Oh my Gad-na!

So, for those of you not following too closely, I had a mere 38 hours after returning home to Kibbutz Tzuba after visiting Poland (icky, icky place) before I was whisked off again to another experience. This one, however, was a bit more...involved, shall we say.

We travelled to Sde Boker, an Israeli Army base in the Northern Negev Desert, and after a pit stop to load up on shwarma in Beer-Sheva, proceeded to enroll ourselves in a 5-day course known as Gadna. No sooner had we stepped off the bus than we had about a dozen Israeli soldiers screaming at us in Hebrew to separate into groups and don the uniform of the Israeli Army...and thus begun our week of Hell.

There were no single days in this experience, just a blur of running, pushups, and lessons. Our mefakeddet (commander) decided that she liked to see a bunch of American kids sprint everywhere, so we did. A lot. If it took us 12 seconds to get one place, we had only 10 seconds going back. All kinds of fun, let me tell you. Every day we had several lessons dealing with all kinds of things from the basics of Tzahal (the IDF-Israeli Defense Force) to advanced weapons training to what it meant to be a Jew in a Jewish state. We took a 4-km hike in the middle of the desert, then played a game of military-style hide and go seek with camoflage. Also, our commanders gave us a test: two rocks were presented to us, and we were to tell which one was different. One of the rocks, our commander told us, could be found anywhere in the desert. The other rock, she calmly told us...




...was a grenade!!!!!!!!!!

This little game was hilarious for the officers, and we ended up playing it all day long. Our group would be waltzing along, and suddenly hear "Rimon smol!" (grenade on the left!) or "Rimon yamin!" (grenade on the right!), and we had three seconds to dive to the ground and cover ourselves. The consequences were either to not have children or to not have a head (and thusly not have children). Before someone calls the IDF to sue, don't worry. The grenades were never real. And in the end, the game was quite fun, minus an encounter with a yellow scorpion that shook a few of us up a bit.

The big perks of the Gadna experience for me were the fact that not only were we wearing the uniform of the Israeli Army, but we had just come back from Poland and experiencing the Holocaust. And now, we were preparing to fight for our country and for our beliefs---just as the original Zionists did to make the dream of a Jewish State come true. During the obstacle course, I set my tiredness aside, forgot the horrible sleeping conditions and poor hygeine we were under, and put all my energy into doing well. At one point, there was an 8-foot high wall to get over. This was done by getting a running start, jumping as high as possible, and flailing over the other side. The first two tries I think I was a little too enthusiastic, as I found myself on the other side of the wall, on the ground, without even having touched the top...my commander thought it was hilarious.

On the last day, we had the chance to fire 10 rounds from the M-16 A1, the assault rifle used by the Israeli and American armies. After three days of weapons training, I still wasn't too sure about the whole gun thing, since I'm not that into guns. Once I got to the firing range and shot, though, I could see that the guns we were using don't have to be just a method of destroying things---in fact, this country and much of the world wouldn't be around if not for guns. At a distance of 50 meters from a wind-blown paper target, I managed to fire one bullet practically dead center, and after watching the mefakdim (commanders) do a little celebration of another week of Gadna completed, we were ready to hang up our uniforms and go home. Getting back on the bus, I was a bit sad to have to go, but I'm fairly certain now that sometime in the future, the army will see me again as an Israeli citizen, and I too will have to serve my country just as the founders of Israel did.

After a long bus ride back to Tzuba, we had a few hours to sleep and then headed back out, this time to a complex of farms near Tel Aviv. Here, we picked palmellos (a citrus fruit, akin to a grapefruit) for a program called Table to Table. At the beginning of our stay in Israel, we picked onions for those that don't make enough money to buy bread in Israel. Well, the several hundred kilos of palmellos we picked went to the same people, hopefully making a difference in their lives for the better.

As if enough hadn't happened in the past two weeks, I received a call from my parents informing me that their plane was turned around over the Atlantic and they would be delayed in their coming to visit me. At long last, they arrived and proceeded to get horribly lost in the Judean Hills, and around 3AM that morning pulled up in front of the hotel here on Tzuba. We shmoozed for a bit, while they mused over how I'd grown and both laughed at my newly-grown beard. A few hours of sleep later, we went off to Tel Aviv to walk on teh beach, have falafel and shwarma, and just generally enjoy having some time together in between August 28th and January 2nd. That night we had dinner with our family in Jerusalem, and the next day it was time to get back into the "normal" groove of school.

Sunday, we went on a tiyul ("field trip") to learn all about the 1948 War of Independence, beginning at a kibbutz up north that was turned into an underground bullet factory, and continuing to the building in Tel Aviv where Israel declared its independence on March 14, 1948, at 4pm. Maybe in my next entry I'll expand on the sites in this tiyul and the 1948 war, but it's late, so I'll just outline for now. Not too long after the British withdrew from the Middle East, all of the Arab nations surrounding Israel rushed in to wipe the Jews into the sea. Ultimately, they failed, and although a heavy price was paid (1%, or 6,000 out of 600,000 Jews were killed), the State of Israel persevered and held on, defeating the Arabs and making the borders secure for the time being.

