Tikocyn and Treblinka

This morning we boarded the busses and headed out towards the small quaint town of Tykocyn. This small shtetl had 1400 Jews at the time of WW II, which was about 70% of it's population. Although small in numbers the Jewish community has long had a presence here, as evidenced by the ancient Jewish cemetery, one of the oldest in the country. When we arrived at the Shul, Rose gave us the background of the Shul, and provided her own unique personal connection to this town and especially the Shul. Next we heard a story about the Gabbai of a shul whose family had been the caretakers of the Shul for years. When the Nazis deported the members of the town and barricaded the shul, it was desecrated and ransacked, through all of the camps that this fellow went, the one thought that kept him going was that he has to survive to take care o f the shul. After the war he made his way back to the shul only to find it in shambles. Sitting depressed someone yelled out that it is Simchat Torah tonight, they can take out the Sifrei Torah out and dance with them, filling up the Shul with dance and song. But after opening the ark they realized that the Torahs had all been ripped apart and they had nothing to dance with. Just then a young boy and girl walked in to the Shul crying looking for their parents. Consoling the children, they picked them up and in place of the Sifrei Torah, in place of the destroyed past, they had these young children, hope for the future. And they danced with those children... AM YISROEL CHAI

We then danced with those echoes from the past . And we too danced with each other thinking of Hitler's failed ambitions and our bright future ahead. It was a lively and spirited dancing that concluded with the singing of HaTikvah.

We then went over to the cemetery one of the oldest and most neglected Jewish cemeteries in Poland, where we spent an hour cleaning up and trying to uncover some of the broken tombstones. It was a hard and tedious job, but the kids did a great job, righting several stones during the process. 

From there we went to Lupochowa forest, a site of mass murder by the Einstatzgruppen in 1941. The Jews of Tykocyn and nearby hamlets were herded into this small clearing in the forest and shot dead. They were then tossed into this mass grave. While there we we sang Eli,  Eli, by Hannah Senesh, and we said a Kaddish for all of those fallen brethren that are buried there.

We then headed over to Treblinka. Treblinka is a very difficult place to describe, on th eone and it has a museum feel to it, but on the other hand there are rocks to memorialize the Jews killed there, which gives it a graveyard feel it. I am sure the kids will have some unique insights about it. 

Around the roast pit, all of our kids read a line o the rest of the region from Rav Shwaub's moving Kinnah describing the Holocaust in great detail. After our students read their part. We told the story of the Eish Kodesh who was the Rebbe in the Warsaw ghetto and who eventually perished in the camps. Yet he lives on through his writings discovered after the war. In his writings the Eish Kodesh says that he knows that he personally won the war, he hopes G-D will help the rest of the Jewish people win the war. He reaffirmed firm in his commitment to G-D he hopes that the Jewish people as a whole will do the same. Seeing all of the youngsters gathered together in Treblinka, making an effort to come to the camps and relive the horrors of the Holocaust, shows that indeed we did win the war. I implored them to take home that message - always affirming our commitment to Judaism, to insure that indeed we will always win the war.

Tomorrow is our final day in Poland - Lublin and Majdanek; then we fly to Israel, can't wait !!!

RT