Ramaz Senior Journey 2015

SENIOR JOURNEY 2015 Germany | Poland | Israel

Berlin, Germany:

2015 ITINERARY

Monday, March 23 – Tuesday, March 24 Neue Synagogue Moses Mendelsohn’s Tombstone Missing House Stolperstein – Stumbling Stones Rosenstrasse Memorial Bebelplatz (Book Burning Memorial) Reichstag Brandenburg Gate Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe Checkpoint Charlie Berlin Wall The Bavarian Quarter Track 17 at the Grunewald S-Bahn Station Wannsee Conference Villa

Lizhensk: The Rebbe Elimelech Remah Synagogue and Cemetery Kabbalat Shabbat with other Heritage Seminar Students Tefillot Shabbat at Krakow Temple Kazimierz Jewish District: Alta & Isaac Synagogues Krakow City Walking Tour Presentation by Paulina,

the Righteous Gentile Schindler Factory, Pharmacy in the Ghetto Silent March to Birkenau Auschwitz 1 Final Ceremony in Auschwitz 1

Israel: Monday, March 30 – Wednesday, April 1

Poland: Wednesday, March 25 – Sunday, March 29 Warsaw Jewish Cemetery Tikocyn Shtetl and Synagogue Lupachowa Forest Treblinka Dinner with Chief Rabbi of Poland, Rabbi Michael Schudrich Warsaw Ghetto:

Ghetto Wall

Umschlagplatz Town Square

Mila 18 - Jewish Resistance HQ

Rappaport Memorial Majdanek

Yeshivat Chachmei Lublin

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Shacharit at Kotel Breakfast on the Tayelet overlooking

the Old City Hike the Sataf Trail in the Jerusalem Hills Chesed Projects:

Medical clowning session at

Hadassah Hospital

Livnot U’lehibanot – repairing,

painting and gardening in a poor

neighborhood of Jerusalem The Israeli Museum at the Rabin Center Lunch and shopping at the artist market

in Nachalat Binyamin Tikvot: A mifgash with wounded soldiers; Rock climbing with soldiers as guides

Photographs: (Cover) Students visit a memorial for the murdered Jews of Tikocyn, Poland.

(Background) Students walk with Israeli flags in the woods where the Jews of Tikocyn were marched to their deaths.

SENIOR STUDENT PARTICIPANTS Simon Abergel Rachel Aboodi Matthew Abrahams Alexander Agus Brian Agus Saul Ancona Adam Bandler Sharon Bensadigh Elliot Beretz Jack Bonime Naomi Bouaziz Bradley Brecher Yale Buchwald Joshua Buksbaum Frieda Chera Lea Chetrit Joseph Cohen Jeremy David Daniel Dishi Esther Douer Steven Eliau Benjamin Emmerich Nathaniel Fessel Abigail Freilich Samuel Fried William Fried Margo Geller-Oshry Avi Goldman Joseph Goldring Lauren Gross Jordana Gurewitsch Amanda Haimm Joyce Harary Ethan Heller Molly Heller Rebecca Hering Olivia Hershkowitz

Benjamin Hirschfeld Aliza Hornblass Nathalie Kahn Jonah Klapholz Arielle Kleinberg Joshua Kleinberg Isabella Korchnoy Tabitha Korn Adam Lassner Alexander Leibowitz Skyler Levine Michael Liesman Andrew Lobel Maya Locker Gabriel Low David Major EdwardMattout Jaclyn Mehl Andrew Merczynski-Hait Samuel Merkin Orly Mintz Albert Missry Olivia Mittman Ilana Naim Erica Newman-Corre Benjamin Nissim Michelle Palagi Gabriel Roth Hannah Scherl Zoe Schreiber Joseph Silber Victoria Spero Gabrielle Stemp Raquel Sterman Mayer Sutton Jack Tauber

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Photographs: (Opposite) A student walks through Majdanek concentration camp with his grandmother and another student. (Above) A rose lays on the train tracks in Auschwitz.

NACHAS: FROM GENERATION TO GENERATION My experience on the Ramaz Berlin-Poland trip was uniquely meaningful because my grandmother, a Polish Jew from Warsaw, walked and talked us through her experience of the horrors of the Holocaust. I have heard her stories over and over again at the Shabbos table, at Yom Hashoah events, and in her book, but all of those times together cannot match the power and reality of hearing them whilst standing in the very place where they occurred.

