Poland Journey 2010

I am happy to write to you that the Shnat group has returned from Poland safely and soundly, having gone through a challenging but very meaningful experience there. The group visited extremely difficult places and also heard stories of hope and heroism, and went through it all together.

The first day was spent in Cracow, walking around the old Jewish quarter - Kazimierz - exploring the syngagogues and Jewish culture that existed for hundreds of years. Outside the Temple Synagogue there, Hailey read the story of her great-grandfather, a former president of that synagogue, whose name is still inscribed on stained glass window there:


The second day we traveled to Auschwitz and Birkenau, which was a long and intense day. At the close of the day, the first tekes (ceremony) of many that were planned by some of the shnatties was held:



The third day was spent mainly in Cracow, first in the Plashow labor camp outside the city, and then in the Jewish ghetto area, including the former youth movement apartment where resistance was organized inside the ghetto. In the morning of the forth day, we visited the Jewish cemetary of Lublin and talked about some of the Hasidic leaders buried there. Then we walked around what used to be Nazi headquarters in Lublin, and focused on some of the different groups involved in the Nazi party and Hitler’s regime. In the afternoon we went to the concentration and death camp, Majdanek, situated only a few kilometers from downtown Lublin.

We spent the fifth day, walking around the Ghetto area and learning about its history and different aspects of life inside the Warsaw Ghetto. By one of the last remaining pieces of ghetto wall, Tal read his great-grandfather's last letter from inside the ghetto:



We also visited the Jewish cemetary of Warsaw, a massive cemetary with an incredible number of different stories, from famous Yiddish writers, to Jewish communists, to Hasidic saints, to get an understanding of the great diversity of pre-war Jewish society.

The sixth day we visited what once was the shtetl of Tykochin, where Jews had lived peacefully for many hundreds of years before traveling to Lopochowa, the site of their eventual demise. The afternoon we were in another death camp, Treblinka.

The last day in Poland was spent in Warsaw talking specifically about the youth movements and how they responded to the situation around them. We visited the site of a “chava” (literally – farm, but equivalent to “Shnat”) and Dzielna, the site of the Dror commune in the ghetto. The afternoon was spent walking through the path of remembrance and heroism, learning and discussing the uprisings and other various acts that took place in the ghetto. We finished with a rainy but moving final tekes at the Rapaport monument:



We left Poland Wednesday night and returned to Israel early Thursday morning, starting the Rosh Hashana chofesh period. Hopefully they've gotten some rest since the flight. After chag and Shabbat finish Saturday, they will be starting their first days of Kaveret and mesima (volunteer projects) Sunday morning.