Photos by Pa m e la Lip

TRAVEL

Greeting arriving
Soviet Jews in
Israel.

Finding Roots

A national mission to Poland and Israel
brought young Michiganians closer to home.

MELANIE KOFF

Special to The Jewish News

ne of the largest
groups of young
Jews ever to
visit Poland
were swept up in
an emotional whirlwind dur-
ing their 10-day Morasha
(Heritage) Mission to Poland
and Israel last fall.
Fifteen Detroiters took part
in the United Jewish Appeal
Young Leadership Mission.
They were joined by 235
American Jews from all over
the country, in their mid-20s
to mid-40s. The trip was in-
tended for those who came of
age after the Holocaust and
the establishment of the
State of Israel.
Morasha Mission travelers
received the red carpet treat-

ment. In Poland, they spent
an evening in a Krakow
synagogue, Pospe Powa, that
had been closed for 50 years.
The Star of David was taken
down Crystal Night, the
November night in 1938
when the Nazis attacked
Jewish citizens, stores and
synagogues.
"We had a new brass Star of
David made and mounted on
the synagogue," said Owen Z.
Perlman of Ann Arbor, na-
tional co-chair of the Morasha
Mission. At the synagogue,
the Krakow Philharmonic,
under the direction of its
American conductor, Gilbert
Levine, performed sym-
phonies of Jewish themes and
by Jewish composers.
Mr. Perlman said when an
American cellist, 19-year-old
Matt Heimevitz, played
"Hatikvah," "most everyone

started to cry. `Hatikvah' had
never been played in the
synagogue before, as Israel
did not exist when it was
closed up."
After the performance, the
American ambassador to
Poland threw a reception at
the synagogue for the mission

"We are the last
generation able to
meet people who
survived."

participants. "The synagogue
has been cleaned up and is
open now," said Mr. Perlman.
"The community will attempt
to keep it going."
of
Pamela
Lippitt
Southfield had been to Israel
four times but had never
visited Poland. "We are the

last generation who are real-
ly able to meet people who
survived the Holocaust," said
Ms. 'Lippitt.
The group visited Lublin, a
Polish city with 52,000 Jews
before World War II. Today,
six Jews live in the city.
"Fifty percent of American
Jews trace their roots to
Poland, a nation that once
had a Jewish community of
three million and now has on-
ly about 8,000 Jews," said Mr.
Perlman, who is president of
the Jewish Community Asso-
ciationlUnited Jewish Appeal
of Washtenaw County. He
spent the last year planning
the national mission.
The group were led through
Polish towns, former ghettos
and Auschwitz-Birkenau, ac-
companied by a Polish sur-
vivor of the Holocaust.
They traveled to the

Maidanek concentration
camp outside Lublin, and
viewed a commemorative
marker that contained the
ashes of 18,000 people,
slaughtered in one day.
Dolcy Garfield, of Ann Ar-
bor, said the trip provided the
opportunity to "get as close as
we can to having a better
understanding of what the
survivors went through."
Ms. Garfield's father was
born in Poland and fled to
Russia at the beginning of the
war with other men from the
community. The men thought
their wives and children
wouldn't be harmed, but
when they returned two years
later, they learned their
families had been taken to
Auschwitz.
During the Morasha visit to
Auschwitz, Ms. Garfield was
surprised to see a concession

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

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