We Left Before The Day Began Poland Trip to poland - impressions Date: 2-9/7/2003 Tammuz 5763 They will be back conference on The Hidden Children Date:11/5/2003     2003 Trip to poland - impressions We Left Before The Day Began Poland On the 2 Tammuz 5763, July 2, 2003, an organized group through the Michlalah Jerusalem College left for Poland. We left for the airport before the day began. Already before the trip started, certain feelings stirred. Two buses would be waiting for us at the airport in Warsaw, which would take us to places like Kock, Krakow, Lublin, Lezajsk, Lodz,. We would visit the notorious concentration camps of Auschwitz and Madjanek. We would pray and light candles at the graves of the great Rabbis. We would daaven in the Synagogues which once were. We would cry and listen to the winds in the trees. Sochaczew was our first stop, a district near Warsaw, with a Jewish history dating back to 1426. The community today is only the cemeteries of this once great Hasidic center. The group said Tehillim and Kaddish beside the grave of Rabbi Avraham Bornstein, known as Reb Avremele Sochaczewer known as a leading halakhic authority. Ninety miles west of the capital Warsaw, we come to Lodz, and see the famous Poznanski Mausoleum and go to the graves of the rabbis such as the famous Lithuanian rabbi, Elijah Hayyim Meisel, the recognized leader of the Jews of Lodz. Before the war the Jewish community consisted of 233,000 and after liberation there were 900 survivors. Traveling further, in the fairy tale beauty of the Polish countryside, we came to Piotrkow Trybunalski and visited the Synagogue where from 1936 Rabbi Moshe Hayyim Lau הי"ד, the father of Rabbi Israel Lau יבל" א, was the community's rabbi. We see as we see all over Poland, simple plaques, but not so simple stories. "This plaque is in memory of Piotrkow Jews murdered 1939-1945." 22,000 Jews gone, deported to Treblinka. In Auschwitz where 2,000,000 Jews were killed, we see now buildings whose windows shine, and unending barbed wire, now calm, non electric, a kind of "today" museum, but still when you climb the stairs and come to the rooms and see the glass enclosure holdings of the hair, the shoes, the luggage with the names, you know the truth. Much has been written, but the day of our visit, more was felt. We visited nearby notorious Birkenau. The barracks may have been replaced, but the railroad tracks have remained. Here was the last stop. In Tarnow we see the remnant, The Bima , all that's left of the magnificent Synagogue destroyed by the Germans 11.X1.39. "Memories' I say as I photograph a woman from Geula. She answers, "I have my own." In Lancut, how can you describe the Bet Knesset? It just takes your breath away. The Bima is huge - four marble columns. Perek Tehillim and prayers all alongside the walls. The Germans who know how to destroy, wanted to set it on fire, but Graf Potoksy the Polish Count, made them put it out. We daavened Mincha and continued on our journey. In Lezajsk we pray at the grave of the famous Rabbi Elimelekh Lippman (Elimelekh of Lyzhansk), who made Lezajsk a center of Hasidism. The group prays and puts petakim for the many miracles that have been performed and prayers answered. In Lublin a city that once had 100 synagogues we go to see the once famous Yeshivat Hakhmei Lublin which was world known set up by Rabbi Meir Shapiro, and is now called "Collecium Maius" a medical school. In Madjanek we see the 5 field barracks, housing 22 barracks to a field, where 600 hundred beaten masses huddled inside each one of them. We see the gas chambers, and the metal door with a peep hole. We see the crematorium, and say Tehillim, light candles and cry, a different kind of cry. We sing אני מאמין באמונה שלמה. We visit the city of Krakow, barely damaged during the war. In the Old Jewish Cemetery we pray before the grave of Poland's most eminent rabbi, Rabbi Moses Isserles, the Remuh. In the Remuh Synagogue we daaven on Shabbat in the synagogue built in 1553 by Rabbi Moses Isserles, his father. The synagogue is small different from the grand styles of Poland as it was built as a family synagogue. In Gora Kalwaria, the seat of the Gur dynasty Mrs. Esther Farbstein, who is related to the Gur family, shows us the family house, and points to the window where the women used to sit and see as the men went to daaven on Erev Shabbat. We stop en route at Wyszkow to say Kaddish for one of the group members' family, for a community that is no more, and see its remnants, a stone wall with bits of gravestones, salvaged. In Tykocin - Yiddish Tiktin, in the Bialysotk province, the bus goes through the forests, the Forest of Lopuchowow,, where the entire community was forced to go and were murdered. Our tourist guide Debbie Lifschitz tells us that the Germans first killed the Rabbi's children. How can you describe the feeling as you see the trees moving, thrashing nervously as a different kind of wind blows around. How do you explain, as you leave and Dvora Mann, the director of the program, observes "the trees have stopped." How do you explain? Our last stop is Warsaw, the city that once was called the "Mother-City-of Israel". Here was the once 400,000 vibrant Jewish community, the biggest in all of Europe. Here were the 300 hundred synagogues, with only one remaining, the Nozyk Synagogue. Today it's a city of memorials, and markings, of a Ghetto, of a Umschlagsplatz where the people were marched to the waiting trains. Poland, today! Where there are winds in the trees, and Jewish tears, and memories, and Kaddish, the real Poland as Rabbi Feder says. And we come, and we remember and we don't forget those who perished, for that becomes our purpose of the trip, and if we cried in the beginning, and we walked away, we feel that those we cried for, now comfort us, and the trees stop moving nervously and are at peace. And when we sing at the mass graves, and hear in the Hatikvah, ירושלים we come back to ourselves, stand straight and know its time to go back home, to our land. In conclusion, there was a get together at the Michlalah of all the participants of the tour in which people expressed what they felt. One participant wrote, " Before the trip we wished to know where they were, to feel what they felt and to stand against the void and to cry. During the trip I felt shock against the "Judenrein", tears for the atrocities and humiliation In Madjanek and Auschwitz we had a spiritual elevation from the daavening. And with our prayers we felt close to Hashem who watches eternally over Israel. There was a strong feeling of the survival of Am Yisrael and recognition of our mission in the world, the flag of Hashem. Thanks a lot to the organizers, the coordinators, the participants for their being what they were." Print