As a Jew going to Poland, it is not really a vacation but more of a lesson on how Jews were dehumanized and the level of Antisemitism that people can have when they are influenced by hate and fear. For me the Shoah before Poland was just a camp, gas chambers, crematoriums and numbers. That what they taught me when I was younger, I remember having to wear a yellow star of david and standing in complete silence for two minutes while a siren went off for all the Jews that died and that’s all. When I heard that I was going to Poland I assumed we would do what we did and tour the camps and listen to testimonies of survivors, but I never expected it to be that of nightmarish things that the Nazis put them through. I was only taught about the Shoah in the gan in Israel and then later on in movies like “Schindler’s List” and “Defiance” so I thought I had a good idea of what happened to the Jews of Europe and what they went through. For me after seeing all the camps and all the mass graves and hearing all the stories it makes me sad to know that people had the chance and opportunities to stop this but they didn’t, they were to blind until it was too late and that just doesn’t make me feel right about humanity. What I take away from this whole thing is to never lose my Jewishness and even though something as heartbreaking as this it led to forming of a great Jewish homeland that proved the whole world that from now on until the end of time there will never be free Jewish blood, ever again.