It would be an understatement to say that our visit to Poland was one of the hardest and most emotional trips we have and fortunately will ever experience. However, besides the gloomy atmosphere and the freezing cold weather, I have to admit that I learned a lot more about the Holocaust than I expected given how much I have already been taught in school or in Hebrew class. We visited places like Warsaw, the Majdanek death camp, Lublin, Krakow, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Lodz. Throughout the week, we not only focused on the tragic murder of more than 6 million Jews, but we also focused on the lives of the Jewish people in Poland before the Holocaust took place, as well as signs of resistance during life in the ghettos.
In a small village, or shtetl, called Tykocin, Jews were accepted and their lifestyle flourished. The charter of rights that was established in Poland included several privileges that the Jews were granted under the protection of the Polish government. Within Tykocin, we observed several examples of Jewish life such as Jewish shops and restaurants decorated with Hebrew and Stars of David, especially in the Jewish Quarter. It was very common for Jews to be involved in business and trade, so that’s exactly the role they played in Tykocin, as well as other parts of Poland before the Holocaust. Tykocin, particularly, was around fifty percent Jewish before the Holocaust began and, therefore, was a very tight-knit community given that it was incredibly small. Thought to be a world within a world by some of its community members, the village of Tykocin was a colorful and prosperous society that gratefully accepted the Jewish people throughout the early twentieth century which brought me a rare joyous feeling on our bleak and depressing journey.
Unfortunately, the vitality of Jews in Tykocin and the rest of Poland did not last as long as it should have. As we all know, when the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, the Jews were no longer accepted anywhere in the eastern part of the world. At first, Jewish people were forced into poor, cramped areas known as ghettos. In the ghettos, people were forced to live under unimaginably harsh conditions; there could have been anywhere around fifteen to twenty plus people living in each one-room apartment. As a result of these overcrowded living spaces, disease broke out and spread rapidly, causing the deaths of hundreds of people in the ghettos. Illnesses were not the Jews' only concern, many also died of starvation due to the tiny rations of moldy and rotten food that were only sometimes given out. However, with the unthinkable tragedies occurring around them, the Jews began to commit acts of Iberleben: the Yiddish word for survival. These efforts of resistance ranged anywhere from begging children to violent uprisings. One particular story that stuck out to me was about a woman doctor who attended to children that were sent to the hospital in the ghetto. When the doctor found out that the Nazis were going to deport the children to one of the death camps, she made the troublesome decision to poison these helpless children to keep them from being sent into the gas chamber, and eventually the crematorium. Another outstanding story was about a man named Janusz Korczak who set up an orphanage for children in the ghetto, and when they were ordered by the Nazis to march out to their deaths, Korczak stood with them and was shot and killed with all his children. It’s important to learn about such stories because it shows that even through the hardship and torture that the Jews went through while living in the ghetto, they still managed to stand up and defend themselves with all the strength they had. Although some acts of Iberleben did not end up being as effective as one may have wished, it was the effort that counted along with the fact that the people still had some hope to survive while others truly believed that this was the ultimate end.
While we did not get to visit every place that the Jews were dreadfully murdered in Poland, we did visit a few of the death camps in which our people were stripped of humanity. One camp in particular stood out to me with its exceptional preservation and its bitter atmosphere: Majdanek. Despite all the other horrifying places we visited such as Auschwitz-Birkenau and the forest in Tykocin where thousands of Jews were shot to death into massive ditches, Majdanek had more than just an emotionally dreadful impact on me; this death camp in particular was the one place I was finally able to visualize at least a fraction of the number of people that were unreasonably murdered during the Holocaust. This realization came to me after 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. I have always imagined death camps exactly how they are described- full of dirty barracks, gas chambers, and crematoria- but I have never been able to comprehend the number of people that entered those camps without ever exiting, until that moment. That was the moment that I physically felt the appalling murders of my people in my heart, in my stomach, in my head. There, at that moment in time I was mentally impacted by the death that had enveloped the world during the Holocaust. Majdanek is the most well-preserved camp in the entire world and is alarmingly capable of being up-and-running maybe within a day or two, and this fact along with the terrifying images still stuck in my mind will remain with me for the rest of my life.
Rabbi Emil Fackenheim wrote, “Jews are forbidden to hand Hitler posthumous victories, they are commanded to survive as Jews, lest the Jewish People perish.” This statement, or rather a commandment, may be considered the 614th mitzvah that is required for all Jews to follow. As a Jew myself, I plan to follow this command until the day I die; I hope to marry a Jewish husband and raise Jewish children, and even if I do not end up marrying a Jewish husband, I will fight to the end for my children to be Jewish and continue on my religion. Being Jewish is more than just following Halacha (Jewish Law) and tradition, it is educating future generations to carry on the Jewish religion, the Jewish culture. Without informing the generations to come about what happened to our people during the Holocaust, it could lead the future population to forget about the time in history when our entire people was almost wiped off the face of the earth. In other words, I completely agree with Rabbi Fackenheim’s statement: we must survive as Jews, and we must not let Hitler achieve his goal even after his death.
Poland was not just a trip to learn about the history of the Holocaust. Our journey taught me to feel a personal connection to what happened there less than a hundred years ago, deeper than just knowing that I am a Jew like all the people who were stripped of their humanity in concentration and death camps. I was finally able to grasp the reality of the event, something that I never had the ability to do even with years of education on the topic. More importantly, our visit to Poland made me one hundred and ten percent prouder to be a part of Am Yisrael (the Jewish People). The amount of strength and integrity that the people had at the most difficult point of their lives was unbelievable, and led to some of the most extraordinary survivals imaginable. Unsurprisingly, the Holocaust was not the first time that Jews were attacked for being who they are, but hopefully it will be the last. It is our job as the future of Am Yisrael to thrive and flourish throughout the world, and to not let anti-semitism overcome our strength as Jews.
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