Heller High Poland Pilgrimage:  Tykocin

by Mikayla Snead,       10th grade,         Dallas

Recently, I was on the journey of  lifetime traveling around Poland. Out of the many places we went to and traveled around, I think Tykocin is both special, and will hold a very special memory in my head for the rest of my life.

A tombstone in the Jewish cemetery of Tykocin

Our first stop when we arrived in Tykocin was a very old Jewish cemetery. I remember there being almost no grave stones, and it was never kept up. The few stones that were there had writing on them but it was so eroded that it was almost impossible to read them. I remember being told that it was a cemetery that was never destroyed. It was left as it was when the Nazis came through in 1941 and the people who were left after the war purposely left it alone so these people can lie in peace underground. This cemetery is no longer active.

After visiting the cemetery, we walked around the old shtetl that once was back before World War II. Out of all the information I learned,one specific thing really stuck out to me: even though there was so much anti-Semitism in Europe during - and even before - World War II, the Christian and Jewish communities lived side by side as if there was nothing going on outside of the town. It was so interesting to me that during everything going on outside the community, these two different sets of people were living their lives happily together, side by side. To this day, this community is still active, except there are no Jews. Only Polish Christians live there.

The interior of the Tykocin synagogue.  The synagogue was built in 1642.

Inside the shtetlof Tykocin, there was an old synagogue. It was so beautiful inside. My all time favorite part of being in the synagogue was bringing life back into it. I remember we had a very short service inside, and immediately after had a song session to remember. We sang some all tie favorite songs people knew from camp, and that was when I really felt connected with this group of people I’ve been surrounded by for the past 3 months. It truly felt special. But then we suddenly had to stop…

a marked off mass grave in the Lupochowa forest, site of Nazi atrocity

walking in the Lupochowa forest near Tykocin, a site of Nazi atrocity

After all of the joy and fun we were having, we were told that in one day, the entire Jewish community in Tykocin was taken away. We got on the bus. Silently. We drove until we got to a wooded area. I din’t think anybody knew what was going on when we got there. I know I didn’t. We started walking through the woods, and we eventually we got to what we would learn to be 3 mass graves. All fenced around. Memorials at each, topped with candles, flags, letters, flowers, and so much more. My heart dropped when I realized what I was looking at. There were hundreds of dead bodies in those graves and I was walking on the trail where innocent people were told to strip naked and walk to the edge to meet their fate after being forced to sing Hatikvah before being shot. 

At the end of the day, we learned a whole lot about what happened to the Jews of Tykocin during the Shoah. It’s sad, tragic, heartbreaking, but most of all, real. It was very difficult to see these graves, but I knew it was the right thing. To be there and learn about the lives of these people and to see what they went through before eventually meeting their fate at the end.