March of the Living

The March of the Living is an annual event that takes place on Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. Around 11,000 people (both Jewish and not) from all over the world came together to walk the 3km "Death March" between Auschwitz I and Birkenau and commemorate the loss of the victims of the Holocaust. I travelled with the UK delegation, and we spent 3.5 days touring Jewish sites in Poland before the day of the march.




Day 1 - Warsaw:
I met the UK March of the Living delegation at the airport before lunchtime. We had to wait for the non-London flights to get in, so we were in the terminal for a bit. We were given books with information about life before, during, and after the Holocaust, songs and prayers, accounts by survivors, and our itinerary.

It had started raining by the time we left the airport. We were given sandwiches for lunch on the bus on the way to our first stop, the Jewish Cemetery in Warsaw. The cemetery was huge, and there appeared to be no order to the graves. There is no map, making it hard to find specific graves. The tombstones were all of different styles, shapes, and sizes. The educator with our group took us around, pointing out notable gravestones.

There was also a mass graves site because the Nazis knew Jews were smuggling stuff and hiding things in the graveyard. The mass grave site served as an open space with no trees and tombstones to hide behind.

We were told an amazing story about a statue of a man holding onto young children. Janusz Korczak ran an orphanage in Warsaw, and the orphans were called to be sent to Treblinka. Korczak got the 200 children dressed up as if they were going on an outing, and he didn't want to leave them on their own, so he went to the camp with them even though he knew they would all be killed.

There was a very colorful mosaic grave for L.L. Zamenhof, the creator of Esperanto. Esperanto was a language designed to be easy learnable by people all over the world. The goal was to make international communication easier.

We also saw the grave of Adam Czerniakow, the head of the Judenrat in the Warsaw Ghetto. The Judenrat were administrative bodies that the Nazis forced the Jews to form in the ghettos. The Nazis made Czerniakow write the lists of Jews that would be deported each day, but he committed suicide instead. Even though you cannot be buried in a Jewish cemetery if you commit suicide, an exception was made for him.

We then went to the Jewish Ghetto and saw a piece of the ghetto wall that was still standing. The ghetto walls were about 10 feet high, and there were apartment buildings right up against the wall. Jews were stuffed into the ghetto, with many families having to share single-family apartments.

The next stop was Umschlagplatz, the place where Jews got sent to Treblinka. There is now a memorial in this spot, and there are still some rail tracks visible on the street next to it. The memorial shows a selection of first names of people sent away, with the idea that first names would be more relatable than last names. It was designed to look like an open cattle car with a gravestone on top. The split in the back wall opens up to a tree to represent hope.

We walked past another memorial, but we could not go up to it because members of the Israeli police were having a ceremony there.

We also passed the Ghetto Uprising memorial, which is in a construction area because a big museum about the history of Polish Jews is being built behind it.

Our last stop was the Jewish Historical Institute. We were told about how the Nazis would collect Jewish objects with the intent of making a museum about Jews once they were extinct. They would collect Kosher candy, for example, since nobody would know what Kosher candy was once the Jews were gone.

After walking around all day in the cold rain and getting very wet, we went to our hotel for dinner. It was nice to be in a real hotel after spending the past week and a half in hostels. My roommate was another Oxford grad student from Michigan. She went to high school with Zander, one of the boys I had just been travelling with. Somehow she ended up on a bus with a bunch of eighteen-year-olds. All of the meals on the trip were Kosher; the food, however, did not compare at all to the amazing food we were given in our hotel in Jerusalem (which was understandable given how small the Jewish community is in Poland). The buffet dinner typically consisted of chicken cutlets, soup packets, cucumbers and tomatoes, baked potatoes, green beans, and hummus and baba ghanoush with bread. Dessert was usually halva, chocolate mousse, or jello.