I usually hear the term “nachas” used when parents or grandparents are proud of their children or grandchildren, but in this case, my grandmother gave me ​nachas, and made me proud to be her grandchild. I felt great pride and appreciation when a classmate or a teacher would tell me how amazing my grandmother was or how she made the trip all the more meaningful.

One of the most amazing things was to see how happy and energetic she was able to be while in the very place that haunted her for years after the war. Almost every time she spoke about her experience, by the end of her story she would begin to passionately rant about how she “dafka” raised “three generations,” including five children, 18 grandchildren, and 25 greatgrandchildren. I am proud to be part of my grandmother’s defiance of Hitler and the Nazis. ​By the end of the trip I came to a realization that changed the way I think about my grandmother. I began to understand that my grandmother is not an extraordinary person because she survived the Holocaust; instead I realized that she survived the Holocaust because s​ he is such an extraordinary person.

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A Journey

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This train station located in suburban Berlin was one of the two principal places from which the Berlin Jews were deported to ghettos and camps further east. Inscriptions that run along the platform document the dates, size and destination of the dozens of deportations that took place throughout the war. What struck the seniors the most was the fact that the Nazis were so committed to annihilating the Jews that they allocated vital resources to deport 18 Jews in March 1945, when the war was clearly going to end in just a few weeks.

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D The image depicts the facade of the Nazi estate on the Wannsee Lake in the outskirts of Berlin. In early 1942, fifteen high-ranking Nazi officials met at this mansion to discuss how to deal with the Jewish problem. It was here that the Nazis determined the methods to implement the final solution.

There’s one theory that contends that the Wannsee conference was held so far away from the center of Berlin to enable the Nazi leadership to inconspicuously get rid of any possible dissenters at the meeting.

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The students visited the room where the infamous Wannsee conference took place. Students were surprised to learn that a majority of those who attended the meeting were doctors, which meant that even the most well educated Germans whose job it was to apply rationality and deep thought ended up losing their morality and acting with so much evil. What also stood out were the concise and simply-worded minutes from the meeting that almost sounded like they were taken straight out of a scientific report on how to deal with a house E infestation problem.

After touring through the estate, the grade sat in a circle near the beautiful lake to reflect on the entire Berlin experience.

Students discussed which aspects of the city hit them the hardest and how their firsthand perception of Germany’s attitude towards the Holocaust today compared to their expectations coming into the trip.

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A line traces the torn up Berlin Wall as it made its way through the heart of Berlin during the Cold War. For almost 30 years the wall divided Berlin into two cities, restricting travel between the two zones. It quickly came to represent the brutality of the Communist regime in the East and indicate the stark differences between the Communist and western ways of life. Today, C more than 20 years after the fall of the wall, Germans live as if the wall never existed and would laugh at you if you were to ask whether they live in West Berlin or East Berlin.

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The Reform “Neue Synagogue,” built in 1866, was our first stop in Berlin. The architecture of the synagogue was heavily influenced by Christian themes because there were few other large shuls to model it after and because the Jewish community at the time sought to fit into the nationalistic German society. The interior of the shul sustained significant damage in the allied bombing raids of World War II but has not been restored.

Instead it has been turned into a museum about the vibrant Jewish community in Berlin before the Holocaust.

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A memorial situated in the plaza in front of a leading Berlin university marks the spot where the Nazis burned thousands of Jewish books and other subversive texts. This event helped to legitimize the Nazi party by showing that the German intellectual community had embraced its ideology. It also made it clear that the new Nazi order would tolerate zero opposition and would do all it could to eliminate any influence the Jews might have had on the German people. Incredibly, Heinrich Heine, a prominent Haskalah poet, accurately portended many years earlier that people who burned books would soon be burning people.

On the walking tour, the grade came across these engraved tiles called “stolpersteine,” or “stumbling stones,” on a sidewalk of a side street in Berlin. The tiles contain the names and dates of the births, deportations, and deaths of a few Jewish residents who lived nearby in the years leading up to the Holocaust. This memorial serves to humanize the Jewish victims of the Holocaust and make sure that they will be remembered not as numbers, but as real people. The fact that the tiles are imbedded in the ground, forces the German people to confront the bitter horrors of the Holocaust on a daily basis.

