was in awe at what she had to face.

I cleared my expectations for Poland, hoping not to form any misconceptions that could hurt my experience, so there isn’t much to write about there, but what I can say is that every Jewish person, young or old, religious or secular, associated or unassociated with the state of Israel, should be obligated to visit Poland and view these sites firsthand.

Itinerary and Thoughts on Individual Days:

The following account is a formatted version of notes that I hastily typed on my phone whenever I had a spare minute or two. I am very aware of the grammatical and spelling errors but have chosen to keep the notes for posterity.

Below each account, I will provide additional thoughts that I have as a write this entry.

Day 1 - Tykocin

• Saw aspects of shtetl life, including a school that had significant impacts in teaching zionist values, a graveyard still honored and untouched by the people who live here today, a river used for transportation of goods and economy, a main square for trading etc, and a synagogue Germany decided to conquer USSRs half of poland despite non aggression pact
• Led over a thousand Jews and their families on death marches, shot and killed and buried in forest pits
• When I look at the memorial site set up for tykocin, I'm not really sure if I'm capable of fully comprehending what happened. I see three circular areas surrounded by fences, each decorated with flowers, messages, and letters in languages including Polish, Hebrew, English, Spanish, and possibly Yiddish. I try to make myself imagine what went on in the pits - an entire community being stripped naked and brutally murdered - and I just can't. It feels like something out of a movie; what went on is simply too grotesque for me brain to comprehend it as reality. Yet, looking at memorials still trigger emotions - I know that it's one thing to be told about what happened and another entirely to be exactly where it occurred. And such a rapid change in mood - only an hour ago, we were joyfully singing in the old synagogue. Is this the speed at which the Polish Jews had their souls shattered?

• Went to a Jewish cemetery in warsaw, included many influential Jews of different backgrounds, included someone who invented a language and someone who took their own life in protest of conditions
• Visited warsaw ghetto wall
• Learned about heroes and people who kept documentation (memorial walk), people who started Warsaw ghetto uprising which ultimately failed, the roles of various acts of rebellion and uprising (iberleben), jews were not docile during the war
• Conditions in the ghetto - 100k died from starvation and conditions etc 350k sent to treblinka

• Shopping on a little polish street with historical significance
• Went to a yeshiva, very prestigious, used for already scholars and to train people to teach it
• Learned about how the talmud is taught, is a very long cycle, repeated like the Torah
• Was destroyed by Germans, thousands of books burned and jews are forced to watch it
• Majdanek Audio Files

• Went to a Jewish graveyard, heard stories and heard about an influential jewish figure compared to Moses based on some oral law commentaries (forget his name)
• Went synagogue hopping! Went to either 4 or 5 synagogues that survived the Holocaust and learned about the diversity of the people who went there etc. • Learned about krakow jcc, heard from a speaker there
• Learned about krakow ghetto and how it connected to warsaw, saw location of scenes from Schindler's list
• Heard from speaker about how she and her family helped save and shelter jews, received award, she's 90
• Shopping at town square, great Hungarian food

• Auschwitz Audio Files

• Went to schindler's factory (now an unrelated museum)
• Dsol told us stories (2) about righteous among the nations - one was denmark (in its entirety for risking itself for the jews) and the other was a person who helped smuggle 2k children out of the ghetto
• Bus ride to Warsaw, Shabbat service and dinner at nice reform synagogue, liked the prayers and hymns and melodies used

• Final day of Poland. We had Shabbat services and went to a museum that showed Jewish history in Poland (since Jewish culture has always been such a huge part of Polish culture since there were once so many Jews in Poland). Today even, Jewish culture is a part of Poland even without the Jews present. I didn’t pay much attention because a very small part of it focused on the Holocaust and the rest wasn’t interesting.
• We went to a Chabad for dinner and had a memorable final Havdalah service - including singing “Leaving on a Jet Plane.” Left around 11pm.

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