Jewish Federation of Greater Middlesex County leaders — from left, Susan Antman, Linda Block, Arlene Frumkin, and Sandy Lenger — visit the site of the Jewish ghetto in Cracow during a July 13-23 United Jewish Communities mission to Poland and Israel.
Photos courtesy Linda Block
September 9, 2008
When four women representing the Jewish Federation of Greater Middlesex County traveled to Poland in July as part of the United Jewish Communities’ mission, it was with some trepidation.
While their aim was to learn about the revival of Jewish life in that Eastern European country, the four also knew they would be touring the sites of the infamous concentration camps Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek.
United Jewish Communities is the umbrella organization of federated Jewish communities in North America. The campaign chairs’ and directors’ mission to Poland and Israel ran from July 13 to 23.
“I had never been to Poland or any concentration camp before,” said Arlene Frumkin of Kendall Park, chair of federation’s Women’s Philanthropy, who was accompanied by federation associate executive director Susan Antman, campaign chair Sandy Lenger, and major gifts chair Linda Block.
Block of East Brunswick said going through Warsaw and Cracow and learning the history of the Jews who lived there proved fascinating, and having two Holocaust survivors accompany the mission enhanced the experience.
“We got a lot of firsthand information,” she said. “One gentleman, Eli Lavon, did not speak of his Holocaust experiences for 45 years until he happened to meet Elie Wiesel, who told him he had to speak about it. The other woman was a hidden child who was the only survivor from her family. From the age of three on she had six different mothers who took care of her during the war.
“It was heartwarming to hear about those who had such feelings and took care of others during the war,” said Block.
Lenger of East Brunswick said one highlight of the trip was meeting a group of 120 members of the Israel Defense Forces who were also touring Majdanek.
“We had a memorial service with them there,” she said. “To see Israeli soldiers in a place where Hitler’s goal was to exterminate all the Jews was very moving. One of the soldiers, who was a pilot, spoke in Hebrew, and it was translated. He said his job was to protect Jews wherever they were.”
Lenger said she also recognized the importance of such a trip, adding, “I was thrilled to be able to participate. A lot of people say, ‘Why would you go; it’s so depressing?’ But you have to go because it’s part of your history. If that history is lost or not spoken about, who knows if it will happen again?”
“As the daughter of Holocaust survivors, I didn’t need to go to Poland to bear witness to the horrors and suffering that took place there. It’s a part of my identity. What I did witness in Poland that was totally unexpected was the revival of Polish Jewry,” said Antman.
Discovering roots
The four women said they were so moved by the stories they heard in Poland, by their participation in memorial ceremonies, and their seeing the evidence of the Nazi atrocities — the piles of suitcases, shoes, and other personal belongs of the victims — that they wanted to make a gesture of remembrance. They carefully sifted through ashes outside the crematorium at Auschwitz, looking for pebbles that they later placed at the Kotel in Jerusalem.
At the Kotel in Jerusalem during the United Jewish Communities mission to Poland and Israel are, from left, Arlene Frumkin, Linda Block, Susan Antman, and Sandy Lenger.
“We felt as if each of us took one person from a place they were never able to leave and brought them home to Israel,” said Block. “We were very careful not to disturb any fragments of bone. In Israel, as we said our prayers and placed those stones in the wall, we felt we were able to give a person a proper Jewish burial.”
Before World War II, Poland was home to more than three million Jews, the majority of whom perished in the Holocaust. But in contrast to the overwhelming sorrow the mission members felt at the sites of persecution and extermination, seeing the revival of Polish Jewry proved exhilarating.
Mission participants attended programs run by UJC’s partner agency the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee through which Polish Jews were discovering and connecting to their roots.
“It was wonderful to see so many young Jewish adults who are just finding out they are Jewish and want to find out as much as they can about their Jewish heritage,” said Frumkin. “They want to live as Jews, they want to visit Israel, and they want to meet other young Jewish adults.”
The culminating visit to Israel further reinforced for the mission members the necessity for the Jewish state’s existence.
“Israel exists because of the Holocaust,” said Frumkin. “But somebody said, ‘If there had been an Israel more than 60 years ago, would the Holocaust have happened?’ It makes you really think.”
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