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Living Memories

(01- [571,7

A Detroit-area survivor
makes history real for
March of the Living youths.

SHIRR TRAISON
Special to The Jewish News

t was a peaceful spring day in Poland, the golden sun setting, mild
clouds decorating the clear blue sky when the Holocaust finally became
a reality for us.

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Jewish students and their tutors pass by a guard's tower at the former Nazi
death camp of Auschwitz as they walk the annual March of the Living in the
southern Polish city of Oswiecim on Tuesday. Marchers included a 70-member
Detroit delegation.

Identical looks of horror and of revelation lined the faces of everyone present
when David Bergman, a survivor of the Holocaust and of Plazcow concentration
camp, where we stood, began to tell his horrific tale of survival.
After an emotional account of his days there, Bergman said strongly, with undy-
ing certainty, "Am Yisrael chai — the nation of Israel lives." Then the whole group
began to sing "Eli, Eli, my God, my God" with one voice, with one mind.
"On the way to the site, everyone was talking, joking around," said Dovy
Singal, a sophomore at Akiva, but when Bergman began to speak, the mouths
closed and the hearts and ears opened. People began to cry. We realized that it had
really happened,"
Plazcow, a subcamp of
Maidanek, began func-
tioning in June 1942.
Now, the barracks and
wire fences have been torn
down; all that is left is a
site in memory to all
those who perished.
As we stood by the site,
Rabbi Aaron Bergman, of
Congregation Beth
Abraham Hillel Moses
and David Bergman's son,
began to recite, Ael Maleh
Rachamim, the memorial
prayer to those who died.
In Poland this week, Detroit-area youths visited
Halfway through, he
the ghetto in Kracow; the death camps in Auschwitz
ceased as he began to cry.
and Maidanek, near Lublin, and sites in and
It was very intense,"
around Warsaw, including Treblinka and the
said Rabbi Bergman,
mass graves in Lupochova forest.
watching my dad, 55
years later, speak about it
as though it had happened yesterday. I've heard about it my whole life. Now I have
seen it."
With the trip to Plazcow, it had begun. "I was awestruck," said Sarit Ashman, a
senior at North Farmington High. For us, 55 years later to witness this is one
aspect. But to see Mr. Bergman, a survivor, come and tell us makes it so much dif-
ferent, so much more real."
Barry Skoczylas, a senior at Akiva Hebrew Day School, was amazed by this as
well. "We had to walk from the Plazcow site to a stone quarry. As we walked, we
complained about how strenuous it was. Only when we arrived was it revealed to
us that Mr. Bergman had made the same trek in his days at Plazcow while carrying
heavy stones above his head."
This trip to Plazcow made the Holocaust come haltingly before our eyes. We
were no longer tourists in Poland. We realized that, due to our ancestors, we are
s urvivors.

"

Shira Traison, 16, is a junior at Akiva Hebrew
Day School in Lathrup Village and is partici-
pating in the March of the Living trip to
Poland and Israel. She is the daughter of
Michael and Datia Traison of West Bloomfield.
She hopes to be a lobbyist for AIPAC, has
taken part in Model UN and Panim el Panim,
is regional vice president of education for
Central East National Conference of
Synagogue Youth, and is a,member of the
Anti-Defamation League Dream
Dialogue and
D
the Daniel Sobel Friendship Circle. Last sum-
mer, she attended the NCSY Michlelet pro-
gram, a six-week learning program in Israel.

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4/16
1999

14 Detroit Jewish News