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Original Article Published on The Jewish Ledger

WARSAW — Why would 15 day school teachers and administrators come to school at 10pm on a Saturday night? Because the staff of the Lauder-Morasha School, under the leadership of principal Helise Lieberman is eager to talk about and to show off their 250-student day school.

Dr. Norman Ravski, co-chair of the New Haven delegation to the March of the Living in Poland, welcomes the late night visitors.

“We are proud to have a strong bond with the Warsaw and Lauder Morasha communities,” reports Ravski, who went on to recount how the special relationship between Warsaw’s Lauder-Morasha School and Woodbridge’s Ezra Academy has unfolded during the past four years. Dr. Henry Spencer, also a Woodbridge resident and Ezra parent, was intrigued when he came across an article about the Lauder-Morasha school in a New York Jewish newspaper several years ago. When Spencer traveled to Poland as part of a genealogical research project, he made a point of stopping at the school.

Upon returning to Connecticut, Spencer shared his experiences at the school with the students at Ezra. Three students, Evan Ravski, Mika Larrison, and Deborah Krieger, who would soon be traveling to Poland and Israel on the March of the Living, were similarly intrigued. When they had an opportunity to visit the Lauder-Morasha school, they wanted to see the school’s Torah which they couldn’t seem to find anywhere. “Why do you have to have such tight security? Is your Torah locked up?” Ravski wondered.

Lieberman answered, “We don’t have a Torah!”

Ravski, Larrison and Krieger were dumbfounded. With the help of Dr. Spencer, the students approached the Ezra staff, board and student body, and requested help in securing a Torah for the Warsaw school. At the time, Ezra owned a kosher Torah and a “pasul” (non-kosher) Torah.

Under the leadership of Shelley Krieger, the Ezra Academy embarked on an extraordinary school and community-wide learning and social actions adventure: the students learned how Torahs are made, what makes a Torah kosher, and they raised nearly $7,000 for the repair of the scroll. A sofer ultimately repaired the Torah, and the entire student body, under the direction of local artist, Jeanette Kuvin Oren, designed and decorated a Torah mantle.

Just after Shavuot, 31 adults from New Haven and several Ezra upperclassmen, traveled to Poland to present the Torah scroll.

“This was perhaps the greatest moment of my ten years at Ezra,” observes Krieger, who described the love and care shown toward the Torah throughout the trip to Poland. “Everyone took turns ‘guarding’ the Torah — on the bus, on the plane [the Torah had its own seat!], at Auschwitz [the Torah couldn’t enter since Auschwitz is considered to be a cemetery], and while touring Poland.

The Torah was presented to the school at the end of the trip, and the delegation was greeted by singing and dancing children who lined the stairways of the Lauder-Morasha school.

Lieberman introduced her staff, who joined the New Haven delegation for a moving Havdalah service and led tours of the impressive school building, a former old-age home whose purchase was financed by philanthropist, former-Ambassador Ronald Lauder. As the group enjoyed Polish pastries, Lieberman commented on the timing of the group’s visit.

“We lend the Torah to the Nozyk Synagogue when necessary (i.e. Sabbaths and holidays when two Torahs are needed). They have to insure that love and care will be shown to the scroll. Just today, the synagogue dedicated a new Torah scroll. Now, we can take our Torah back.”

Lieberman praised the New Haven delegation, many parents of current or former Ezra Academy students.

“The Torah symbolizes a real commitment, a relationship that will go on forever, into the next generation.”


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Original Article Published On The Jewish Ledger

New Haven Federation participates in March of the Living

At Auschwitz-Birkenau, Raisy Sessel of Orange, 12, traveling to Poland and Israel with her mother, Deborah, was struck by the hundreds of shoes confiscated by the Nazis, now in a display case in one of the barracks.

Other cases display human hair, suitcases, combs and brushes and eye glasses. Eric Smith, president of Interfaith Cooperative Ministries and pastor of the Adoni Spiritual Formation Center in New Haven, was struck by the enormous size of the two camps.

