Irv Miller Scholarship Winner
Recounts 'March of the Living' Trip

Jeremy Schwarz was a recipient of a $1,000 scholarship from the JCC's Irv Miller Endowment Fund at the Columbus Jewish Foundation to help defray the cost of his participation in the 2008 March of the Living, a two-week trip for Jewish teens from Poland to Israel in memory of the Holocaust. Upon his return, Jeremy wrote the following article about his experiences on the March.

Stepping off of the bus with my grandfather, Zaidy, on one side of me, my grandmother, Bubby, on the other and my two aunts when we arrived at Auschwitz was a feeling that could never be replicated. Getting the first glimpse of the camp with the barbed wires at the front and the rows of barracks in the back gave me a feeling of hatred, sadness, and hope, all in one. After hearing all the stories and seeing all the pictures from those that have gone on the March of the Living before me, I was anxiously awaiting my turn to go and to have the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to go with some of my family members, and Zaidy who survived the Holocaust is something I will never forget in my entire life.

Arm in arm, we walked through the camp and as stories came to mind, he would recount them to me and I would listen with enormous interest and try to take notes and frantically take pictures as best I could. He normally wasn't one to talk very much about his experiences to me and my brother, but when the time came that he returned to the place where he saw his family members beaten, tortured, and even killed right before him, he wanted to tell me his thoughts and stories.

One of the most heart-wrenching things Zaidy told me as we were standing on the train tracks at Birkenau, was when the trains stopped and were unloaded with his family and himself, they were divided into two lines. One line was for those that could work; one was for those that could not, and those that could not were immediately sent to the gas chambers. Zaidy's mother and aunt were put into the "bad" line and my Zaidy, to the "good" line. As soon as they got the chance, his aunt and mother ran across the train tracks towards him, kissed him goodbye and ran back and he never saw them again.

The rest of the week in Poland was pretty much the same every day. The sky was always grey and we almost never saw the sun. It rained every day, usually when we were inside a concentration camp. When we were in Auschwitz, it rained. In Treblinka, it rained. When we were in Majdanek, it began as being very hot and humid. When we arrived there, people started to take off their jackets and drink lots of water to brave the sun. We toured some of the camp for a little while and then walked into one of the gas chambers of the massive extermination camp.

After looking around inside, we stepped out and it was pouring rain. The jackets came back on along with some whining and moaning and I heard someone behind me say, "The souls from the camp are crying." When I heard this, I stopped and thought for a couple moments about this odd coincidence. There we were, in what could be, even today, a fully functioning death camp, standing right outside a gas chamber where almost nobody back then survived, in the drenching rain, and people were complaining about getting cold and wet and tired. The things today that we take for granted were stripped away from Jews back then, and if they ever complained, they were either beaten or killed.

After visiting as many of the camps as we were able to, including Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Majdanek, and other historical sites in a short period of time, we gathered around a huge dome with 17 tons of ashes in it in Majdanek on our last day. Our head guide pulled out a few small bags of sand from Israel and poured a little bit into each of our hands. He told us to throw it onto the ashes so that it should be like they are being buried in Israel. He then exclaimed that since it was our last day in Poland and that night we would be getting on the plane to go to Israel that we were going from "hell to heaven" and that is exactly what happened.

We hurried to the airport for a midnight flight and flew to Prague and then from Prague to Israel, landing at 4:30 a.m. Nobody got any real sleep on the plane rides because the thrill of arriving in Israel was so exciting. Being that it was my first time and also my grandparents' first time there, it was especially exciting. The plane finally stopped at the terminal and I grabbed my bags and raced out of the plane so I could film my grandparents getting off and see their reactions.

It was a very warm feeling to be in the Jewish homeland with my family, and friends. I was so excited that I started taking pictures of everything in Hebrew. Even the advertisements for rental cars that were in Hebrew are now saved as photographs and memories.

My experience in Israel was a "complete 180" from what Poland was. As opposed to grey skies, rain, and feelings of dread and disgust, Israel provided blue skies, warmth, and a beautiful view. People were happy and smiling and you could just walk down the street and order falafel from a shop - in Hebrew even!

Israel's Memorial Day, Yom Hazikaron, is their saddest day of the year. At 8:00 that night, a siren sounds throughout the country and people stop whatever they are doing anywhere and wait for the siren to end. The siren goes for a minute and then people resume their duties.

At the time, we were at a ceremony in Pekiin that consisted of readings and singing and various other things. The next day, we went to a high school not far from Pekiin and participated in their ceremony. Following that, we went to the busiest intersection of that area to hear the second siren. The siren would sound at 11 a.m. and would last for two minutes.

Because we were in the midst of a ceremony the night before, we didn't really get to see everything stop but today we would. We all got in position as the clock was nearing 11 a.m. With business as usual, cars were honking and going through the intersection, busses were loading and unloading and then the siren went off. The sight was miraculous as everything really did stop! Wherever they were, cars were stopped, motors turned off and the drivers got out and stood with their heads down. The siren ended, people got back into their cars and drove off. Life continued as normal.

That night was Yom Ha'atzmaut in Israel, the Independence Day. It is literally as if someone flipped a switch on Israel because that night, everything came to life. What was once sadness and sorrow became happiness and glee. People were singing and dancing in the streets and everything was nice. The next day though, things calmed down a little as we toured a little bit of the country, going to different places up north and to Jerusalem where we stayed until the week was up.

On one of our last days in Israel, Friday afternoon, I had the honor of leading mincha for our group at the Kotel, the Western Wall. Zaidy joined us as well, and after I finished, everyone shook my hand. One of my teachers, Hillel Meyer, told me to bring Zaidy up to the Wall for the first time. I helped him out of his seat and we both walked over to the Wall. He touched it, and for a couple minutes, he stood, embracing the center of the Jewish world and he turned around to me and said, "I have said my peace, and I said it in Hungarian, too!" We both chuckled for a bit and I hugged and kissed him. I was so happy that I got to bring him up to the Wall on our first visit to Israel together.

We closed out our two weeks by sitting in a big circle in our hotel and each of us went around the room and was asked what they would get out of this trip, what they would take back to The United States, where our freedoms are guaranteed and our rights, preserved. After that, we went up to our rooms, packed, and left Israel and came back to America.