March of The Living

On arrival at Warsaw airport, our feet had barely touched the floor before we went straight to Warsaw’s main Jewish cemetery. This cemetery was the final resting place of the great and good of Polish Jewry. We heard incredible stories of people like Adam Czerniaków (30 November 1880 – 23 July 1942) – head of the Warsaw Ghetto Jewish Council. Czerniaków committed suicide when asked by the Nazis to arrange deportation lists. This led to discussion about the actions of others at that time such as Rumkowski and the choices these people were being faced with during that time.

The afternoon was spent at the Polin Museum, which displays exhibitions and artefacts from Jewish history in Poland from the last 1000 years. Galleries of this museum explained how the surviving 10% of Polish Jews dealt with the aftermath of the Holocaust and how those affected picked up their shattered lives and attempted to rebuild them. Incredible video footage of desecrated Torah scrolls being buried by survivors and futile attempts to find family members feature in some of displays at the museum.