Chanichim Reflections from Poland

Recently our kvutsah has taken part in a shared journey with the American kvutsah in a journey to Poland where we visited concentration camps such as Auschwitz and Majdanek concentration camp, where we saw the horrible living standards and exploitation of the Jewish people, we also saw the death camp Treblinka and the mass grave of over 2000 Jews in Lopohova forest while also getting the opportunity to talk to a righteous gentile and visit ghettos and shtetl's throughout Poland and much more. During our time in Poland we tried to explore the mentality of all people involved in the Holocaust while also exploring the effects this event has had in our lives and the wider communities we live in. This speech was delivered by us in our final ceremony in Poland before leaving for Israel and it tries to put into words our thoughts and feelings after the amazing week long experience we had with one another

One of the greatest tools that HDUK has is a summer machaneh solely dedicated to holocaust education, not only is this beneficial for the chanichim but also to further educate the madrichim. From this we feel privileged to have received such thorough education on the Holocaust and its relevance to our lives today. With all this being said, one of the hardest realities which we as a group found hard to come to terms with, is the fact that the holocaust did actually occur. This may sound like a strange comment to say but for the majority of us, the horror stories of Auschwitz 1 and Treblinka were simply stories which we have grown up learning and hearing our entire lives. Being woken up from the day dream we have on the holocaust, that it is not simply a popular story line we see in films such as Schindler's list, The Boy in the Striped pyjamas and The Pianist, and immediately being hit with the stark reality that Auschwitz Birkenau is not a movie seen and is in fact a real place where horror's occurred is something we immediately had to come to terms with, not only this but also that it was carried out by human beings.

As our Madricha (Lucy Travis) likes to say over the past week we have starred into the abyss of mankind and seen what it is truly capable of in its darkest hour, over our journey through Poland we have realised that we are all connected to this event, either by the fact that we are Jewish or through a personnel family connection to the event. We were shocked to see how the Nazi's turned the extermination of Jews into a capitalist enterprise through exploiting them for all resources possible, whether that be using them as a slave labour force, the sale of all their possessions which even includes the gold from their teeth and hair from their heads, and the use of their ashes from the crematorium to use as fertiliser, while also trying to exterminate them as cheaply and efficiently as possible .

However despite this we have taken great inspiration and strength in the knowledge that Jews did not always "go like lambs to the slaughter", when all will and power was drawn from individuals, they found the courage to rise up and prove to mankind that we deserve more than "three lines in history". Being part of Habonim Dror has always been special for us, however it only took until this journey to truly see the power of the movement. Throughout this experience we learn't about both the Warsaw and Krakow ghetto uprisings and how being part of the movement which we are currently in, allowed its members to escape from the reality of the outside world and to develop a space for friendship and laughter, while also demanding courage from its members to take responsibility over the Jewish youth but also allowing them to demand the courage from one another to rise up against their oppressors. We felt the way that the movement achieved this, is best explained by Zivia Lubetkin in her piece 'The Secret of the Movement's Strength'

"The Movement always knew how to demand everything from its members. The Movement’s goal had always been to educate a new kind of man, capable of enduring the most adverse conditions and difficult times while standing up for the emancipation of our people, of the Jew, of mankind. It was our movement education which gave us the strength to endure. I don’t know if I succeeded in describing how much we tried to live up to those values. I did mention how we were almost obsessed at times with preserving the unblemished personal morality of each of our members as individuals, and of the movement as a whole…. What gave us this moral strength? We were able to endure the life in the ghetto because we knew that we were a collective, a movement. Each of us knew that he wasn’t alone. Every other Jew faced his fate alone, one man before the overpowering, invincible enemy. From the very first moment until the bitter end, we stood together as a collective, as a movement. The feeling that there was a movement, a community of people who cared about each other, who shared ideas and values in common, made it possible for each of us to do what we did. The greatest tragedy was that the Jews did not know what to do. From the very first days of demoralisation in the ghetto until the final days of destruction and death, they did not know what to do. We knew. Our movement values showed us our goals and how to achieve them. This was the source of the strength to live. It is the very same source which keeps the survivors alive even today."
                                                 -Newman 

I swore never to be silent whenever an wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tortured" As holocaust survivor Ellie Wiesell so wisely said. We should not only take pity and sorrow from the holocaust but we should take inspiration from those both Jewish and non-Jewish who decided to fight and not sit idly by.
The words "never again" are always used when we come to talk about the holocaust, and they should not solely apply to racism, discrimination or even genocide. We should use these words to understand that we as those who have the ability to look at a situation an critically analyse should make it that when we see where an injustice prevails, we should act and attempt to prevent this. We MUST learn from the holocaust that the ability of millions to stand up and attempt to change the reality was not met. We MUST take from this an abled body and minded people to stand up and protest any injustice that we see or hear about. Are we not as guilty as those who commit the crimes if we just sit and stand Idly by and watch? WE MUST NOT BE THE BYSTANDERS!!!

                                               -Harry