The 2018 Natanzon/Taylor Senior Trip to Poland and Israel

Poland, Day 1
We had an uneventful easy flight into Warsaw and arrived cheerful despite the lack of sleep. We met Danny and Avi and boarded our bus where we met our Polish guide Marcelina and guard, Tomas.

We then made our way to the Warsaw Jewish cemetery to learn about the Jewish world that is no more. The cemetery gave a fascinating picture of the diversity of Jewish life of those who had lived in Poland and had been buried by their loved ones. It showed us clearly a vibrant community which is no more. What had a profound impact upon our students was when they stood at the site of mass graves containing

Fifty thousand bodies. One of the most fascinating graves was that of Adam Czerniakov who, as head of the Judenrat, committed suicide rather than hand over his quota of Jews to be taken to Treblinka. Most moving was the memorial in the cemetery to Januz Korchak.

We then saw parts of the remaining wall that is left of the ghetto which was set up in 1944 and then proceeded to the Nozyk Shul, Warsaw's only surviving pre-war synagogue, to daven mincha which was led by Betzalel M. ‘18. It was beautiful. After mincha we made our way to the famous and quite impressive Rappaport Memorial and site of Mila 18 which was undoubtedly the highlight of the day.

After seeing these sites in Warsaw, we boarded a bus for Lublin, a 3.5 hour trip. Distances in Poland are pretty vast as we are finding out...

Lunch was at a kosher restaurant called Galil and for dinner we were at the former Chachmei Lublin Yeshiva where Rabbi Meir Shapiro established his first modern Yeshiva. It was closed by the Nazis and recently refurbished and returned to the Jewish community.

It was a very interesting and meaningful day and the students were interested and engaged despite being totally exhausted.

Poland, Day 2
After a good night's sleep everyone was up on time and at davening by 7 am! After a meaningful davening and a healthy breakfast, we set off for Majdanek concentration camp, a short distance from our hotel. It was a beautiful, warm day, totally incongruous with the site we visited. Majdanek was a slave labor camp and not a place of mass extermination, yet 80,000 people died here. It is a very overwhelming place and our students were totally silent for the nearly two hours we spent there. We experienced the camp by reading the memoirs of a camp inmate, Alex Donati, who wrote a book entitled The Holocaust Kingdom.

We stood and looked at the room with thousands of pairs of shoes as we became very emotional. We read poems and sang. Betzalel showed us pictures of his family members who had perished there and led us in a very moving Kaddish in their memory.

We saw the crematoria, the mass graves, and the huge mound of ashes, all heart wrenching and difficult. We boarded the bus in a somber and serious mood.

After lunch we headed to one of the most important places of remembrance, Belzec. It was built solely to murder Jews and is the place where 500,000 Jews perished -- the entire population of Galician Jews. The place is no larger than a small parking lot, and is built right next to the railroad, something which was immediately noted by our students. This death camp was completely destroyed by the Germans in order to erase evidence and so a memorial has been built on the site of the original camp. It is moving beyond words and had us all in tears. We listened as Danny, our guide, gave a vivid description of what would happen as one arrived and we all walked in somber silence down the original corridor that they walked to the gas chamber. The memorial consists of a huge area of artificially created rocks to symbolize the stark horror of the place and that nothing resembling life can grow here. Around the memorial are the names of all the Polish cities from where transports came to Belzec.

Our students continue to behave in a way that would make you proud and many are writing journals on their phones on the long bus rides. The places are so powerful that each and every one of us was moved.

We then boarded the bus for a 3.5 hour bus ride to Reysha/Rzeszow where we will sleep tonight. After dinner we will get together to share our feelings about the powerful experiences we had today.

Poland, Day 2 and Day 3
We had yet another chicken dinner (it has now become something of a joke as to how many ways you can make chicken!). Four chicken meals in three days!

The hotel is lovely and quite luxurious and the students had somewhat of a free evening to socialize and relax after a really hard and emotional day.

After dinner we had some time to decompress; students were broken up into four groups and were given the opportunity to share their feelings about the day. It was wonderful to see how safe our students feel expressing their emotions and describing how they felt at Majdanek and Belzec, and how respectful they are of each other's opinions.

