....11
family learned
about the
H eatherwood
life-style...
and now I'm living it!"
p"My
Survivors Are Planning
First Return To Poland
ALAN HITSKY ASSOCIATE EDITOR
B
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endet Lewkowicz of South-
field hasn't been back to
Poland since the end of
World War II. And for
many years, the 71-year-old Holo-
caust survivor had no desire to re-
turn.
Now, in part due to a trip to
Poland and the Nazi death
camps, sponsored by Children of
Holocaust Survivors Association
in Michigan (CHAIM), that has
changed.
Mr. Lewkowicz will travel with
his two sons in April on the
CHAIM-sponsored visit to
Prague, Cracow, Rzeszow, Lublin,
Warsaw and Rome. The $2,100
tour has time built in to include
the travelers' hometowns, the for-
mer Jewish ghettos in major
cities, as well as the Auschwitz-
Birkenau, Majdanek and Tre-
blinka death camps.
- It was only in recent years that
Mr. Lewkowicz began thinking
about visiting his native Zdun-
skawola, near Lodz in Poland. Al-
though he and five sisters
survived the Holocaust, he lost
his parents, three brothers and
other relatives to the Nazis.
"But now I want to go back and
see the streets where I walked as
a young boy," he said. "I want to
show my sons where I grew up."
Mr. Lewkowicz is under no il-
lusions. He doesn't expect to find
people he knew. "The older peo-
ple are no longer living and the
younger people won't know me.
There are not many Jewish peo-
ple left there."
The Nazis murdered more
than 3 million of Poland's 3.5 mil-
lion Jewish population. Commu-
nist anti-Semitism after World
War II forced most of the re-
maining Jews to flee. The coun-
try now has 3,500 Jewish citizens.
Morry Levin, Jack, Bendet and Esther Lewkowicz.
Mr. Lewkowicz was 16 in 1941
when he was taken by the Nazis.
He was a slave laborer in a coal
mine near Auschwitz, and also
was sent to Buchenwald in Ger-
many and to other camps.
In 1946, while in a displaced
persons camp in Germany, Mr.
Lewkowicz found his sisters'
names on a Red Cross list from
Sweden.
A friend of the sisters in Swe-
den pretended she was his wife
so that he could be reunited with
them. The friend, Esther, and
Mr. Lewkowicz later married.
The couple moved to the United
States from Sweden in 1954, and
Mr. Lewkowicz worked here as a
house painter.
Their sons, Morry Levin of
Farmington Hills and Jack
Lewkowicz of Herndon, Va., are
going to Poland with Mr.
Lewkowicz. Esther Lewkowicz is
not.
"It's too hard physically and
emotionally for my mother to
go," Mr. Levin said. "But when
CHAIM announced the trip, my
father jumped at the opportuni-
ty. This is where his parents
died and many others in his
family.
"For myself, I have no ances-
tors in the United States. I want
to see how my father lived. I'd
like to find a cemetery" where
family members are buried. "I
have no pictures," he said.
Dr. Charles Slow, founder and
president of CHAIM, conceived
the trip, which was organized by
CHAIM member Helen Cozzet-
to of Mayfair Travel Service.
Dr. Silow said time is getting
short for many of the survivors.
"Many have already passed away
and some would never go back,"
he said. "But others see this as a
once-in-a-lifetime opportunity." ❑
Et For information about the
CHAIM trip, call Helen
Cozzetto at Mayfair Travel,
(800) 788-7633.
When The Holocaust
Becomes Humdrum
DAVID ZEMAN STAFF WRITER
411
oshua Hearshen, a 17-
year-old junior at Berkley
High School, had grown
impatient with the per-
functory attention given to the
Holocaust in school.
As a sophomore last spring,
he finally decided he had had
enough after sitting through a
history class in which students
seemed distracted and even ap-
peared to doze off during a lec-
ture on the extermination of the
Jews — a style of teaching Mr.
Hearshen wryly refers to as "re-
gurgitation education."
So he approached a favorite
teacher known for her uncon-
ventional methods and offered
this provocative proposal: allow
him and his schoolmates to
teach their own course on the
Holocaust.
"Students can teach students
as well as teachers can teach
students," Mr. Hearshen de-
clared with characteristic brava-
do.
The teacher, Mary Jo Maples,
recalls the sales pitch vividly.