Bobby Epstein had always wanted to go to Poland to learn about his heritage, so he signed up for the March of the Living as soon as the registration was available through his synagogue.
“It’s been on my bucket list to see where my family came from because they were from that area and I’ve never had a chance to do it,” Epstein said of his ancestors, who left Poland before the Holocaust.
He attended the trip with fellow members of B’nai Israel Congregation, led by Rabbi Michael Safra, in the first organized Washington, D.C.- area adult delegation to participate. The March of the Living is an annual program that brings people from around the world to Poland and Israel to learn the history of the Holocaust and the roots of prejudice.
The 36 participants, primarily from B’nai Israel, went to Poland from April 22 to May 1. The delegation began by visiting the Jewish community center in Krakow, where Epstein learned a lot about history.
“We found out that the JCC in Krakow is thriving again, is rebirthed, and they are also helping a lot of Ukrainian refugees … because a lot of them were displaced by the war,” he said.
Poland is currently in an “age of discovery,” Epstein added. It’s unknown how many of the 200,000 or 300,000 surviving Polish Jews stayed in Poland after the Holocaust, but those who did changed their names and hid their Jewish identities.
Advances in the internet and genealogy websites have allowed many grandchildren of Polish survivors to discover their Jewish identities 80 years after the liberation of the concentration camps, Epstein said. These third-generation Holocaust survivors are turning to the community’s rabbis and the JCC to learn more about their Judaism.
“It’s a fascinating phenomenon that’s happening,” Epstein said.
Safra similarly enjoyed getting to see this Jewish life in Poland.
“I was interested in not just seeing how Jews in Poland died but also how they lived,” he said. “I didn’t realize how impactful [this trip] was, but that’s part of the reason why I wanted to go, to see how Jewish life in Poland has revived somewhat in the past 40 years.”
The group toured Auschwitz and Birkenau, the German Nazi concentration camps and extermination centers, ahead of the April 24 march.
“Birkenau is unbelievably enormous, with an unbelievable amount of crematoriums,” Epstein remarked. “It was just yards and yards of land showing all the horrible things that occurred there. They had train tracks going in from both sides to Birkenau so they could get more Jews in from both ways to kill as many as possible.”
On April 24, Safra, Epstein and the delegation joined hundreds of marchers to walk the three kilometers from Auschwitz to Birkenau, retracing the steps of the “death marches” that tens of thousands of Holocaust victims endured. The nearly 12,000 participants were led by 80 Holocaust survivors from around the world and an Israeli delegation of released hostages, hostages’ family members and bereaved families.
Phyllis Heideman, the president of International March of the Living and a Bethesda resident, said this march included “probably the largest group of survivors we’ll ever gather.”
This year’s event was also notable because President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s great-grandson, Merrill Eisenhower, marched alongside the survivors — President Eisenhower commanded the Allied Forces that defeated Nazi Germany and liberated the concentration camps in 1945.
“Walking to a gas chamber preempts just about any experience you can have,” Heideman said. “March with survivors and hear their stories, appreciate what our survivors went through, how and why the six million were murdered in crematoria, gas chambers, mass graves, on death marches, it becomes a core of understanding of, as President Eisenhower said, ‘what we’re fighting against and what we’re fighting for,’ which is ‘never again.’”
“The word ‘Shoah’ means ‘utter destruction,’” Safra said. “And yet, 80 years later, we’re able to come together from so many different countries, generations later, saying, ‘The Jewish community is still here. The Jewish community is still alive.’”
The ceremony was cut short by a thunderstorm. The group had to walk three to four miles through cold, pouring rain to get to their buses in an experience that made them feel “one percent like how [their] fellow Jews felt being marched in the camp,” Epstein said.
“Our shoes were drenched, our pants were drenched with mud and dirt, but at least we had shoes,” he added.
Participants saw the inclement weather through a different lens upon learning that people during the Holocaust were overjoyed by the sight of rain — it meant they could have extra water to drink and bathe in.
Seeing the concentration camps up close was especially impactful for participants because it helped them visualize the enormity of the Holocaust.
“This wasn’t just a few people,” Safra said. “The Nazis had this efficient killing machine. Their desire was to get rid of all of world Jewry.”
Post-march, Epstein recommends this trip to everyone: “Walking through it, it becomes reality.”
“When you walk this walk, you know it’s not just another stroll,” Heideman said. “With every step, you know you’re retracing history.”