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REFLECTIONS: WARSAW, TIKOCYN, TREBLINKA Warsaw, Poland WARSAW JEWISH CEMETERY As we made our way into the Warsaw Jewish cemetery, we all expected a sad, grieving experience. Upon arrival, however, our guide Yishai made it clear that this was to be a joyful experience that would make us proud of Jewry in Poland. In the cemetery we saw beautiful tombstones with unique and striking designs. We took the time to read some of the Hebrew inscriptions. We also had the opportunity to see the grave of Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik, the gadol hador whose Torah teachings and that of his descendants and students we’ve studied throughout our years at Ramaz.

On our way out of the cemetery, Yishai stopped us by a sewage hole which was covered by metal with an engraved Jewish star. We immediately started to whine about the awful smell but Yishai explained to us that for the Jews in Warsaw this smell was that of freedom.

It symbolized a potential escape route out of the ghetto and a way to smuggle food. Yishai’s powerful words really helped give us a perspective as to how fortunate we are. To think that something so vile to us meant life to the Jews of the time really helped us appreciate the circumstances of the Jews of Warsaw.

Soon after, Yishai told us that he had, in recent years, discovered that his great-grandfather had been buried in the Warsaw cemetery. Hearing that a member of our group had found out that he was connected to the cemetery on a personal level enabled us to feel connected to the cemetery as well. A member of our own class also had arranged in advance with the caretaker of the cemetery to visit the grave of her great-great-grandmother.

Our emotions transitioned from the sweetness of family memories to bitter sorrow on our way out of the cemetery as we passed by a mass grave. This was the first time we were exposed first hand to the horrors of the Holocaust. We recited a powerful bracha under intense emotions before exiting the cemetery. At the gate we spent time with Israeli students who were also visiting the site. To see Jews from all over come together to recall our common heritage gave us an extremely strong feeling of achdut.

Photographs: (Opposite) A student stops to reflect at one of the memorials for the murdered Jews of Tikocyn.

(Above) Tour Guide, Yishai speaks to the students at the Warsaw Ghetto.

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TIKOCYN After a long bus ride, we finally arrived in Tikocyn, an intact Jewish shtetl in Poland. We got off the buses and entered the 300-year-old Jewish village. We entered the community’s shul. We were amazed by the beautiful architecture and art in the shul. The shul had various tefillot painted on the walls, a necessity for a time when siddurim were scarce. After a moving mincha we stayed in the shul to sing a few songs, our way of reviving an old dormant shul with shirim and simcha.

After walking around the village, including seeing an old home with a Magen David still emblazoned on a window, we arrived at the town square, the location to which the Jews of the shtetl were summoned by the Nazis, not knowing that they were to be marched to their deaths in a nearby forest. We boarded our buses in silence and were driven to the entrance of that forest.

We walked through the woods, again in complete silence. Fenced areas in a clearing were surrounded with memorials. We gathered around to hear about the unspeakable events that occurred on the very ground we stood on. One story was about a woman who had to witness the murder of every one of her friends and family members. She had survived the shootings but had fallen into the mass grave and had to climb her way up on top of the bodies of the very people she grew up with. Many of us were immediately drawn to very intense tears. When we were told that the Nazis forced the Jews to sing Hatikvah just before they were murdered in a brutal demonstration that they in fact should have no tikvah, we all began to sing Hatikvah, our voices cracking in sadness but also in pride. A moment of shock and grief turned into comfort and consolation when we came together as a grade. The unprecedented emotions we were feeling were more easily experienced because of the support we received from our classmates.

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And the everpresent Israeli flags hanging from the fences around the mass graves and adorning the memorials were the ultimate sources of comfort. Countless Magen Davids fashioned from the twigs of the forest dotted the path back to the buses. One undisturbed message in the ground, also formed from the wood of the forest, declared “Am Yisrael Chai” (May the Nation of Israel Live). The bus ride out of the area was entirely silent as we took to our journals to try to express feelings that felt inexplicable.

TREBLINKA We knew where we were going, we knew what had happened there, but we didn’t know what to expect. We got off the buses and walked along the platform that Jews stepped on when they got off the trains. We heard testimonies of Jews describing the very sand we were standing on. We walked into this killing center hearing accounts at every stop. These accounts helped us understand what this dismantled camp was like when it was operational. We heard stories of babies being smashed against walls in front of their mothers and then handed back to them. We learned of the heroism displayed by those who planned the Treblinka revolt in August of 1943. We spoke about the Jews who wanted revenge for the 800,000 innocent lives that the Nazis murdered in Treblinka. We learned that a siddur with the word “nekumeh,” revenge, written in blood had been found in the forest not far from Treblinka. It was left to our imagination and interpretation what was meant by this inscription. We couldn`t help feeling that our very presence here was a fulfillment of that siddur owner’s command.

One of the more challenging aspects of this experience was the difficulty of comprehending the scale of what had happened at Treblinka. We were able to begin to understand the horror of the number of 1400 Jews of Tikocyn who were killed. But to multiply that number to the scale at Treblinka was completely unimaginable. While no building still stands at Treblinka, the entire area is filled with small and large stones memorializing the thousands of cities and villages whose Jews were sent to Treblinka. Some of us used a map of the vast memorial to locate by name the towns of origin of our families.

After dark, we held a ceremony near the large monument at the center of the camp. A few students recited poems and reflections, others recited tehillim and kaddish, but everyone sang and everyone felt the horror in the air. We felt comforted by the fact that we helped fulfill one of the last wishes of the fallen Jews – to remember them.

We will certainly never forget what we saw at Treblinka.

Photographs: (Opposite - Top) Students visit the synagogue in the village of Tikocyn. (Opposite - Bottom) Students gather in the Tikocyn town square. (Above) Yartzheit candles at the nighttime ceremony in Treblinka.

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EYEWITNESS TO WARSAW GHETTO AND MAJDANEK; LEARNING AT YESHIVAT CHACHMEI LUBLIN Warsaw, Poland On Thursday, we began the day by visiting the Umschlagplatz of the Warsaw Ghetto. This was the town square where Jews of the ghetto were gathered for deportation to Treblinka. Even though there was only a small post-war monument of the actual ghetto, the time we spent there was extremely powerful. We heard from our classmate’s grandmother, Mrs. Roth, about her experience in the Warsaw Ghetto. She spoke about the conditions under which she lived.

As much as her story was so remote from our own experience, the passion with which she spoke moved us all. Her account of the deportation was horrifying. You could feel the terrible memories she carried with her from the ghetto and from the boarding station that took her to a hell on earth.

After we heard from Mrs. Roth, we visited Natan Rappaport’s memorial for the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. The memorial, created in 1948, and originally erected amidst the ruins of the ghetto, is a product of its time. From the enormous chasm of postwar loss and chaos, from the shock and mourning of those who remained alive, there arose a desperate and immediate need to pay tribute to those who managed to fight back. Their bravery needed to

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be immortalized, captured in stone, in order to provide a testimony that – despite claims to the opposite – the Jews did fight back and did not just meekly go like “lambs to the slaughter” in the death camps and killing pits.

The Jews of the uprising are depicted as Greek, muscular warriors. On the opposite side of the memorial, however, there appears a group of weaker, more fragile Jews holding Torahs and looking heavenward as they pray to God for help. The power of the monument is that together with the fighters, we remember other types of resistance –

what we today call “spiritual resistance.”

Perhaps the religious figure with the Torah symbolizes those Jews who were still able to believe in God and practice Jewish ritual in the shadow of death, instilling comfort and faith in the Jews around them, even to the very doors of the gas chambers. The monument shows that every person was a hero in this terrible tragedy. Each individual was fighting for something.

It also brings to mind the modern state of Israel with its powerful army fighting to defend the Jewish homeland that was prayed for for nearly 2000 years. The heroism of those who were able to fight in the ghetto and in the Shoah would now be transferred to those fighting to prevent another such tragedy in the new Jewish state. In 1948, spiritual resistance took a back seat to armed resistance. Today, almost 70 years after the Shoah, Torah and Tefillah in Medinat Yisrael flourish alongside and even within our strong Tzahal, so that the two facets of the memorial can once again complement each other side by side.

We then traveled to Majdanek. All the images we have conjured up throughout our lives about the Shoah finally took on the scale of three dimensions.

Mrs. Roth’s passionate speech about her purpose in life as a survivor to tell her story had the most impact at this site. She told us how she used her memories of Friday night seudot in her home, with all their tastes and smells, to enable her and her acquaintances in the barracks to survive long cold nights at Majdanek.

Photographs: (Opposite) Monument at the Majdanek concentration camp. (Above - Top) Students visit the Natan Rappaport memorial for the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. (Above - Middle) Reverse side of Warsaw Ghetto Memorial.

(Above - Bottom) Mrs. Roth speaks to the students at the foot of the Majdanek Concentration Camp Memorial.

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It is that imagination and comfort of religious traditional practice in such a terrible place that was amazing to hear.

As we walked through Majdanek, we could not believe our eyes. The incomprehensibility of Jews being forced into gas chambers that were still fully intact was painful to contemplate. The huge mountain of ashes near the frightening crematorium was only possible to behold when we were bolstered by the presence of another group of Israeli teenagers wearing Israeli flags and our own tekes (ceremony) with recitations of poetry, tehillim, yizkor and the singing of vehi she’amda on our way out of that terrible place.

These experiences encouraged us to appreciate what we have today and become even more excited to make our eventual journey after Shabbat to Israel, our ancient homeland.

We ended the day with a visit to Yeshivat Chachmei Lublin, the site of one of the first modern yeshivot, founded in the 1920s, and the birthplace of the daf yomi with its intent to unify world Jewry by the simultaneous study of the same page of Talmud. We studied the topic of pidyon shevuyim, redeeming captives, that was related to the particular daf (page) of that day. We learned about the overriding halakhic significance of this mitzvah, along with its attendant risks, as exemplified by the painful controversy in Israel regarding trading large numbers of jailed terrorists for captured Israeli chayalim (soldiers), as in the case of Gilad Shalit. We also learned about some of the issues addressed in the teshuvot (responsa) of Rabbi Ephraim Oshry, a relative of one of our classmates, who had to respond to halakhic queries in the midst of the Shoah under the most complex and desperate of circumstances.

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THE RELIGIOUS AND RIGHTEOUS – SHABBAT IN POLAND Krakow, Poland On Friday we dedicated the morning to Chasidut, which finds its roots in Poland.

We visited the grave of Rebbe Elimelech of Lizhensk, an extremely important figure to Chassidic Judaism. One of the many things the Rebbe is famous for is writing a prayer that has the sole purpose of preparing one for tefillah. For this reason, we crafted our own prayers and left them by the Rebbe’s graveside, which helped us form a special connection to a leading Jewish figure of 18th century Poland.

We then made our way to Krakow where we saw the old Jewish cemetery of the town. We visited the tombstones of three essential Torah leaders of the 16th and 17th centuries – Remah, Bach, and Tosfot Yomtov, the last of whom is a direct forebear of two of our classmates. It was disheartening to hear that this cemetery was destroyed by the Nazis and, therefore, the placement of the tombstones is not indicative of who is buried beneath them. Mixed with this tinge of sadness, however, was a feeling of comfort that even though the community is gone we are still living our lives based on the foundation of their teachings.

In anticipation of Shabbat, we davened mincha in the back of the adjoining Remah shul, which is in the midst of renovation, and broke out in spontaneous dancing, excited that Shabbat would soon be upon us.

Our Kabbalat Shabbat at the Temple Shul of Krakow that night was a genuine culmination of our activities of the week. We davened with hundreds of other Americans – some had traveled from New York as we had but most were spending the post high school year in yeshivot and midrashot in Israel. We had much in common, but now we shared more than ever before, having experienced the same emotional highs and lows during our week in Europe. We channeled all of our thoughts and confusion from the past days and used it to enhance our Shabbat. It was inspiring to see this 19th century shul teeming with singing and dancing throughout Kabbalat Shabbat, and then again Shabbat morning.

Photographs: (Opposite - Top) Students stand in front of the Mausoleum at the Majdanek Memorial Site.

(Opposite - Bottom) The chapel in Yeshivat Chachmei Lublin. (Above - Top) The grave of Rebbe Elimelech of Lizhensk. (Above - Bottom) Students gather for minchah at the gates of the Remah Shul of Krakow.

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On Shabbat afternoon, we had the special opportunity to hear the story of Paulina, a righteous gentile who saved the grandfather of Rachel K., a former student who graduated from Ramaz last year. Paulina was riveting in her account of how strongly she and her family felt about doing the right thing in a dangerous time, and compelling in her declaration that they never doubted or second-guessed their decision to hide and protect Jews.

On Motzaei Shabbat, we postponed Havdalah so that we could recite it in front of the Alt Shul in the Jewish quarter of Krakow. We then headed to Oscar Schindler’s enamelware factory.

The evening ended with a visit to the newly restored matzevah of Sarah Schenirer, the famous advocate for Torah education for Jewish women and founder of the Beit Yaakov schools for girls.

THE HOMES LEFT BEHIND Oświęcim, Poland On the day we spent at Auschwitz-Birkenau, two of us left the group and saw the lives that our grandparents left behind in the town of Oświęcim. The gorgeous town mixed imposing postwar buildings with intricate prewar buildings, while several of the town squares still contained classical period buildings and churches.

