The Pilgrimage

I knew going to Poland would hit me, I just never could have imagined how hard.

Going from a country like Israel to a place like Poland was a culture shock. Coupled with the fact that Israel sprung from the ruins of Polish Jewry, the gap only grew wider. Spending five days with 60 girls in a country that opposed everything we are in seminary to enhance was an indescribable experience. Yet for four out of the five days in Poland, I could not have been more miserable.

Depression doesn’t begin to describe how I felt. Though only a four-hour flight, Poland felt like a different universe to me. It was as if I had stepped out of reality and entered the surreal. The entire country radiated the Holocaust, yet the remembrance of the tragedy appeared to be but a passing concern to its residents. We would stand in Majdanek or Treblinka, places where over a million Jews were murdered, and neighborhoods could be seen in the distance, seemingly detached, utilizing the death camps as their backyard playgrounds. To me, it was as if the Poles had used the blood-soaked soil of the land to advance their economy. Poland had turned a nightmare into a tourist attraction and, no matter how hard I tried to focus on the reason I had come, my rage was all-consuming.

Questions like “Why would G-d let this happen?” and “What lesson can I take away from this pilgrimage?” did not matter to me. The only debate I wanted to have was “Why the hell did I come here?” I asked every staff member. Their answers only fueled my fury. I wanted out as soon as possible. For me, five days were five days too long. We would stand in the freezing cold, trying in our feeble way to empathize, vainly attempting to experience a semblance of what our family members dealt with and how they must have felt day in and day out. We would cry and mourn and scream over the bloodshed and injustice and then, like a switch, we would be back on the bus complaining about the weather and food. As I fought to maintain the right mindset and composure in a space so appalling, I felt no better than the Poles. I was looking at the gas chambers and bunkers through jaded eyes. And though my sobs were real and my pain was unbearable, it would soon simply melt away with the snow.

In this singular point of polarity, I made the discovery that changed the way I saw the world. This was my first and last trip to Poland. I had experienced more lows in those few days than I thought capable of experiencing in a lifetime. The Holocaust was an event that can never be summed up in words, feelings or expressions. More than anything, it was an atrocity of a personal nature. In no way was it my place to expect others to feel the way I was feeling or to act in the manner I saw fit. That was Hitler’s mentality. Nazi Europe never discriminated; it's hate radiated to all nationalities and all peoples equally. Our only revenge is to love with an ever greater intensity. That is the lesson of this trip, and it’s the work before us that must begin in earnest, beginning with you and me, and beginning right now.