New Jersey Jewish News
MetroWest Feature

‘Images vs. reality’

Students see the worst and the best of Jewish history in March of the Living educational program

by Ron Kaplan
NJJN Staff Writer

Never again” is a phrase post-Holocaust Jews hear practically from birth, a reminder of the horrors of that era and a pledge to make sure they are never repeated.

For several high school students from MetroWest, those words took on a more personal meaning as they participated in the 15th March of the Living, an international educational program started in 1988 that brings Jewish teens from all over the world to Poland on Yom Hashoa (Holocaust Memorial Day) to march from Auschwitz to Birkenau, followed by a week in Israel to observe Yom Hazikaron (Israel Memorial Day) and Yom Ha’atzmaut (Israel Independence Day).

During their week in Poland, 8,000 March participants visited camps at Auschwitz, Birkenau, Plashov, Treblinka, and Majdanek.

Eight teens met with NJ Jewish News last week to discuss their journey as part of a contingent from the New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Ohio area.

The group included Greg Davidson, 17, Maya Lahav, 17, Jessica Miller, 17, and Jon Schwartz, 18, of Livingston; Lindsey Horowitz, 15, Malli Kirschner, 16, and Gabby London, 18, of Randolph; and Sophie Oshman, 17, of Montclair. Morristown resident Joel Katz, executive director of the Sephardic Community Center in Brooklyn, and his wife, Marla, served as chaperones for the New York-area delegation.

They may have had different reasons for enrolling, but all the teens agreed they wanted to see firsthand the places they had heard about or seen in movies and photographs. They said nothing — including visits to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC — prepared them for what they encountered.

Sophie’s grandparents are survivors, as is Jessica’s grandmother. Pre-trip talks with her “had put pictures in my mind, but they were inadequate,” Jessica said. “When you’re actually there, walking around the camp, sitting in the gas chambers…, it was a lot more intense.”

Lindsey said she didn’t expect to “get [so] emotional. When you’re actually standing on the train tracks…you realize [the victims] were here where I’m standing. It just hits you, and you realize that you might not have been here if [the Nazis] succeeded.”

The railroad imagery also stuck with Maya. Now, when she sees train tracks in New Jersey, she said, “I stop and think and it takes me back there.”

The most innocent items can trigger memories. “The other day I saw a big can of tomato soup,” Maya said, “and the first thing I thought of was seeing cans of Zyklon-B,” the gas used by the Nazis. “I never want to forget the feelings that I had when I was in Auschwitz. In the gas chambers, I put my fingers up to the wall and into the scratch marks of people who were trying to get out.”

The transition to Israel was eye-opening as well. “In Poland, we learned about all the atrocities and then in Israel we learned about building a nation,” Jon said. He came back with a more spiritual feeling and a newfound sense of tolerance.

“Tolerance is the only thing saving humanity. People don’t like what’s different, whether it’s religion, race, or sexual orientation,” he said.

Before the trip, Greg had only one picture in his head: a single concentration camp, barbed wire, and people being killed. While he didn’t share Jon’s increased spirituality he said, “I’ve gotten a better sense of the Jewish community and how proud I am to be Jewish. We do have a voice, a power in the world, and we need to speak up at times.”

Addressing the Holocaust education program that is part of the NJ school curriculum, Lindsey, who attends Randolph High School with Malli, said she thinks “they do the best they can with what they can teach to kids who aren’t Jewish and might not have a connection to it. But when you visit and see the camps, you realize that they don’t teach you half [of it].”

Katz, who has chaperoned nine trips with March of the Living, lamented the relatively poor turnout of American students. Of the thousands who took the trip this year, only 23 were from a region that includes New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. “Not even one bus,” Jon said. “That’s ridiculous. Montreal had seven buses; Miami had six.”

The week in Israel, Katz said, served as “a taste.” Many of the youngsters “need to get back to do more, and feel more. Each year I see something else, each year I feel something else; the tears flow and the horror is still there, no matter how many times I return.”

Marla Katz has made the trip twice. “I think our job is to get the word out so that more kids come,” she said. “They bear witness because in years to come…the survivors will all be gone. Anyone who’s gone on the March, they now have become the survivors and have to bear witness for the next generation.”

“The March’s integration of Holocaust education and Zionism has been viewed as a compelling, identity-building experience, and appropriately so,” said Robert E. Lichtman, executive director of Jewish Education and Identity Initiatives, who is responsible for a new agency evolving from the Jewish Education Association of MetroWest. “We will…enhance both the recruitment of teens for the program as well as follow up with them upon their return to help guide them along their Jewish journeys that gain such powerful momentum from their participation.”

Because of the intense theme of the trip, prospective participants — high school sophomores, juniors, and seniors — go through a rigorous screening process that includes an interview, essay, and letters of recommendation. For more information, contact Joel Katz at 718-954-3133 or Linda Jum, JEA managing director, at 973-929-2965.

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