Reinterpreting My History

Let me preface this by saying that prior to my last two weeks overseas visiting concentration/extermination camps in Poland and then visiting Israel, I tried fervently to portray to people that yes I am technically Jewish, but I don’t subscribe to the faith’s ideals or the idea of organized religion. Not for me. I’m too cool, independent, and intellectual to hop on that train. Observing the religion on the one hand and all the cultural benefits that come along with being Jewish like friends, strong networks, and good food on the other couldn’t be appreciated separately in my mind.

 Even though I was still involved with a youth group (the group which I went on the trip with) I wanted everyone to know that I was an independent thinker. So I always had to answer the “Are you Jewish” question with a longer than necessary, complicated answer. And I ran into many people who were in a similar boat but I couldn’t stop playing with the concept in my head throughout the trip.

I impulsively signed up for the trip—which for a long time seemed completely implausible—with some friends the way a group of guys would say “Dude, we should totally go sky diving one day this summer.” But we managed to make it happen despite the hefty cost and inconvenience in schedules the trip would cause. We were excited to go but for a while were partially shocked that we had even signed up and on top of that couldn’t really see past first semester with the trip being in April. It could have just been the bout of sluggishness that has dominated so much this year but even days before my first trip ever overseas I was relatively unaffected by the thought of it.

Yet as soon as we landed in Warsaw, Poland I realized that I couldn’t just nonchalantly roll through this and that it was going to be a life changing experience. Our first day there we visited the remains of the Treblinka extermination camp. Strangely enough, it was almost as if the organizers of our trip struck a deal with the weather behind closed doors so that we could get the most out of each site. At our first camp, we encountered snow that lasted for hours, which really helped shift the mood from socializing with friends from all over at the airport to walking through a death camp. There weren’t many visual testaments to the Nazi’s ruthless killing like we would eventually see later on in the trip, however we stood in the location where 800,000 Jews were slaughtered. Our guides used one tool in particular to help conceptualize the amount of deaths that occurred by simply pointing to the dense forests that surrounded us for miles on end and comparing the number of trees to human beings.

The next day was colder and grayer, and was a walking tour of the Warsaw Ghetto. Not only did we move through the area where Jews were crammed together by the thousands to live, but we visited Umschlagplatz—the spot where Jews were gathered to be transferred to death and concentration camps. We ended the tour on a more positive note by visiting the spot where teenage members of the ghetto plotted to rebel against the Nazis and were actually successful.

It’s one thing to learn about the Holocaust in a historical context in school and to see pictures and videos of what that place was like at the time. But there’s something oddly intriguing about seeing those famous places now surrounded by facets of the 21^st century: apartment buildings, Pizza Huts, and other retail outlets. Visiting these places now provides a new perspective that can’t be learned from a textbook or observed in an extensive documentary. I was really focused on taking in as much Holocaust knowledge as possible but like I said, I’ve never before been to Europe. I found it hard to sleep the first few long bus rides and to not have my eyes glued out the window. You realize that everything is different; the way the city is set up, the types of advertising they have, the nature of the people lining the streets. The graffiti is different and seems predominantly to be portraying some type of message of social or political injustice. But spend more time looking around and you find pieces of American culture that have pervaded.

The next day was the biggest thus far in the trip. We left our first hotel and drove five hours to southern Poland to visit Auschwitz and Birkenau. We toured Auschwitz which was the first point of the trip of a much more graphic nature. We passed under the entrance gate into the camp with the infamous phrase “ARBEIT MACHT FREI” which loosely translated means: “work will set you free.” The tour quickly escalated from lots of reading and throwing around of numbers to the horrifying spectacle that was 4,000 pounds of hair (along with products they made from it) followed by masses of shoes and other personal belongings taken from Jews in similar proportions. The final portion of the tour was through the gas chambers. Talking and photography were restricted inside. As you walk in and are trying to make sense of what happened in there you can visibly notice a blue residue on the walls from the Zyklon B gas used and where there aren’t remnants of the chemical weapon used there are scratch marks…on concrete walls. After that, we briefly toured Birkenau, a camp so large that football fields aren’t even sufficient in describing its size. We sat in one of the barracks to hear the story of one of the survivors that was travelling with us, said a prayer and then went back to the hotel.

The next day was the main event that the trip itself is named after, the March of the Living. Our group returned to Auschwitz after touring the old Jewish quarter in Krakow only this time with sunlight made even brighter from its reflection off the melting snow and 10,000 other people. People were smiling and laughing and speaking a wide variety of different languages. We marched with this mass of people from Auschwitz into Birkenau down hundreds of yards of train tracks that were once used to carry in cattle cars full of Jews. The march concluded with a service at one end of the camp where you could see for another two hours people still filing into the camp. I met people from France, Argentina, Austria, Taiwan, Brazil, the UK, Morocco, Canada, Mexico, South Africa and almost any other place you can think of; all gathered to pay their respects and physically demonstrate the fact that the Nazis weren’t successful.

Unfortunately, our trip in Poland didn’t end there. Our last day was comprised of another five hour bus ride to one of the most horrific death camps, Majdanek. The sun shined bright as we were leaving the hotel but as we neared the camp we were hit with freezing rain. It had the usual displays of appalling numbers of shoes and personal belongings along with gas chambers and other spots of torture. Here the crematoriums stood out the most: one big room full of ovens that turned thousands of dead bodies into ash. Most of that ash made its way to a monument that was erected after the war. A set of stairs leads you up to a grand circular mausoleum with a marble walkway around it that can be seen from hundreds of yards away. In the middle there’s a pile of what looks like sand and rocks but is actually the ashes of 68,000 people. It was at this point I had let my epiphanies regarding my religious identity run wild. I realized that I don’t have to go home and absorb Jewish teachings and live strictly by them but I can still proudly say out of respect for the remains of the people whose ashes I stood over and was captivated by that I am of Jewish heritage. You may not agree with the traditions or teachings but to distance yourself from that history, one so tragic and yet triumphant, is pointless and close-minded.

We left Majdanek and headed straight to the airport where I took off my jacket and long johns, and changed into shorts and a tank top. We landed in Tel Aviv, Israel at four AM, climbed a mountain and then floated in the Dead Sea. What followed was such an optimistic week in Israel that only reaffirmed the revelations that I had about my Jewish identity in such a dark setting as Poland. I would have to write a whole book if I were to include every detail and nuance of our time in Israel. The trip concluded with a march in Jerusalem starting at City Hall and ending at the Western Wall with those same 10,000 people as before. Seeing this type of action in light of Holocaust remembrance allowed me to figure out for myself what it was about being Jewish that was important to me; not necessarily the faith’s moral guidelines or its dos and don’ts, but the rich and triumphant history. My answer to the “Are you Jewish” question remains long and slightly complicated but is now much more rehearsed and natural for me to express.