What an incredible and emotional day. I will try to capture the range of feelings I had while touring Poland today with my brother in law Daron. Words will not adequately describe our experiences, though... We began our day with a short walk from our hotel to the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. This museum is located right at the heart of where the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising happened. We spent a few minutes here before entering the museum.
As you can see from above, the museum is a beautiful piece of architecture. This was an incredible museum that details the more than thousand year history of the Jews in Poland. I will refrain from going into too much detail as I will be sharing this museum with our traveling group in just a few days. It was an incredible museum.
After a few hours at the museum (there is so much to see we could have stayed all day) we met Anitole who would be our driver from Warsaw to Lublin. We drove through lush landscapes, tons of trees and green as far as the eye can see. While Poland is really a flat country, it sure is beautiful. The most eventful moment during our trip was when our car's tire went flat... After about a 30 minute delay we were off to complete our drive.
We were lucky enough to get to Lublin early enough to visit two cemeteries, the New Cemetery and the Old Cemetery. Below are some photos from the New Cemetery.
We saw stone after stone detailing who died in Lublin during the Holocaust. It was sobering to see so many stones. We walked through a fence to another section of the cemetery and found all of these stones laying against the wall.
It turns out the Nazis destroyed this cemetery during the war and these stones were the remnants of what was once there. It was heartbreaking to see these stones just tossed to the side, especially when we hold these places to be so sacred. It was an act of pure cruelty. Little did we know the scale of the cruelty we would be experiencing.
We walked to this monument which we learned marked the mass grave of the more than 100 Jewish children from the Lublin Jewish Orphanage and the many residents of the Jewish Shelter for the Elderly, murdered by the Nazis on April 24, 1942.
And we went to another mass grave, this time for 190 Jews. Mass grave after mass grave, nameless people representing so much hope.
The most sobering fact we learned was that more than 5400 people were buried at the New Cemetery. We were standing on holy ground.
We then went to the Old Cemetery, dating all the way back to the 1500's.
We learned that at this Cemetery the Nazis executed countless Jews. It was the reality of the Holocaust hitting us directly in the face. Here we were in such a beautiful town, in a beautiful country where such darkness was forced upon the innocent. A pit formed in my stomach that remained with me for the rest of the day.
We then visited the Yeshiva where many studied before their lives ended during the war. It has been restored but is now simply a museum, with the exception of the services held in the renovated sanctuary.
Our next stop was to meet a man named Pavel, who had keys to an old Shtibl, meaning a little room used for prayer. Daron learned of this man from a contact of his and we met him on a whim. He took us inside and shared all of the history of this place.
Pavel is an incredible man, who through his broken English was able to share with us his passion for preserving any and all pieces of Jewish history. He shared past pictures of a once vibrant Jewish area now only represented by a secret Shtibl that only a handful of people visit. We were able to see, touch and interact with many rescued Torah scrolls, none complete, but each holding so much history and meaning.
I often interact with our Holocaust scroll at TAE, but there was something different about the scrolls in the Shtibl. Were were able to see the tears, the scorch marks, the water damage, the mistreating of these sacred texts. It was as if those in the mass graves were calling to us through these scrolls. There was a power to touching them that is indescribable. I do not think I will ever handle our sacred Torah scrolls the same again. Poland has changed me, the sadness of the reality of the Holocaust has hit me unlike anything I have ever experienced before. As I hand our Torah to each of our bar and bat mitzvah students for the first time, I will be thinking of those children in the mass grave who were never given the chance to embrace Torah. I will think of Sophia van Hasselt who touched the Torah through Carly's loving hands. It is so easy for us to take things for granted. In honor of these children I will try to never do that again, especially our Torah. This was an emotional day indeed. I can only imagine how walking into a death camp will impact me tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment