17,000 Rocks, 17,000 Bits of History. Never Forget.

We woke up from our first night in our new Hotel. Its really nice. Clean, modern, enjoyable. After breakfast we loaded in the bus for the busy day ahead of us. Our first stop was the Warsaw Ghetto. I'm going to be honest, before today I have heard mention of the Warsaw Ghetto, but, I knew really nothing about it or the history. I learned a lot today. In the pre-war world, Warsaw was the second largest Jewish city, second only to New York City. The Jewish population of Warsaw was over 350,000 people. Starting on Yom Kippur 1940, the Nazis went into Jewish communities and forced all Jews out of their home and into the Ghetto. Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, and we were taken to this hell during such a vulnerable time. 350,000 people all herded out of their homes and into this tiny Ghetto. It was only the size of Central Park in New York, 16 blocks wide. There were 13 people shoved into each room. Only one month after the Nazis began gathering all of the Jews, in November of 1940, the Ghetto was sealed off. One month, and three-hundred fifty thousand Jews were stolen out of their home and led to this awful place. Food was rationed, each Jew was given only 200 calories of food a day to eat. People were hungry and uncomfortable. The wall around the Ghetto closed off the inside from the outside. People snuck out, though. The children would dig holes in the earth around the wall to crawl through. People would sneak out through the sewer system. It was so dangerous because the Nazis would kill you if you were caught. One story we were told, which was also told briefly yesterday at the March of the Living Ceremony, really was incredible. It is the story or Irena Sendler, a gentile who is truly a remarkable person. Before her death, in 2008, she was quoted saying that she did not want to be called a heroin because she felt she did not do enough. Irena would go into the Ghetto and find families with children. She would explain to them the inevitable danger that they faced of their death. Irena would ask them to allow her to take their baby and give it to a non-Jewish family to protect and keep safe until the end of the war. Very often parents would fight her and not let their babies be taken. However, Sendler successfully smuggled out over 2,000 Jewish children from the Ghetto. She would smuggle them in suitcases, tool boxes, jackets, bread boxes, anything she could with out getting caught. Irena would then create false documents for these children so that they were safe. She also kept meticulous records of what she was doing and kept them very secret. She would code records of the children's real names, new identities, real family, addresses, everything. To keep this safe should would put the record in jars and bury them under the apple tree by her home. Here was the problem, Irena did not tell anyone where the records were or how to translate them. The Nazis got very suspicious of Irena and had soldiers hunting her down day after day for months. They found her one day and arrested her. Irena was taken in and sentenced to death. The people who worked with Irena and supported her went to the SS and bribed them to set her free. After many tries, the SS falsified documents that she was killed and Irena was smuggled out of the prison. At this time, the Ghetto was liquidated, but, she was able to decode her records and save the kids she had been taking care of. Here was another interesting story. The SS had a council of Jews that worked as somewhat of middle men between the Nazis and the Ghetto. When the liquidation of the Ghetto began, they asked this council to select which people would be in the first transports out of the camp. How do you pick who lives and who dies? How? The story was told of one man on that committee who could not make that decision. He killed himself that day. The Nazis in charge of the Warsaw Ghetto wanted to give Hitler a good present for his birthday, they wanted all of the Jews in Warsaw murdered before his 54th birthday on April 20, 1943. The Jews would not allow this. The Jewish Combat Organization led an uprising that lasted strong for three weeks. The Jewish Combat force only consisted of 300 people fighting over 3,000 Nazis. On May 8,1943, surrounded by the Nazis, many perished or took their own lives refusing to perish at the hands of their enemies. These stories of resistance and heroism are the most uplifting part of the this experience.

We left the Ghetto and went to the Warsaw Jewish Cemetery. We did a mitzvah here. As BBYO does every year they go on this trip, we went and helped clean up this cemetery. This cemetery is where 300,000 people rest. Judging by the grave stones, I think it was probably opened in the 1880s or earlier. I walked in the cemetery and we worked together to try to clean this place. It was absolutely massive. I wasn't able to walk this whole thing in the couple hours we were there. All of our group worked together, however, to pick weeks and lift grave stones that have been broken over time. One of the saddest things we saw was a pile of earth that one kid in our group was trying to dig up. I walked over and stopped him. I found a small marker lying a few feet away from the grave. I couldn't read it but I made out 1940. There was a body under that mound of earth that was never returned to. Their family must have been taken into the Ghetto and killed. They were never able to return and put a grave marker over this body. This was just one case of this amongst hundreds in the cemetery. There were areas of this cemetery that served as mass graves too. During the times of the Ghetto's existence, people would die in the streets of illness and malnutrition. The elders in the area would tell the young kids to take the bodies and sneak them out of the Ghetto under the walls and carry the bodies to this cemetery so they could rest in peace. It was really a powerful experience to clean up this cemetery and put together the graves of those who have no family to do it for them, have no family to remember them, have no family to carry out their family name and history because of the Holocaust.