In one square, we saw a church and the town synagogue share the same public space. The square was named Priest Jan Skarbek Square in honor of the Polish Catholic priest who was arrested and imprisoned by the Nazis for aiding prisoners of Auschwitz. A memorial in the square commemorated this location as the gathering point for the Jews of Oświęcim who were deported to ghettos. The synagogue has been restored and serves as a museum and archive of the town’s rich Jewish history.

Two blocks away stood the prewar house of Bradley B.’s paternal grandmother. There we explored the courtyard and the main staircase of the building.

For Bradley it was a touching experience as he was the first in his immediate family to return to his grandmother’s home.

Next we took a short cab ride to the home of Josh B.’s great aunt and cousins. The house had been built shortly before the war, and Josh’s great aunt had spoken very fondly of it, but the house had been demolished very recently. Only rubble stood next to a modern house, a fitting symbol of the Jewish life that had been, but is no longer.

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AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU On the right side of the road was a bright yellow house with a small swing set on the lawn.

On the left was a cattle car where hundreds of Jews were shoved inside to be shipped off to their deaths. The contrast between the opposite sides of the street revealed the unwillingness of the Polish people to stand up on behalf of the Jews. Every day these people looked out their windows and witnessed innocent men, women, and children being sent to concentration camps. Yet they happily continued their lives.

For fifteen minutes we marched in silence to Birkenau, observing the surrounding city. When we arrived, we crowded into one of the barracks where Mrs. Roth shared her experience in Auschwitz.

She told us the amazing story of how she adjusted to the camp, managed to stay with her aunt, recovered from typhus, avoided Dr. Mengele, and so much more.

Mrs. Roth’s unceasing courage and strength moved us all. Her positive attitude served as an inspiration for the students of the senior class.

Photographs: (Opposite - Top) Two students visit the synagogue/Jewish Museum of the town of Oświęcim, Poland, where their grandparents grew up. (Opposite - Bottom) Student standing in front of his grandmother’s prewar home.

(Above - Top & Bottom) Students learn about the cattle cars that carried Jews to the Birkenau Death Camp.

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Afterwards, we were able to follow the journey of the prisoners of Birkenau. We saw the location where Jews arrived and were selected to either live or die. We stood in the exact place where their entire future was decided in an instant.

There, thousands of people were separated from their loved ones, never to see them again.

Those who were selected to die were herded down a road next to us. We walked down the path towards the gas chambers. We tried to imagine what it might have felt like to be in our ancestors’ place, but many of us had trouble doing so. We stopped in a women’s bunk full of wooden bunk beds. Then we made our way towards the gas chambers. Although they had been destroyed and now looked like just a pile of bricks, we all recognized the importance of the spot where we were standing. Jewish people just like us unknowingly walked down a flight of steps straight to death.

After a short bus ride, we arrived at Auschwitz I. We walked under the famous “Arbeit Macht Frei” sign we’ve all seen in so many pictures. Students wore Israeli flags on their backs and braced themselves for the horrors of the notorious Auschwitz.

However, upon entrance to the camp, it felt like we were entering a small town full of brick houses. Then, we all turned our heads toward the tall barbed wire lining the camp, and we were reminded of where we were.

We walked through the prison blocks, now a museum commemorating the prisoners and victims of Auschwitz. The charts, maps, and photos of the camp informed us of everything we needed to know about the history of the largest Nazi concentration and death camp.

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We learned about the 1,300,000 people who were deported to Auschwitz. In order to really comprehend the immensity of such a number, we saw collections of various Jewish belongings that the Nazis kept. Enormous piles of glasses, suitcases, shoes, and hairbrushes filled the rooms of the museum. We were shocked to hear that these were only a tiny percentage of the items taken from the Jews.

We continued our tour to see the conditions of a typical bunk. We saw the bathroom, beds, and mattresses that the Jews of Auschwitz lived in. The horrible conditions of the bunks truly made us realize how privileged we are to live in the world that we do.

Lastly, we walked through the gas chamber and crematorium, early versions of the killing methods that were to be used later in Birkenau on a mass scale. Most horrific were the scratches up and down the walls of the gas chamber, etched into the walls with the fingernails of the desperate and suffocating victims trying to climb upwards. The dark room filled with ovens looked as if it were made for baking bread. Visualizing so many innocent people being murdered there was one of the most difficult aspects of the day.

