equipped to handle such an intense
experience and to actually learn from
it, rather than just feeling it."
March officials say they would like
to involve college students and.: he.
first March for college-age students
did take place in 1997, with a second
scheduled for next spring. However,
neither Yosef Kedem, executive vice
president of the International March
of the Living, nor Susan Rachlin,
director of special projects for the
New York Board of Jewish
Education (BJE) and coordinator
of New York-area March of the
Living groups, see college pro-
grams as their priority.
Rachlin says it is hard to find
college students to begin with
and notes that Yom Hashoah
often coincides with university
final exams. But she also says the
most important motivation for
focusing recruitment efforts on
tenth, eleventh, and twelfth
graders is that these teenagers are
"impressionable, and amenable to
change and understanding."
Even before the March begins,
organizers emphasize the transfor-
mative effect of the experience.
"Afterwards, you may never be the
same! And you may like what VOL .Ve
become," exhorts the educational
packer sent to all participants.
But how does the March attempt to
change students, and what does it
want them to become%
Yoni Schwab, a junior at Columbia
Un:versity and the Jewish Theological
Seminary of America and a 1994
March alumnus from New York, says
the program relies on a "shallow evo-
cation of emotion in order to spur on
pro-Israel and anti-gentile feelings."
Despite what he says is an admirable
attempt by March educators to pro-
vide sz:Idents with background and
resources both before and during the
trip, there is also considerable reliance
on emotional manipulation.
Richler said the Poland itinerary
itself is "contrived" and "calculated" ro
achieve the greatest dramatic effect.
The Columbia graduate even sees a
purposeful order to the extermination
calap visits. First was Treblinka, at
which there are only memorial stones,
then the march between Auschwitz
(primarily a camp for non-Jewish pris-
oners of war and other undesirables)
and Birkenau (which had only Jewish
inmates). The final destination, as she
recalls, was Maidanek, "the most
intact, horrifying, and emotion-jerk-
ing." Richler goes so far as to label the
March an attempt at "reconstructing"
the Holocaust experience.
In Poland, the time constraints
imposed by the groups' one-week stay,
compounded by the long distances
between major sites and cities, make
the trip grueling as well as incense.
"While in Poland the kids barely eat,
barely sleep, and we take them from
camp to camp," says Friedman, who
has served as a staff member on the
March. "Of course, they are going to
react emotionally."
March organizers do not
deny that they want partici-
pants to have an emotional
reaction to what they see.
The organization's official
Web site likens the emotion-
al swings felt by participants
to those of a roller coaster,
careening from a low depres-
sion to the heights of joy.
Participants are taught
that Poland is a country full
of death camps and anti-
Semitism, students said.
Kedem, the March's director,
says, "we do not teach that
the Poles are to blame for
what happened during the
Holocaust," adding that
some recent groups have met
with Polish non-Jews.
Yet Cynthia Weinger, a 1998 grad-
uate of Washington University and a
1995 March alumna, describes how
her group "traveled around Poland in
a protected bubble." She cannot recall
any meaningful interaction with Poles.
Detroiters Praise March Experience
Format changes have emphasized thinking as well as feelings, they say.
HARRY KI RS B AU M
Stair Writer
T
he first time Arnie Weiner
went on the March of ,the
Living, in 1990, he thought
some leaders promoted
intolerance of the Poles.
"They came across impressing on the
kids how terrible the Poles were and
what they did to the Jews," he said. "In
fact, I remember coming out of the trip
saying to myself, 'Gee, I thought the
Germans were the ones guilty of this
whole thing.' The Poles were complici-
taus, of course, but the emphasis
seemed to be anti-Polish."
Returning in 1994 and 1996,
Weiner, the executive director of the
Michigan Region B'nai B'rith Youth
Organization,
said he found the
e,'
emphasis changed and that the March
had become less reliant on emotions
and more interested in objective pre-
sentation.
In recent interviews, other local
MOTL participants and organizers
agreed with Weiner that the March
had a handful of negatives that were
strongly outweighed by the positives of
the two-week visit to Poland and Israel
for high-school-aged Jews.
They noted, for example, that they
certainly didn't feel too young to han-
dle the emotional and physical
demands of the trip.
"The March is dependent upon
one's maturity as opposed to their
grade," said Shari Aviva Katz, 19, a
participant in the 1997 MOTL. "If
you have a genuine interest in embark-
ing on such a trip, age is irrelevant."
emotionally draining then physically
draining. The food, which was kosher,
was not necessarily from a four-star
catering service, but it was enough to
provide us with energy and nutrition,"
she said. "Because of the trav-
el time from site to site, we
had ample time to sleep on
the bus.
"After seeing the concen-
tration camps, we all felt for-
tunate to have food and a bed
to call ours each night," she
added. "The trip made you
think in a different way than
from the thought process of a
typical day in Farmington
Hills or West Bloomfield.
And it made you appreciate
In a concentration camp, a teen studies Holocaust the bare necessities which we
need to survive."
documents.
While the trip through Poland was
deemed too physically grueling for
some, with not enough time to eat
and sleep, Katz disagreed.
"I believe that the trip was more
12/18
1998
Detroit Jewish News
9