All the groups met after dinner to introduce ourselves, explain why we were on the trip, and talk about the activities of the day. The most common reasons for coming on the trip were a direct family connection to Poland, wanting to learn more about the Holocaust, and wanting to connect with Jewish history. I was on a bus of students and recent grads, and we were divided into two groups - a group who had gone on Birthright and a group of people in a few youth movements and the miscellaneous others like me. The people on my bus ranged from the occasional non-Jew, people with one Jewish grandparent who were not brought up Jewish, to people who grew up in Orthodox families and attended Jewish day schools. People in the UK continue their participation in youth groups throughout university. They also go to "summer camp," which is typically a 2-week stay at sleepaway camp with their youth group, similar to USY's week-long Encampment. One interesting youth movement represented in my group was JLGB, the Jewish Lads' and Girls' Brigade. If that sounds kind of militaristic to you, it's because it kind of is. They have military-like uniforms and rankings like officers, and they march for certain things. During the war, many members of the JLGB participated in the war effort. Even though we grew up in different countries, I felt like I shared a culture with many of the people on the trip. We were able to talk about things like our favorite Passover foods, our Hebrew school days, and not loving the people we went to Israel with. I also learned that instead of Japs, the Brits have J.P.'s. I did not know enough, however, to be able to pick out who would be considered a J.P. in this country.

The other buses (or 'coaches,' as the British would say) in the UK delegation were: 1) adults, 2) people in youth movements like BBYO, 3) "students." A Holocaust educator was assigned to each group (ours was Simon Cooper), and a survivor travelled on each bus. Our survivor was Eve Kugler. We spent a lot of time on buses and watched three movies: 'Fiddler on the Roof,' 'The Pianist,' and 'Conspiracy,' an HBO film about the Wannsee Conference, where high-ranking Nazi officials devised the Final Solution.

Day 2 - Treblinka, Kazimierz Dolny, & Lublin:
We had an early start with breakfast at 7 am. Breakfasts consisted of cereal, hard boiled eggs, yogurt, and any of the food that we used for making our lunches. We made our lunches in the morning to take on the bus and had the options of rolls, nutella, jelly, tuna, cheese, cucumbers, tomatoes, make-your-own egg salad, and apples.

Treblinka was our first stop of the day, and it was pouring when we got there. Treblinka, an extermination camp, seemed to be in a forest in the middle of nowhere. There were no barracks at the camp; more than 800,000 people just went there to be murdered. One German commandant, Franz Stangl, lived at the camp with his family (who he claimed didn't know about what went on in the camp). He would ride around the camp on his white horse directing Jews to their death. The only workers were the Jews forced into taking bodies out of the gas chamber and burying or burning them. They revolted in 1943, and about 100 Jews escaped. In order to cover their tracks, the Nazis destroyed the camp. There is now a memorial full of stones of varying sizes. Long stones are placed as you enter to represent an endless train track.

The main memorial site begins with stones with the names of the countries all the victims of the camp came from.

There is a massive stone structure in a center area with a stone in front of it that says "never again" in a multitude of languages. This structure stands in the place of the gas chamber.

This area is surrounded by smaller stones, some of which have engraved in them the names of communities where victims came from.

Only one stone is engraved with the name of a person. That stone is for Janusz Korczak, the head of the orphanage. Black stones are placed in the ground in the field where bodies were burned.

Before leaving Treblinka, we held a small ceremony at the structure where the gas chamber once stood. One of the survivors with us lost many of her relatives, including her mother, in Treblinka. Before saying Kaddish, she recited the names of these family members. Seeing her sob as she recited these names was the most moving part of our trip to Treblinka.

Our next stop was Kazimierz Dolny, a shtetl town along a river that gave off a feeling of being a popular summer vacation spot. The town still has a lively market day.

Before the war, the town was about half Jewish. We visited a tiny old synagogue that was used as a movie theater after the war. It was only recently converted back to a temple, and it is now full of black and white photographs showing Jewish life in the community before the war. A group of men formed a minyon and prayed in the shul. Afterwards, the Rabbi led us in a song and dance separated by gender.

One of the educators on our bus later told us that this was the first Jewish prayer service held in the building since it was restored, and everyone on the bus clapped for being part of something so meaningful.

We passed another memorial on our way out of the town, but we did not get out since it was wet, and we were behind schedule. We then drove to Lublin, where we spent the night.

