Running On History
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For Poles, these infamous sites are on their jogging routes.
TALI ZECHORY
Special to the Jewish News
I like to jog. I jog through my neighborhood, the
perfect suburban setting, complete with minivans,
golden retrievers and children behind lemonade
stands.
I saw a jogger last week. She looked just like
every jogger I know and she was probably on her
everyday route. But this route had no golden
retrievers. Hers was a route through the Plaszow
concentration camp.
It seems almost insignificant, but this event
stunned me. A woman jogs through an infamous
concentration camp, nonchalantly breezes by 70
Jewish kids from half a world away who are leading
a service for the thousands killed at that very site,
and she does not say a word or even turn her head?
Does she not realize that she could be running
over the unmarked graves of hundreds or thousand
of Jews killed there? Does she just not care? Or is
she simply desensitized to the Holocaust by the
integration of it into her regular environment?
To us, the participants in the Mitzhad Ha-
Chaim (March of the Living), the sites are like
nothing we have ever seen before. Where in
America can we find places like Auschwitz,
Treblinka and Plaszow? Nowhere.
But for Poles, these infamous sites are in their
very back yards, on their way to work, on their jo
ging routes. And it has been this way for the past
half-century.
What kind of responsibility do the people of
Poland today hold for the Holocaust? Some say it
should play a major role in the day-to-day educa-
tion and lives of Poles.
Shema For The Living
After tears, a redemption in a barracks at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
ELISA LINDOW
Special to the Jewish News
About The March
Forty-two Detroit area teens went to
Poland and Israel as part of the Detroit
Teen Unity Mission/International
March of the Living, a trip that allows
the teens to learn about their ances-
tors' experiences in the context of the
Holocaust and post-1948 Israel.
This trip, which included teens
and rabbis from Orthodox,
Conservative, Reform and
Traditional backgrounds, is the sec-
ond sponsored by the Agency for
Jewish Education of Metropolitan
Detroit and Jewish Federation of
Metropolitan Detroit. B'nai B'rith
Youth Organization has been send-
ing teens on the March of the Living
every other year since 1988.
The Jewish News asked three teens
to file reports, reflecting on their
experiences on the April 10-26 trip.
Here are their stories.
Rain was falling April 19 when we started our tour
at the black gate of Auschwitz.
For some on this March of the Living, the rain
just blended in with the tears.
We went first to the building that records all
those who died of starvation. Seeing the pictures
and sculptures, I leaned up against a tall, cold,
green stove; chills ran up and down my spine. Here
we were, wet and overwhelmed by what we were
seeing and hearing, and it was only the beginning
of what was to come.
As we walked down toward the "wall of death,"
where so many people had been shot to death,
many of us started to cry again.
Next was the special railway ramp from Auschwitz
to Birkenau. Here, women and children were sepa-
rated from the men. About 25 percent of the arrivals
were considered fit for work and were directed to the
camp. The others were led to the gas chambers.
As we walked inside one dark, cold, gray cement
room with so many crammed inside, we saw the
blue marks left on the walls from the Zyklon B gas
that poured out of the "shower heads." I thought of
the 1,000 victims shoved in at a time. After 15 or
20 minutes, the chamber was opened; the bodies
were stripped of gold: teeth, rings, etc. Then the
bodies were transported to the crematoria and the
victims' personal documents were destroyed. We, (
unlike them, were able to walk out and go outside.
Soon after we lined up with hundreds of other
teens from all across the world. The rain stopped,
but the gray clouds remained. This was it, the
March of the Living. Israeli flags blew in the wind;
Death, Life And Memory
A small Galilean settlement celebrates Memorial Day and Independence Day.
SHIRR TRAISON
Special to the Jewish News
Hoshaya, Israel .
On a slighly chilly evening in this little yishuv in the
Central Galilee, no one said a word. It was Memorial
Day, but a barbecue was not on the agenda.
Three hundred people, many with tears run-
ning down their cheeks, stood in the dark in front
of a beautiful synagogue, staring at the pictures
flashing on the overhead projector. Even the chil-
dren stood with their arms by their sides, looking
at the images of people they had loved who died
for the State of Israel.
When the siren went off, all was deadly silent. "It
is probably the only time in the world when an
entire country is quiet, commented Marc Barnes, a
senior at Birmingham Groves High School.
For the residents of Hoshaya, and for all of
Israel, Yom HaZikaron is the most somber of occa-
sions. Every Israeli knows someone who died for
Israel. It is a fact of life most live with uneasily, yet
daily. In this small country that rose from the ashes
of the Holocaust, this is one more daily reminder of
survival.
When I whispered to Moriah Ashkenazy, my
Israeli cohort and host for the evening ceremony, <
"This is so nice," she whispered back, "It is because
they were nice." Moriah, 16, understands what this
means because this is a way of life.
With each photo projected, a relative or loved
one rose to tell an anecdote or two about the per-
son, a quirk or characteristic that made them spe-
cial, something that made this martyr live.
Some of these soldiers had been only 19 or 20
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