Coming Home A New Person

There is something that I managed to find in Poland that I wasn’t expecting to bring home with me and I do not believe anyone else was able to bring back. This was not a souvenir or a stone or photos, I brought back a pride in where I came from. My great grandfather on my mother’s side of the family was Jewish. I did not often think of myself as Jewish before we went on this trip. I learned about the horrible things that had happened to the Jewish people, among others, and it felt so wrong and I often thought of my grandparents and the fact that they left Austria right before the war reached them.

We went to the Jewish Community Center in Krakow and met with the head of the center. He gave us a lecture on how many of the citizens of Poland are now finding out that they have a Jewish grandparent or two Jewish grandparents when they previously had no idea of their lineage. Many of the people would come to him, confused about what to do with this new information and he would give them a safe place to explore that part of their heritage without judgement or fear.

I knew where I came from, I have many nationalities, I was always proud of where I came from. I knew that I had family that was Jewish but I never counted that as part of who I was. I wasn’t practicing Judaism so I figured that I couldn’t be Jewish because of that. I saw being Jewish as only a faith and not a nationality. When we went to the Jewish Community Center we were told that no matter how religious you are, you can still be Jewish. The director of the center is an atheist and he told us that if we asked the rabbi who worked in the synagogue if the director was as Jewish as him he would, without hesitation, tell us that they are both just as Jewish, no matter their religious views.

This spoke to me and I came home with something special. I came home with a pride for another one of my nationalities. I am Jewish, no matter my past, I will always be able to carry that with me.

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The Children Of The Holocaust

The children lost in the Holocaust. A subject that I had never quite spent too much time thinking about, you always see pictures of adults and what happened to them but not often the children. When we went to Auschwitz I learned things that broke my heart. I have a niece and two nephews at home and just imagining them in the best of the situations there tore me up inside as we walked through the camps. We saw children’s shoes along with the 80,000 other pairs in the museum. Children’s clothes were hung up among the other confiscated items. We saw small uniforms for the camp made for the small frames of children, forced to work and starve in the camps.

            In wartimes you never think of children as being the ones to suffer, not initially anyway. You think of women and children as being the first to be evacuated or the first being sent to the lifeboats. Never do you think that children would be the first targets or the first to die. They were specifically targeted in many cases because they were too weak to work or too little. They were often sent to the gas chambers, if not, they were often used in Nazi experiments. Most of the time separating twins or other siblings to have a control group along with a test subject.

            Thinking about what these children had to witness, what they must have endured, it is sickening. Small, young kids that had no idea what was going on in their countries. They had no clue why their friends weren’t allowed to hang out with them anymore or why they couldn’t go to school, or why their mom and dads seemed so frightened all the time. They had no way of comprehending the reasons why people they had known all their lives suddenly hated them and wanted them to go away. They were sent away to ghettos and camps knowing what was going to happen to them. Some children left drawings, they knew that they were going to a scary camp where there were men with guns who would shoot the people they loved without a second thought. Those are some of the atrocities these children had to become witnesses to. Things that they would grow up having nightmares about, and that’s if they survived because out of the 104,000 children in the camps, only 600 were liberated.

            These children and all of their stories are the reasons that we can never let this happen again. Why we must stand as witnesses to the horrible things that occurred and stand firm against anyone or anything that would threaten this kind of destruction to our children.

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Our Obligations as Witnesses

Walking along the fences that they walked along, feeling that similar feeling of being contained, nothing can compare to it. Visiting the grounds of Auschwitz was an experience that I will hold with me for as long as I live. Nothing can prepare you for how thick the air feels or how it feels almost wrong with each step you take.

            My decision to travel to Poland with this class was not a quick or easy one. I have Jewish heritage and know that none of my family members were enslaved at these camps. Still the thought of all the Jewish blood spilled and the fate my family members narrowly missed was jarring. I made the choice to join this excursion and face in person the atrocities that played out in Auschwitz.  

            Entering the grounds under the infamous gate was like entering into another world. Stepping through and feeling a rush of calm understanding rush over me. A respect demands to be felt when you walk the pathways. Recalling everything that we had learned in class and finally being in the place where it all transpired, a sort of spell falls over you. Everything you see, you see through different eyes. Every innocent looking structure was the home of murder, torture, and suffering. These people had gone through so much in this camp and now we walk the same dirt roads as they did, learning about what we are obligated to do as witnesses.

            Each building we were able to enter showed us yet another aspect of life in the camps that we could not hope to fully understand. We were shown building with beds lining the room where people were forced to sleep not knowing if they would survive the next day. Beds where siblings, parents, and children were separated and never knew if their family was alive or dead, no comfort came in the night in those rooms.

            Our job is to bear witness to what happened years ago to so many people from many different groups and never allow it to occur again. We, the groups who have gone on this adventure together, have become witnesses to the Shoah. We have heard and seen the direct effect as well as the ripple effect of what happened in those camps and across the world. We now hold in our minds and our hearts, something that needs to be protected. We must protect what we have learned and protect the honor of the victims we lost. 

By: Cassie Sampogna

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