Shabbat Shalom!

Shabbat started and ended in singing.  On Friday night we went to the main synagogue that we visited earlier in the week.  When the men and women began to go to there sitting area, the women section being on the upper level, due the locals and the other groups that were at this synagogue, there was very few seats for the women from our group to sit.  Most of the women ended up sitting in the main floor where, magically, a machitzah arrived.  During the service, there was one group of men from Israel, and from a school in New York, that mixed in with the locals, that nights davening was so crazy energetic and spirited.  Many songs that aren't in the service were screamed and sung in between prayers, sometimes it felt that the building would explode with energy.  Throughout the night, the energy continued as we sang in the streets, when we spoke about our previous week, and screamed "Good Shabbos" like Moshe Good Shabbos out of the windows of the JCCs dinning room.  Before free time, we had "family time" where we discussed our previous week by having candy bowls set up in front of us and having to make a kabob of candies then answering the corresponding questions.  For the people that took the candy that asked what the favorite part of the week was, answered that the singing, and dancing at the synagogue was their favorite part.  Even though many people in my grade may not be as religious or go to services on a weekly basis, they still knew some songs that which they sang and danced.  This experience helped us feel proud and feel like empowered to continue the traditions that we were taught in school and by our families.  25 hours after singing in the synagogue, we sang havdalah in the hotel along with several other songs.  We gathered in a big circle, it did not matter if you were standing next to your friend or not, we were together and celebrating our journey and strength of our people.  We began by singing a slow Hebrew song that everyone knew the words, then began havdalah.  Right after we said amen to havdalah, people began to talk to their friends in the crowd, but some didn't. Some people gathered together and began singing Matisyahu's One Day loudly, and slowly our grade began catching on and singing a long. Being able to sing loudly, dance proudly and enjoy being together, we celebrated our Judaism and ensured that the Jewish life that was once so prominent in Krakow, still shines bright.

Stories and Stealing

We arrived at 8 AM in Auschwitz with many layers on; I had leggings, ski boots, a sweater, a light shirt, and a ski jacket, yet I was still cold.  Several other people and I felt freezing, but then one of my friends said, if we were cold now with all these layers on, what would people that were in this camp feel like with wind and in freezing temperatures.  One portion of a barak was dedicated to what the Nazis stole from the prisoners like glasses, suitcases, and other things like that.  When we walked through one portion of the building, two big piles of shoes were showed on display.  There were 40,000 pairs of shoes on display that were piled from the floor the ceiling; but even sadder, is that the shoes on display were far less than the total amount of shoes that were taken by the Nazis just from Auschwitz. This number of shoes on display only represented a small amount of people from only Aushwitz, but there were several other camps like this with the same, or more amount of people which means more shoes and more lives were taken.  After the meaningful tour of Auschwitz, we quickly drove to Birkenau and began learning about some experiences from survivors and Jewish workers from the crematorium.  We began following the story of Ellie Wiesel and his story when he first arrived at Birkenau when we were standing at the train tracks.  Wiesel arrived with his parents and younger sister, but was separated from his mother and sister when they got off the train.  After Wiesel was separated from his mother and sister, he was guided on the path that passed the crematorium.  But as he got closr to the crematorium, he thought he was going to die, but he and the others in his line passed the gas chambers.  While Wiesel and the other people passed the gas chambers, he saw a ditch that was burning children; when the Nazis did not have enough time to put all the bodies that were gassed in the crematorium, they would make a pile of the bodies and burn them in a field.  As Wiesel passed the fire, he saw that the fire had child body parts.  The actual crematorium that Wiesel passed was later blown us later on by Jewish people that worked in the crematorium.  As Wiesel passed by fire, he still did not know what was still going to happen to him.  Wiesel and the others had to get out of the clothes that they were in, shave their heads, shower, and change into clothes made of thin material then had their number tattooed on them.  This process that the Nazis did with all people that were not sent straight to the gas chambers stripped the people from who they are and made them into nothings and the same.  In Birkenau, the place that the objects that were collected from everyone was right in front of the real showers spreading 60 buildings, where the contents in each building was to be shipped to Germany to be recycled and used to their benefit.  We learned that there was a division between Jewish prisoners and non-Jewish prisoners, which was that the papers of the Jewish prisoners were thrown out while the non-Jewish prisoners' papers were taken, but not thrown out.  Even though there was a difference in how they were treated with their belongings, the fate of their lives were equal.  In the years that Birkenau functioned, over 1.3 million people, not just Jews, were murdered in the gas chambers, if not sent to the gas chambers right away, the average life span at the camp was only three months.  The lives of the people that survived Birkenau and/or Auschwitz were changed in many ways, many lost their family in the camp, had to move their own families bodies from the gas chambers to the crematorium, or mentally could not get over their experience at the camp/s.  The camps that my grade visited today challenged us in many ways, whether it was emotionally or physically, we overcame them together.  This past week has been filled with many challenging moments, but now, as we begin to get ready for Shabbat, I look back at this week and I am how much I have learned and experienced.  We have done so much this week, Shabbat is needed and welcomed with open arms.  I hope that you have a great and meaningful Shabbat wherever you are reading this! Shabbat Shalom!

