Ani Zocher:
Pilgrims' Stories

Poland Seminar 2004,
by Laura Friedenberg, CRUSY

Poland. One word that holds me back from telling everyone at home in Ohio how much fun I’ve had. Among the new roommates and old bus driver, the same sandwiches every day for lunch, praying and playing Frisbee everywhere from tiny basement rooms to a public square in the Jewish quarter of Krakow, memories were formed. Pictures were taken and tears were shed. My tear ducts were drained the most at Auschwitz. At the time I didn’t know why. I felt a connection there. All the camps gave me eerie feelings. I saw train tracks and crematoriums where as Yonaton said, “Our Jewish ancestors came in by trains and left by ashes.” I walked where they walked, I saw thousands of personal belongings from hair to hairbrushes, suitcases, tallit, eyeglasses and shoe polishers. I smelled the dirty leather of the shoes and the mustiness of the barracks. But Auschwitz had more. I cried in the crematorium. I kneeled on the floor with my head and hands on the cold hard scratched wall and cried, as I’m sure my ancestors did sixty some years ago. My soul was telling me a message, it was talking to me. As the tears flowed down my cheeks and I tasted their salty message, I began to understand. Little did I know it wouldn’t be until 3 ½ weeks later that I would completely understand.

We couldn’t wait to leave Poland and as the plane went into its final stages of flight, USY group 5 erupted in song, taking over the back half of our airplane whether the flight crew and other passengers liked it or not. I kneeled and kissed the ground as I got off, as my ancestors and my friends did. This, however, was different than the kneeling and kissing I did in Auschwitz’s crematorium. This one was for hope. It was in daylight. There were men around in uniform, yes, but they were smiling at us, appreciative of us. I smiled back at them, tears of joy in my eyes.

My tear ducts were pretty well sealed up in Israel until we made the trip to Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust museum and memorial. After seeing the pictures of emaciated bodies, barely distinguishable from the dead bodies and stacks of skeletons, after seeing pictures and reading stories of how some families successfully escaped, we went to the computers. They have a program where you can trace back your relatives and learn about them. I waited patiently for a computer and sat down. I placed my hands on the keyboard, a foreign object I hadn’t touched since I left my house. E-i-c-h-b-e-r-g, I hit each key slowly and deliberately, clicked search and took a deep breath. The results appeared. I scrolled down the list of names and eventually found what I was looking for, what Oma was looking for, what changed my outlook for the whole trip. Josef and Emmy Eichberg, both under separate entries but with information in common. Same place of origin: Germany. Same place of death: Auschwitz. It hit me hard. I stared at the screen. I couldn’t believe it. A little part of me didn’t want to believe it. I’m the only one in my family at home now who knows where my great-grandparents spent the end of their lives. My brain was freaking out. Why did I find this, do I want to know, what will I do now that I know, how do I tell the others? I responded as I did in the crematorium and at Ben Gurion airport. I walked outside the memorial, fell to the ground and cried. I was so overwhelmed, the salty tears quenched my hunger and I couldn’t eat the rest of the day. The questions continued to run through my mind, what am I going to do now that I know?

It’s two weeks later and I still don’t know. I haven’t told my family in Ohio yet, only the forty-seven family members I’m here with now, in Israel. I want to tell them somehow, in person, when I get home.

Three months from now, I hope the news will have settled in. I will be too busy to think, with college, color guard, a birthday and new friends. The rest of the family will be at home doing their own thing. When Thanksgiving rears its head, I will finally have something else to be sincerely thankful for, which I’m positive I will share with everyone else at the table.

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