Since 1988, March of the Living International has been bringing Jewish high school students from every religious and educational background and every part of North America to both Poland and Israel, over Yom HaShoah and Yom Haatzmaut. This year, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II and the liberation of the concentration camps, adults and teenagers have come on the March of the Living, which retraces the “March of Death” which thousands took from Auschwitz to the gas chambers of Birkenau.

On the long drive to Auschwitz, Pierre-Joachin “Jo Jo” Mubiri of France and Damian Rosset, both students in Professor Praszalowicz’s Polish language and history course at the Jagiellon University in Krakow share thoughts and answer questions about their own knowledge of Jews and the Holocaust.

Polish tour guide, Agneshka Novack told the group that she has personally been to Auschwitz “between 200 and 400 times” with groups of all ages.

“Each time I go, it is as if I am there for the first time.”

In the parking lot of the March of the Living, Connecticut residents are struck by the number of buses – with signs in the window indicating they are from Kiev, Odessa, Boca Raton and Savannah.

Laury Alderman Walker, traveling with her mother, Lucille Alderman, and sisters Susan Buxbaum and New Haven Jewish Federation executive director Sydney Perry, spots a bus from Riga, and is touched by the fact that her family is from that same town.

The New Haven delegation, in bright blue hats and carrying a blue “Jewish Federation of Greater New Haven” banner, joined an estimated 22,000 marchers from nearly 60 countries, including Uruguay, South Africa, Germany, France, the Ukraine and Panama, on the three kilometer walk from Auschwitz to Birkenau. Many clapped as Elie Wiesel, the keynote speaker, and other dignitaries walked past, and marchers seemed touched to see nearly 200 Polish youth, carrying the flag of Poland, joining in the march. Participants, many clad in dark blue “March of the Living” raincoats, walked along the train tracks used 60 years earlier to transport so many to their deaths, pausing

briefly to reflect and to put in the ground mock miniature grave markers with names of relatives killed by the Nazis.

Thirty members of the German parliament, Israeli Knesset members and various dignitaries from around the world were in attendance.

As marchers awaited the start of the formal program, youth from around the globe conversed, played “Jewish geography” and “traded” hats, shirts and buttons/pins. One Israeli teenager was pleased to meet the New Haven delegation – she had just made a successful trade for a sought-after hat, and in the process learned that her next door neighbor in Afula, Ziv Abekassis, had been a young emissary last year to New Haven.

Footage of transports and of emaciated concentration camp victims, and the words “Never Again,” were projected on the large screens. A lucky few were close enough to the stage to see dignitaries up close. Most stood on the large field, muddy from intermittent rain and sunshine of the past few days, far away from the speakers.

Following the march, the delegation drove to the nearby Auschwitz Jewish Center for dinner, a presentation by board member and New Haven resident, David Goldman, and a panel discussion. Upon returning to the hotel, a particularly energetic few explored Krakow, a quaint town reportedly 700-1000 years old and home to 17 universities and 120,000 students.

Krakow to Majdanek

Friday morning began with a 5 a.m wake-up call. The early start allowed the group to experience the long, scenic ride through the Polish countryside, enroute from Krakow to the concentration camp of Majdanek, and on to Warsaw in time for Shabbat. As the group would learn, Polish roads are slow and often times in poor shape. Yellow and purple flowers and black birds were sure signs that spring has arrived in Poland. As the bus passed through Kielce, considered to be a medium sized Polish town, Israeli guide Hannah described a time when such towns had such a high percentage of Jews that the marketplace was closed on the Sabbath.

The bus arrived at last at Majdanek, the labor and concentration camp just outside of the town of Lublin. Before entering the “showers” and gas chambers, Hannah had Raisy read an account of Helena, a girl approximately her age, who survived the showers, but was confused when her mother never came out. As we walked on the wooden crates on the gas chamber floor, mission co-chair Dr. Norman Ravski tells the group of his father’s reaction several years ago visiting a similar gas chamber.

“This is the wood,” Ravski’s father told the group. He remembered the smell and feel of the wood from his days at a camp in Fluxenburg, Germany. The senior Ravski was lucky enough to survive the gas chamber due to what Dr. Ravski called “a fake out” by the Nazis – “they took him to a fake gas chamber to psyche him and the others out-and they survived.” According to Hannah, 360,000 were killed at Majdanek.