A succession of wars followed the '48 War of Independence, the first being the Sinai Campaign in 1956, in which Israel responded to attacks by Egyptian guerillas by capturing the Sinai Peninsula and the Suez Canal. The story goes that Britain and France meant to help the Israelis, but by the time they got to Egypt to provide reinforcements, the Israeli soldiers were tanning on the bank of the Suez Canal saying "where were you guys?". In the end, the UN made Israel give Sinai back to Egypt, something only done once or twice in history---where the victor of a war actually has to give land back that they gained legitimately. The 1956 Campaign showed the Arab nations that Israel was now something to contend with, and this led up to the next flare-up of violence, the Six Days War.

On June 5th, 1967, Israel sent out planes before dawn to bomb the air bases of Egypt and Jordan, immoblizing the amassed military capabilities existing there. In the weeks prior to this event, Egypt's Prime Minister Nasser moved all his troops to the Israeli/Egyptian border, as well as closing off all trade routes and evacuating the UN peace forces in the area. He united with Jordan and Syria, and by June of '67, Israel knew that the Arab countries meant war. In an effort to surprise the tri-national Arab force, Israel launched a preemptive strike, and then moved its troops onto three fronts. On the Egyptian front, the Sinai Peninsula was captured again; on the Syrian front, Israel captured the Golan Heights; and on the Jordanian front, Israel re-took the West Bank of the Jordan River, now an Israeli territory. The biggest gain of the Six Days War, though, was the re-uniting of Jerusalem. From 1948-1967, Jerusalem had belonged to Jordan, and Jews couldn't get into the Old City to pray at the Cotel (Western/Wailing Wall). After all the hard work of the War of Independence, the Jews of Israel still couldn't pray at their holiest of holy sites. This was the focus of today's tiyul, at Ammunition Hill. This hill used to be a Jordanian outpost, and the Israelis took it by force in order to regain the Old City. After a long, bloody battle, the Jordanians were subdued and Jews began flocking into the Old City, blowing shofars and holding Torah scrolls high. For the first time in 19 years, Jerusalem---all of it---was again in Jewish hands.

This triumph is where we've left off for now, and it is getting rather late, so I must bid everyone adieu. I apologize for lack of entries since Poland, but I've been one busy puppy, running around with my parents everywhere and showing them the sights of Israel. Tomorrow, we're going to take an all-day excursion to Tzfat, the town of mystics and artists in the Northern part of the country. It'll be good to have some parents-and-me time, time that isn't just dinner and back to the kibbutz. Oh, and by the way, our group has again lost two more members, and the countdown to January 1st has inadvertantly begun. I really love it here, and would love to stay. On the other hand, even though this land may be my home, my home in the States has begun calling to me. Oh, what a paradox.

I do believe it's time to start what I call "living it up".

May the next month be a good one for you (in honor of Rosh Chodesh),
--Aron

aronaltmark@aol.com

Aron Altmark
NFTY-EIE High School
Kibbutz Tzuba
90870 D.N. Harei Yehuda
ISRAEL

**Please be sure to mark all letters with, “AIRMAIL.”

Of a Pilgrimage to Poland and the Holocaust (Warning: Very Long Entry)

I don't think I've ever been happier to be back in Israel in my entire life (disregard the fact that I've only flown in twice thus far). We flew in this morning around four o'clock in the morning, returning from five days travelling throughout Poland seeing the sight and learning about Jewish culture before World War II and the Holocaust, and the effect it has on us as the Jewish people in modern times. Since there's a lot to write about, I'll split up this entry into sections by days to make it easier to read. So, here goes:

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Sunday, November 5 2006

Today, I finally learned the true meaning of a "pilgrimage". First, though, the trivial details:

At 2 o'clock this morning, we got on our bus, left Kibbutz Tzuba and departed Ben Gurion airport around 6am. We landed in Warsaw approximately five hours later, and to my pleasure there was around a foot of snowfall on the ground (so what, little Jew boy from Alabama hasn't seen that much snow since 1993, get over it...damn Yankees...). As soon as our baggage was collected, we were whisked onto another bus and drove to Warsaw's main cemetery. There, we walked around with the purpose of finding out something about the Jews living in Poland in the the 1900's, pre-WWII. Cemeteries often have the most information about a group of people, and we found some cool sights, including the graves of the founder of Yiddish Theatre, the pioneer of the Esperanza language, as well as many other prominent Jewish figures of the times. The conditions weren't ideal, being at 4 degrees Celsius (around 34 degrees Fahrenheit) and raining/sleeting on the already snowy, icy, slushy ground, but I have never seen a more beautiful cemetery than the Warsaw cemetery covered in snow. Near the end, there was an abrupt transition from graves packed together like sardines to a large, bowl-like expanse surrounded by stone pillars. This is the mass grave of the Jews that died in the Warsaw Ghetto, and therefore holds all the bodies that couldn't survive the living conditions set by the Nazi government and either starved to death or died of disease. During the height of WWII, a rabbi would stand at the top of the pit and say benedictions for the dead as hundreds of bodies were poured through shoots and with shovels into the grave. Shortly after seeing this, we left he cemetery to have lunch and warm up a bit.