Some of the ideas and thoughts expressed:
"Looking at the shoes I felt numb and my throat went dry."
“Nothing compares to being there."
“For the first time the stories became real."
“I felt so closed in and small."
“I was surprised how emotional I was."
“I realized how fortunate I am."

And the following excerpt provided by Haviva G. ‘18 from her journal summed up how many felt:

"I realized something as I stood in silent reflection at the foot of the steps to the Jewish memorial. The worst part about Majdanek was what lay just beyond the fence — a beautiful view of a city that long ago overlooked the atrocities happening in their back yard. A city that taunted the prisoners, reminding them of what they once had and what they would never have again. I decided that that beautiful view was the ugliest thing I had seen that morning."

Poland, Day 3
We started our day with a healthy breakfast followed by a walk around Rzeszow (Jewish Reysha). It was another gorgeous day. Here we stood in the town square which had once been a bustling market place. We looked at the old and new synagogues which is all that remains of a community that is no more. The 20,000 Jews of this city comprised nearly half of the town's population. They were all murdered and there is no Jewish community left here today. Many were executed in the cemetery across from the synagogue. Eerily the cemetery was totally devoid of any gravestones as it was demolished by the Germans, and the only sign that they were once buried there is a plaque in their memory. Those who were not shot in the cemetery were taken to Belzec to be gassed.

Following along on our theme for the day, which is investigating the material remains of a community as a way of connecting with the people who were murdered there, our next stop was the town of Tarnow. This town was a thriving community of some 25,000 Jews (again about half of the town's population) with 40 synagogues. We stood in the town square where Jews were gathered and murdered by Germans raining bullets down on them from the rooftops. The area is called "Jew Street" because Jewish blood literally filled the street. We then walked down to what remains of the once Great Synagogue of Tarnow. It was blown up by the Germans in 1939 and all that remains is the Bimah area where we formed a circle and sang Acheinu and Am Yisroel Chai. It was very moving and emotional.

Our next stop was the Zbylitowska Gira Forest (Ya'ar HaYeladim) where thousands of Tarnow's Jews were murdered for the crime of being Jewish. We walked through a Polish neighborhood to reach the forest and someone wondered, "Who buys a house on a murder site?" One enters the forest which is a place of incredible beauty, lush and green and there we stood at a mass grave containing the remains of 800 children murdered in 1942. There are simply no words to describe such a place of beauty and horror at the same time. Many of us were reduced to tears as we read letters left there addressed to the children. Jacob T. ‘18 found a photograph of a kindergarten class slaughtered there, and a letter from the person who had left it. He had survived because his family had left Tarnow in 1936. At the memorial we held one of our own with readings, singing and Kaddish recited by Nick F. ‘18. We returned to the bus in a very somber mood.

We then set off for Crakow, about 1.5 hour drive away. Here we started by looking at the ghetto wall from the Nazi era and walked past Schindler's factory which is now a museum. We then went to the Kazimierz Old Jewish Quarter dating from the 1500s where we saw the beautiful original synagogue, and then visited the attached cemetery where the Ramah, Rabbi Moshe Isserles (great scholar and codifier of Jewish law) is buried.

Dinner was at the Cracow JCC and was chicken AGAIN but definitely the best dinner of the trip! Here we met Mrs. Przebindowska, who told her story of how her family risked their life to save a Jewish girl. She was honored by Yad Vashem as a Righteous Gentile. We were very honored to meet her and to see the citation and medal she received.

After dinner we had a brief conversation with the Director of the JCC in which he gave us some information about the present state of Jews in Cracow. He told us that in the post-communist era many people are discovering that they are Jewish and come to the JCC to connect with their Jewish roots and find a sense of family. He told a very moving story of a young girl who recently found out she was Jewish. Her grandmother was handed over to a non-Jewish family as a very small girl and raised Christian. The last words her mother said to her were, "Never tell anyone you are a Jew," and for 70 years she did not. Before she passed away she called her granddaughter and told her, "You are a Jew. Go and find out what it means.”

And this very active JCC is reaching out to lost Jews and rebuilding Jewish life with Shabbat meals and classes of all kinds.

We are now at our hotel in Cracow preparing for bed (hopefully) as we have a very early start tomorrow as we have our final day in Poland culminating with our visit to Auschwitz, and then we will head to the airport.