Shabbat and the concentration camps

Saturday April 6:

Today we enjoyed a Shabbat walking your of the old city of Warsaw. The tour consisted of seeing some sights and then we were allowed to walk around and get something to eat or a souvenir. Some of my friends and I decided to get a "hot chocolate"( it was just melted chocolate and a goffer waffle (a waffle with ice cream, whip cream and fruit with chocolate sauce). Later that night we went to a Shabbat program lead by Canadian delegation. This program discussed the uprising of the Warsaw ghetto as well as how we are still alive and strong. What touched me the most was while the sang that hatikvah ( Israel's national anthem) and Am Yisrael Chi , all of the holocaust survivors go up on stage and started to dance together, on the projected screen you could even see some of their faces with tears coming down there eyes.


On Sunday April 7th we traveled southward a to southern poland to visit Auschwitz and Birkenau. It was a emotionaly draning day as we walked alongside Trudy (my bus's holocaust survivor) as she told us her story. It was the first time In my life where I actually got chills and emotional while learning about the holocaust. But being in these camps were teens my age were held was very surreal. The most terrifying place in the camps, were most of my group started to cry, was the gas chambers, were you could see the handmarks and nail scratches of the people who were murdered . After we toured the camps , we had a small ceremony where we did the mourners Kaddish to honor those who had perished and then went to the Oswiecem Synagogue where we got yelled by some soldiers for interrupting their meeting . Later on we learned it was Israel Defense Forces -20th Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz.