Tami joined a delagation from FZY on the March of the Living Trip to Poland in April 2012
16/04/12
The first thing that touched me today, was the holocaust film we watched on the bus “Escape From Sobbibor”. I’ve seen this once before but somehow being inPolandand watching it made my stomach churn and made my anger grow. The scene with the mother holding her baby after she was caught hiding her affected me deeply. She smiled, holding her child with a gun in her face. She was so content with the situation and it showed her willingness to die as a mother and baby rather than – well what word can I use? The idea of a child dying before her parents is so dire that there is no name for this like there is for an orphan or a widower. She’d rather die with her than live knowing she’d never see her again. A choice that not everyone had.
The way the people worked together in Sobbibor to escape was inspiring, but I had a thought the whole time. How ridiculous is this whole situation? They’re forced to kill, lie, steal and ESCAPE. The situation should have never been so severe.
The first destination today was “Treblinka”. Seeing the model of the death camp, and walking around seeing it was fascinating and distressing. Standing in the same place where all these Jews were, gave me chills.
Mala, a wonderful holocaust survivor joined our group today. She told us tales of her experiences. She spoke of the embarrassment of having to walk naked in the concentration camps in front of the SS soldiers. She told us how she would be talking to a friend in the camp and they’d pass away, in the middle of a sentence, but she didn’t feel anything for that was her reality. Death, and work.
Memorial Service at Treblinka - Photo by Lauren Geisler
Hearing her stories made it even more real. Everyone in these camps have stories, they have lives, HAD lives. It could have been us.
The tekes was intense and necessary. We said prayers and took time to remember those souls. A holocaust survivor began to cry as she relayed a long list of her family members that had been taken from her. It became infectious, not before long the majority of the crowd who had gathered also began to feel their tears touch their cheeks.
All of us Jews, standing there together, made me hope that these unfortunate souls could see us, could know that we know, that the world knows, that we are still here.
It also made me think of these evil people who claim the Jews made up the holocaust, or at least exaggerated it.
Who can deny the holocaust? Who can say this was all a myth, a dream, a made up truth by the filthy Jews? Come toPoland, come toAuschwitz! Use your brains, your heads and your hearts. They hurt us, the memory hurts us, but we’ve proved we’re not vermin, so why be so callus to say that we lie.
If a man was lying in the street, staring death in the face and looked up at me to spit and call me a horrible Jew, it would be my duty to lift him off the floor and take care of him as if he was one of us, because we’re not evil or animalistic, we’re human just like everyone else, and now this man can never tell his friends that the Jew is bad, and if he does he’ll forever know he’s lying.
We pride ourselves on helping others even when we’ve been so disgracefully let down, so please, deniers of the holocaust, haters of the Jews, come toPolandand see what we see, hear what we hear and learn that we are all the same, only as we’ve been victims we’ve learnt never to victimise. Does it need to be the case that others must feel the same pain in order to understand? I hope not. I wouldn’t wish this upon anyone, ever again.
Let us be, let us live, let us prosper, for we are all one.