In one of the barracks, used to house memorabilia, confiscated items belonging to victims and lists, Lucille Alderman, traveling with three adult daughters comments, “The thing that amazes me is the records. Their precision is sick.” Following a difficult walk through the crematoria where many lit memorial candles, the group witnessed the trenches where 18,400 Jews were killed on November 3, 1943. The ashes of the victims are housed in a famous urn.

Shabbat arrived in Warsaw, ushering in a period of needed calm following three emotionally charged days. Rabbi Sheya Hecht of Southern Connecticut Hebrew Academy, who had earlier taught his fellow bus passengers the history of the Baal Shem Tov and the rise of Chasidism, organized a spirited Kabbalat Shabbat service at the Warsaw Radisson, led by Dr. Michael Kligfeld.

The entire delegation – including people from Savannah, GA, Myrtle Beach, SC, and Berkley, CA, mission chair Bob Naboicheck of West Hartford, and Federation directors from both Hartford (Cathy Schwartz) and New Haven (Sydney Perry) ate Shabbat dinner together, accompanied by such notable community guests as the Chief Rabbi of Poland, Michael Schudrich, Helise Lieberman, principal of the Lauder Morasha School, and Yale Reisner, Genealogical Director of the Jewish Historical Institute, and Israel’s Ambassador to Poland, David Peleg.

Ambassador Peleg shared examples of Israel’s growing diplomatic and economic relations with Poland. He noted that seven top Israeli officials have visited Poland in the past year, and he said, “Twenty-five thousand Israeli tourists visit Poland each year, including nearly every single army officer.” [I was struck by the presence of Elite Coffee packets in each hotel room at the Radisson, and by the Elite coffee dispensers at gas station snack bars throughout Poland.

Peleg informed the audience of a joint effort by the governments of Poland and Israel to monitor and correct references in the media to “the Polish death camps,” noting that they were actually “Nazi death camps on Polish soil.”

Reactions

Milton and Joan Wallack had expected their visit to Poland to be full of

only the horrors and depression of the concentration camps and death camps of Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek.

Instead, both also witnessed renewal and hope.

On Shabbat afternoon, the Wallacks and many from Connecticut attended a panel discussion at the Nozyk Synagogue on Jewish renewal. Chief Rabbi Michael Shudrich, director of the Joint Distribution Committee in Poland, Yossi Erez, and a Polish-Jewish journalist spoke of the rediscovery of Jewish roots among many Poles.

The delegates were entertained by a musical performance by the Tslil Choir, who sang songs in Hebrew and Yiddish. Following a standing ovation, Dr. Wallack, president of the Jewish Community Relations Council in New Haven, spontaneously stood to address the choir.

“Thank you. You have shown us that light comes out of the darkness,” he said.

While many were surprised at how upbeat and positive they felt by certain aspects of their Poland trip, others were happy that their Poland trip was winding down.

Roslyn Lerner felt that coming to Poland was important but said, “I would never come back.”

Martha Weisbart of Orange, also feels she took her “obligatory trip” to Poland and does not plan to return in the future.

“I’m still bothered that they still talk about Jews and Poles as if Jews are separate from the Polish people,” Weisbart said. “In fact, Jews were always part of the Polish people.”

No matter their reaction to Poland, the New Haven participants were all happy to leave behind the concentration camps for Israel, where they experienced Yom Hazikaron and Yom Ha’atzmaut.

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POLAND — The trains whiz in and out of the Oswiecim Station, to and from the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. The people stand, packed like sardines with little room to move. The men with beards and black hats are sent by government agents to the left and to the right. We are in Poland, where more than three million men, women, children and babies were brutally slaughtered by Hitler and his murderous Nazi regime.

But it is not 1945. It is 2005, 60 years after the liberation of the camps, and sixteen years after the fall of communism. This is the new Poland. The tracks are familiar, but the trains are not carrying Jews from Hungary, Slovakia and Greece to the gas chambers and crematoria. Rather, they are transporting an unprecedented number of Jewish teenagers, staying in hotels and hostels throughout Poland, to Auschwitz-Birkenau for the March of the Living, which took place May 5.

