A Compelling Trip To Poland And

 The Landmarks Of The Holocaust

By Tanjua Damon

Outside Block 11 was the death wall, where thousands of Jewish people were brought to be killed during World War II. A mass grave in Tykocin is where many were made to walk for two and half miles, dig their own graves, and then were shot by Nazi soldiers.

The gray sky and cool weather helped to provide Raquefette Kilchevsky with a perspective on how it may have felt to be in a concentration camp during World War II. The high school junior took a trip to Poland to see firsthand the camps that housed Jewish people under Hitler’s rule.

Raquefette and her mother, Laurie, spent two weeks in April in Poland and Israel to participate in the March of the Living with 4,000 other Jewish people. People came from all over to world to participate in the march, on which participants could see what the concentration camps were like for their ancestors, and to show that the Jewish people survived the devastating acts of World War II.

Many concentration camps were visited during the two-week tour that took place during three holidays – Holocaust Day, April 19, Israel Memorial Day, April 24, and Israel Independence Day, April 26.

The march began at Auschwitz, where people being held in the concentration camp made a sign reading “Arbeit Macht Frei,” with the “b” in Arbeit purposely done upside down to try to let people know something was wrong. Its meaning is “Work Makes Free,” but the people were not free. Then the group marched one and one-half miles to Birkenau.

“A lot of people’s grandparents were in concentration camps,” she said. “It was even more amazing for them because it was something their family members couldn’t do.”

As the group marched, Polish people just stopped in the streets to stare, Raquefette said. Many do not understand why people come back over and over again to see the concentration camps.

She walked along the railroad tracks that brought Jewish people to the camps and saw hair that was cut off people’s heads and put in a glass case so that people could see what happened to people before they were killed.

“I walked along the tracks where they would bring them in,” she said. “It was a really weird feeling like I was walking in but in a different way.”

Over six million Jewish people lost their lives during the Holocaust. Many survivors also attended the trip to tell the descendants’ families how important it is for them to realize the goal of killing Jewish people was not a success, according to Raquefette. Auschwitz was made into a museum. Pictures were taken of all Jewish people when they were brought to the camp and the day they died.

“His goal was to kill all the Jews,” she said. “Now we are standing. We were standing were he once tried to achieve this goal.”

Majdanek is one concentration camp that can be up and running in 24 hours. It is also a place were people can see and touch actual equipment and belongings of Jewish people who were held in the camp. There is a space where shoes are kept and people can touch them.

“I stood in the gas chamber. I looked up where the gas would come in,” Raquefette said. “It’s really freaky.”

It was different for Raquefette to know about the Holocaust and then travel to Poland and really experience the effects of the Holocaust.

“After learning about the Holocaust, you just want to be there and see it,” she said. “You have to go and hear their stories so now you can pass them on. I don’t think you can learn enough from the books in school. You think you know, but you really don’t.”

Being able to go to Poland and see where millions of people lost their lives has made an impact on how Raquefette views many things in her life.

“Just standing where these people stood, walking along the train tracks, seeing the holes where gas was let out from, to see it all and know I’m safe and free,” she said. “I see small things that have happened that bothered me in the past. There are so many more important things that really aren’t that important.”

Emotionally the trip was draining. Raquefette still has visions and stories that come to her mind that remind her of what people just like herself had to deal with and endure so in the end she could be free.

“It was really tiring emotionally and physically all the time,” she said.

Even Mrs Kilchevsky was impacted by what she saw, but not in the sense that it would keep her away. Instead it keeps her going back.

“Until I saw it, I came home and wanted to throw my shoes away,” she said. “I felt like I had Nazi dirt and blood on them. But I have to go back.”

After the trip to Poland, the group spent about a week in Israel to see the progress and culture of Jewish people today. The two went with a group from the New York/New Jersey Jewish Community Center.