After lunch, we walked to a part of Warsaw that was formerly the ghetto. One street has been preserved so taht all can see the living conditions imposed upon the Jews of Warsaw during the Nazi occupation---and let me tell you, they weren't near 5-star rated. The entire Jewish population of Warsaw and the surrounding areas, consisting of almost 450,000 Jews, was crowded into an area only 2.4% the size of the entire city of Warsaw in the winter of 1940. Not long after, the Nazis decided to liquidate the Ghetto and sent all but 40,000 Jews to their deaths in the concentration camps all over Poland. During the existence of the Ghetto, up to 10 people might live in a one-room tenement, contributing to the rampant disease and severe death toll in the ghetto.

Within the ghetto, there was a synagogue that hsa been kept preserved. The Nozhyk synagogue was the major shul for all Jews of Warsaw. The shul hasn't seen a decent prayer service in about 60 years, since the extermination of its congregants, and we had the chance to bring some life back to the place by having Minchah T'fillah. Walking around and looking at the old scrolls and siddurim, I could see the Jews of Warsaw davening just as we did; saying the Shema just as we did; praying to G-d just as we did, even in times such as the terrible times they lived in. It was actually quite hard for me to leave the shul, but of course there was the schedule to follow. I don't like schedules...especially when they involve cold, Polish wetness.

So later that night, I found myself sitting in the hotel room in front of a small yizkor candle that symbolized the remembrance of those that aren't alive anymore. Who was I remembering? Well, now I get to my definition of a pilgrimage.

My grandmother's parents (on my dad's side) lived in Warsaw pre-WWII, and when the Nazis came to power, they were moved into the Ghetto. At some point, her mother and aunt (my great-grandmother and great-aunt, respectively) were able to escape the ghetto with their families, walking from Warsaw to Siberia and Kazakhstan (respectively). After that, both were able to catch boats to the U.S., which is how I came about in a round-about way. Some of the family that escaped eventually moved to Israel and still live here, but most of the family in the ghetto (those that didn't escape) were murdered or died of disease or starvation. As I was standing at the foot of the mass grave in the Warsaw cemetery, a ton of bricks hit me in the face with the message: "Your family is in that hole." The thought made me shiver, and when we went to the ghetto and the shul, I felt as if I was walking in the footsteps of my ancestors. I was reliving their experiences, catching glimpses and flashbacks into the past. It almost felt like they (my ancestors) were watching me, seeing how I am changed by this experience, this pilgrimage.

{insert really good four-course French/Polish meal here}

So there I sat with a Yizkor candle in the middle of Warsaw, remembering my ancestors who perished and seeing the past in a new light. And I realized that my generation is the last one that will be able to hear the stories of the Holocaust and the Ghetto. The survivors are dying or dead, and soon the memories will be just that---memories. Unless, that is, we (the youth) step up to the plate to carry the torch, to hear the stories and and recognize that it is my responsibility to make sure the memory of the past is never forgotten and to keep their stories alive. Burn on, candle, burn on.

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Monday, November 6 2006

After a somewhat unpleasantly early wakeup, we had a two hour bus ride to Kazimierz Dolny, a small town that formerly held a few thousand Jews. This experience was meant to show us the other side of Jewish life pre-WWII, referred to commonly as "Shtetl" life. Think "Fiddler on the Roof". That's where we were, pretty much, minus the dancing milkman and singing Chasidic Jews. The life enjoyed by these rural Jews was much simpler and revolved around their town---who would marry whom? Would the matchmaker approve? Who was rich, who was poor?--All kinds of simpler things, no big city worries. That is, until the Nazi occupation, riots and pogroms. When the first anti-Jewish pogroms (riots) came to Kazimierz Dolny, the Jews just turned the other cheek while their lives were ripped apart. In one particularly devastating pogrom, all the Jews of the town were taken to the outskirts, dug a pit and were shot, while the rioters went to the cemetery and uprooted all the tombstones, shattering them and making a new road using the tombstones as cobblestones. We went to the cemetery and saw that even though there are no more Jews in the town, the residents still have respect. In the 1980's, the town paid to have the tombstone roads pulled up and a wall was erected with the broken tombstones on it to make a memorial to the Jews that once lived there. The wall is broken in the middle, showing that even though amends were made, some rifts cannot be repaired with time.

Oh, one quick interjection. At the cemetery, I slipped on some icy ground while walking down the hill and managed to royally smack my skull into the ground, bruising/scraping my knee and arm, as well as almost breaking my glasses and giving me a nice little cut above my left eye. There's still a lump there as I type this entry, and it's been four days. You may call me super-graceful if you'd like. Continuing...

