Student Reflections on Poland

This week in Poland we have borne witness, reflected, and traveled back to the time of the Shoah, 80 years ago. Here are a few of my takeaways from this experience and moments that especially impacted me.

In the Auschwitz I Yad Vashem exhibit, home movies were projected on the walls that demonstrated a side to those who were murdered that I had not heavily ruminated on. These clips showed the lives of Jews before the Holocaust: children running through the fields, men and women dancing, and people working with smiles on their faces. These actions, though seemingly mundane, are little windows into life before the war, a life with humanity, with lightness and laughter. I couldn’t help but think back to the home videos of my childhood. This connection only deepened the terror and sadness associated with the Shoah. Videos of little me singing and dancing at the beach—how would she feel, at just five years old, to have everything taken away like the millions of Jews in the Holocaust had? As much as it was painful, these videos allowed me to better connect and resonate with the victims of the Shoah.

In Sobibor, the barren land had more impact than I thought it would. Walking through the forest and open fields, I felt an atmosphere of intensity. Ashes and bones buried beneath sacred land, it almost felt disrespectful to walk above them. Singing “Eli Eli, she’lo yigamer le’olam” with my classmates solidified the sanctity of this moment and of the land.

Majdanek was the most difficult for me. A camp in the center of Lublin, its conspicuousness was frightening. The air in the crematorium was thick and damp with sorrow. Upon entering, I was immediately overwhelmed and overtaken with sadness. It felt as if the same emotions processed over 80 years ago were preserved as well as the building itself. The sentiments felt trapped inside the expansive grey crematoria. I almost saw them trying to escape, collecting at the ceiling, unable to exit through the open doors. In Majdanek, I felt the full impact and finality of the Shoah and of death.

Finally, and more generally, it was impossible not to notice the copious amounts of vegetation and nature at each camp we visited. The nature, typically a sign of comfort and hope, is laced with mourning and hopelessness. Trees and flowers broke and sprouted through land sown with bones of the innocent. Trees, older than the camps themselves, stand as witnesses to brutality, keeping the history alive as long as they remain.