Making Connections

We have just returned from a two week holocaust learning experience, “The March of the Living,” in which we travelled with approximately 250 other Jews our age through many places of historical significance. We spent a week in Poland visiting concentration camps, liquidated Jewish ghettos, mass graves, cemeteries and other holocaust memorials. Following this highly emotional week, we traveled to Israel where we witnessed the continued existence and rise of a Jewish people from the ashes of the crematoriums scattered across Europe.

Our first week was one of extreme sadness. Visiting death camps such as Treblinka, Maidjanek and Auschwitz Birkenau was an extremely traumatic experience. To bear witness to the evidence of the inhumane acts that occurred throughout the Second World War is a tremendously profound experience. We can say, without any doubt, that should anyone ever wish to visit these places, to do so with friends and/or loved ones – it was emotionally exhausting. The trip was a series of deep emotional highs and lows. Following the harsh, depressing feelings which plague one who visits these sites, it is an unbelievable experience to be surrounded by other loved ones who were also moved by what they’ve witnessed, so that together, you can uplift each other’s spirits. Throughout our trip, many people who otherwise would not socialize found room to interact with one another to offer each other compassion due to the nature of the experience we were encountering together, as Jews. Needless to say, after our first week, we were very happy to leave Poland and head to what we truly felt at this time was our home.

We thought a lot about our class project that we left, “Life in the Open Prison,” in which we are studying the Cambodian genocide. The state of Israel is built on the motto of “never again.” The state is concerned with providing a home to Jews who for hundreds of years were exiled and rejected from immigration officials all over the world. Because of this to become an Israeli citizen one needs only to be Jewish. Making “Alliyah,” or immigrating to Israel, extremely easy. All in all, going HOME, to Israel, was a tremendous experience that we will never forget.

Throughout the year we had been encountering and learning about the horrors of the Cambodian genocide. After seeing such intense images of brutality, we feel that we understand better both the beauty that is life and the evil that rests inside every human. Right as we were commuting to Auschwitz and I was to see the horrors of the “Showers” for the first time we were asked, “What would you tell your non Jewish friends about this experience? Why is it necessary?”

My response was that we are all members of the same family Homo-sapient-sapient and that I was doing this trip for myself as much as them. I was doing this for the sake of humanity in hopes of understanding the brutality of man. Now although I may have thought I knew know and I know that I will make it my duty to ensure that this does not happen again.

This is where this movie comes into play it is not only a connection to my Jewish heritage but my human heritage. I work on this now with a renewed commitment and I am ever more enthusiastic about the words “Never again”.

Jake Sherman, (Marketing and Production) and Daniel Freder (Production and Sound)