After this visit, we took a short ride to the city of Lublin, where we walked through the older parts of town that was the Jewish quarter in the first part of the 20th century. Lublin had around 20,000 Jews living in it, and was considered one of the major centers of Jewish learning with two major Yeshivot, one of which we visited and learned a bit of Talmud. There are no more Jews in Lublin, and it is all due to the structure that sits on the outskirts of the town: Maidanik.

Maidanik. This was one of the first death camps established by the Nazis for the purpose of ridding the Third Reich of all those it didn't desire: Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, non-Aryans, Poles, etc. The thing about Maidanik is that that camp hasn't been touched since the Allies liberated it in 1944. Except for burying bodies and putting signs up on some buildings, the camp is exactly as it was when functioning. Established in 1941 as a POW camp, in 1943 Maidanik became a concentration camp and ended up killing around 300,000 Jews. The camp is no more than a half kilometer outside town, and the residents of Lublin certainly knew about the goins-on. This is one of hte only camps not to be hidden away by the Nazis; rather, it is in plain sight for all to see. At its peak, the gas chambers, which used Zyklon B and carbon monoxide as its toxins, were working around the clock with the crematoria and were able to murder and burn to ashes almost 1000 bodies per day. We were able to walk through the camp freely, something no one in the time of its operation got to do. I walked through the gas chambers. I walked out the other side.

In the freezing rain, the camp was grey and black, just like the pictures. It was hard to picture anyone living there, especially without the benefit of our warm coats. Teh experience shook me to the core, and simply seeing the chimney of the crematorium in the distance made me gag. Inside the crematorium, I saw the instruments of death laid out before me, almost ready to be fired up again at a moment's notice. Outside the crematorium, a massive dome stands. Under it, a pile of ashes weighing 7 tons serves as a monument to the victims of the camp's machine-like nature. At this point, I made a silent vow to never forget, and to never let them (the victims) be forgotten. May G-d bless their souls, and let them rest in peace.

Leaving the foggy, raining, freezing complex of Maidanik behind us, we drove on to Krakow.
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Tuesday, November 7 2006

Today was devoted to seeing the development of European Jewry in relation to their surroundings, going all the way back to medieval times up to the Shoah (hebrew for Holocaust). Krakow is, thank G-d, about 5 degrees Celcius warmer than Warsaw, so we weren't completely freezing our asses off.

Our first stop was a castle that the lords of the Krakow area used to reside in. Now, I've seen a good many castles in my day, and this castle was pretty nice, complete with walls, gates, and even its own cathedral in the central square. The cathedral doors are adorned with a mammoth's tusk, a whale bone, and the skull of a lion, and legend has it that as long as those items hang above the doors, no ill fate may descend on Krakow. Turns out these charms didn't really help when it came to the concept of hate.

As long ago as 500 years, Jews lived in Krakow and practiced freely, even flourished. Then, a new king came into power and ordered the Jews to move across the river from his castle so that he wouldn't have to see them. When the Nazis came into Poland, the Jews were ordered into a tiny area that turned into another ghetto. We walked all over the city, from the castle to the old Jewish quarter, where we saw two abandonded synagogues. Each has its own traditions that reflect the past. In the case of the Auld (Old) synagogue, the congregants used to pause and have a moment of silence during the 4th Hakafa (procession) at Simchas Torah to remember the time when a group of rioters attacked the shul in the middle of the service at that exact moment. Neither the Auld nor the Neiu (Old/New respectively) have seen their congregants since the beginning of the 1940s, sadly.

On we walked, eventually coming to another shul. The Ramu synagogue was built by a man who completely re-codified the laws of Judaism for European Jews, building on Yosef Karo's Shulchan Aroch and re-creating a form of it in the spectrum of Jews in Poland. The cemetery outside the shul holds many famous names, and with the names come a great many stories. There is also one wall of the cemetery constructed out of tombstones. This is the same idea as the wall in Kazimierz Dolny, where a pogrom made roads out of the Jews' tombstones, and the Poles memoralized this act in the latter half of the 20th century.

From this shul, we saw two more--the Temple shul and Issac shul. In the Temple shul, we had T'fillah, and as we sang a nigun (Chasidic tune), I couldn't help but notice the gold reflected in the walls become brighter and the large expanse of the room get warmer as we sang, our voices ressurecting the memories of generations past. That was a truly beautiful moment, and the last before we ventured into the ghetto of Krakow. Part of the wall of the ghetto is still standing, and shows just how terrible the Germans really were in their deception and crushing of the Jews and their culture. The wall is made to look like so many tombtones, so that all hope of surviving would be summed up just by looking out one's window in the ghetto. For the Jews of the ghetto, there was no hope.

That night, we had dinner (chicken and fries, which evidently is the only dish Poles serve to people my age) at a Klezmer restaurant. There, we ate and drank while listening to an authentic Yiddish folk band. Well, authentic in every sense except for the whole being Jewish part. This was a chance to look back and see a part of the beautiful culture lost in the Shoah and in the extermination of all European Jewry. After dinner, it was back to the hotel to collapse and greet the next day, which would certainly be the hardest day of the trip.

