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Day 5 - The March
Since 1988, more than 250,000 participants from 52 countries have marched down the three kilometre path connecting the Auschwitz and Birkenau death camps on Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Today, it was our turn. Ee had the privilege of marching alongside over 10,000 Jewish teens of all backgrounds through the street where Auschwitz meets Birkenau. These teens reign from over 40 countries including India, Germany, France, and Morocco.
As per the Australian tradition, the Australian delegation marched in silence to process not only the solemn occasion, but also to make sure that we drank up the irreplaceable atmosphere.
A delegation of officials from 11 European Union countries pledged their commitment on Monday to Holocaust commemoration, at the annual International March of the Living ceremony, which took place at the Birkenau death camp on Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day.
After lighting one of the memorial torches, Austrian Federal Minister for Education Dr. Sonja Hammerschmid, who led the delegation of education ministers and officials, read out a declaration stating: “We take upon ourselves the solemn commitment to remember and to commemorate the millions of Jewish victims of the Holocaust, the Roma Genocide, as well as other Holocaust-related mass atrocities. We shall respect the survivors still with us and honor those who resisted the evil of Nazi tyranny.
“We will commit to combating all expressions of Holocaust denial, antisemitism, antiziganism and any form of racism or intolerance,” she continued on behalf of the delegation, expressing their vow to strengthen the commitment of their peoples and governments to sharing the history of the Holocaust.
Also lighting a torch was Elisha Wiesel, son of the late Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate Eli Wiesel, who participated in the march for the first time.
“My father never forgot. The things he saw stayed with him all the days of his life. He lived to speak of them to me and to my children. My father was a witness,” Wiesel said.
“He was a witness to the worst atrocity that man has ever unleashed on fellow man. And he was a witness who believed that to acknowledge the suffering of another – and to have them feel less alone – was an imperative for every human being. He spoke for victims around the world: Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur. The thought that genocides could occur in the wake of the Holocaust haunted him.
“But my father was a witness to more than the Holocaust: he was a witness to the Jewish lives in Eastern Europe, which it had claimed. He was a witness to his parents’ beliefs and their traditions and their values, some of which continued even in this place, even in that time – the father and son saving crusts of bread for each other, the rabbis condemning God at trial and then praying the evening prayer,” he said.
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Day 4 - The Old and the New
“It's eerie to think that by the time you read this, I will probably be dead. That's what Hermann says is going on. People either die immediately, or on the way, or after a week or two of forced labor and no food. But I won't have lived in vain, Mirele, if I know that I brought you into the world and you will live and survive and grow big and strong and you will be happy. You can be happy, Mirele, because we loved you.
There will be bad times, for you, Mirele, I know. But just think about me holding you, rocking you to sleep in the sunlight. Keep that sunlight in your heart always.”
The power of a parent’s love, especially in the face of death, was what struck us all the hardest at Zbyltowska Gora, a mass grave for 800 children deep in the forests of Poland. While we were walking to the cemetery, it started to snow, perhaps warning us of the harsh scenes ahead of us.
The hardest thing about the site is the overwhelming sense of innocence that we treasure in babies and toddlers. We are told, in fact, that the Nazis used to play nursery rhymes to soothe the children as they led them to the pit.
After hearing the letter written from Lieba (’Mama’) to her daughter, Mirele - only discovered sewn into the hem of the jacket used to bundle up a baby Mirele when the Nazis came to collect her parents - we all took an extended time of silence to reflect and be there to support one another.
On our way back to the bus, it started snowing again. One of the students reflected on an snow as if the souls of the children stopped the snow when we got there and then continued it when we left. We all felt that presence.
We started off the day praying at the Dabrowa Tarnowska Synagogue. The synagogue was refurbished and is now a museum filled with artifacts from the initial synagogue and the Holocaust. After praying we all gathered together to learn about the synagogue and the vibrant Jewish community it used to have. The Rabbis then spoke to us, and Rabbi Plotkin said that we should dance and sing, so that in 100 years from now people will know we were here. We all started singing and dancing and had an incredible time.
We then went and visited Krakow’s old town, stopping at Ramah's Synagogue and his cemetery. After, we visited the mall and then walked to Dinner at the Krakow Jewish Community Centre. This was followed by the final program of the day was a Tekes for Yom Hashoah and we honoured all of our survivors.
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Day 3 - Shabbat in Krakow
A take on Day 3, written by our New Zealand participants: "Our first MOTL Shabbat began by walking through the streets of Krakow to a Jewish museum where we held our beautiful Kabbalat Shabbat service. The service was led by Rabbi Plotkin and Rabbi Brodie who both encouraged great amounts of student involvement. We shared stories, sang songs, danced, and overall had an incredible experience. The ruach (spirit) was so evident among the entire region, it was truly palpable.
