Reflections on a Journey to Poland: Accompanying TRY Students on Their Masa
by Amy Skopp Cooper, National Ramah Director
I had the privilege of spending the past week with our Tichon Ramah Yerushalayim high school students during their journey to Poland. I don't use the word privilege lightly—joining this group of 38 passionate, thoughtful, and articulate teens, along with our gifted educators, was an extraordinary experience. (You can view photos and videos from this trip on Ramah Israel Facebook.)
During our six days together, students learned about the vibrancy of pre-war Poland as they explored cemeteries, davened in old synagogues, and studied text in the Yeshiva Chachmei Lublin. They found remnants of mikvahs, searched for indentations in doorposts where mezuzot once hung, and looked for walls with faint Hebrew signage. It was extraordinarily painful for the group to grasp that most of what they saw no longer exists.
Our stops included forests where entire communities were annihilated, Majdanek, Treblinka, and Birkenau. At each stop, students, often draped in Israeli flags, prepared songs and readings, lit candles, and laid stones that they had brought from Israel. Thirteen students are descendants of Shoah survivors. Each shared the stories of their great-grandparents, some of whom they had had the privilege of knowing. They read their first-hand accounts and shared photos and the names of their relatives who had perished. There was never a dry eye. In a number of cases, we were able to visit the towns where our students' families had once lived. One of our students located a relative's grave in the Warsaw cemetery; another found a photo of his great-grandfather in the Auschwitz museum.
Our days began at 6:00 am and concluded close to midnight with group processing sessions led by our incredibly skilled Ramah educators. In between stops that can only be described as the depths of despair, our Ramahniks sang, davened, and danced with zeal. They celebrated Shabbat in Krakow, and one of our students offered a dvar Torah to a kehillah of over 200 visitors to Krakow.
Our final day was spent in Auschwitz and Birkenau. After seven hours in both camps and a culminating ceremony, the entire group joined hands and walked along the train tracks. The sun was setting; we were among the last to leave. Their song—first soft and then muffled with sobs—grew louder as we exited the gates, when they burst into “Am Yisrael Chai,” singing with urgency and passion.
Our students returned to Israel early this morning, where their first stop overlooked Jerusalem. Their time in Poland, a physical, intellectual, and emotional journey, will no doubt help to shape the rest of their time in Israel, as well as their understanding of our shared history and experiences as Jews.