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Wednesday, November 8 2006

6:30am wakeup. Get on the bus.

After a near-three hour drive, we came to the town of Oswnciem, and to the synagogue there. We had T'fillah, led by myself and a few others, surrounded by the old wood scent and dusty prayerbooks. This may seem insignificant, but this may wake up those that are tired of reading this: The German name for Oswnciem is Auschwitz.

Just outside of the town limits, Auschwitz I sits like a barbed-wire sentinel. The combined facilities of Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II (Birkenau) killed an estimate of 1,250,000 Jews during the Holocaust, making them the largest and most lethal concentration and death camp the Germans had in their possession. The smaller camp, Auschwitz I, was originally a POW camp, but was turned into a concentration camp when the war got into full swing. Soon, the single gas chamber and crematorium wasn't enough, so Auschwitz II (which I will refer to as Birkenau from now on) was built. Auschwitz and Birkenau had 5 gas chambers and crematoria combined, and at the height of their operation, working 24 hours, 7 days a week, were the most efficent killing machine devised in the history of man.

Our day began with a tour of Auschwitz I, which has been turned into a bonified museum. Each of the brick barracks was repaired and there are hundreds of exhibits telling the stories of the camp. In one, thousands of pictures of the prisoners were hanging on the walls, while in another 10 tons of human hair was on display behind thick glass. The Nazis were extremely creative in the camps, not only demeaning and dehumanizing by replacing names with numbers tattooed on a prisoner's forearm, but shearing all their hair in order to send it to Germany for use in the textile industry. Prisoners in Auschwitz were forced to do manual labor, all meaningless tasks like cutting the grass with bare hands or carrying heavy stones from place to place for no purpose. This was the death of many prisoners, and even those who could handle the workload frequently ended up in the gas chambers. Children were the worst off, thanks to the SS doctors. "Doctors" like Dr. Mengele took their pick of young children and performed experiments on them, like submerging them in cold or boiling water to see how long it took for them to die. In some particularly brutal experiments, limbs were broken and mended or serious invasive surgeries were performed without the use of any anesthetic or painkillers to see what the human pain tolerance was.

The most striking moment in Auschwitz I, for me, was in fact someone else's experience. In one of the barracks, we were walking out into the hallway where thousands of pictures and names of prisoners hung. No sooner had we crossed the threshold of the doorway than one of my peers [name withheld] gasped and went into hysterics, for there, right in front of [them], were two pictures of inmates with the same last name as [my friend], both staring [them] directly in the eyes. Up until that point, two things hadn't really clicked for me: First, up until this trip, the six million Jews murdered in the Shoah had been just that, Jews murdered. I couldn't connect individually to any of them, they were just a statistic. Now, however, there were two men that had been there and seen the atrocities, staring out of a picture frame at us. All I could do was hug [them] and try to calm [them] down. The second thing that shook me will come a bit later in this same day's entry, so have patience.

After passing back under the sign at the entrance of Auschwitz I that proclaims proudly in German: "Work makes you Free!", we had a light lunch and prepared ourselves for the hardest experience of the entire journey.

Many people have seen the postcard-like picture of the big brick archway with railroad tracks leading into Auschwitz II, or Birkenau. It's a famous picture, and I know that I associated it with the Holocaust before I went on this trip. Standing on the tracks at that same spot, however, shook me to the core. I got the chills, shivered a bit. Over one million of my people, the Jewish people, had taken these tracks into the same place, through the archway and to their death. Now, it was my turn, although I was invested with the knowledge that at the end of the day, I could walk out--something the Jews that came before me never had a chance to do.

Birkenau is just like Maidanik in the sense that nothing was messed with. When the Allies liberated the camp in 1944-45, the Germans blew up the crematoria and gas chambers before the evidence of their crimes would be discovered, but the ruins still lie just as they did that day. All the barracks are original except for a block that was taken apart by Polish locals to use for firewood in the economic depression in Poland following WWII. The sight of where the camp's inhabitants lived was rather disturbing: each barrack housed around 1000 people, crowded into buildings that were formerly stables meant to hold 52 horses. You do the math. Space was nonexistent, and prisoners slept almost on top of each other. Their concerns weren't anything to do with marriage or future. All these individuals were concerned with was where they would sleep; if they would be whipped for being too close or too far from the door; if the person above them would bother to get up in the middle of the night if they had to use the bathroom; whether they could keep a hold of their hat or steal someone else's if one went missing at roll call. These were desperate times, and only those who did everything they could were able to survive. One story of a survivor goes something like this:

"Just before roll call, I noticed that my cap was missing, and nowhere to be found. I knew that if I didn't have it at roll call, I would be shot. So when everyone was leaving the barracks, I took a cap that was sitting on one of the bunks. Later that evening at roll call, somewhere down the line a gun was fired and a body was dragged away. I turned my head, not wanting to know who I had sacrificed to give myself one more day of life."

