Our Newest Witnesses to History

We live in a complicated time in a complicated world. It only takes a glance at the day’s headlines, a listen to the news on television or radio, or even a passing glance at one’s social media feed to capture the vibe.  And, at least from how I hear and witness it, it’s not a good one.

I feel that even more keenly this week.  I write these words from Krakow, Poland in the midst of a week traveling with some 250 NFTY participants who are spending this week in Eastern Europe en route to their summer experience in Israel.  It’s a journey I have taken before, as recently as last summer. Yet, each time I have the privilege of accompanying our NFTY groups on this part of their journey, I find the experience hits me from another perspective. This year is no different. In part that difference comes from our complicated world. But it is always amplified and sharpened for me by seeing this journey anew, through the eyes of our young people. Their perspectives, their honesty, forces me to confront my own conceptions and my own assumptions.

Having made our way from the beauty and rich Jewish heritage of Prague to the nightmare and cruel ironies of Terezin, late last night we arrived in Krakow, Poland. Today we visited Krakow’s Jewish quarter with its many different and fascinating synagogues, and growing Jewish renewal. We also visited the remnants of the Krakow ghetto and the Umschlagplatz (the Square from which Krakow’s Jews were shipped by train to the concentration and death camps.) Today’s touring ended at the site of Oskar Schindler’s factory, where our young people spoke quite openly and passionately about what they had seen in just 48 hours, and about how it informs their vision of our time and today’s world.

Tonight they are preparing for tomorrow’s visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau. It is, I know, a day which will hit them hard. I know in part because it was just a year ago that I paid my first visit to Auschwitz with last summer’s NFTY travelers. Tonight they are looking at photos, learning facts, and reading quotes from a wide variety of writers reflecting on the meaning of the Shoah (the Holocaust) for humanity.  The participants were asked to choose from among some twenty such quotes and share their own reflections on the meaning of the Shoah and the words they had chosen.  In some ways, I have known the group of participants with whom I have been traveling these past days since their early childhood.  I have watched them grow up at our URJ Eisner Camp and I have taught them in Limud (learning sessions) over the summers. I am deeply struck by the maturity and deep perspective they now bring as young adults to this mostly heavy week of touring and learning. I watch them grapple with the weighty history we are confronting, and I think back to a member of my first congregation, Temple Shaaray Tefila in New York City. 

Frederick Terna was a Holocaust survivor who came to speak one evening with my students about his story and experience in the darkness we call the Shoah. I can still hear Fred’s voice as if it were just yesterday as he concluded his visit with a plea to my students. “Years from now, if you remember little of of what I have told you, that will be okay. But I implore you, please remember that you met me and heard my story. There are already people in our world who seek to deny that any of it happened.  So long as you remember that you met me, you will be able to tell them that it did happen. You will be able to tell them that you know it happened because you met me, a survivor who lost his family, and very nearly, his life in that darkness. By the time you are my age, there will be very few eyewitnesses to keep the world honest about what happened.”  

That was some thirty-six years ago.  As I prepare to visit Auschwitz-Birkenau tomorrow with our NFTYites I am keenly aware that there are even fewer survivors left to tell their story. Yet, my travel companions are already grasping and grappling with the enormity of what took place in that dark time. And judging by their comments at Oskar Schindler’s factory earlier today, I am confident that they are aware of and growing in their sense of responsibility to make certain that we have learned the lessons of that dark time and that we will not allow them to be repeated.  There are days and nights when I, myself, am no longer certain how much our world still carries those lessons. My young friends give me hope - and that is good, for it is their world that will be changed by how we apply and live by what we have learned.