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"Take Revenge"
June 07, 2005Comments (0) | Add | E-mail this to a friend  Speaking on a kibbutz in the Western Galilee, Miriam Harel kept a roomful of birthright israel participants in rapt attention as she shared her memories of being a teenager caught up in the horror of the Holocaust. She recalled a message she found scrawled on a wall in a Polish ghetto where she hid more than 60 years before: "Take revenge."
"You are our revenge," she told the students, explaining that by remembering the victims of the Holocaust and celebrating their Jewish heritage they were helping to defeat of Hitler's "Final Solution."
Harel's testimony was a powerful introduction to Kibbutz Lochamei Haghettaot, the Ghetto Fighters' Kibbutz, founded in 1949 by survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto. Several buses of birthright israel students visited the kibbutz museum, the world's first Holocaust museum, as part of five hours of Holocaust education that is included throughout the 10-day trip.
After hearing Harel recount her experience in the ghetto and several concentration camps including Auschwitz, the students visited the separate children's museum, Yad Leyeled. The educational center provides a simpler, less graphic view of the Holocaust that allows children to interpret information in their own way using photos and replicas of life in the ghetto.
David Brownstein, a senior at Penn State, was struck by an unattributed quote displayed on a wall that said, "Acts are droplets. They merge and form pools. No one can take the pool of the completed act from you."
"In reflecting on this great tragedy in our history, and reflecting on it the quote reminds us to remember to look back while we also move forward," Brownstein said.
The students also watched a short film about a member of Hitler's youth movement who discussed participating in the organization. For many students this was the first time they had heard a German perspective on the Holocaust.
"It was a thought-provoking experience that opened our minds to a new perspective that a lot of people have not come into contact with," said University of Connecticut student Lillia Shapiro.
Many were shocked to say and hear propaganda used to dehumanize the Jews in the German media and the lies told to cover up the realities of the Holocaust. "It made me wonder if people knew about all that happened or if they were actually kept in the dark," said Joseph Schwab IV, a student at Penn State.
Later in the trip, students will continue their conversation about the Holocaust while they visit Yad Vashem, Israel's national Holocaust Memorial Museum.
By Jill Lewis
Hillel Senior Communications Associate
Jill Lewis is accompanying students on Hillel's birthright israel trip.
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