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July 9, 2004/Tamuz 20 5764, Vol. 56, No.42
Local teen marches with Jewish youth from around the world
EAN GOLDBERG
Special to Jewish News
Seventeen-year-old Ean Goldberg participated in March of the Living 2004, an international educational program that brings Jewish teens from all over the world to Poland on Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Memorial Day, to march from Auschwitz to Birkenau concentration camps and then travel to Israel.
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Getting onto an airplane with a 100 other Jewish teens on my way to Poland, I really did not know what to expect from this trip. I just knew that it was supposed to change my life. I really did not see how a trip like this could change my life like everyone was telling me. I mean, I had seen the horrific pictures of the gas chambers, the ashes, the burning bodies and the terrorized faces. I knew I would be ready for whatever I was going to see.
When I got to Tikocin, Poland, I realized no matter how much you may think you know or how much you believe you are ready, you really do not know anything about the Holocaust until you see the mass graves or feel the scratches of your dying ancestors inside a gas chamber or you touch the ashes of your family inside an oven.
It is difficult to describe the sites that I saw on March of the Living. I saw the remains of the Warsaw ghetto uprising and the mass graves at Treblinka. One cannot describe the sight of rooms and rooms of the hair of thousands of Jews who were contained in Auschwitz or the over 20-foot-high pile of ash in Majdanek. Along the way, every bus had a Holocaust survivor who described what happened to him or her. Listening to their tragic experiences makes me realize how lucky we all are and the massive responsibility that we all have as Jews to carry on our traditions and religion.
Arriving in Israel takes on a whole new meaning after spending time in Poland and reliving the remains of our Jewish ancestors there. In Israel, we climbed to the remains of a great community at the top of Masada.
In Israel, a siren sounds at 11 a.m. and 11 p.m. on Yom HaZikaron. At these moments, everyone in Israel stops for a moment of silence for our ancestors. It is a silence that will stay with me forever. Yet we experienced the greatest party ever the next night during Yom Ha'atzmaut, Israel Independence Day.
It is said that when you listen to a witness, you become a witness. It is my hope to become a Holocaust witness who can carry on the legacy of this tragedy so that it will never happen to anyone again. At the end of my experience I realized that this trip was something I had to do as a Jew and as a human being. I made some lifelong friends and had a whole different appreciation for life.
Ean Goldberg resides in Phoenix and is a senior at Chaparral High School.
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