March Moments

You might think that what I'm about to say is going to be about my emotions during this trip or specifics about moments in the camps that made me want to throw up from sadness, but you're all wrong. I'm going to focus mainly about the thing all grandparents can't figure out, parents hate, and teenagers spend too much time doing: texting. 

On my third day of the March of the Living, I sent out three very memorable text messages (not just three since I am a teenager with a great International plan thanks to T-Mobile). That can hopefully help me explain my emotions and thoughts a little better. These three messages were "your Torah", "I love you", and "refuah shlema". 

Receiving a random text in the middle of the day just saying "your Torah" could be quite confusing without any context, so here is a story that will help my disorganized thoughts make sense. 

That morning we woke, got dressed, and packed our blue March of the Living backpacks with lunch and winter jackets. Instead of praying in the hotel, we drove all the way to a synagogue. 

This synagogue was the Dabrowa Tarnowska, home to 7,000 Jews before the war and only 1% survived. Here we davened and listened to amazing stories about the community, but best of all we danced and sang Hebrew songs, expressing our love for the Torah. 

Then, they brought out a 250 year old Torah saved from Czechoslovakia generously restored by the Golish family. This Torah was hidden in a Russian library and hadn't been used for 80 years until we brought it with us to Auschwitz and gave the first aliyah to a survivor named Max. As the Torah writing was being finished by the survivor, a student, and a staff member to honor them, I quickly snapped a few pictures and videos then sent it to Rosa Golish captioned, "your Torah."

The text "I love you" gets sent so many times a day for all types of reasons. I'd like to think this one will change the way I word my loving text messages from now on. After the Torah celebration we continued our emotional roller coaster of a day with a children's toy. 

"I hope the kids really like my bear. I loved this when I was younger," a friend of mine said to me on the bus. I realized he thought we were going to an orphanage and didn't know what we were about to experience. I wasn't going to burst his bubble. I let the grave site do it. 

We walked through the woods to the very spot 1,500 children weren't "worth the bullet" our guide said, so Nazi soldiers would drink two rations of alcohol and smash children's heads against rocks. "They never got to really have a favorite toy," we were told. "We will give them one right now." 

"They don't have tombstones," we were told. "Their tombstones are in our hearts weighing us down with the weight of carrying on the Jewish faith in their honor." 

"They didn't have anyone to say Kaddish for them," we were told, "so we will say Kaddish right here." After we said Kaddish one of the group leaders shared with us a heart-wrenching letter from a mother who heard about these monstrosities and sent her daughter away the morning the last group was being collected. The letter was so powerful and moving that it really got me thinking. G-d forbid I was that child and my amazing mother was in my position. What would she do? I knew the answer immediately. My life was too precious, I'd be on the last available kinder transport, so that my mom would get the maximum amount of time to love and nurture me, before I could even realize I'd never see her again. I became nauseous with sadness, took out my phone and texted my mom "I love you."

"Refuah shlema" is a prayer for the sick. I've sent this text multiple times in my life either talking about someone who is sick or talking to someone who just needs any type of healing. This time, though, it wasn't about the text I sent saying refuah shlema. It was about where I was when it was sent and what I did with my new information. 

After the children's graves, we took a long bus ride to the Ramah Shul in Kraków right where the Kraków ghetto was. Next to this Shul is the old Jewish cemetery of Kraków where the Ramah himself and many others were buried. We sat in the main sanctuary, listening to a great story told by Rabbi Plotkin and then we all sang the Kraków niggun. 

As we were finishing the tune, a friend of mine texted me saying her mother was going to have emergency surgery and to please pray and keep her in mind. Now here I am in an over 800 year old shul in Kraków, Poland, where people prayed for all sorts of things unimaginable, but I received a text that deserved a prayer. Quietly and off the top of my head I said the prayer of refuah shlema but once I finished I was met with the roaring sound of "amen" said in unison from my entire travel group. I then texted my friend "refuah shlema."

These memories and the texts messages I sent are filed in my brain categorized as "March Moments." Moments I would not have had on just any Poland/Israel program. Later on in my life I know sending similar texts will trigger my memory and bring me right back to those exact moments. The key to March Moments is to categorize them in a sequence of events and not by individualizing each emotion. This is because another major component to the March of the Living that makes it so special is the emotional roller coaster you are sent on. On this particular day I went from feeling joy, to sadness, then gratitude.These are only a few of my many March Moments that I will treasure forever and keep filed in my brain. 

Thank you,
Lena Stein, Class of 2016