1993-1994 Rothberg Yearbook

54
tim e & Leisure
/
M arch of the Living
Jennie Levy
When I decided to go on the
March of the Living, I thought that
it was to educate myself about the
Holocaust: to understand the what,
the how, and the why. Last year
at school, a friend told me that he
thinks that the Jews use the Holocaust
as a crutch. I didn’t know
how to respeond. What he said
upset me and I told him 80, but I
couldn’t explain why in an lntelligent
way. So a year later I end up
in Poland learning a tremendous
amount of information yet I developed
more questions than answers!
The experience of The March
seems to mean something different
to everyone. Personally, a lot of
what I learned in Poland was about
myself - who I am as a person, my
goals, and what my Judaism means
to me. My feelings about what happened
In Poland changed at times
from indifference to anger and from
sick and disgusted to sad. I wasn’t
always depressed, but there were a
few times that it hit me hard. For
example, the hair In Auschwitz and
the shoes in Majdanek. Since we’ve
been back in Israel, I feel like I
have a lot to share. There are also
feelings which I don’t know how to
explain. How do you express what
it was like to stand In a place
where 800,000 h um an beings were
taken Just to be murdered? I think
that going to Poland meant more to
me than I can even realize at the
moment. In September, I will see
my friend whose words in a small
way prompted me to make this
journey. I'm still not sure exactly
how I would respond to his statement,
but I know that I no longer
lack information and now have my
own personal experience to draw
from.