Masa LePolin -March 31st to April 5th-
I find it very interesting that the majority of foreigners who travel to Poland, travel in for a WW2 tour. Because that's exactly what I did this past week; my group, 40 South Americans, and nearly 200 Israelis.
The first two days were spent in Krakow. We visited the old Jewish quarter from pre WW2, and the Jewish ghetto from the present of WW2. We went to the old city of Krakow, admired the beautiful buildings, and I ate some delicious Polish food. We went to visit the site and memorial from the Plaszow concentration camp, and I tried to imagine myself as a bystander in the movie Schindler's List.
We went to tour Auschwitz 1 on day three, which looked entirely different from what I expected. The Baracks were huge and brick like and in rows and if I didn't know any better I would have guessed that it was a well established historical colonial village. We also went to Auschwitz-Birkenau on the same day, which looked more like I imagined Auschwitz would.
On the fourth day we took a brief visit to Tarnow. We learned about the Jewish history there before the war. We went to Zvilitovska Gura, a very depressing mass grave site in the forest, and we went to Kreznik to visit old synagogue sites. We spoke about the development of the zionist movement and the Hasidic movement; two very different movements that originated in very close areas in Galicia, Poland. We danced Israeli dances in the basement of a 200 year old, dark, falling apart synagogue that hasn't been in use for at least the last 80 years.
The fifth day was spent in the city of Lublin. We went to a Polish high school there and met with Polish high school students who thought that we were all from Israel. It was a very strange experience. They wanted us to teach them about Israeli traditional foods, and teach them about the map of Israel. When I told someone there I was from the United States, she told me that she heard somewhere that all Americans think that Poland is an Island, and that they don't have cars, and all Polish people ride around on horses. She asked me if this was true. I assured her that I had never met a person with this belief. That same day we went to the Majdanek concentration camp, a very unique camp, and the camp that happened to make the most people cry. Majdanek is located pretty mush right inside the city of Lublin, and I think what makes most people emotional is that there was a city so close by to the horrible things going on there, and nothing was done about it.
We spent the last two days of our trip in Warsaw. We visited the Jewish Ghetto site, and saw the left over parts of the wall, and old, falling apart buildings that existed inside of it. Warsaw is a particularly interesting city when it comes to WW2 because they entire thing was destroyed, but the entire thing was rebuilt, and the old city, which we also visited, was rebuilt to look exactly as it did before the war. We went to the Jewish cemetery in Warsaw which looked like it had come out of a horror film with all the leaf-less trees and rainy mist and mossy cracked stones. We went to the Warsaw Zoo and learned about how people were hidden there during the war. We went to the deportation site in the Ghetto and to visit the sites where the headquarters for the Warsaw Ghetto uprising took place. We learned a lot about the figures who played major roles in this uprising, most of whom were apart of the youth movement then, that I am a part of now. This part of the trip was particularly meaningful. On the last day of the journey, we also visited Treblinka, a death camp where nothing is left to be seen of what happened there; just a memorial.
It was a very interesting and thoughtful trip. Not entirely emotional for me. There is a tradition on this trip that our guides ask our parents to send us letters while we are in Poland. One of the things that my Father wrote in his letter was about how when he was in Poland two years ago, he had found it very hard to feel emotionally connected to the things that went on in Europe in WW2, because he had no family that was left in Europe by the time the war started. Therefore, he spent most of his trip thinking about the war on an intellectual level. As I too, obviously, had no family left in Europe during the war, I also had a hard time connecting emotionally, as much as I tried. But I spent a lot of time thinking about humanity, and how things like this can happen, and about how if members of my youth movement back then could stand up and be remembered for fighting against something horrific, members of my youth movement today should be able to do the same thing. Thank goodness there is no need for us to do so in our own countries. I think what I most learned from Poland is that people shouldn't just fight for humanity in the areas around them when it directly effects them; they should fight for humanity around the world, because humanity around the world effects them too, even if they can't see it. And I think it's important to appreciate the lives that we have been able to live in peace today. But we must also be aware of what is currently going on in the world around us, and to teach people about the things we know that are going on around the world so that the people learn to fight against crimes against humanity.