Page 24 - Issue 22

democratic education institutes in the world. The Jewish
orphanage created a republic that had a parliament,
newspaper and court. It may seem silly and too childish for
children to play politics, but it was such a unique way to
bring about a method of education outside of formal
education. When the war came, they moved their building
into the Warsaw Ghetto. In 1942, the soldiers came to collect
the children. Korczak was given a chance to live on the
“Aryan side” of Warsaw, but he refused to leave his children.
The children wore their best dresses and marched to the
Umschlagplatz where the train carried them to Treblinka. In
my youth movement, madrichim represent people to help
guide children in learning new ideas and thoughts and to
push them to things that they care about. I don’t think any of
us could attain the amount of loyalty and willpower that he
possessed in remaining with the very thing he had always
cherished and held to high standards to their deaths. In the
late afternoon, we gathered at the Rappaport Memorial
adjacent to the Museum of the History of Polish Jews where
the final tekes was held. It was mainly run by Hanoar
Haoved v’Halomed (the working and studying youth) that
was our sister movement. They shared the same ideologies
and most structures like Habonim Dror and were also on the
Poland Trip. Most of the speeches covered both the horrors
and actions that the Jews were involved in. By knowing what
happened back then, we all knew that we would be amongst
the heralds for the future of the memories of the Holocaust
to remember the good and bad of what happened.
Afterwards, we headed out to the airport to head for Israel. I
left Poland confused and with so many blanks in my train of
thought. I couldn’t get any immediate reaction to what
happened since it happened so fast.

When we returned back to Israel, I never gave the
experience serious reflection because of how distant my
relationship with the Holocaust was. Small tidbits of ideas