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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Original Article Published On The  Jewish Ledger

STAMFORD — “Creative Contraptions,” a four-part exhibition featuring the cartoons, sketches and inventions of Rube Goldberg, are currently on display at the Stamford Museum & Nature Center through May 22.

Rube Goldberg, who lived from 1883-1970, was the artist, cartoonist and inventor so well-known for his intricate, whimsical creations that the Webster’s New World Dictionary defines Rube Goldberg as an adjective “designating any very complicated invention, machine, scheme, etc. laboriously contrived to perform a seemingly simple operation.”

“Goldberg, one of the 20th century’s most prominent humorists, is best remembered for his wacky and complex inventions’ which proposed hilarious multi-step solutions to relatively simple problems,” explained Rosa Portell, the SMNC curator of collections. “His depiction of maximum effort to accomplish minimum results’ offered a sarcastic counterpoint to the numerous labor-saving devices marketed in the 20th century.”

Goldberg, who was trained as an engineer, created his works using a “readily recognizable visual language of action and reaction in which birds, mice, monkeys, porcupines and goats set pulleys in motion, springs uncoiled, weights dropped and bells rang, all towards a pre-determined and hilarious outcome. His madcap world was presided over by the likes of Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts and was populated by delightfully drawn characters cursed with everyday foibles,” Portell said.

The exhibition includes original works from the Rube Goldberg Collection, which was donated by the artist’s son, George W. George of Stamford, to Williams College Museum of Art in Williamstown, Mass., and additional loans from Bill Janocha of Stamford and Stuart Reisbord of Wallingford, Penn.

The exhibit includes pieces like “Simple way to dispose of a strange bug crawling on the wall.” The piece shows 12-steps, starting with a man yelling and scaring a rabbit, and ending with a feather tickling the bug under the chin so he laughs himself to death.

Also featured are Goldberg’s multi-step sketches including “Automatic sheet music turner,” “A simple way to take your own picture,” “Simple way to turn off the light if you forget when leaving the room” and “simple idea to keep you from forgetting to mail your wife’s letter.”

The exhibit also includes works created by four professional Connecticut artists, who submitted proposals for works that responded to characteristics of Goldberg’s creations Works by Ellen Hackl Fagan of Greenwich, Alexander Isley of Ridgefield, Chris McQuilkin of Ridgefield and Margaret Roleke of Redding were selected by Jessica Hough, associate curator, Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum; Deborah Rothschild, senior curator, modern and contemporary art, the Williams College Museum of Art; and Deborah Schwartz, deputy director, education department, Museum of Modern Art.

The exhibition also includes a section of concepts by students in grades K12, who were invited to submit drawings of kooky inventions that could complete a simple, everyday task in five or more steps. The final section encourages visitor participation in the “Build a Better Mousetrap” hands-on room, which includes a number of interactive contraptions.

“Creative Contraptions,” an exhibit of the cartoons, sketches and inventions of Rube Goldberg, will be on display at the Stamford Museum & Nature Center through May 22.

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WOODBRIDGE – When Avi Bar-Aharon invited two New Haven area buddies to climb Tanzania’s 19,345-foot Mount Kilimanjaro with him, he had no idea it would be one of the most intense Jewish experiences of his life.

The long ascent up Kilimanjaro, which ended with 24 climbers from ten countries (and their 95 Tanzanian porters and 5 guides) reaching the summit on Feb. 14, actually began ten years ago when the Israeli-born Bar-Aharon and his wife Denise started Make-A-Wish Foundation-Israel, in memory of Denise’s brother, David Spero, a young man who loved and helped children. Spero died at age 28.

[Make-A-Wish Foundation International (www.worldwish.org) grants wishes to children around the world who are living with life threatening illnesses.]

Bar Aharon, who moved here from Israel a few years ago, decided to join the February expedition climbing Kilimanjaro to raise funds for the Make-a-Wish Foundation.

Jonathan Perkins, a local attorney, answered Bar-Aharon’s offer to join the climb without hesitation.

“I like to travel—I thought it would be a physical and mental challenge, a chance to be with the guys, and a way to do something worthwhile to help sick children,” said the South African native.

Eitan Battat, a Woodbridge businessman, was less decisive.

“I counted 26 real fears and I was upfront about them. I would wake up twice a night—one time thinking I’d go, one time thinking I wouldn’t go!” laughs Battat, who proudly reports, “I buried my fears on the top of the mountain!”

Battat credits Bar-Aharon for his patience and New Haven’s Rabbi Sheya Hecht, who told the men to each bring a tzedakah (charity) box and put in one dollar each morning, with the final dollar being deposited once they returned home from the safe journey.

