We spent the first part of our week touring Kazimierz (the old Jewish section of Krakow), the Krakow ghetto, and Aryan Krakow, including the Sukiennice, the large town square. Between our excursions in Krakow, we also made a day trip to Auschwitz-Birkenau and Auschwitz I. We then traveled for one day in Lublin, first touring the city and learning about the Nazi presence there, then visiting the Chachmei Lublin Yeshiva, and finally venturing on a somber tour of Majdanek, a former labor camp. 
The last part of our trip was spent primarily in Warsaw, though we spent one day visiting the small town of Tikochin,--where half the population was formerly Jewish--then the Lopachova Forest,--where the Jewish residents of Tikochin were shot and buried in mass graves--and finally Treblinka--an awful death camp that is now the site of a memorial of seventeen thousand stones, each representing a person killed during the day of the camp's largest mass extermination. In Warsaw, we visited the orphanage that was run by Janusz Korczak, the famous Jewish educator and studier of pedagogy that was murdered along with his orphans at Treblinka. We toured important sites that were in the Warsaw ghetto, and finished our time in Warsaw with our madrichim leading us on The Path of Heroism, essentially a tour of important spots related to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
I had a really meaningful time on this trip to Poland. One highlight was meeting-up with Jan, a relative of mine who lives outside Krakow, along with his wife, Maria, and their daughter, Magdelena. The family took me out to a really nice restaurant in the Sukiennice, and I enjoyed a meal of warm bread, grilled vegetables, and mouth-watering chocolate torte. As we sat and talked, I learned that Jan had not been told that he was Jewish until he was forty years old, as his mother had kept it a secret to protect her family. It was fascinating to hear Jan talk about family history and comforting to be with all three relatives so far from my home. I was sad to leave after spending only two short hours with them!
Another highlight of the trip was learning about the history of the Dror movement. Both in Krakow and in Warsaw, we visited buildings that were previously Dror communes. Ohad, our Poland madrich, read us excerpts of accounts written by commune members, and we noted how the commual lifestyles those movement members led sound very similar to our communal lifestyle here on Workshop! We learned about the resistance that movement members did throughout the Holocaust, and discussed as a kvutza how we feel that resistance is necessary in our lives today. All throughout our Poland journey, we found ourselves in constant discussion, which I feel was even more important than seeing the sites that we visited.
This was my second journey to Poland, and while I saw many of the same places as I did with my grade only a bit more than two years before, this felt like an entirely different trip. The discussions that we had with one another strayed away from focusing on vicitimization, and instead focused on methods that bring people together, enabling them to resist. One discussion topic that stood out to me was capitalism's presence in the Holocaust, how not only did the Nazi's gain a profit in any way manageable at the expense of dehumanizing and murdering Jews, but Jews oppressed other Jews to gain money as well. In Warsaw, we stood outside of the ghetto's former Judenrat (Jewish council) building and discussed how the council had refused to raise taxes on the rich in order to aid the poor and dying within the ghetto, as they themselves were the rich. This topic got me thinking about capitalism's immense presence in our society today, and how I don't think negative aspects of it have been combatted since its horrible factor within the Holocaust. Another discussion that topic that I found interesting was one revolving around why the youth movements were such strong resisters in the Holocaust. As a kvutza, we talked about how movement members had grown up learning about the importance of living and working together, so it was natural for them to feel inclined to collaborate during hard times. This made me think about my life right now, living and working with my kvutzamates, and how important a lifestyle this is to me.
Most importantly throughout the journey, I felt an enormous sense of love for my kvutza, and a sense of gratitude that I'm fortunate enough to have this structure in my life. Communal living can be hard, and we certainly aren't all the best of friends, but at our core, we remain a group of unique individuals that constantly question the world, want to work together to actualize values that we hold dear, and most importantly, truly care about one another's well-being.
