On a bus bond for Treblinka, a group of North American students listened spellbound as Rena Quint, a Polish Holocaust survivor, described her childhood during World War II.
“When I was a child, the Nazis sent my father and me to Bergen-Belsen, where he disappeared without a trace. My mother and two brothers were sent to Treblinka. I never saw them again. Visiting the camps is the closest thing to visiting the graves of my family,” she said.
For the students, who were among 5,000 Jewish young people taking part in this week’s “March of the Living,” the horror of the Holocaust and the bravery of its victims has taken on a personal dimension: They now know someone who was there.
The biennial March of the Living program, which began with 1,200 participants in 1988, has grown into the largest single Holocaust educational tool in the world. It has also become a media event that draws world attention to the Nazi slaughter of Jews half a century ago.
The youths, who range in age from 16 to 21, arrived here earlier this week aboard nearly 150 flights from 42 countries. Fifty tons of kosher food were specially flown in from Israel, along with 1,000 Israelis and 700 foreign students studying in Israel.
In Poland, the Israeli delegation was joined by 1,800 North American 450 South Africans, and others from as far away Australia, India and Colombia. According to the organizers, the group has taken almost every good hotel room in Warsaw.
Though the culture and language differ from group to group, the itineraries are consistent. On Monday, a convoy of buses accompanied by Polish police and Israeli security guards took hundreds of students to the dilapidated Warsaw Jewish cemetery, and later to Treblinka, while another convoy visited the Majdanek death camp.
A VISIT TO WARSAW CEMETERY
The next day, the two groups swapped schedules, while a third visited the site of the Warsaw Ghetto and the refurbished Nozyk Synagogue, where Warsaw’s tiny, elderly Jewish population comes to pray.
On Thursday, the students and visiting dignitaries will walk the two-mile path from Auschwitz to Birkenau, transforming the route of death for millions of Jews into the March of the Living The day will culminate with a service at Auschwitz commemorating the victims of the Holocaust.
Following a Shabbat spent with the Polish Jewish community, the students will fly to Israel, where they will tour the country and celebrate Israeli Independence Day on May 7.
From the beginning, the kids took a hands on approach to their tour, with the encouragement of the program’s organizers and youth leaders.
At he Warsaw Jewish cemetery, hundreds of youths armed with rolls of toilet paper and determination cleaned some of the crumbling grave-stones.
The task proved more symbolic than practical, however: Many of the stones have been damaged or destroyed. Most of the remainder are in danger of disappearing under a thick, damp layer of decomposing leaves and moss.
Still, Dina Siegel from Teaneck, N.J., and Lisa Heinrich from Monsey, N.Y., labored to unearth a nameplate. After several minutes of scrubbing, the Hebrew letters became visible, and the name “Chanah Feingold” appeared.
“These are lost graves,” said Siegel, “and they will all be lost soon if someone doesn’t fix up the cemetery. Not many people come here, but that doesn’t make those who are buried here any less important.”
‘SOMETHING I NEEDED TO DO’
Just why these young people came to Poland, most at their own expense, is intensely personal. For Richard Gorelick from Potomac, Md, “it was just something I needed to do. No one in my family was killed in the Holocaust, but I still think about it all the time.”
The tragedy, he said, “conjured up questions I couldn’t answer. It’s easy to read books and find out what happened historically, but understanding an emotional level is more difficult. I hope to find some answers here.”
For Zena Abraham, who immigrated to Israel from Ethiopia a year and a half ago, “the Holocaust is a universal Jewish experience, Jews from America, Morocco, France all feel what has happened here. I needed to see what the Holocaust was all about, with my own eyes.”
Often, said Abraham Hirchzon, chairman of the march, it is the world’s eyes that need opening. “Sure, the march is first and foremost an educational tool for our own kids, but it can also be a model for others. Without mass demonstrations like ours, the millions who were murdered will soon be forgotten.”
At Treblinka, where only a few structures from the death camp still remain, the students turned inward, toward private thoughts and feelings. As distant thunder rumbled, some lit yahrzeit candles and Kaddish, while others, like survivor Rena Quint, searched among hundreds of stones bearing the names of cities and towns from which Jews perished.
With the help of a young American student, Quint found the stone of her hometown, petrikov, Poland. Clearly moved, she said, “This young man, whose family was spared the Holocaust, is now a member of my family.”
During the short memorial service, the students, clad in blue-and-white jackets with a Jewish star on the back, sang Hatikvah. When Kaddish was recited, the storm moved overhead. The sky darkened, thunder growled, and large raindrops began to fall.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
