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.