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The horrors of the Holocaust were brought back to life for 12 student newspaper editors and three team leaders who traveled to Poland, Bulgaria and Israel during the summer.
The purpose of the two-week trip, sponsored by the Ant-Defamation League (ADL), was for the students to learn more about the Holocaust, anti-Semitism, the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and how to handle these sensitive issues from a journalistic standpoint.
The students came from schools all over the United States, such as Harvard College, Oregon State University, Morehouse College and the University of Denver. They also were from a variety of backgrounds, religious beliefs and ethnicities.
For the first three days of the journey, participants traveled to Poland and saw first-hand the atrocities of the Holocaust. In the country’s capital, Warsaw, participants visited synagogues and the remnants of Warsaw ghettos, where thousands of Jews perished. The faded, run-down brick buildings evoked the oppression and humiliation Jews and minorities faced during the Holocaust. These historic buildings stand today among modern shops and apartments.
From Warsaw students then traveled to Krakow to see the famous factory of Oscar Schindler, the man who saved about 1,200 Jews from execution, as well as a cemetery containing a monument for Jewish children killed during the Holocaust.
Near Krakow is the largest and most well-known concentration-extermination camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau, where more than one million Jews and thousands of persecuted minorities were exterminated in gas chambers.
With somber faces, participants walked the mile-long Birkenau camp, passing by wooden bunkers, community toilets and numerous gas chambers and incinerators.
After the disturbing sights in Poland, students encountered a livelier atmosphere in Bulgaria. The Bulgarian government played a significant role during the Holocaust, saving about 50,000 Jews from death. While in Sofia, Bulgaria’s capital, students met with Krasimir Stoyanov, chief of staff to Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov. Stoyanov spoke more on Bulgaria’s new financial stability and current relationship with the United States, saying that these relations are the “highest priority in Bulgarian foreign policy.” He emphasized the need to attract more U.S. businesses and to invest in Bulgaria’s energy resources and tourism. When asked to address anti-Semitism in his country, Stoyanov outright denied such activity actually existed.
“Bulgaria is very sensitive and responds immediately to any kind of hate speech,” said Stoyanov. “We are all involved in a huge macro program to fight anti-Semitism.”
Although Stoyanov strongly stressed how the Bulgarian government pays attention to racial issues, later that afternoon students visited a Roma or gypsy community in the nearby town of Ihtiman. The Roma people were one of many minorities nearly exterminated by the Nazis. The trip participants were met by hundreds of men, women and children clamoring to glimpse the small group of foreigners who were visiting them.
The people of this community were living in poverty, cramped into small shanties and surrounded by trash and sewage. The leader of the Roma people said that in his eyes, America was a place unlike where they are living now. America is a place where people care about their poor and no one commits prejudice and discrimination, he said.
After three days in Bulgaria, students flew to Tel Aviv, Israel for the last part of the trip. Students learned about the current conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians.
The seriousness of the conflict was made even more real as students were shepherded to and from events with an armed guard to ensure safety.
Stuart Schoffman, ADL scholar-in-residence and correspondent for Jerusalem Report, said what is going on in Israel is “a tragic clash of stories.”
Schoffman pointed out that today, more than 10 million people live between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, of whom about 80 percent are Jewish and over a million Israeli Arabs. He thought the release of about 500 Islamic prisoners on Aug. 6 was a tactic for the Israeli government to demand concessions later and may be a “small window to reach a two-state solution.”
Though a majority of the people who spoke to the group were Israeli Jews, there were two Palestinian men who gave their points of view. Both men said the Israeli government must come up with a compromise that both sides will not agree with, but necessary for a resolution to the conflict.
In addition to hearing about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, students were able to visit numerous places in Israel, including the Jordan River, the Sea of Galilee, the Golan Heights, the Dead Sea and hike up Masada.
The trip was funded by Bidi Finkelstein in memory of her husband, Albert, and by Laura Tisch Sussman.