Day 3 - Majdanek, Krasnik, & Krakow:
Our first stop of the day is Majdanek, the concentration camp right on the outskirts of Lublin. It was the first camp to be liberated in 1944 by the Russians, and the Nazis didn't have time to destroy it. The road next to the camp existed during the war, and you can see apartment buildings in the city from the camp. The Poles likely knew about what was going on, but they would have been killed had they done anything about it.

When the Jews entered the camp, they went through a selection process - you go to work or you go to the gas chamber. We were told stories about some helpful German guards who hinted at young boys in the selection line to say they were of an older age in order to avoid the gas chamber. We entered the gas chamber, where the walls looked like paint was coming off, or perhaps that is what gas does to concrete. One room had a small grated window that the Nazis would look through to check when the gassing process was complete. 

Many of the barracks were converted into museum space with information about life in the camps, prisoner belongings, maps of camps and towns, etc.

One barrack was converted into a memorial where barbed wire formed circular structures around small lights.

We also entered a barrack that showed what sleeping quarters were like - big wooden beds covered in hay with a piece of fabric on top.

Then we saw the crematorium. The ovens had metal devices that looked like stretchers in them.

The last thing we saw at Majdanek was the Mausoleum, which was built on the path to the crematorium. The Mausoleum is a giant dome that you walk up to, and inside is a mound of dirt taken from the camp grounds. Since bodies were burned and buried in the camp, this mound is likely to contain ashes of the victims. Our group lit memorial candles in the stones at the bottom of the Mausoleum before leaving.

Our educator told us many stories about life in the camp as we travelled through it. The story that struck me the most was that of Operation Harvest Festival. On this one day - November 3, 1943 - the Nazis shot 18,000 prisoners while blaring music from the camp loudspeakers to drown out the screams. In the group discussion that night, I said I had trouble imagining that many people, and our educator told me that on the day of the march, I would see 11,000 people at Birkenau.

After Majdanek, we went to Krasnik, a small town that used to be about half Jewish. We visited an old synagogue that the Germans destroyed during the war. It was much bigger than the synagogue in Kazimierz Dolny and was probably much more ornate, judging from the paintings that remained on the walls. The synagogue is being refurbished as a museum and community building (since there are no Jews left to use it as a synagogue), and our educator told us that technically we had entered a hard-hat area.

We then had a little bit of free time in the town to find a snack. Another girl and I went to ask a grocery store attendant where we could find a bathroom. We remembered that the Polish word for toilet looked something like the English word, but saying that didn't work. When my friend finally said 'wee wee,' the woman understood what we were asking for lol. You have to pay an attendant to use many of the bathrooms in Poland.

When we arrived in Krakow, we visited Kazimierz, the Jewish district. We learned that people in Krakow go out for 'Jewish food,' just like you would go out for Indian or Chinese food.

We saw a couple synagogues, Jewish restaurants, and the Krakow JCC. The JCC had a sign inviting MOTL participants in, and our educator told us about the problem of Holocaust tourism - people just come to see the camps but typically don't see anything else related to Jewish life in Poland or Polish life in general. 

There was a little fenced-off grassy area outside the Remuh Synagogue, which was first built in the 16th century. The area has a sculpture that resembles a chuppah. Legend has it that a wedding was delayed because the groom argued about the dowry from an orphaned girl. The rabbi had told them to finish before Sabbath, but they did not. The rabbi then excommunicated everyone involved with this ordeal, and then the ground opened and swallowed the wedding group.

After dinner that evening, Eve, our survivor, told our bus a bit about her story. She lived in Germany, and her father owned a department store on the ground floor of the building they lived in. Her grandfather was arrested one day and deported to Poland. On Kristallnacht, the Nazis arrested her father and destroyed the windows of his department store. She told us about how her mother had to clean up the damage of the store, and how business went down because many of the regular non-Jewish customers said that though they didn't have a problem with the Jews, they didn't want to be caught in a Jewish shop. One notable story Eve told was about how she was out with her mother and a Nazi congratulated her mother for producing such a beautiful Aryan child. Eve's mother eventually got the family visas out of the country to France.

