Our first stop of the day was to an old Sefardi shul in Zamosc where we davened Shacharit. From there we went to the Belzec death camp where we walked through the powerful memorial and held a tekes where we read about the importance of names. We went to the Kommandat’s house where we learned about different Nazi leaders and personalities. After that we went the the Yosefov shul that has since been turned into a public library. We questioned how the German masses became perepetrators. From there we went to the forest in Yosefov where 1,500 Jews were murdered in mass graves. In the forest, there was a touching memorial that was put up by the Hamburg police dedicated to the Jews killed there by the same police unit 75 years earlier. Then we visited the grave of Rabbi Elimelech of Lezansk where we fulfilled his will by dancing at his gravesite. We prayed for a safe return of the hostages and also took time to say personal prayers in his zchut. While we were in Lezansk, we also had a tisch with singing and divrei Torah from our Rebbeim. Our last stop before going to the hotel for the night was to a memorial in Markowa which payed tribute to the righteous gentiles of the Holocaust. It was really impactful and inspiring to learn about the Polish people who risked their lives to save Jews.
Avielle Shiller and Anna Jane Rudensky
