Hi, I'm Lena Stein and I'm a DKJA student. This trip has been very impactful already and it's only the third day.
The hardest part about this trip so far is being in the camps and thinking, "Wow, this is a beautiful place..." Who expected a place known for darkness and death to be still and peaceful? Definitely not me or my other school friends who have spent countless hours and classes studying about each individual detail of the camps. It made most of us feel upset and completely disconnected from the the experience.
Soon, though, we came up with a solution to fix our discomfort with the unexpected beauty. All of a sudden there was an imaginary watch on my wrist that, once I twisted it, I could travel in time. Everywhere I went I took out my imaginary time traveling watch, closed my eyes, and felt myself go back in time to the tragedies and feel like one of the many heroes who endured all of it. Standing together packed tight in a cattle car, walking next to a gas chambers in Auschwitz, touching the train tracks in Birkenau, feeling the presence of the children who passed in the cemetery and even more. My handy dandy time travel watch helped me connect and feel as one.
But the best part about my very special imaginary watch is when I turn it off I'm not sad or angry or even emotionally drained anymore. I become happy. So happy that we survived. Happy to be a Jew. Happy that they failed and we're still here. I literally started dancing and singing "am Israel chai" in the front of Birkenau.
The entire trip has been an emotional roller coaster from sad to happy between the children's death and finishing the Torah and I can not wait for more of these moments all the way to our El Al flight to the most amazing place in the entire world.
Lena Stein,
Class of 2016
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