Diseases were rampant and killed most of those who didn't die from the labor or weren't sent to the gas chambers. Our tour was a little backward, so after seeing the barracks, we headed to the infamous Ramp.

The Ramp is a strip of gravel about 100 meters long right next to the railroad track coming into the camp. These tracks, by the way, were built for the main purpose of sending the Jews of Europe to their deaths, and have not been used since. Back to the Ramp. Once a train arrived with a few thousand Jews on it, often in the middle of the night and after a journey of up to two weeks with no food or water and no space to sit down, the ones that still lived would be gathered on the Ramp and lined up. From there, an SS doctor would determine in the space of 10-30 seconds whether the person would go to the left or right. To the left meant straight to the gas chambers, while to the right meant hard labor. Almost 90%, mostly women, children, and the elderly or infirm were sent immediately to their deaths. The amazing thing about the Nazis was their talent for deception. When the ghettos were liquidated and the Jews were sent to the death camps, the Nazis told them to pack for a trip and that they were going to be resettled in the East. Some were even forced to buy their train tickets, and when they arrived at the camps were told that they were going to be showered and disinfected. After a horrible train ride, the prisoners were ecstatic and flocked to the "showers". Once inside the chamber, complete with fake showerheads, the doors were closed and the lights turned off. Then, a can of Zyklon B was dropped in and carbon monoxide pumped in. In about 15 minutes, the SonderKommando, a group of Jews bribed with 4 months guaranteed to live, were sent in to extract and valuables including gold teeth and fillings, as well as drag the bodies to the crematoria. Once the bodies had been burned, the ashes were dumped in ponds that dot the landscape of Birkenau to erase as much evidence as possible.

We had a bit of quiet time near the ponds, and I've got to admit that the scene was very beautiful. There is a grove of birch trees right beside the ponds, which is where Birkenau got its name (German for "birch tree") where the Jews would sit until their turn came to be killed. I sat there with a nice breeze blowing in and said Kaddish while promising never to forget the story and the memories. This was a nice tranquil moment before we walked through the buildings that comprise the processing-center of Birkenau, where new arrivals would get sheared and disinfected with either freezing or boiling hot water.

At the end of this building was a display with pictures found in suitcases and confiscated, comprising three different families. Referring back to the earlier half of the day, this is where my second serious shock came. The same peer [name withheld] was walking around the display and, to everyone's surpise, there on the wall were almost a hundred pictures of people with the same last name as [them], most likely their ancestors. Now, personally, I don't believe in the concept of fate. I think that we all decide our own fate. But this event was the closest damn thing I've seen to fate, seeing one's family twice in one day at Birkenau. This experience changed [them] for good, I think, and not in negative way at all.

Finally, our little group gathered by the remains of crematorium IV to have a tekes (ceremony). Crematorium IV was blown up by the underground movement in the camp as a revolt just before the Allies camp to liberate them, and the focus of our tekes was looking at the tragedies and seeing the stories therein. Beside the crematorium there was another one of the ponds with ashes in it, but on the shores of this pond there were bone fragments that didn't get burned completely. I decided to take one of these fragments for burial in Israel, somewhere proper. Returning them to Eretz Yisrael--it's a mitzvah.

After the tekes, we sung Hatikvah, Israel's national anthem. This brought tears to even the hardest souls among us; seeing all the devastation and death around us, but still singing a song of hope and joy...sort of like a pheonix rising out of the ashes to spread hope and light.

Phew. No more metaphors for me...that one left me empty in my metaphor tank.

Finally, we turned our backs to the crematoria and walked along the railroad tracks from the place where they stopped (end of the line, much?) to the gate of Birkenau. Then we walked out, and as we left the barbed-wire fortress, I felt a weight shrug off my shoulders and I sighed. Thank G-d, and now I was ready to go back to Israel.

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Thursday, November 9 2006

Today had a very early wakeup and then a 5-hour drive back to Warsaw, where we had the chance to tour the former Warsaw ghetto area after having a scrumptious lunch of Polish Mexican food at a mall.

The Warsaw Ghetto, as I've already described above, was a horrible place to be. Watch the movies "Schindler's List" and "The Pianist" and you'll catch a glimpse into what I mean. But not everyone in the ghetto bowed their head and was slaughered. The focus of our trip to Warsaw today was, in fact, the topic of resistance. In 1942, the Germans began to liquidate the ghettos of Poland, and it soon became clear to the Jews in Warsaw that the transports were being sent to death camps and being exterminated. During the second large expulsion of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto (the first expulsion had sent 300,000 to their deaths), the ghetto's underground movement decided it had had enough. In January, 1943, the Germans came into the ghetto only to encounter heavy gunfire and guerilla tactics. After four days, the Germans withdrew from the ghetto after suffering heavy casualties. The uprising lasted until the evening of Passover, April 1943, when the Germans took over the ghetto by force, and finally put down the uprising.

