Shalom magazine - The Atlantic Jewish Council

HoLoCaust eduCatioN
The March of the Living for Educators
2010: Walking in Remembrance;
Returning with Responsibility
by Anne McLeod, Social Studies Teacher,
Prince Andrew High School, Dartmouth, NS
The group singing in a synagogue in Krakow
For ten days in July I was part
of a trip that left me mentally,
physically and emotionally
drained. I would not have missed a
second of it. Twenty-six educators
from across Canada were given the
opportunity to experience the places
of the Holocaust in the company
of an incredible lady, Vera Schiff,
herself a survivor of Theresienstadt.
Along with our guide, Yishai and the
organizer, Carson Phillips, we were
all about to go through an intense
10 days that none of us will ever
forget as we walked in the footsteps,
sometimes literally, of the millions
who, 70 years ago, walked the same
paths with no hope of returning.
Berlin is a bustling, modern city that
still harbours pockets of its darker
history. Wannsee House is a lovely villa
set on lake, surrounded by manicured
gardens. Standing in the foyer, looking
up at the curved staircase, it was hard to
comprehend that, in 1942, in the room
in front of me, over some refreshments,
Heydrich and the top Nazi officials met
to plan the implementation of the “The
Final Solution”. This surreal feeling
accompanied me throughout the trip
as I visited place
after place where
atrocities had
occurred, listening
to the words of
those who had
survived to tell
their stories, but
seeing blue skies
and having the
words underlined
by birdsong.
Surreal, indeed!
Following our visit
to Wannsee we
had the first of many
debriefing sessions, sharing our feelings
and thoughts. The insights brought to
our discussions by Vera were invaluable.
Throughout the trip, she was always
open to sharing her thoughts, feelings
and experiences with us and truly
was the heart and soul of our group.
Even when she was finding the places
emotionally taxing, she was always
involved and I feel very blessed to have
had the chance to speak with her one on
one several times on a variety of topics.
I know that she touched every single one
of us very deeply
The Jews of Berlin were taken to Gleis
(Track) 17 to be
loaded onto trains
and deported, so
that was where
we went next. As
I looked at the
dates and numbers
of deportations,
I observed that
in the last two
years of the war
there were many
transports with
only twenty-five or
so people on them.
Page 2 Tishre 5771 - Vol 35 No. 2
This underlined the fact that as the war
was drawing to a close, the Nazis were
more intent on killing Jews than they
were in providing the infrastructure
to win the war. This was also evident
at Birkenau and Majdanek where the
death count soared in the last 2 years.
Standing on that railway platform, gazing
at hill we had just walked up and at the
tracks before us was the first of many
experiences that left me trying to grasp
the enormity of what happened there
but still with the question” How could
this happen in a civilized country?” still
pounding in my head, as it does even
now.
While in Berlin, we also visited
Saschenhausen, one of the first camps
established to deal with primarily
political prisoners and homosexuals. As I
had been to two other camps previously,
Mauthausen and Dachau, I was a bit
prepared as to what I was going to see as
far a buildings and layout; however as we
entered the remains of the crematoria, a
group of young Jewish teens were having
a memorial service and this moved me to
tears. As a high school teacher, it brought
home to me the legacy that the Shoah
has left to these young people and also to
all future generations. I guess that it why
Janus Korczak’s Orphanage