Poland Pilgrimage

by Marissa Magasiny,      11^th grade,       NJ

I wrote this poem after we visited the Maidanek concentration camp in Lublin.  I believe that although it is about the memorial there, it fits the theme of all the camps. It explains the same feelings after we saw everything else and what life will eventually bring us. If you dig deep into it, it shows how lucky we are to live our life to the extent that we are given, how we are not forced to die right away like people in the Holocaust were.

Ashes to Ashes

“We are all dust and ashes”

A memorial

A true life filled memorial

Huge and directly in front of my eyes

I stood staring

I didn’t know what i would see

A few more steps up

Some forward

And I...

I am...

Lost.

Unable to breathe,

A pile maybe fifteen feet high,

Could’ve been 100 feet around,

The ashes of human beings.

The ashes of a life

Killed so easily.

My heart shattered.

My mind unable to comprehend.

I thought I’ve seen it all.

I've seen rocks and statues,

Tomb stones and flowers.

This time

I was wrong

Because this was so different.

Ashes.

Thousands of them

Just piled like dirt.

Dust to dust,

Ashes to ashes.

All I thought,

All I knew,

Was that we

Not like this though,

Will all be

Just dust and ashes too one day.

Auschwitz, it is a name in which many see hate, destruction, loss, history, and wrong-doing. January 27^th, 1945 was the day that Auschwitz was liberated.  Seventy-four years later, on April 4th, 2019, I stood at Auschwitz. I stood alongside my fellow classmates and my amazing staff. Proudly and so uncertain, all of us trudged forward on the tracks into a place once so dark. Over 70 Jewish teens with our teachers and madrichim stood on the famous train tracks headed straight for the unknown. We did exactly what the Jews, Gypsies, Gays, Disabled, etc. did many years ago. As we walked towards Auschwitz with our Jewish history classes, we felt uneasy. My class was asked to line both sides of the track and kneel down. Our teacher, David, said “ feel the senses around you not only what you see but what you see, hear….now put your hands on the rail….” He went on to discuss our being there and that we were not tourist but that we were witnesses. We were all witnesses to such a tragedy. Through our journey in the concentration camp, David read many testimonies and told stories. Each one having some type of relationship to the spot we were paused at.

The first stop was out of order in his lesson plan. So many of the students were interested in seeing the barracks where the victims lived. Now they were not the real thing, they were very accurate replicas of it. The first barrack was mostly empty. In the back were three rows of concrete. In each were two rows of holes, each row had maybe thirty. That was their latrine. Human beings stripped of privacy and humiliated just so they could relieve themselves. It was so terrible. We walked into the barrack a few feet away from the first. This one was filled on each side with queen sized wooden bunk beds with no padding or blanket. In the middle was a small brick wall attached to two chimneys. It was used for heating. This was where we heard the first shocking news, but at this point everything was already a shock. The worst form of punishment was when Nazis would push a prisoner over the brick wall, pull down their pants or pull up their shirt and whip them or hit them with a wooden plank. I felt disgusted and sad.

The next large stop was at a train car. We all put our hands to it and nobody spoke. That single cart once held many. They were squished and crammed. They could have been in there for days, weeks, even close to months. Now all it was, was empty. That was not fair. It was never fair. These people were treated like animals and eventually made to feel as though they actually were. One story we were told is how human beings, victims, barely got food and the closest they came was by eating sand and grass around the barracks and work areas.

We then made our way through the woman’s section towards two of the four gas chambers/crematoriums. All four gas chambers were destroyed during the war. The only part we saw was the remains all over a small area of the ground taped off. We were able to see what was left of the inside and the stairs of crematorium number 2. The victims of the Holocaust were either brought there right away during the selection process off the train, or sometimes after suffering for an amount of time in the camps. They were forced to undress themselves and stand in a small room. All these people wanted was a shower and instead of shower, poison was dropped that killed them all. Millions Jews died like this. I felt so lost. The gas chambers and crematoriums were the worst part of all of the camps we visited. At some camps we were able to walk through them. So many of my peers and I were unable to walk through. The ones that did came out unable to speak or in tears. Some had said they felt angry, sad, suffocated. These are feelings none of us wanted to feel.  

We ended our day at a spot in the back right corner of the camp. All of our classes met together. The teachers gave us about fifteen minutes to just walk around or write in our journals. When the fifteen minutes ended, our group circled up in front of three memorial tombstones. Eight students and one madrich read poems, prayers, and testimonies. As they finished what they were saying, all of the Heller High staff and students put our arms around each other and sang Hatikvah. Hatikvah came to an end. The group started to walk towards the exit. Most of us kept holding hands with at least one other person or had our arms around one another. I alongside two other girls and one boy lit yahrzeit candles and placed them next to the memorials directly before leaving.

We will always remember what happened and how it happened.