Righteous Gentiles

Today we walked around Kazimierz, where we looked at the Jewish synagogues and other historical sites such as the Wawel Castle and the dragon statue.  At the end of the tour, we walked across a bridge that was parallel to the bridge that many people had to cross to leave their homes and go into the ghetto.  We went to a memorial that was at the edge of the ghetto and was used as the train station to several camps, but in its' place is a memorial made of chairs spaced equally out throughout the area  to represent where the people would be beginning their journey to the camps.  While at this memorial, we learned of the physician by then name of Ponkevich who lived on the corner across the street from the station. The interesting this about Ponkevich was that when he was asked to leave by the Nazis so that that area can be used as a ghetto, he did not leave.  This man helped many Jews through giving them small weapons to rebel against the Nazis.  To prepare for their visit to Eastern Europe, my grade visited Yad Vashem in Israel.  At Yad Vashem, there is a wall of righteous gentiles, those who are not Jewish, but still helped Jewish people survive the Holocaust.  Of the millions of people who were in the Holocaust, and people that they went to, to prevent going to camps, only 22,000 people were considered righteous gentiles according to Yad Vashem.  This number surprised me, wouldn't more people realize what was happening and what to help their neighbors and friends?  the מדריך posed the question of of what would we do if we were in the position of helping people like Ponkevich was, what would we do, which prompted a deep conversation.  One person mentioned Oskar Schindler's motives because he did begin his company to make more money, but by the end of the war, he was looking back at his company and asking what more he could have done to protect and save the Jews.  Even Yad Vashem had trouble answering this question, they debated over the topic of whether to include Schindler's name or not based on his motives.  As I mentioned earlier, Schindler's List was filmed and actually took place where we were today, so yesterday to prepare, we watched Schindler's List.   Before we were able to resolve or come to any joint conclusion, we were needed to begin to walk to the busses, and past Schindler's factory.  When we passed the factory, we all looked for the pictures of two important people from Schindler's List; Izaak Stern and Helena Hirsch.  Stern was like the second in command to Schindler, but was a prisoner, while Hirsch was in Plazow as a prisoner, then the maid of the commander of the camp, who beat her often.  These two characters stuck with us while we passed by the factory and how Schindler saved them and showed how Schindler's name should be on the wall at Yad Vashem.  From the beginning of the day, we were presented a theme of righteous gentiles, throughout the day we were shown how many people experienced them.  At the end of the day, many students told stories of their grand- and greant-grand-parents' experiences in the Holocaust, some of who experienced the help of righteous gentiles.  Many times we don't always see the good in everyone right away, but try to see the goodness in the person's actions instead of the bad.

Connections

Today at the beginning of the drive to Lezasnz, one of the מדריכים announced the results of the Israeli elections from the previous day.  The מדריך then went on to talk of a blog post from a Rabbi in Israel who wrote about how there may have been a separation between voters and political parties, but they were all trying to create a better nation.  The blog went on to ask rhetorical questions that always ended in how the nation was brought together to create something together and as a result, became unified.  It wasn't until the end of the day when we visited the Buczyna Forest where humdreds of people were told to dig giant holes, and when they were done, they were lined up and shot and fell into their final resting place.  The sad thing about these specific plots of land, was that they were not only adults, but also for children.  When we first arrived, we saw a monument that had flowers, candles and rocks placed on the base.  On the four sides of the stone pillar were swords that were engraved and stained with different colors.  We learned about what happened at his sites and what type of people and to our surprise, not only Jews were there, but also Christians and other Poles.  Each plot was similar in the sense that each had a symbol of what that religion or culture was, as well as candles around the rails.   The Jewish plots were different; they had bright blue banisters and decorations.  On the blue banisters there were Israeli flags, candles, flowers and many other things that people brought to place on the plots to commemorate the dead.  My grade was given butterflies to place on each plot.  Many people, placed their butterflies on the Jewish plots, but very few were placed on the other three that were not Jewish plots.  As time went on, more butterflies were placed on the other plots.  Around the Jewish plot, where many people gathered, there were un-lit candles all around memorial, which we took as a sign to begin lighting the candles and to help commemorate the children and families that were killed at that site.  When we first walked to the courtyard, the only light was from the sun, but when we left, the courtyard and the plots of land were lit up by the sun, our candles and our passion to remember what happened at places like this one.  This piece of land and many others like it, brought the end to many peoples life, not only Jewish, but Christians and even locals.  Similar to the Rabbi's post of the election, this, even though in a sad and disappointing way, that although religion and/or lives were different, they were connected and bonded through the pain and fear that they went through before they were murdered.  We remember these children and others that were murdered like this by visiting, placing butterflies near the graves and singing songs they would have known in their memories.  Having learned of stories like this and visiting sights that such tragedy occurred, we understand further the pain and struggle that people went through at that time and that there is no border of who did and did not feel the pain of the Holocaust.

