Reflections by Alex Sokol

Today is April 27, 2006, it’s only been 3 days since we arrived in
Poland, but it’s already felt like weeks. We have gone to many places that have been etched into world history. Places so infamous that when you hear their names thoughts of death and cruelty come to mind. We have been to Aushwitz-Burkineu, Majdanek, and today we went to the place were Treblinka was. Now it is just a monument with 18,000 erected stones.

When we first arrived in
Krakow, Poland, it was beautiful weather. Sunny and clear skies, you couldn’t ask for a nicer day. After we went threw customs and got our bags we were off to the city of
Krakow where we went to some famous synogauges and learned about the famous Rabbis that were apart of our history and what they had to do with those synogaugs. After that we went to dinner. I was expecting terrible food but to my surprise the food wasn’t that bad. It was a nice chicken dinner. Actully this whole trip has had pretty good food. After dinner we went to an AMAZING memorial ceremony dedicated to the victims of the holocaust. During the program we met a lot of other groups. The group I was most excited to see was the group from
Israel. In that group my friend who I haven’t seen since the summer was in it. I probably spent at least 20 minutes running around looking for her, but I eventually found her, and when I saw her all these happy emotions started pouring threw me. She told me she spent at least 20 minutes looking for me. She was asking everyone if they knew me. I just started laughing and almost crying of happiness. So after that we went back to our hotel in
Krakow and crashed for the night.

            The next we had an early wake up at 5:45 and we left the hotel around 7:00 to started a day that I will never forget and that changed my view on my Judiasm and how I am as a person. So after Breakfast we went of the bus for just a little bit till we arrived at were the
Krakow ghetto used to be. We learned a little bit about the history of the ghetto and then we went to the site of were the concentration camp called Plaszow was. There is nothing left of it except you can see were the mass graves were. After that we were off to see the most infamous place on earth. A place that when you hear its name only thoughts of death and torture come to mind. This place is called
Auschwitz.
Auschwitz is enormous. It is separated into to places
Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Berkineu. We started out at
Auschwitz I. It was between 10 and 11 that we arrived at
Auschwitz I, on April 25^th, 2006, which was also Yom HaShoah, in English it means Holocaust rememberance day.

            The first thing we saw at
Auschwitz I was the gas chamber and cremeetoria. As I walked into it I felt my knees go week. I almost couldn’t hold myself up. You cant prepare yourself to see such things. As we left the gas the chambers we went into different parts of the camp that they have turned into museums. You got to see how the prisoners lived. You saw the bathrooms, living conditions, were the SS lived, and how it was all constructed.
Auschwitz I is huge it stretches for kilometers. After we toured around the camp and learned about it, it was time to start the March of The Living. Nine Thousand Jews from all over the world were there to take the 3 kilometer march from
Auschwitz I to Auschwitz II-Berkineu. As the march began we walked out the front gate of Auschwitz I that have the worlds that say in German “Arbeit Macht Frei” which means work for freedom in English. When we reached Auschwitz II-Berkineu and hour later and saw how big the camp was, it shocked me the size of it. It stretched for miles on miles. The maginitude of the camp is jaw dropping. I thought to myself how could anyone construct something so big for one purpose, and that was to kill. When the ceremony started many people talked including, Shimon Peres, The head of the
Auschwitz museum, A representative of the Polish president, and the head Rabbi of Israel who was a holocaust survivor. At the end of the ceremony the Israeli national anthem, but also the national anthem of the Jewish people was played, the Hatikvah. When I heard the Hatikvah played I cried. I cried because at that moment I relized how proud I am to be a Jew and how much my Judiasm means to me, and how much this anthem meant to all Jews that were murdered in the Holocaust. We were at
Auschwitz for about 8 hours, but those hours felt like 8 minutes. It was a life changing expierence. After the ceremony we toured Auschwitz II-Berkineu for a few hours and learned how they killed the people who were in the camp. It is the largest cemetery in the world. Close to 2 million people were killed there.

The next day we went to the place I think is the scariest place on earth. This place is called M