Shotar The B'nai B'rith Youth Organization Tammuz 5744, July 1984 Aleph Zadik Aleph (AZA) B'nai B'rith Girls (BBG) International Presidents Reflect on Overseas Travels By Brenda Fishman and too old to clean it themselves. (International N'siah) In the back of the cemetery stands a and Dan Fields (Grand Aleph Godol) huge brick wall-the original ghetto wall. Yurich (the aforementioned madrich) DAN IN POLAND used to crawl through a sewer which we On Wednesday, April 25, 1984, Dan saw, or climb over by scaling a tall Fields, an 18-year-old youth organization tombstone. He told us that sections of the president, vanished from his suburban brick wall were removed nightly and Portland, Oregon home. Twenty-nine days COWS were snuck through for Kosher meat st later his mother found him asleep in his in the Ghetto. own bedroom. She woke him up and he The third morning dawned and our at had this amazing story to tell buses made the long journey to Southern I got off an airplane. A uniformed Poland to Oswiecim-Auschwitz it was soldier with a gun stood at the bottom of called in German. the ramp. He directed me to the customs My G-d! Auschwitz, infamous for the station at Warsaw, Poland's airport. I stood horrors carried out against its interned among a group of 80 Jews, representing Jews in the Holocaust, looked like a park! a few dozen youth movements and four- Kids bicycled around trees and green teen different countries. The Brazilian guy grass, and families were eating lunch at in front of me said to the Polish customs benches. Small shops ringed the entrance official, "Ata M'daber Ivrit?" ("Do you to this death camp. speak Hebrew?") I thought it was funny. I walked slowly through the main arch The customs official didn't understand. that states, "ARBEIT MACHT FREI Dan Fields, far right, poses with other youth representatives on tour of Poland In Warsaw, Poland's capital, our group "WORK IS FREEDOM." Meanwhile, inside before the Alte Shul museum in Cracow. went to the legendary Warsaw Ghetto. One the museum, a large sign boasts that the of horror, when I heard crying behind of our Madrichim (staff members) spent mixed emotions, I was shocked by the "State Museum of Oswiecim is a monu- me. I turned to see a girl and boy from our next storehouse. It contained the same his childhood in the ghetto, smuggling ment to the martyrdom of the Polish peo- group bent over the dirt pathway. She food and other necessities under, over and thing, but even more! G-d, it made me feel ple." Jews were not mentioned here. was crying and he was overturning through the wall that surrounded and sick with anger. I walked along them all; After leaving, I could not stop myself from clumps of dirt. Underneath the clumps lay they were old, tarnished, torn, without trapped his family. Only he survived the thinking: Thousands of Poles, Germans grey, sooty ashes, and white bits of bone. soles. I tried to imagine their thoughts, see ordeal. His family perished. and other tourists come to see the ghastly Human ash and human bone. Jewish ash their eyes or hear their prayers. All I saw Today, the Warsaw Ghetto is only a site that was Auschwitz Death Camp, and and bone, I thought. I continued to pull up were their shoes. I, nor anyone else, could memory. The tiny streets and cramped all they see is the primped-up, fixed-up dirt clumps and found more and more know their souls. buildings that housed an average of 13 and kept-up look of Auschwitz Park. Even and more. The entire ground beneath me Overall, the six days in Poland were Jews per room in 1942 now have broad during World War II, the Red Cross was had to contain the remains of thousands more of an education than a year of a Hol- boulevards and dozens of modern high- shown this portion of Auschwitz, led to of Jews. All the movies, lectures and read- ocaust class could ever be. The lectures rise apartment buildings. It was impossi- believe conditions and facilities were ade- ings I had ever heard suddenly seemed ble to visualize what the ghetto really and information we heard and read greatly quate. (Of course they were not shown insignificant as I held the bones and ashes supplemented the visit to the cities and looked like. It has vanished from the col- the two crematoria used to burn Jewish of some nameless, faceless human being camps. Of course the experience of actu- lective conscience of the Polish people. bodies.) in the palm of my hand. I did not cry; I did ally seeing the sites while learning the sto- Now only a large memorial stands in the Above I mentioned "this portion of Aus- not feel anything to cry about. I just felt ry made Poland an extremely valuable area commemorating the Jews that died, chwitz." You mean there is more? Indeed numb. and unforgettable trip. recalling their will to live during the Ghet- there is. Auschwitz II, the second, and Majdanek Concentration Camp is lo- to Uprising. I found it ironic, and a bit largest part of the complex, is a few kilo- cated in the suburbs of Lublin, on the So- BRENDA IN vengeful that the memorial was built from meters away. It is called Birkenau. Stand- viet border. From the middle of the camp FRANCE AND BELGIUM the very stone that Adolf Hitler imported ing on top of the rubble that remained of could see the windows of apartment On April 31st Dan Fields and I met in to Warsaw for the purpose of building a Crematorium III, I suddenly remembered buildings nearby. Majdanek is rarely spo- Paris so that we could begin our visit to memorial to "the extinct race called Jews." that it was Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Re- ken of, but 380,000 Jews were killed there. our newest District-#19. Neither of us The other striking site in Warsaw was membrance Day. The farce of Auschwitz Walking over the crumbled ruins at were sure what to expect, but we were cu- that of the Jewish cemetery. Imagine faded as I listened to a reading about a Birkenau did not leave quite the impact rious to see how much had progressed standing in a forest filled with trees and man who managed to escape the gas that walking into a cement-walled room at chamber. since spring 1983 when Judy Altenberg gravestones for as far as you can see. That Majdanek to see blue stains left on the and Adam Petrovsky (GAG and N'siah, is the Jewish cemetery. Trees and bushes After our memorial service and wall from Zyklon B gas did. As I stood in 1982-83) had visited. When they were grow up through graves, and fallen "Hatikvah," we had time to walk about the the very chamber in which thousands branches drape over tombstones like in a there last year there were only two chap- desolate camp. Next to the crematorium were murdered, I could not help feeling ters in existence in Paris. Dan and I were bad horror film. The Polish government was a little marsh with a sign that said, angry. My anger turned to numbness again to be pleasantly surprised! has refused pleas to repair the overgrown "Pit For Human Ashes." I stood on the when I moved on to see the storehouses. We spent 10 days in France and Belgium cemetery. The Jews there are too few edge of the pit trying to visualize that kind The storehouses were astonishing. I had and during that time we traveled and met seen so many pictures of the hair and with Moshe Avital, District 19 BBYO Direc- clothing, and eye glasses and hats and tor and Sam Fisher, Assistant Interna- brushes and gold fillings and cer- tional Director of BBYO Overseas who tainly did not expect to see so much of it filled us in on the background of the Dis- preserved forty years later. I entered a trict. storehouse 30 feet wide by 75-80 feet We learned that there used to be a deep, full of human hair. I walked all the number of chapters in continental Europe way down and all the way back inhaling before the Holocaust, but then our mem- the odor of stale moth balls, staring at bership was wiped out. Since then nothing greying mounds of blond, brown and black in the true sense of BBYO even happened hair. The Nazis sent most of the hair again, until the beginning of the 1980's back to Germany to be used in textiles when they started sending teenagers over and for stuffing pillows. This was mad- in small numbers from France to ILTC. ness, I thought, sheer madness. Because of these individuals some groups Then I entered a store house filled with did start up in France during the last few shoes. I cannot accurately describe the years; the most successful being Netsah sense of anger, vengeance, and most of all, BBYO in Paris. frustration that filled every inch of me as The first concrete move to start a viable I left the room filled with thousands of program in the District happened last shoes of Jewish men, women and children long since dead. As I tried to sort out my Continued on Page 8