The best feeling– landing back in Israel after being in Poland for a week. Although in Poland I learned and experienced so many things, nothing compares to the feeling of stepping back into our home, seeing my dorm, and spending the night with my roommates. In Poland we celebrated life, retraced Jewish history, and showed pride for who we are today.

One of our first stops was a Jewish Cemetery. Here, we did not mourn the death of the dead but celebrated their lives. We got a grasp of what the Jewish life was like before the war. I really enjoyed this because usually cemeteries are full of sadness but this time we were joyous in learning about how people’s lives impacted the Jewish people. Majdanek was the first concentration camp that I visited. Going in I did not know how it would affect me. Would I feel connected in any way? As we walked through the camp I felt the terror and the uncertainty that the Jews felt while being there. At the end of our time there we had a ceremony planned by some people in the group. We listened to the chief rabbi of the IDF recite a prayer and then sang the Hatikvah. It then all made sense. The Jews had so many hopes dreams but they were crushed by the Nazis. They hoped to be liberated, to go back to their normal lives, and to be free. We stood in front of a memorial that houses the ashes of sixty thousand people. The outside read, “Let our fate be a warning”. So many things spoke to me after reading this.

One of our lighter days involved walking around the Kashmiers, the Jewish part of Krakow that is still fully intact unlike Warsaw. It was so awesome to see the Krakow JCC. It really hit home for me because I spend a lot of time at the JCC.

Poland was such a great experience for me. I feel like I can connect more with stories even though I will never fully know what the Jews went through.