They joined more than 22,000 people – Jews and non-Jews, from more than 60 countries, and such cities as Kiev, Odessa, Riga and New Haven.

They commemorated Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, by walking the 1.8 miles from Auschwitz to Birkenau, retracing the steps of the “Death March.” Many marchers were “wrapped” in the blue and white flag of Israel, carrying flags of their home countries, or holding banners displaying names of their home communities. Others carried miniature wooden (mock) grave markers with names of deceased relatives. I was one of 45 New Haven delegates, proudly wearing a royal blue Jewish Federation of New Haven cap, a Connecticut state pin, and a dark blue “March of the Living” raincoat.

Participants assembled on the large field of Auschwitz, often referred to as the “world’s largest cemetery.” The field was muddy from days of springtime rain and contained only a handful of portable toilets. The crowded field is paradise compared to the cattle cars which rode through here just 60 years ago, filled with the relatives of so many here today.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Nobel Prize laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Weisel and other dignitaries sat on the stage, under tight security, ready to address the crowd. The hordes of teenagers were more interested in trading hats, shirts and pins with peers than in viewing the

footage of emaciated prisoners, crying children, or the words “Never Again,” which are being projected on to large video monitors.

Somehow, this playful bantering among Jewish teens from around the world felt entirely appropriate. It is an affirmation of life and proof that Hitler didn’t succeed.

It was a rather surprising five days in Poland. As we walked through the Umschlagplatz on the outer edge of the Warsaw Ghetto, where Jews were transported to Treblinka, and as we walked through the concentration camps and death camps of Auschwitz/Birkenau and Majdanek, the horrors of the Holocaust were inescapable. Yet, as we drove from Krakow to Lublin via the towns of Kielce and Radom, we learned of the long history of Jews in Poland. “Kielce was 60 percent Jewish,” our Israeli guide, Hannah, told us, “They closed the marketplace on the Jewish Sabbath.”

Despite a reported 19 percent unemployment rate and poor roads, the country felt alive. Black birds flew over fields lit up with yellow springtime flowers.

The pubs, restaurants and internet cafes of the quaint town of Krakow were packed with students from the towns’ eleven universities. We were amazed to see signs for Bagelmania Bagels and Burritos as we walked through the old Jewish ghetto of Krakow, minutes on foot from the Remuh Synagogue, built in 1558 and still in use.

In Warsaw, we lost count of the number of cranes all around – working to build apartment buildings and stores, and to expand the Warsaw airport. Saturday night in Warsaw offered the ballet, Yiddish theatre and casinos. Not bad for a city leveled by the Germans just 60 years ago.

Jewish life seemed to be making a comeback as well. At the Radisson Hotel, Israel’s Ambassador to Poland, David Peleg, told us over Shabbat dinner about Israel’s expanded trade relations and tourism to Poland. I smiled as I spotted Elite coffee from Israel all over Poland. I was delighted when I read that the SuperPharm chain of Israeli pharmacies is expanding to Warsaw. On Saturday morning at the Nozyk Synagogue, the chief rabbi of Poland, Michael Schudrich, addressed the crowd in Polish, Hebrew and English, and a newly donated torah was dedicated.

The Lauder-Morasha school in Warsaw hosted the New Haven group for pastries and a tour late Saturday night, at the conclusion of the Jewish Sabbath. Every day, people in Poland are learning of Jewish roots they never knew they had and they are thirsting to learn more.

Many on the March of the Living went on to Israel to experience the shift from despair and destruction to renewal and life in a homeland. In Poland, we saw the ashes; we also saw that, out of the ashes comes new life. This is the old-new Poland.

Filed under: New Haven Register, Newspaper Articles, Special Articles

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Original Article Published On The Jewish Ledger

As Jews around the world celebrate Passover, the holiday commemorating our journey from slavery to freedom, Jews from around the state are preparing to relive a more recent bondage to liberation story.

From May 3 through 13, about 80 Connecticut residents will join 18,000 Jews from around the world on the National Yom Ha’Atzmaut Mission to Poland and Israel.

