I know I didn’t make a “Poland trip scouting report”, but there really wasn’t that much to say. Before today I did have many hopes and goals for this seven-day trip, but mostly I just expected the unfathomable sadness that is the Holocaust. I do think that will come, but today I experienced something different.
Arriving to Warsaw Poland earlier this morning, I felt very apathetic towards the country itself and its people. I mean if you’re Jewish and someone says “Warsaw”, you immediately think of the Warsaw Ghetto, and the famous uprising that happened there. Three hundred thousand Jews were sent out of Warsaw Ghetto to concentration camps, yet this morning hundreds of Israeli and American Jewish teenagers were doing just the opposite.
Many of the stereotypes of Poland are true; it’s really cold, and there is some anti-Semitism. Besides these two factors, I found the city of Warsaw to be a regular clean and modern city, which is actually rather pleasant. You would never imagine that terrible murders were once committed there, because in fact after WWII the entire city was destroyed, and was then rebuilt into the modern hub it is today.
The first site we visited was the massive Jewish cemetery. There were already many Israeli groups there, accompanied by intense Polish security guards standing watch. The idea of this Year Course trip is to not go to Poland just to say Kaddish and see the destruction of Polish Jewry, it is also to learn about the incredible life that Jewish people had in Poland prior to the holocaust. At the cemetery this is exactly what we did. We visited the grave of Y.L. Peretz, a famous writer who depicted Jews in a new modern way. We saw the grave of a man who had fought in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, stayed in Poland to become a Doctor, and later became an advisor in the Polish ministry of health. We also saw graves of many famous Rabbis and scholars. What incredible revolutionaries!
In the large modern city that is Warsaw, there is only one remaining wall of the Warsaw Ghetto. The Ghetto was a terrible place where Jews were kept until they were taken to the concentration camps. The Nazi’s organized these Ghettos, but it was actually the Jews themselves that governed the ghettos. Warsaw had the largest Ghettos, with a population of over 60,000 Jews. Although there were terrible conditions inside the Ghetto walls, the Jews living there actually found ways to keep their humanity and intellect intact. There was a secret orchestra in the Ghetto, as well as art, and some soup kitchens. In the midst of this horrible piece of Jewish History, the courage of the Jewish people amazes me.
After visiting the Umschlagplatz memorial (which was the site where the Warsaw Jews were sent off by train to Treblinka), we visited the last bunker of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. The story behind this site is sad but inspiring. After 300,000 Jews were deported to death camps, the Nazis kept 100,000 Jews who were mostly youth and laborers in the large ghetto. The remaining Jews decided they would not go like the others, and slowly organized the first Jewish resistance against Nazi Germany in History. Lead by the heroic Mordechai Anilewicz, the Jewish resistance fought bravely, catching the Nazis by surprise, and caused them to retreat several times. Eventually the Jewish fighters including Anilewivz ran out of firepower, and were forced underground. It was in this bunker, that Mordechai Anilewicz was finally discovered and killed.
After the Shoa, one of Anilewicz last letter’s was found. He talks about how proud he was of the resistance fighter’s efforts. “ It is now clear to me that what took place exceeded all expectations…The last wish of my life has been fulfilled. Jewish self-defense has become fact. I am happy to be one of the first Jewish fighters in the Ghetto.
So we have started from the beginning, and seen that even in the face of final destruction, some justice was served. Tomorrow will be different, as we continue through the history of the Shoa. But for now I am inspired. By Anilewicz, by Y.L. Peretz, and by everyone else in between.
The Warsaw Ghetto uprising memorial.
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