The thing that amazed us was that hundreds of Jews, mostly around our age, were the fighters in the ghetto. They had little ammunition, and only a few pistols and rifles. They used many molotov cocktails and had a large series of tunnels connecting their bunkers, complete with electricity and water. The biggest achievement, according to the leaders of the revolt, was that after so many year of Jews being led "like lambs to the slaugher", there was finally some sort of resistance in the ghetto. Even though those Jews were ultimately killed or committed suicide, this resistance inspired so many other ghetto uprisings, and also the Polish revolt against the Nazis. Finally, the Jews stood up for themselves. The only way the Germans could find to put down the revolt, both in the ghetto and outside, was to level the city of Warsaw. Only a few of the building there date back to the end of WWII, and only a small 10 meter portion of the ghetto wall remains as a memory. Obsidian tombstones dot the streets in remembrance of the fighters of the revolt, and each and every Jew should be proud of this show of resistance, whether or not it was successful--depending on your definition of success. I think it was a big success, in showing that we wouldn't just turn the other cheek and that we weren't helpless. We fought, even when there seemed to be no hope.

There hasn't been a Jewish community in Poland since the Shoah, or so we thought. Now, people are coming back to their roots and Jews are resurfacing in the country. Still, only 30,000 Jews (an overestimate) are in the entire country, less than half the population of Seattle's Jews, but we had a chance before dinner to speak with the rabbi in charge of the reform/progressive Judaism movement in Poland in modern days. He had some good things to say, and it appears that within a few decades Poland could have a sizable Jewish population...but I doubt it. The memory of the Shoah still haunts the country, and still haunts the Jewish people. It's only been 60 years, and that's not near enough time to heal what kind of damage was done.

In the Shoah, an entire people were exterminated. An entire culture, a way of life, one that only belongs to the Jews of Europe pre-1940's , was lost, and can never be regained completely. The Shoah is a nasty stain on the history of the world that, personally, can never be erased or repaired. Our job is to remember, educate, and never let it happen again. For those that don't know, look up the goings-on in Darfur, Sudan, for there is genocide there as well, and it is happening now---happening again. As a Jew, and as a human being, I don't feel that anyone has the right to say which religions, cultures, or groups of people should live and which should die out. Think about it, and realize that there can never be enough time to heal all the wounds made, but there can be steps made to prevent the rest of mankind from letting another holocaust happen.

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Shortly before midnight Thursday night, we departed Warsaw and arrived in Tel Aviv around 4am. Driving to the kibbutz, I got to watch the sun rise over the hills, and I can honestly say that I've NEVER been more glad to be in Israel, and that it does feel like my homeland. After my suggestion, we were able to go the Cotel (Western Wall) in Jerusalem for Friday night T'fillah. This was the best experience, coming from the destruction of the Shoah to the rebirth of the land and dancing around, celebrating with soldiers, Chasidut, and all kinds of Jews, regardless of where/who/etc they are or come from. And again, after T'fillah this morning, I can reiterate that I've NEVER been more happy to look out on the Judean Hills or to walk around the kibbutz freely. This is the dream and the hope that kept so many Jews alive and hopeful through the Shoah and through the founding of the state of Israel.

Unfortunately, while we were out of the country, the Israeli Army, while operating in the Gaza Strip against terrorists, misfired an artillery shell and hit a residential area. 19 Palestinians were killed, mostly women and children. Even though it was an accident, the terrorist organization Hamas has said that it is "reconsidering" the ceasefire with Israel. Basically, the Middle East is on a high level of alert right now, and I just hope that the spark needed to ignite the whole situation never comes around. For now, we aren't allowed in any malls or large public areas...just for precautions.

On a much better note, tomorrow morning at 9am we leave the kibbutz (again) to participate in Gadna, which is a week-long basic training program for the Israeli Army. We'll be on an army base in the middle of the Negev Desert, which, if you think about it, is propbably the safest place on earth to be during any sort of conflict in the Middle East. This experience will allow us to get an inside look at what it really means to defend your country and fight for what you believe in. Israelis don't volunteer for the army, they are required to go in as soon as they turn 18. If one day (now, family members, don't freak out) I decide to move to Israel, I'll be required to serve, and this will give all of us an idea of what it's like, considering a bunch of kids already have made up their mind to live here someday.

Also, my parents come to visit the day after I return from Gadna. PARTY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Alright, I know that was long-winded, but for those of you that stuck with me, I'll give you a cookie when I return to the States in January. Shabbat Shalom for the moment, but by the time most people read this, Shabbat will be over, so I'll wish you the best and a good week, a week of peace.