My Majdanek realization

We were able to leave the camp but over 250,000 people were not able to.  Today we went to Majdanek where many, for many people, the Holocaust became the real deal.  When I first saw the Majdanek camp, it didn't seem to be big, but walking through the camp made the camp itself, and the Holocaust more personal and real.  When we were able to walk around the camp ourselves, there was a little museum within the camp.  The museum had little biographies and quotes from several people who kept journal, several stories stood out to me.  Romuald Sztaba, a physician who was arrested in January 1941 for participating in a secret organization.  Sztaba wrote that "An SS man stood in the middle, then a kapo or two non-commissioned officers, and then me.  One of them decided: to the left- gas, to the right-still can live a little.  And that's it.  He took the medical cards of the people who were going to the left, and gave all the others to me.  The sick were to be prepared for the 'transport' within four hours."  Having learned about the Holocaust for several years, we learned that when in concentration camp, officers and commanders treatment of the prisoners were horrible.  Sztaba and many other Jews worked in the camps, and even though they were considered prisoners, they still were in charge of many decisions.  Today, the first stop we went to was the showers.  We walked through the room where people had to undress, clueless to what laid ahead of them.  The next room was the shower, where there were concrete with several windows and two baths. The next room that we walked into next was when the doctors made their decisions of whether they were to go to the correct showers or the gas showers.  These few small rooms have had over thousands people walk through them and some never returned.  The experience of fear in each of these rooms were evident through the scratches on the walls and the stories that officers have told afterward.  The Majdanek camp itself was not only gas chambers, it was the at this camp that many people lost their family members and have come back to mourn them and lived in fear during the war.   We are lucky that we live in America or other places that experience minimal to no anti-semitism and that we do not have to face this evil that many Jews over 70 years ago faced.

The little old lady

Before you begin reading, I just want to let you know, I have less than 2 hours of sleep today, so please excuse any typos or bad grammer.  Today, during one of the tours of Warsaw, an elderly women walked past a group of us, turned toward us and mentioned something about the Holocaust in Polish, which someone from our group picked some words out translated roughly that she had family that survived the Holocaust and they now live in Israel.  Although we did not fully understand what she was saying, we were connected by theme of family, religion and our history.  Earlier in the day, the students who came from the USA met up with the students who came from Israel and went to the Jewish graveyard in the Warsaw ghetto.  While visiting this site, we stopped by one of the few markers that outlined a mass grave sight of those who lost their life in the Warsaw Uprising.  The headstones of many others had a symbols of what that specific person would be remembered for within their own community.  Sadly, the people who were killed during the uprising did not have a tombstone or anyway to commemorate what they would be remembered by. They also had no name written to document that their final resting place is in that pit, due to the war the office that held the records was bombed.  The people that lost their lives during the uprising had a family, friends, and people who cared about them and would have wanted them to be remembered for their good. The nice old lady reminded us that even though many of us do not have blood relatives who have been through the Holocaust, we must remember what occurred and to make sure that we prevent something like this never happens again.

The journey begins

Our parents dropped us off, took a picture and left.  That was it.  Getting our tickets wasn't too hard, but deciding how to switch around our assigned seats was the real issue.  We immediately compared our seating assignments and began deciding who we would sit next to and how that would happen.  After we quickly got through security, our gate was the next step.  With the several hours that we needed wait for our plane, boredom set in with the 8 of us, we begin watching CNN  on the TV monitors, reading the novels that were brought, or just pacing between gates.  Once the plane arrives, we can't wait for this journey to begin.