Poland

I spent a week in Poland with 26 other Nativers, 2 madrichim, director Yossi, and head of USY Jules Gutin (who was also our tour guide for most places).  Purpose: Learn about Poland’s pre-Holocaust Jewish life and the Holocaust.  This trip was somewhat similar to other Poland trips (a USY summer program, March of the Living, Camp Ramah post-camper pre-staff summer, Israeli 11^th grade trip) in that we saw old cemeteries, old synagogues, and the remnants of concentration and death camps.  But unlike these trips we all already knew each other (this is the same for the Israeli trip; and I also must say we had a great group), we’re a little older and more mature, and we all had to prepare a presentation about a place, person, or text, which helped us find a little more meaning in a particular thing we saw.

It was an amazing trip.  We were full of emotion, but still able to have fun during our long bus rides, at hotels, and during our free time. 

I don’t want this blog to be a history lesson, and I also don’t want to relive this week, so I’m going to post our itinerary and say just a little more about some things.  The places we went and the things we did were very interesting, so I suggest you look these places up if you want to know more.

Jan 18

3am- leave Jerusalem

9:20am- arrive in Warsaw

Old Jewish cemetery in Warsaw

Noyzak synagogue

Go to Lublin 

Jan 19

Old Jewish Cemetery in Lublin

Yeshivat chachmei Lublin

Majdanek

Go to Krakow, visiting synagogues on the way

Jan 20

Tour of Jewish Quarter

·         Synagogues: Ramah, Kuppah, Tempel

o   Some absolutely beautiful, but it’s the people not the appearance that makes the davening for me
·         there are store signs representing how there used to be Jewish life here
Jewish cemetery
Schindler’s factory (now a Polish Holocaust museum)
Free time to wander Krakow (I went with a group to see an old castle)
Nativ services in Tempel synagogue

Jan 21

Services at Ramah synagogue
·         Very few non-Nativers, about half of whom were visitors
AltaShul (“Old School”)
·         was the Jewish school, now a Jewish museum which one Nativer said reminded her of an exhibit of ancient Egyptians, about a people that doesn’t exist anymore.  And in Poland, this may as well be true
Mincha- guys went to back to congregation from morning (so they’d have a minyan); girls had women’s davening at hotel (so we wouldn’t have to be back behind a really bad mechitza)
Free time in Krakow Square

Jan 22

Auschwitz I

• buildings turned into a museum

Auschwitz II- Birkenau

• we left walking on the train tracks that brought over a million people to their deaths

Go to Lodz

Jan 23

Cemetery
Deportation center
Go to Warsaw

Warsaw Ghetto

·         this area has been reconstructed to a new residential area

·         several memorials

o   one main one was sculpted by Nathan Rappaport, who had the same name as my great-grandfather who came to the US from Poland in 1914

Jan 24

Lupochova forest- mass graves of Tykocin Jewish community

Treblinka

·         nothing left.  There’s the forest built to cover up evidence of the camp and stones similar to gravestones for countries and cities impacted.  The only person’s name on a stone is Janusz Korczak, about whom I did my presentation with Gila the night before.

*This day I felt very conflicted because there is little more beautiful to me than forests, and I saw what may be the two most horrible ones.

*This was the most meaningful day for me.  I don’t know if it’s because we saw places I knew very little about or if the whole week had been building up in me, but this day was hard.

Return to Warsaw to leave in the morning

Trivia: What was the highlight of the week?  Returning to Israel.  I hope to never go back to Poland