Shavua Tov,
--Aron

aronaltmark@aol.com

Aron Altmark
NFTY-EIE High School
Kibbutz Tzuba
90870 D.N. Harei Yehuda
ISRAEL

**Please be sure to mark all letters with, “AIRMAIL.”

Zionism, Zionism, Zionism, A Birthday...and the Holocaust

I can confidently say that this year may have been the best birthday I've had in 17 years. That's right, yesterday yours truly turned 17 (shiva-esrei in Hebrew). I know everyone wants to hear about the parties and all, but first a quick review of the past week's events:

Sunday, on the way back from Tel Aviv, we went on tiyul to the North of Israel, near the Sea of Galilee. Our first spot was in Zikhron Yaakov, where we saw one of the first successful kibbutzim established during the late 1800's, early 1900's, and learned all about the British occupation of what was then called Palestine. After a few hours, we arrived at the Arbel Cliff, a massive...well...cliff---overlooking the Sea of Galilee and the entire Northern land. The story behind the cliff is that when the first Zionists came to Israel, they established kibbutzim and moshavs all around this area, and when fighting began with Arabs or the British, they would come to the caves (just like the Maccabees did some 2000 years ago) and hide out. According to our calculation of throwing a rock off of the top of the cliff, since it took four seconds to reach the bottom, then the cliff is...really damn high up. Then, my favorite part of any tiyul came: we went into Tiberias, were given shkalim and given free time. I.E. SHWARMA time!!! Can we talk about how much I love shwarma? Because I do love it. A lot. Mmmm...

Alright, so after the shwarma incident, we went to a Jewish cemetery and got followed by the ugliest dog I've ever seen. This cemetery lies right on the shore of the Kinneret, looking out on the hills that are the Golan Heights. The view at sunset was so spectacular, it's no doubt that famous poetry was written about the area by a woman named simply: Rachel (the poetess). From here, we talked about how a new form of Zionism emerged, one called Labor Zionism. This is where anyone who came to live and form a Jewish state (under the British Mandate) had to work. All this labor led to the cultivating and renewing of the desert landscape of Israel, and gave us this beautiful forested country we have today.

Monday, I had my Jewish history midterm, which covered roughly 4000 years of history of the Jewish people. There were around 100 questions, ranging from timelines to Moses to Rambam (Maimonedes), all the way to the first Aliyah to Israel in 1881. Needless to say, regardless of how much I learned, that test was a pain in the tuchus. My head hurt after finishing, especially after the essay question which asked me to trace the origins and institutions of Jewish Law from Oral Law and the commandments on Mt. Sinai up until the present-day law of Chalaha. Okay, it wasn't all that bad, since this gave me a chance to see how much I really have learned.

Then, on Wednesday, we went into Jerusalem to visit the Russian Compound and learn about resistance to the British Mandate and the White Papers passed that took away the dream of a Jewish state. The Russian Compound was a prison where the British kept political prisoners, and was where the underground resistance movements began. First, there was the Haganah, which was a fighting force that was only meant to defend against Arab attack. Then came the Irgun, a more radical faction that wanted to actually target British soldiers as well as Arabs. Even more extremist were the LEHI, who were by and large outright terrorists. These organizations all had one goal: to show force and resistance to the British and to fight for the establishment of a sovereign Jewish state in Palestine. Eventually, the British were forced out, and the state was won...but that story comes in about two weeks.

The only other really exciting things that have happened since...Well, the 11th anniversary of the death of Yitzchak Rabin, Israel's beloved leader, was today. All over Israel, memorial services are held to commemorate him, and the Israeli culture still mourns for his loss. On a happier note, yesterday was indeed my birthday. A few things: I have the best Grammy in the world, because she baked cookies (chocolate chip, my favorite) and wrapped them up really well, then sent them all the way to me in Israel. And by G-d were they good. Also, I've got some biking magazines to keep me company, although I walked over to the bike trails on the kibbutz the other day and decided to talk the director of the program to let me ride them. I can dream, can't I?

Last night, after a visit to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum of Israel, we watched Fiddler on the Roof, all in preparation for the next week. Oh! I should describe my next two weeks for everyone. Thanks for reminding me. No problem.

Alright, so tonight at 2am we leave Tzuba for the airport to get on a plane and go to Poland. We'll be there for 5 days walking around Warsaw, Krakow, Lublin, and two camps--Maidonek and Auschwitz. In Poland, we'll be studying European Jewry and what was lost forever when that culture was wiped out by the Holocaust. This trip will probably be one of the most trying and emotionally draining of my life, but there is a saying:

"The sun will NOT rise tomorrow, and all things will NOT pass. You must MAKE the sun rise, for it is in your hands."

So off to Poland I go to see the history of my people and to find out what the Holocaust was all about. The best part is that we get to come back to Israel afterward, and no sooner have we gotten back than we enter into Gadna, a week-long basic training course for the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces). The whole next two weeks should be amazing, and I'm pumped and ready. The only downside is that I won't be able to update the blog again until we get back from Poland, and the same with Gadna, but I'll be sure to keep a handwritten journal in order to have a massive post ready when I get back from both.

It's time for me to go back---it's been snowing in Poland for the past week, and sure as anything we'll be freezing our butts off. I wish everyone a happy Shabbat, and best wishes. Remember, mail is still very appreciated.

Much love and good cookies,
Aron

aronaltmark@aol.com

Aron Altmark
NFTY-EIE High School
Kibbutz Tzuba
90870 D.N. Harei Yehuda
ISRAEL

**Please be sure to mark all letters with, “AIRMAIL.”