Day 4 - Krakow & Auschwitz-Birkenau
Before we left for Auschwitz, we stopped in the Krakow Ghetto and visited a remaining piece of the wall that surrounded the ghetto. We were told about a pharmacist, Tadeusz Pankiewicz, who is now considered to be a Righteous among the Nations, non-Jews who risked their lives to help Jews during the Holocaust. This pharmacist had a shop in the ghetto area, and he was the only gentile allowed to remain once the ghetto was created. His shop had a backdoor that entered the ghetto, and he continued to provide drugs to the Jews.

We also saw the memorial to the Krakow Ghetto, which consists of a bunch of iron chairs in an empty square. Along the edges of the square and at the bus stop next to it, there are regular wooden chairs that people can sit in. This represents the idea that anyone could be a victim. Jews in this ghetto were either sent to Plaszow (a camp in the suburbs of Krakow) to work or sent to Auschwitz if they were thought to be unfit for work. We were told about how people accepted the transport to other places because their lives were already so miserable where they were.

Once back on the bus, we passed Schindler's factory. Schindler saved over 1000 Jews by having them work in his factory. He had connections with Nazi elites and could convince them that his factory was necessary for wartime efforts. Our educator told us how we could never really know what Schindler's motives were - if he employed the Jews because they were cheap labor or because he genuinely wanted to help save them. 

During the ~1 hour trip to Auschwitz, Eve continued to tell us her story. Eve and her older sister went to NYC on a Kindertransport, while her younger sister became a hidden child. Her parents ended up in a French concentration camp and made it past selections for deportation to Auschwitz. She eventually reunited with her family in NY.

The name Auschwitz technically refers to a complex of multiple camps. Our first stop was Auschwitz 1, the administrative center for all the camps and the place where many Polish prisoners were sent. The people who lived in the area around the camp were forcibly removed in order to isolate the camp. This camp had red brick barracks and did not have as poor living conditions as in other camps. Much of the campsite had existed before the Nazis to house the Polish army. The first thing you see when you arrive are signs about paying to park your car. Little food stands and grassy areas are in the immediate area of the parking lot. The place was packed with people. Our educator had warned us that visiting Auschwitz would be a very different experience than when we had went to the other camps, which were emptier and quieter. Many participants in the March would be there, and this was the main Holocaust site for tourists. In addition, the Polish government requires all students to visit the camp when they are teenagers.

When you enter the camp site, you go through a building that says 'museum entrance.' We were given headsets in order to better hear our guide. All visitors are required to tour the camp with a Polish guide, and we spent about 1.5-2 hours with ours. We walked through the famous gate that says "Arbeit Macht Frei" (work sets you free), and it was much smaller than I had expected it to be. The camp itself also seemed to be very compact. The lack of expansive roads and green areas made the camp seem smaller than it probably is.

Many of the barracks have been converted into museum exhibits. In one barrack, the hallway walls were covered with photographs and names of prisoners in the camp. The rooms showed what sleeping and cleaning conditions were like. 

Some barracks had information about the number of prisoners in the camps, where they came from, and how they were treated. There were also posters with quotes from Nazis, information about the transport process, the selection and killing process, etc. There was also a model of the disinfectant/gas chamber/crematorium process similar to that in the Holocaust Museum in DC. I found the model in DC to be much more powerful, however, because you could get really close to it and see all of the details, whereas here you were pretty far removed.

Other barracks showed collections of items taken from prisoners such as suitcases, eyeglasses, bowls and silverware (you only got to keep one bowl and utensil), brushes, crutches, toys, shoes, cans of Zyklon B, etc. All of these items were sorted in an area called "Canada," because Canada represented a far off land of plenty. One massive display case showed the hair from victims. Chemists have tested the hair and found that Zyklon-B remains in the hair, proving that the Nazis used the gas to kill the prisoners (and that hair was not always cut off before extermination). Because the hair used to be part of humans, there is debate about how it should be treated - should it have been buried or be on display? will it receive a proper Jewish burial if it decomposes?

glasses

hair/makeup/cleaning brushes

As we walked around the camp, we saw where prisoners were shot. The windows of the surrounding barracks were covered so prisoners could not see what was going on. A wall was built on top of the initial wall with materials that would prevent the bullets from ricocheting. People had laid flowers and lit candles along the wall where the shootings took place.

We also saw a few locations where prisoners were publicly hanged. The Nazis did this to scare prisoners out of escaping or helping others try to escape.