We walked out the gates of Auschwitz to begin our journey to Israel. The freedom we possess is a privilege that our forebears didn’t have, and we are all so fortunate that we don’t need to live every day in fear. After all that we have seen and learned in Berlin and Poland, we feel that it is our mission to carry on the stories of those who lived and died in the Holocaust and to honor their memory in every possible way.

Photographs: (Opposite - Top) Entrance to the Auschwitz I Concentration Camp. (Opposite - Bottom) Barbed wire surrounds buildings of Auschwitz I. (Above) Students, with Mrs. Roth, hold up Israeli flag at the train tracks in Auschwitz.

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HOME SWEET HOME! We stood gazing at the cold and sadistic, yet the overwhelmingly powerful; the forgiven, but not the forgotten. We took one long last look at it. After a two day, tour in Berlin and a five-day emotional journey through Poland, we were exiting the infamous slaughterhouse of 1.2 million Jews. After the devastating sorrow came the triumphant satisfaction that we were not only leaving the “Kingdom of Auschwitz,” as it is often referred to, but we were fulfilling the dreams of those whose dreams would never be fulfilled. We were finally hours away from leaving the depths of hell in Auschwitz-Birkenau and arriving at our ultimate destination: Israel.

Although we all had endured very long exhausting days with minimal hours of sleep, every single one of us on our flight to Israel - our true home - was ecstatic. Even at 4:00am in Israel, we came off the plane with such relief, happiness and enthusiasm now that we were home. Our true home, where no one can tell us otherwise. It was only fitting that twelve hours prior we had been standing horrified inside an Auschwitz gas chamber, and then suddenly we were standing in front of the holiest place in the world: the Kotel. For four of us, it was the first time visiting the Kotel, while for others it was the one hundredth time. Nonetheless, every single one of us came up to the wall, kissed it, and had a newer sense of appreciation than at any other time. Some were crying during shacharit, some were in awe, but everyone was together in the experience.

Flags were taken out and worn with such honor and dignity as if they were talitot. Immediately after davening we came upon a Bar Mitzvah right outside the Kotel. We sang and danced with the baalei simcha. It was just another addition to the irrepressable high spirits. We then had a delicious Israeli-style breakfast overlooking Jerusalem at the Haas Promenade in Talpiot. The vibe on this beautiful Monday morning was easily among the greatest moments our grade had ever experienced. The sun was shining, we were eating great food, we had a beautiful view, and Israeli music was blasting. It was very special and set an exciting tone for the next two days.

The next activity in Israel was a walking hike. We walked across and then down

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a mountain. This area used to be the home to many Arabs and was then won in battle by the Israelis. We enjoyed the early spring scenery and then enjoyed some falafel. To close off the day, we had two opportunities to do chesed. Half the grade went to paint fences in an impoverished neighborhood in Yerushalayim while the other half went to Hadassah Hospital to learn about medical clowning. Bobo and Amichai, both professional clowns, taught us about their job of visiting sick children of all ages. We then went up, decked out in our humorous red clown noses, and met some of the children struggling with an unfortunate variety of diseases.

Although it was so sad to see the sick children, we had a great sense of accomplishment being able to give back and put a smile on childrens’ faces in their tough times.

On day two in Israel, the final day of our journey, we listened to a speaker on current events in Israel – primarily the aftermath of the recent Israeli elections and the place of Israel in a rapidly changing Middle East. The speaker was entertaining and educational, and we were eager to absorb the details of his update, having been so far away from following the news in the last week. We then made our way to the beautiful city of Tel Aviv. We spent a few hours on a guided tour of the Rabin Center, a museum dedicated to the life of Yitzchak Rabin. There we reinforced our learning of Israel’s founding and history, based on artifacts, photos, and videos of the various eras, following a chronological timeline.

One of the exhibits was the actual living room of Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin as it appeared at the time of his assassination. Following the museum visit, we enjoyed some free time in Nachalat Binyamin, a Tel Aviv shuk and artist colony. Later in the afternoon, we visited the Tikvot Rock Climbing Center. We rock climbed with injured Israeli war veterans who had chosen to continue their rehabilitation with rock climbing. One of the soldiers, a one-legged amputee, told us his story and then proceeded to defy gravity by climbing vertically and horizontally upside down on his one leg. It was an inspiration to see the magnitude of his will power and determination in this incredible feat.