“This year is the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the camps,” notes Caryl Kligfeld, director of Refugee Resettlement and coordinator of Israel/Overseas Programming for the Jewish Federation of Greater New Haven.

Kligfeld said that New Haven’s delegation numbers 45 people,

including grandparents bring grandchildren, mothers traveling with daughters, and daughters bringing their mothers. The delegation from the Jewish Federation of Greater Hartford is comprised of approximately 35 delegates.

The National Yom Ha’Atzmaut Mission Chair is Bob Naboichek of Hartford. In a letter to participants, Naboicheck, who is also chairman of the board of the Jewish Federation of Greater Hartford, notes, “We will be in Poland at an important milestone in history — the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and the end of World War II.” Accompanying the group will be scholar-in-residence Shalmi Barmore, founder and director of Yad Vashem’s Department of education in Jerusalem and current director of Melitz’s Education, Culture, Heritage Organization (ECHO) Program.

The Connecticut delegation, whose trip is organized by the United Jewish Communities, the umbrella organization of Jewish federations in North America, will be touring Poland and Israel together, and will be joining groups from around the world for on Thursday May 5 (Yom HaShoah – Holocaust Commemoration Day) for the March of the Living. David and Jean Federation are the leaders of the Hartford delegation.

On the march, the 18,000 expected marchers, including youth, Holocaust survivors, dignitaries from Israel and Jews and non-Jews from Israel and around the world, will slowly and quietly relive the Death March from Auschwitz to Birkenau.

Yizkor services will be held at Birkenau at the conclusion of the march.

The New Haven delegation has been preparing for the mission in a variety of ways. A series of lectures on the history of the Jews of Poland, have taken place at the Jewish Community Center of Greater New Haven, and an extensive packet of source materials has been prepared for each participant. At a March 21 meeting, which preceded a lecture by Barmore, trip co-chair, Dr. Norman Ravski, a New Haven physician and himself a three-time participant in the March of the Living in five years, prepared the group for what he described as an “incredible journey.”

“I know the profound feelings that this trip will evoke,” Ravski said. “Together we will learn, cry and rejoice. I think that the committed community leaders that are going with us will have a new and even deeper commitment to Jewish life here at home and in Israel.”

At a well-attended April 11 get-together at the home of Ravski and his wife, Karen, he discussed such practical issues as cell phone rental in Poland and Israel, the purchase of special stools for sitting during the long March of the Living day, medications and clothing to bring, Polish currency and adapters for electrical appliances.

Sydney Perry, executive director of the Jewish Federation of New Haven, recently back in New Haven following a one-month sabbatical in Israel, got the group excited about the mood and weather in Israel. As Perry addressed the group, she was cutting blue and white yarn, to more easily identify the delegations’ suitcases at the airport.

“We will go as witnesses to Poland; as pilgrims to Israel,” Perry said.

The delegates will arrive in Krakow on May 4 and will begin the trip with a visit to the Auschwitz barracks and crematorium. On May 5, the group will start the day with an early morning tour of the Jewish neighborhood of Kazimierz, including the Remuh Synagogue, the Old School. The March of the Living takes place in the afternoon. On Friday, May 6, the delegates travel to Majdanek Death Camp during the morning and early afternoon, before arriving in Warsaw, where they will have Shabbat dinner with such guests as Israeli Ambassador David Peleg; Rabbi Michael Shudrich, Chief Rabbi of Poland; and Helise Lieberman, principal of the Lauder Morasha School. Following Shabbat in Warsaw, the group will depart for Israel, where they will hear addresses by diplomats and academics, tour Jerusalem and partnership 2000 sister community, Afula/Gilboa, commemorate Yom Hazikaron (Israel’s Memorial Day), and celebrate Yom Ha’Atzmaut (Israel’s Independence Day).

“Our participation is so high, I believe, because of the importance of memory, of bearing witness; just as we Jews are obligated to remember Egypt, our enslavement and our liberation, so too are we feeling the imperative of remembering Auschwitz,” Kligfeld said. “As the last survivors of that horror pass on, it is incumbent on the next generations to remember and to tell; to continue to be witness, and to never forget.”



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