An Emotional Rollercoaster

   Other than the feelings I briefly described in my essay for Jewish History class, I experienced a large variety of emotions that were surprising to me. Similar to before I left to live in Israel for four months, I did not have any expectations of what to feel in Poland before we left. When we arrived in Warsaw, a gloomy atmosphere enveloped the group. Everyone could tell that we were feeling the same type of emotions: tired, run-down, and even bitter. Part of that is probably because we had just got off a four hour long flight that departed and 3 a.m., but the city itself seemed to reflect those feelings, as well. Warsaw still had a remaining communistic feel to it, and the atmosphere was cloudy and bleak. Overall, our starting day in Poland could have been much better.
   I was surprised with myself for only feeling extraordinarily sad twice out of all seven days, the rest of the time I felt bitter and melancholy. However, those two days were emotionally painful for most of us, it was not only me. The first time I cried was walking through the forest of Tykocin, where the Jews were forced to dig their own mass graves before being shot into them. I did not know what to expect, even though my Jewish History teacher had just read detailed accounts on what happened in the forest. Before we even reached the graves, I began to tear up picturing the innocent men, women, and children being forced to undress until no clothing remained on their bodies before the inhumane Nazis shot them to death. Even if one was fortunate enough to be missed by the thousands of flying bullets, they fell into the pit with the rest of their community and were buried alive. As we got closer to the site of the graves, what I saw was not at all what I had pictured in my mind. What I saw were three mass graves, all with metal fences built around them, and a large memorial made of stone in the middle. There were memorial candles and flowers and notes written in all different languages hanging from the trees and the fences and resting on the dirt that lied on top of the thousands of decomposed bodies. I felt a sadness in my heart toward what had happened here. I felt a sadness in my heart that was trying to become happy because of all the love and care that had surrounded the graves. But this sadness did not diminish, even after we walked out of the forest and onto the bus to continue our day. That sadness remained with me, it will always remain with me, because thousands of people were shot to death for no reason. Not a single member of the Tykocin community, or even the world's Jewish community, was rightfully given a proper funeral during the Holocaust.
   The second (and final) time I felt this deep sadness was at the death camp, Majdanek. I explained in my essay the one thing that shocked me most,

"I hesitantly walked up the steps of a monument that was built around the most horrifying sight my eyes have ever seen: 18,000 humans' pile of ashes. Never have I felt a more significant drop in my stomach. Never have I ever been more shocked to see such a thing with my own two eyes."

After walking up these steps and being forced to look at such a disgusting sight, a different feeling arose within me. This time it was not sadness: it was pure anger. I was angry that I was standing here, staring at a pile of 18,000 humans' ashes. I was angry that, when I turned around to keep myself from throwing up from looking at this pile of disrespect, I saw a cemetery. A cemetery that was filled with hundreds of individual graves for individual people that had individual funerals. A hundred yards away was a place where, when a person died, they were respectfully buried. And when I turned back around to look at this pile of ash, I was furious. I had stopped crying at that point, and all I felt was an empty pit in my stomach.

   These two moments impacted me in an unforgettable way. It is these two moments that will remain with me for the rest of my life, and I am more determined than ever to keep Judaism alive after seeing what I saw on this draining pilgrimage.