Following the service, we walked to dinner which was shared with a number of other regions on the march, including: Switzerland, Dallas, Miami-Dade, and BBYO. Throughout the night we continued to sing and dance with both our new friends and old friends, even though after seeing Auschwitz-Birkenau together, we all feel like family.
This morning we had a number of different options for Tefilah that we could choose from. Of those options, there was one that involved traveling to the nearby Polish synagogue where services were being held for members of the polish and MOTL community.
The rest of the day consisted of our walking all around the old city of Krakow. We saw the remnants of the Krakow ghetto, seeing Schindler’s factory, and then visited the Jewish quarter. All in all, it was an inspiring day. We got to feel what life was like in Krakow before and during the war. Seeing these sites in Krakow showed us how these innocent people, who were ripped from their familiar surroundings, separated from their loved ones, and systematically murdered, were real people; it personalized everything we’ve learned thus far about the Holocaust. This opportunity has made us feel proud of our heritage and has given us even more of a responsibility to ensure that we, and all of the world, never forgets.”
It's me again now. At night, we did something that, even in my third Poland experience, brought on a whole new wave of emotions. It came down to a very simple fact: half the holocaust happened at night. We went to Plaszow, a labour camp only 15 minutes from the centre of Krakow, for Havdallah - our service that concludes the Shabbat period. It was freezing cold, but nothing compared to what the tens of thousands of Jews would have experienced in the war. We heard the testimony of a survivor of the camp, who spoke in detail of experiences that occurred on the very site we were standing on. The senses one experiences at a camp took on a completely different shape at night. It was astounding.
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Day 2: Auschwitz-Birkenau
Vicktor Frankel, writing from Birkenau, says that “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” Today, we entered that space which, for all Jews (and in fact, all humans) is a space of an irreconcilable nature.
We started at Auschwitz, which challenged the perceptions of the famous site for many of our kids. Auschwitz and Birkenau, as many of you may know, are about 2km apart, and it is Birkenau that fulfils the criteria of mental imagery we carry through the Jewish narrative.
We journeyed through the various barracks which have now been turned into museum exhibitions. A particularly powerful moment was exploring the Book of Life - a book that has the name of every victim of the Shoah. The book takes up the whole room.
One of the survivors on our trip, Rosette, spoke in the French barrack about her experiences as a French Jewish child. It is always awe-inspiring to hear such stories of maturity and survival from someone who was so young, and had to grow up so fast. We are so lucky to be amongst the last few MOTL trips to be able to spend quality time with them.
Next was Birkenau, which challenged our kids in a completely different way. The vast spaces, crushed gas chamber ruins, and sheer scale of how many were murdered there is hard to grapple with. When we March there on Yom HaShoah, it will be a life defining moment.
And then came the moment. I’ll let his testimony that he delivered speak for itself. (See incoming video to whatsapp group that is slowly uploading!)
From the darkness of the camps to the light of Shabbat, we let out all the anxious energy that had been building up in a huge session of Ruach - Jewish dancing and singing. It was so unreal to have Shabbat in the middle of Krakow, once an epicentre of Jewish life.
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Day 1: Lodz
Welcome to the March of the Living 2017 Blog - your regular (well, that’s the intention) documentation.
We have started our March journey with a running start. After a monumental journey from Australia --> Singapore --> Zurich --> Warsaw, we found ourselves at the Lodz Umschlagplatz - the platform at which Jews from the Lodz Jewish Community were deported to various parts of Europe. It was often the last time they say their family. Lodz Umschlagplatz brings about the notion of the ‘choiceless choice’, which is the phrase associated with choices parents had to make about which child to protect more, or decisions that needed to be made by the leadership of the Lodz Ghetto as to who should live and who should die.
Our team were quickly introduced to our new American family - the 160 Floridians who we will be sharing every experience in Poland and Israel with. They are, quite simply, a superb bunch. From the bright, friendly, warm, inquisitive participants to the exciting, innovative Rabbis, nurturing staff and well-oiled logistics managers, it is an absolute honour to be travelling with such an amazing group of people.
We had an unbelievably meaningful afternoon prayer service held inside a cattle car at the platform. It’s moments like these that will form the core memories of our March experience - here, we call them March Moments. They can’t be planned, you don’t know when they are coming, but when they arrive, they never can be forgotten.
it is going to be an unbelievable journey.
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