4\256- Yom Hashoah- “ Revisiting the horrors of Auschwitz” and the March – Leah Belson

As I look out the window of the rainy and cloudy sky, I wait in anticipation to arrive at
Auschwitz. Today marks the day of the commemoration of the Shoah, the Holocaust. It just mind boggles me that I am now going to walk through the “gate of decievement” with the knowledge of the lie that is bestowed within those words “ Arbeit macht frei”. And a question comes to mind. Why do I get to walk calmly through the unguarded gate, not ripped away from my loved ones, not thrown aside like garbage being thrown in a trash can, and comforted by the thousands around me unthreatened by those words which slaughtered so many? It is through this 3 kilometer march that I and so many will try to conjure the meaning of –why. It is through this march to the gas chambers, crematorium, and slaughter house that the ideology of the holocaust will be put into perspective when the generations of the survivors of the holocaust prevail by marching in pride to a place that once reeked with death. We are marching in pride to show that we are no longer being forced to march to our own deaths but rather we are walking to live! We will march with our personal motivation to show that WE, yes we, are the result of the triumph of the Jews. And that is why, as I finish writing this, there is no longer a rainy, dreary, and cloudy sky out my window, but a ray of sunlight shinning. – I’m here, Here I go….