November
2000
Dear G.U.C.I.
Staff:
It's unusual for
me to find myself in our Beit T'fillah (outdoor chapel) at 10 p.m. on a Friday
night in October, all by my lonesome. But, as I returned, last month, from
a UAHC Camp Directors' trip to the Czech Republic and Poland, I didn't feel I
had reached my destination until I arrived at our Beit T'fillah.
We took off on a
grueling, six-day, experience, stepping back into the distant and cerebral past
of the middle ages, and to the not so distant, emotional past of our Eastern
European Jewish history. It was quite a personal voyage for me. You
see, three of my grandparents came to America in the early 1900's from Prague,
Czechoslovakia. Czech was spoken at our family get-togethers around tables
filled with Bohemian foods. It just wasn't Thanksgiving if we weren't all
at my Aunt Lill's on Chicago's West side, digging into the goose, dumplings, and
cabbage along with the newer traditions, turkey, stuffing, and cranberries. The
beer was Pilsner Urquell. We belonged to B'nai Jehoshua, a synagogue made
up of mostly Czech families. Enough said. I knew I was a Czech Jew.
At several stops
along the way that week, the realities of our Jewish past stepped up to splash
their ice water in my face. The first was in a small synagogue in Prague
where the living had honored the names of all Czech Jews deported by the Nazis,
by listing them on the synagogue walls and ceilings. I stood there under
the names of my Mother's family, the Steiners, who I would never meet or know. These
were the relatives after which my Aunts and even my Grandfather were named. Until
that moment I had never felt so related to our enemy's victims. I felt a
deep connection to that family I would never know but eternally miss. The
names on that ceiling drew me right into the horrors of that time.
We left the
Technicolor Prague for a black and white Warsaw and Krakow. Warsaw is a
gray, cement block city where most of our Jewish presence has been erased. But,
I did stand on Mila Street to honor the well-known Mordachai Anelevich, leader
of the ghetto revolt against the Nazi monsters. Standing on that street
also gave me the opportunity to honor the not-so-well-known Moshe Pashtan, z”l,
who, born on that street, escaped the ghetto as a child to Germany (of all
places) and then to Israel, only to wind up sharing a tent with me for a summer
as my Assistant Tzofim Unit Head at Olin-Sang-Ruby in 1969. Moshe and I
took a bus to New York after camp that summer. I was leaving for a year
(due mostly to Moshe's summer-long prodding) on my first pilgrimage to Israel. For
me, Mila was Pashtan's street. It was one of the many spots I stopped to
whisper the Kaddish.
I prayed again
at the Jewish cemetery of Warsaw. It's overwhelming to stand amid the
250,000 Jewish graves, to read the Hebrew on the tombstones, to understand the
poetry of their old words. It's another strong connection. This is
where the enormity of our loss starts to become real. Kaddish seemed
inadequate to me. But it was all I knew to say, a way to thank God for
giving me life, to remember and to continue. In retrospect, Kaddish was the
perfect Jewish memorial.
After a From
Russia With Love style train ride to Krakow, thirty miles or so from my
Father's family's hometown (The Klotzes came from Tarnov), we bussed to the
emotional apex of our trip, Auschwitz and Birkenau, Nazi work and death camps. Passing
under that wrought iron sign "Arbact Macht Frei” (work will make you free),
walking through a gas chamber, seeing the ovens, strips away the distance and
protection the filters of film, printed word, even personal testimony of
survivors affords. Being there makes it real. Very real. The impact is
so deep it takes the breath away.
Finally, it's
Birkinau. This is where the train tracks end; the camp built solely for the
purpose of killing Jews. A million and a half of our grandparents, uncles,
aunts, and cousins stepped out of their cattle cars and departed this world at
that wrenched place. Men to the left, women and children to the right. Being
there brings the inescapable thought that it could have been me. It could
have been you. Then the reality, it was me and it was you. To the left
and to the right; stripped, gassed, cremated, ashes dumped into two small pools
of water. All that remains are those pools. We were numb standing by
the water. We neither cried nor screamed. Just numb. Rabbi Allan
Smith, our guide that day began our ascent from those depths with a worship
service in the area adjacent to the water pools filled with ashes. We
shared some of our thoughts along with the prayers. Then he led us in the
opposite direction the 800,000 women and children took as they marched to their
deaths down a half-mile brick path. They are in the pools. We rise
from the place of the ashes to carry on and do our work and live as Jews. I
stopped and dug up a few pieces of brick from that path. So many children
had stepped there. I needed something in my pocket to hold on to. When
my group talked a bit about the experience I told my colleagues that, after the
sadness and the anger, I felt an intense sense of pride and confirmation. Pride
in carrying on our Jewish heritage. Pride in my ethnicity, my faith, my
membership in Am Yisrael. This was an experience that confirmed all of the
above and even more, the work we do, not only here at camp and in NFTY, but in
every synagogue, and in every home where our kids learn to sing the Shabbat
blessings and light the Chanukiot. I've always maintained that it is sacred
work, teaching kids to love Judaism and strengthening their Jewish identities. But
now, after having been in this place, I felt I was carrying home the blessings
of those who walked that brick path. I'm honored to carry the torch into
the future.
So, I returned
late on a Friday night, exhausted after over thirty hours of travel. On the
way home from the airport I took a left instead of a right and wound up at camp
(just a minute out of the way). Closed and dark, it's still GUCI. I
took ten minutes to sit in our Beit T'fillah imagining and remembering the
voices of our campers and staff, singing our prayers, fanning away the heat with
prayer cards. That's how I completed this extraordinary trip.
And so, I headed
home, my pockets lumpy with pieces of brick.
AM YISRAEL CHAI!
Ron