As the last night approached, we were excited to be back in Yerushalayim, exploring Ben Yehuda Street, finding places to eat dinner and nosh to our delight with our friends. But it was a bittersweet feeling for us, simply because we knew this marked the end of the journey.

Over the course of the trip, we had engaged in several group processing sessions, but Tuesday night, before our Ben Yehuda outing, was the grand finale. Our amazing tour guides, devoted faculty, and classmates all participated. This was an open, emotional, and deep conversation that asked us to review what we saw and how we felt, but the recurring theme of the session was the future. How will we continue forward, and especially after witnessing everything that we did, live a life that will contribute to a larger-than-self reality. By the time we finished this Photographs: (Opposite - Top) Students pray at the Kotel. (Opposite - Bottom) View of Jerusalem from the Haas Promenade in Talpiot. (Above) Students and Israeli war veterans pose together at Tikvot Rock Climbing Center.

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hour-long session, each of us had offered, in his or her own way, a commitment to making a difference in enriching Jewish identity and standing up for Israel to prevent another atrocity like the Holocaust from ever occurring again.

It was heartwarming to see the support and respect each of us gave one another. Classmates clapped for fellow students after they spoke, as if we were cheering on celebrities. It was surreal. Your cultural background did not matter, whether you were Ashkenazi or Sepharadi.

Your personal level of religious observance did not matter – we all felt the same undeniable expectations. It is our job to protect Israel and strengthen Judaism. The Holocaust survivor generation is vanishing. After this trip, we all gladly welcome the honor of telling their stories.

We must maintain the intensity of our Jewish identity at all costs.

We cannot possibly comprehend completing a journey of this emotional depth without returning to the very home that Jews died to attain. It was a necessity. It was closure. It was the light at the end of a tunnel filled with too much darkness. The degree of unity we developed over the last two days in Israel was intense. We picked each other up from tears in Lupachowa Forest, Treblinka, Majdanek, and Auschwitz, and in Israel we turned those tears into smiles, laughs, happiness, and most of all, a burning hope. We epitomized the notion of “k’eesh echad b’lev echad” (like one person with one heart) on a level that we had never believed possible. Nothing compared to the feeling of genuinely providing support to another classmate and also knowing that it was reciprocated, whether it was during the most difficult moments or during the happiest times.

Sitting on the flight back to America, we can confidently say that the Ramaz class of 2015 not only will never forget this profound journey, but will have a newfound appreciation and deep sense of gratitude for freedom, for life, for family, for each other, and for Israel.

Am Yisrael Chai!

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Ramaz extends a THANK YOU ‫הכרת הטוב‬

To our donors who helped make this important and life-changing experience possible.

Nicole & Raanan Agus ‘85 Sharon Dane Sherry ‘76 & Mark Fessel Jordana ‘05 & Andy Fruchter Audrey & Mark Goldstein Aren Gottlieb & Ram Roth Joia ‘95 & Joshua Kazam Kim & Jonathan Kushner Jody & Elie Levine Eleanor Merczynski & David Hait Sharon & Solomon Merkin ‘74

Linda & Morris Missry Esther & M. David Muschel in memory of Sara Muschel

Lawrence Newman Diana Newman ‘87 & Isaac Corré Nancy & Norris Nissim Sharon & Jay Podolsky

in memory of Zenek Podolsky

Sirena & Dan Silber Laurie & Elliot Sutton

To our faculty and staff who organized and led our students on this incredible journey: and to Mr. Ira Miller Rabbi Shlomo Stochel Mr. Yishai Goldflam Heritage Seminars Mr. Dov Pianko Jewish Journeys Ms. Julie Aharoni Aren Gottlieb Ms. Julie Elencweig Ms. Aviva Lieber ‘03 To our student contributors for their moving and impactful writing and photography: Rachel Aboodi Will Fried Bradley Brecher Eddie Mattout Joshua Buksbaum Gabe Roth Daniel Dishi Zoe Schreiber Sam Fried Special thanks to Mrs. Rachel Roth, a Holocaust survivor and Ramaz grandparent, for accompanying the students and sharing her memories.

Photographs: (Opposite ) All of the trip participants pose together at the Kotel in Jerusalem.

(Background) Student stands in reflection near Israeli flag in the woods outside the massacred town of Tikocyn, Poland.

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The Ramaz School Office of Institutional Advancement 114 East 85th Street, 3rd Floor New York, Ny 10028 212-774-8055 www.ramaz.org