חיים ומוות

While I was in Poland, my trip had the whole spectrum of חיים and מוות. Two places really stood out to me. The Synagogue in Oswiecim really stood out for me in the hopes of life or חיים and Mydonic was a place that really got to me and symbolized death.

One place that I went in Poland that really represented death for me was Mydonic Concentration Camp. It was the first concentration camp I have ever been to. When I got there we started out on a huge hill overlooking the whole thing. It was huge. I have no other words to describe it, but huge. It seemed to stretch on forever and when my teacher said that we were going all the way to the other side I didn't think we would be able to make it in time. Seeing a concentration camp for the first time kind of takes your breath away. It also did not help that the whole camp is in great shape and the whole thing is STILL standing. As we walked up the hill to start class, I thought my heart was going to beat right out of my chest it was beating so hard and fast. I went through the barracks and the whole camp. I believe that the thing that got to me the most was when I went into the gas chambers. This part was the hardest to sink in and I think it is the place that really showed me death the most. As soon as I came to the realization that I was standing in the same place, living, where so many people were gassed to death, I broke down. I am so happy I had such good friends with me, that I know care about me. One of my friends in particular helped me through the rest of the camp. I am not a "touchy feely" person and he understood that. Through the rest of the camp he just held my hand and that is all that I needed. We got to the end of the camp where there was a huge monument. This too also is another huge reason why I chose to write about Mydonic as a place that really stood out to me that represented death. I walked up the stair of the monument not knowing what to expect to see in the saucer shaped monument, and when I did it hit me like a ton of bricks. I looked inside and there were the ashes of the people who died there. While looking in I could still see the little tip of a bone that hadn't completely turned to ash in the crematorium. It was hard to look at, but it is one of those things that you can't stop looking at. It was huge and filled. It was such a visual representation of all of the death that had happened only at that camp, it turned the numbers very real for me and a lot of my class mates. So you have it; the place that in my mind represented death very clearly in my trip to Poland.

A place in the trip that really stood out to me for life was the Oswiecim Synagogue. Going to the synagogue in Oswiecim was very special for me. I had a very hard time at Auschwitz-Birkenau. After going through the place and seeing everything, I just felt like I needed a sign of hope. All of EIE davening מנחה together, with my teacher leading the service and us all FINALLY using traditional tunes that I knew really helped. The synagogue in Oswiecim was not big or fancy, but my generation(and friends) were able to put prayer back meaning back into it. It was hard to think that there were Jews living in the same town that Auschwitz is in and how fast they were probably sent there. I refuse to have that synagogue mean death to me though. Davening for me is so important especially after you have seen so much evil. I am so proud of my peers that we were able to daven and really put רוח back into a synagogue that probably had some of the first Jews that went to Auschwitz as members. It showed life in so many ways. Praying in it, singing ניגונים, singing Jewish songs in it like עם ישראל חי restored my happiness. It reminded me that, yes bad things happened there, but it is important to remember that we survived.