“These rocks have been waiting for you for 5,000 years,” Hecht told the

men as he offered some pre-trip encouragement. Hecht also accompanied the three men to the Ohel, the gravesite in Queens, New York of the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, to pray for a safe journey, prior to their departure.

While the climb was rigorous and required packing lightly, the men were determined to bring Jewish ritual objects. A large percentage of Battat’s more than 1,000 digital photos show members of the delegation praying with siddurim, wearing tallitot and wrapping tefillin at various elevations.

“When we started, the temperature was 85 degrees in the Serenghetti. When we got to the summit, it was 20 degrees below zero—we had to put the tefillin over our jackets,” notes Battat.

A fellow tefillin-wearer on the mountain was Israeli Yonaton Dotan. Dotan, son of the late Israeli entertainer, Dudu Dotan, is the current international spokesperson for Make-A-Wish Foundation. When Dotan was a 16-year-old with lymphoma, Bar-Aharon helped grant Dotan’s

wish—to meet with [then] U.S. President Bill Clinton. “Usually, these meetings are 10-15 minutes long. In this case, there was such good chemistry that the two talked and joked and still have an ongoing relationship,” reports Bar-Aharon.

Dotan presented Clinton with a T-shirt which said, ‘I met Yoni Dotan.’ He loved it and promised Dotan that he would wear it someday. Soon after, photographs captured Clinton jogging, wearing the T-shirt. The photograph appeared around the world in such publications as The New York Times and The Washington Post. According to Bar Aharon, this created major momentum for the Make-A-Wish Foundation in Israel.

Eight years later, Dotan, 24, and in remission, is the music director for Israeli radio station Galei Tzahal and an important spokesperson for the Foundation. Dotan completed the climb up Kilimanjaro with his fellow climbers, who all paid their own way and helped raise more than $100,000 for the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

Toughest day

According to the men, all of whom are members of Chabad of Orange and live in Woodbridge, the toughest day by far was the final ascent to the summit.

They climbed slowly, fighting thin air and lack of oxygen, and were only able to stay at the summit for about 20 minutes due to the cold and thin air.

“We left at midnight and made the final nine-hour climb to the summit. As we got higher, we could feel the pressure in our bodies, it was hard to breathe, and we had to take baby steps through the volcanic ash. We even saw some climbers return before reaching the top. But the best part of getting there was that we made it together, with friends,” said Bar-Aharon.

At the summit, Dotan spoke with Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, and he received a letter of congratulations from former President Clinton. Upon reaching the summit, all climbers received a T-shirt with “I climbed with Yoni Dotan” on the front; Dotan, of course, wore the “I’m Yoni Dotan” shirt.

On the journey, an emotional Dotan turned to Bar-Aharon and said, “Eight years ago, I met you and you said, ‘The sky is the limit. Now, I am eating with you, and sleeping in a tent with you, high in the sky over Africa!’

Tella-Jerusalem connection

On Feb. 16, just one day after returning from the summit, the three Connecticut friends were enjoying a leisurely breakfast in the courtyard of the Keys Hotel in Moshi, Tanzania. They had a few hours to kill before returning home and decided to visit some of the remote villages of Moshi in order to get a feel for the extent of the poverty. The three plus Dotan felt fortunate to meet Dr. Fideles Owenya, who drove them to Tella. They first encountered men and women walking three or four miles to the marketplace. They then toured the Tella school, where 50 friendly, curious children greeted them in Swahili. The men toured the school and were shocked by the lack of supplies, including basic sugar.

The men were so moved by the experience that they purchased food for the school and made a commitment to help the school in an ongoing way. They have since started the www.tella-jerusalem.com website, which offers information on the school and seeks donations of money, food and equipment.

As the men look back on their entire two-week experience in Tanzania, they

are convinced of God’s presence throughout.

“God was watching us,” notes Battat.

They recounted how one Israeli woman (climbing with another group) named Galit was to light Shabbat candles on the mountain. Just as itwas time to welcome the Sabbath, the men could not find Galit; they learned that she needed to descend to take care of medical needs. Suddenly, a woman appeared on the mountain from nowhere. It was another Israeli, Limor. They invited her to light candles—the last in a series of unforgettable Jewish experiences high atop Mount Kilimanjaro, deep in the heart of Tanzania.

To donate to Make-A-Wish Foundation International, visit www.worldwish.org. For information on the Connecticut Chapter, call (877) 203-9474.

To donate to the village of Tilla, visist www.Tella-Jerusalem.com.

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