We loaded on the bus and made the journey that our ancestors took out of the Warsaw Ghetto during its liquidation to Treblenka. It was a long ride and I slept during most of it, but as we got close I awoke and took note of where we were. We drove down a long, windey, tree covered road. Treblenka was far away from civilization in the deep woods of Poland. It made more sense. But that was the only thing that made sense in this hell. Treblanka is a camp that I didn't know much about but was so disturbed as I learned. Treblanka was opened only 13 months from July 1942 until August 1943. This camp was closed before the war and 100% destroyed by the Nazis. They hoped that no one would find it and no one would know. As the man shared with us yesterday, SS were still just men with daughters and they were ashamed of their actions. Today all of the camp is a monument. Now, I have only heard descriptions of this monument as a lot of rocks. It is so, so much more. Let me try to convey the anguish behind this horrific site. As I said, after closing the camp the Nazis drove through the camp with tanks and bombs and destroyed the entire land with absolutely nothing to remain but a clearing in the forest. Because of the German's meticulous record keeping and the very few stories that survived, we are able to know what Treblenka was. There are long cement blocks that line up to represent the train tracks crossing through the line of tall thin rocks which symbolize the barbed wire boundaries. The rails led to a platform where people used to be welcomed to the camp. This camp was not only a destination for Jews, but, it was almost all Jews. Treblinka had two parts. Treblinka I was a labor camp that held about 10,000 prisoners who were almost only used to build Treblinka II. This was the most despicable thing I heard, Treblinka II had not a single barrack. Not a single place to sleep except for the earth. Treblinka II was simply a death camp. The average life span for a Jew in Treblinka II was two hours. Think about that, in the two hours it took to drive from Warsaw to the camp, it was enough time to end thousands of peoples' lives. This camp was constructed to be the most efficient, and inhumain, way of ending a human beings existence. To destroy the memories of them and their history. Treblinka only had between 20 and 30 survivors. That is all. Those were, I believe, the Jews who they used to bury or burn the bodies after they were gassed. Let me continue talking about the layout so you understand this place. As people would unload from their cattle cars and fill the platform, they would be welcomed happily from the SS soldiers. There was a sign that said to the arriving people something along the lines of "Welcome to Treblinka, this will be a holding camp that you will stay at shortly while you are transported to a labor camp." People were instructed to check their baggage in one area and check their gold, money, and valuables in another. They were even given receipts and told that as long as they keep the receipts they will receive their belongings again as they leave the camp. They never left. The SS collected over 200 full cable cars of personal items from these people as they arrived which were transported to the soldiers in the city. The SS would then tell the people that they must take a shower in order to disinfect before entering the camp. That was not a shower. That was the last 15 minutes of their life. Treblinka did not only have one or two gas chambers, though. The Nazis constructed 13 cellars of execution in this unthinkable hell. They were brought in happily. They confidently walked to their own death without any chance of survival. The Nazis forced other Jews to work in the gas chambers and bury remains, or, when they felt that took too long, burn the remains of their ancestors after they were left lifeless in the gas chambers. 800,000 people were killed in Treblinka in only 13 months. They killed as many as 18,000 people in a single day.

Treblinka today is nothing, but Treblinka today is everything. As you walk past the entrance there are those long cement blocks that signify the train tracks crossing through the tall rock structures signifying the camp boundaries. A platform now stands at the midpoint of the tracks and is home to 10 large rocks with 10 countries etched in it where Jews were sent to Treblinka from to die. Ahead of us was a circular section of the platform with a monument (pictured above) that depicts the message "Never Again" in multiple languages. Behind that is the large rock structure you can see with faces of horror engraved on the top of the structure to express the atrocities that occurred at the site I stood on. There is a crack through this structure that they say will remain separated until the Messiah arrives. In the remainder of the camp stand 17,000 rocks. Each with their own personality. Their own story. Some engraved and some not. Rocks of all different sizes. Each of these rocks represents a town. A town big or small that was devastated by the Nazis. Towns with few, if any Jewish survivors after the war. Each rock represents anything from the six Greek individuals that the Chief Rabbi of France discussed yesterday at the March to the town of Warsaw with 350,000 massacred. Think of that. 17,000 rocks one after another standing up as reminders in the ground. Serving as the only headstones on the mass grave beneath me. The pictures do not do this site justice. Stories do not do this site justice. Only being a witness can truly give you the impact that this site possesses. Behind this structure and in the center of these rocks is a large tar pit. Standing there as a symbol of the gas chambers and crematoriums that were once at Treblinka and served as the final resting place for hundreds of thousands of our ancestors. Surrounding this tar pit was hope, however. There were 18 torches. 18, Chai, Life. This was a symbol of us being there, of the Jewish people surviving and remembering and spreading the stories to our children and their children. We concluded our day with a memorial ceremony conducted by the green bus. It was absolutely beautiful and concluded in all of us reciting the Mourner's Kaddish. Before our group left we all sang Hatikvah together. I know that Israel is my homeland and I cannot wait to experience it. As we walked away from Treblinka I felt such a strong sense of love and unity amongst our group and, subsequently amongst the Jewish people. We all had our arms around someone. We were upset, but upset together. I spoke in depth about life and my feelings with people who, just five days ago I did not know. Tomorrow we are going to Maidanek and then flying to Israel. I cannot wait.
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