...and this is all i'm asking of you
My March of the Living Speech and that i recited at temple.
Love, hatred, happiness, depression, apathy, thankful, doubtful and any other emotion one can possibly feel has been experienced on the greatest trip of a lifetime. The March of the Living. I am not here to explain what we did but how I felt going to the most shocking place in the entire world and then experiencing it with 7,300 Jewish teenagers and adults. It’s hard to see the good in people and in life itself after exiting the gas chambers feeling death creep up all over you. After the crematoriums. After all of the shoes and hair and glasses and talisim. Piled up like garbage. To depict an accurate picture of any of these places is impossible; I can only try to sketch the picture of this atrocity. No one can comprehend 6,000,000 or even 1,000 people. Just think of one person, your mother, son or daughter, best friend; anyone close to you. Then think of the gas chambers and crematoriums. No one knows why this happened but the root of all the evil that occurred has had one root that sprung everything. That is Hatred. Walking through Auschwitz and Birkanou was so hard I couldn’t grasp this but then I picked up my head and looked up and what was flying over me was an Israeli flag. The site of it was absolutely beautiful. I wasn’t alone. Then I had a moment of clarity, I realized I was never alone. I couldn’t even count the flags, they were so many. Marching with kids from 40 different countries was out of this world; I met people from France, New Zealand, Poland, Australia, Mexico, Panama, and all around the country. We all shared one thing, the one cause. To remember. No matter where anyone was from, they all carried the Jewish flag. The Magen David flew gallantly with the wind making sure every single person can see it. The March from Auschwitz to Birkanou was amazing there was just a sea of blue jackets leaving the famous gate that written “Arbeit Macht Frei”: “work makes you free” walking with so much pride. Walking next to the train tracks, the tracks that led to the death of so many of our people. Walking into the gas chambers and securing the fact that we are the people who make sure that every single person will never forget. One other part which affected me so immensely was hearing two of the survivors speak in the barracks they worked and lived at. The pain and agony they had to go through like waking up every morning and see people burnt from committing suicide on the electric fences. I asked myself every night; how they could endure it I really wonder how I would feel but just being there was already hard. There is one thing seeing all of the movies, stories, documentaries and everything but hearing it up close and personal and at the actual location was just. Wow. Such an inspiration this whole experience put on my life. I am getting actively involved in my Jewish community and taking Judaism seriously. You ask yourself how can so much good spring out of so much evil? Unity, which is the one word I would use to describe the March. It is so amazing to have a march with living people and survivors at the exact place where most people marched to their death.