One area of the camp had barracks that have been converted into memorials for the victims from different countries. Each country barrack has the name of the victims on the walls. We were rushed out of the camp in order to spend more time at Birkenau and did not have a chance to go inside.

The gas chamber and crematorium was the last thing we saw in this camp. You get a feeling of disgust when looking into the ovens. In both Majdanek and Auschwitz, I was surprised with the size of the gassing rooms, as they were much smaller than I had expected.

where gas entered

Visiting this camp was a very weird experience. From the commercialism outside to the long lines of people waiting to enter the different barracks to being rushed through the sites, something didn't feel right. I found it difficult to really think about where I was in this type of environment. Birkenau, however, would prove to be a very different experience.

After a short break to eat our lunches, we got back on the bus for the quick drive over to Birkenau (Auschwitz 2 - the extermination camp). We would be spending about four hours there. Heinrich Himmler, the German Minister of the Interior, deemed Birkenau the place where the 'final solution' would occur. Birkenau epitomizes the systematic Nazi killing machine. Over 1 million people died there - most of them Jews. We entered through an archway in the main gate, and there were still train tracks on the outside. This camp was much emptier than Auschwitz 1. As we drove up to it, I was amazed by the size of the camp. I had no idea how big the camp would be. The camp is larger than 400 acres. For comparison, the Georgetown campus is about 100 acres. The main road with the train tracks goes down very far, and there are barracks as far as the eye can see. The men's barracks are on one side of the main road, and the women's are on the other. Our educator decides to take us through the camp as if we were recent arrivals, so we walk to the end of the long road to where victims would get off the train. As we travelled through the camp, he told us about what happened there and read passages from survivor accounts.

We were told about the selection process and saw ruins of gas chambers (the Nazis tried to destroy much of the camp at the end of the war). Those who faced the unfortunate selection of being deemed unfit to work did not have very far to walk from the train to get to one of the camp's five gas chambers. Before entering the gas chambers, victims had to remove their clothes and surrender their belongings. The sonderkommandos (who were Jewish prisoners) working in the crematoria had to look for gold to remove from the teeth of corpses before burning them. One of the crematoria was partially destroyed in 1944 when female prisoners working in a factory smuggled gunpowder out in order to make grenades. People have left memorial stones, candles, and flowers around the gas chambers.

Pieces of wire structures were still visible in some of the gas chambers/crematoria buildings in other parts of the camp. Maps were displayed so you could try to see where different rooms of the buildings were, such as the gassing room and the room with the furnaces.

Small ponds were located next to the gas chambers. This is where ashes of the victims were thrown.

We visited the "sauna," where new arrivals who would stay in the camp were registered and disinfected. They were given their tattoo and prisoner uniform and had all their hair cut off. Clothing would occasionally be sanitized here to prevent epidemics that would make it difficult to run the camp.

clothing sanitizer

This building also held a photographic memorial with pictures brought into the camp. Next to certain group of photos, there were signs about the person in them and their life before the war.

Around this area, the Nazis had planned to expand the camp.

We finally had a dry and sunny day, and many people had commented about how they couldn't imagine visiting camps in nice weather. I, however, thought the beautiful weather added another element to the experience. It's easier to think about the atrocities when the weather matches the feeling, but on a sunny day you can think about how sick it is that all of this horrible stuff happened on such nice days. Looking around the back wooded areas of the camp, the place felt like it could have just been beautiful untouched countryside had nothing happened there. I also noticed that there were no leaves on most of the trees. Though it was late April, it still looked like winter.

At this point, we walked back to the main road, where we saw Israeli soldiers having a small musical ceremony next to the cattle car placed along the road.

We were given the chance to walk the train tracks leading down the road. The tracks didn't always go into the camp, but they were eventually extended so the trains could be brought in closer to the gas chambers.

Up until this point, besides tearing up while watching the survivor cry at our service in Treblinka as she recited the names of her family who died there, I had not really felt anything emotionally. You always hear about how much people cry when they visit these places or how they are scared to visit them because they don't think they can handle all the emotions. I, of course, was able to acknowledge how sad/horrible/disgusting this all was, and I tried to feel like how I thought people are supposed to react when they are in the camps. The photo that kept popping up in my head as I tried to picture people being in these camps was the one where all the prisoners are on their beds looking out to the photographer. Nothing ever triggered my emotions, though I did get small stomach and headaches and felt like breathing got harder when we were in some places. It wasn't until I walked on the train tracks that brought people unknowingly to their death that all of the emotions that hadn't come up throughout the entire trip suddenly appeared. 

We then went into some barracks on the men's side of the camp. The first few barracks in the row we walked along were surrounded by additional barbed wire, as these were the quarantined barracks. The prisoners in these barracks were thought to be particularly threatening to the smooth running of the camp, so they were kept in isolation.

We entered a barrack with the latrines. The toilets were just concrete holes, and the prisoners had to clean the latrines when they were full. There was a bucket in the sleeping barracks for the prisoners to use at night. They eventually learned to tell how full the bucket was by listening to the sound of the urine hitting it. You never wanted to be the one to fill the bucket, because then you would have to go empty it in the middle of the night.

We entered two sleeping barracks that had different types of beds. One had wide beds that were built on an angle, probably to decrease the comfort of the prisoners. The barracks had tiny little heaters that all the prisoners would attempt to crowd around for warmth in the freezing Polish winters. The only light came through the door and the windows on the top of the barracks. We were told about how the prisoners treated their few remaining belongings as pillows in order to protect them from getting stolen at night by other prisoners. When we were in one of the barracks, the wind slammed the door shut. It was very loud and creepy, and the prisoners probably heard that quite often.

After visiting the barracks, we went back to the bus to head back to our hotel in Krakow for dinner. Besides the Jewish district, we only really got to see Krakow when we drove through. It looks much prettier than Warsaw and has been called the Prague of Poland.

After dinner that evening, we went to the beautiful Kupa Synagogue in Krakow. All 160-or-so members of the UK delegation were there, as well as members of the Dutch delegation. One member from every group told stories about their experience on the trip. A Dutch girl talked about how a member of her family was given up as a child and saved in a story that sounded similar to that of Moses. Members travelling with youth groups discussed how their organizations are relevant in light of the trip, and the Iranian guy on my bus who had no direct family connection to the Holocaust discussed how it was difficult for him to connect with the experience until he imagined his parents in the camps. We also listened to one of the survivors, Freddie Knoller, talk about his life. He was a funny and spirited man who was full of life. He was from Vienna, and him and his brothers were able to leave the country. Freddie first went to Belgium and then to Paris where he pretended to be from the German-influenced areas of France and act as a 'guide' for German soldiers in the red-light district. He eventually joined the resistance, was arrested, and was sent to Auschwitz

Day 5 - The March of the Living:
Before we went to Auschwitz 1, we stopped at the Buna Memorial. Buna was a labor camp in the Auschwitz complex where about 30,000 people died. The camp held many British prisoners of war. I had never heard of this camp, but many of the British people knew of it or had family members that were there. We held a memorial ceremony, and an editor from a British Jewish newspaper and the Israeli ambassador to the UK came to speak. We sang Hatikvah at the end of the ceremony.

We then continued to Auschwitz 1, where over 100 buses brought in approximately 11,000 people from about 24 different countries. Crowds were gathering on the lawns outside of the camp before having to line up inside the camp. The sun was shining, the weather was beautiful, and the atmosphere was electric. The camp was so full of life - people were everywhere with blue MOTL jackets and backpacks and Israeli flags. The prominence of the Israeli flag was not intended to be a political statement. Instead, it was used to represent the Jewish people because the star has symbolized Judaism for centuries and the colors resemble the tallit.

Before the march, we were given a bunch of pins that said March of the Living UK to trade for pins and hats with people from other delegations. I ended up getting an American flag from a kid who will be going to GW next year. Most Americans who go on MOTL are in high school, and they continue on to Israel to celebrate Israel Memorial Day and Independence Day. As I was walking past a bunch of Americans, I heard a guy tell someone how much Syracuse sucks. I had to laugh at how Syracuse sucking is still a topic of conversation in other countries. 

