Catching Up: Thursday, Warsaw and Treblinka

We finished our visit in Poland with a stop at the remaining piece of the Warsaw ghetto wall. In 1931 the Jewish population of Warsaw was 352,697, one-third of the city's population making Warsaw the second largest Jewish city in the world after New York at the time. The piece of wall we saw was erected on November 15, 1940 and by December there were 400,000 Jews imprisoned in a 3.5 square mile are of the city that was designed to hold 160,000. During its existence 100,000 people died of disease,starvation, and murder in the ghetto. In two months from July 23, 1942 to August 21, 1942 between 254,000 and 300,000 Jews were sent from the ghetto to Treblinka where the great majority were murdered in the gas chambers. We also discussed the Uprising that took place in the ghetto beginning in January of 1943 and continuing until April 23 when the Nazis fire bombed the ghetto. In honor of their efforts Norman sang some of the Partisan song.










Our final stop in Poland was the death camp at Treblinka where 800,000 Jews were murdered. Like Belzec and Sobibor the entire camp was destroyed by the Nazis after it had served its purpose in 1943. Also like those camps very few were left alive as the camp typically only held 600 Jewish prisoners in one cell block
all oters were usually immediately gassed. Today the site is a very reflective memorial with 18,000 memorial stones, many inscribed with the namee of a city or town from where Jews were deported to Treblinka. In addition to the stones of communities there is also a stone to Janusz Krochak who refused an opportunity to be saved an instead accompanied the children from his orphange to the gas chambers during the first deprtation from the Warsaw ghetto in July of 1942. We finished our stay in Poand with the telling of the story, "Hovering Above the Pit." In the story a young man and a rabbi miraculously jump over a pit while imprisoned an the Janowska labor camp, when asked how they made it the rabbi said it was becuase he was holding on the coattails of his ancestors, and the man answered that he made it becuase he was holding on to the rabbi. We concluded by joining hands and making the symbolic leap over the ceremonial pit at Treblinka while also holding on to the memory of the vibrant Jewish life that was lost in Poland and landing on the other side in Israel.