March of the Living 2025: Day 2

Day 2 of the March of the Living in Poland [Wednesday] - Please click on a photo below to see the full picture.

Our day started on an upbeat note and ending with inspiration. In the middle, we saw the lowest depths.

First the upbeat: having left Warsaw, we stopped next in the famed city of Lublin, once referred to as the Jerusalem of Poland. Rabbi Meir Shapiro started an academy of higher Jewish learning there known as the Yeshivat Chachmei Lublin. We had the honor of sitting in the synagogue of this former center of Jewish studies. It is so important to see how Jews in Poland lived before learning about how they died. Prior to leaving the halls of this once-great hall of prayer and learning, we sang a song praying for the return of the 59 hostages still being held by Hamas in Gaza.

A short bus ride from Lublin brought us to the Majdanek death camp. The Russians captured this place before the Nazis could destroy it. 80 years later, it would only take a few days for this camp to be operational again. We saw has chambers, the camp's crematorium, and a site where 43,000 Jews were lined up in front of pits and murdered over a two-day period in what the Nazis called the Harvest Festival. We were left without words, but did say the kaddish together as a group before returning to our bus for a long trip to the city of Krakow.

The evening ended with inspiration. We heard Krystyna, the daughter of a Righteous Gentile named Maria Nowak, tell the story of how her mother risked her life to save a Jewish friend. Oscar Schindler may be more famous; but that evening we were fully focused on Krystyna. After the presentation, Temple's teen Marches introduced themselves to and thanked Krystyna. Rabbi Andy also talked with her at which time s she asked for and received a blessing from him.