The various delegations were all assigned a spot in the march. We were very close to the starting point. The delegation in front of us was from the Israel Guide Dog Centre for the Blind, and kids from LA and Belgium were behind us. People carried both Israeli flags and flags from their own country or state.

Excitement filled the air as we all walked out of the camp underneath the gate through which so many entered but were never lucky enough to leave. As we walked out of the camp, people had lined the paths of the camp and the roads to watch the march.

We walked along the 3 km 'Death March.' Prisoners sent to Auschwitz would have to walk from Auschwitz 1 to the gas chambers of Birkenau, and many died along the way. After awhile, the order broke down and delegations started to mix. 

When we approached the main gate of Birkenau, some people stopped to put memorial boards in the train tracks outside the gate. We were all given candles and small wooden boards in advance to write whatever we wanted on. As we entered the camp, the names of many of the 1.5 children who died in the Holocaust were being read. Though the mood upon entering Birkenau was much more somber than the atmosphere before and during the march, the camp felt very different than it had the day before. The symbolism of all these people and Israeli flags in the camp was incredibly powerful. You can't help think about how if only the Nazis knew what we were doing here today. In the words of Netanyahu, "we defied their efforts to exterminate us." 

Once inside, we had some free time to wander and place our memorial boards before the ceremony began. I placed my board on the train tracks where the tracks begin to divide into two paths in the camp. I wrote: "In memory of the members of the Plotno and Muzikant families of Kielce who perished in the Holocaust. / Never Again / From Livingston, NJ, USA"

By the time the ceremony was about to begin, the tracks were full of memory boards and candles.

Many people placed their boards next to the barbed wire that separated the road from the areas with the barracks. Some people even had photographs of their family to place next to their memory boards and candles. 

The Yom HaShoah ceremony was about an hour long and was held at the end of the train tracks on the long central road in the camp.

We were given programs with information about the march, quotes, photographs, the program of the ceremony, the words to Hatikva, a proclamation honoring the liberators of the camps, and the pledge of the MOTL to keep the memory of the victims alive, fight against discrimination and intolerance, strengthen Jewish life, and "create a world where "Never Again" will become a reality for the Jewish People and, indeed, for all people."

The ceremony was led by Chaim Topol (of 'Fiddler on the Roof' fame). It consisted of speeches by the former Chief Rabbi of Israel (a child survivor), the Chief of the Israel police, the World Chairman of the JNF, and a video message from Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. There were also a variety of songs. Some were traditional songs, while others were written by Jews killed in the Holocaust. Many of the songs were sung by the MOTL Children's Choir. I thought the saddest and most powerful song was one called 'What Will Become of the Memories?' It was accompanied by photographs and videos of the camps and survivors with their grandchildren. The song was written by a child of survivors and asks who will tell the stories about the Holocaust when all the survivors are gone. 

We also watched a video tribute to the liberators of the camps, and the liberators on stage received a huge standing ovation.

A survivor and his liberator spoke before torches were lit in honor of the survivors, the victims, and the Righteous Among the Nations, the non-Jews who resisted Nazi tyranny to help the Jews. A group of Israelis from the Centre for the Blind that was marching ahead of us lit a torch in honor of the minorities and people with disabilities who were killed. The final of the six torches was lit in honor of Israel to represent the rebirth of the Jewish people. The theme of Schindler's List played as the torches were lit.

At the end of the ceremony, some survivors lead the crowd in the Mourner's Kaddish. Beforehand, they went down a line saying who they were saying Kaddish for. The ceremony concluded with the singing of Hatikvah, the Israeli national anthem. 

It was colder and cloudier during the ceremony than during the march, and as we sang Hatikvah, the sun broke through the clouds. It was one of those times where the light scatters to look like it is showering through the clouds to the ground from the heavens. If there was ever a visual representation to show that maybe there is a God, this would have been it. After the ceremony, our leaders moved us out of the camp pretty quickly to avoid getting stuck in a traffic jam of buses. 

After dinner, our bus came together to discuss our experiences and how Holocaust education can continue once all the survivors are gone. We spent the rest of the evening packing, socializing, and getting minimal amounts of sleep. We had to be in the lobby by 4 the next morning to take a bus back to the Warsaw airport to head back to England.

More photos: here