March Of Living Tweaking Message

Annual trek, which long ignored Polish Jewry, is now reaching out. Is it enough?

March of the Living participants are gaining new insights into current Jewish life in Poland.

by Carolyn Slutsky
Staff Writer

This week, when thousands of young people descend on Poland for the March of the Living program, some of them will bring more in their bags than the typical Israeli flags, prayer books and changes of clothing: For the first time, some students will bring books to donate to a fledgling library established recently by Czulent, a group of young Polish Jews living in Krakow.

This year marks 20 years that March of the Living has been taking Jewish high school students from around the world to Poland and Israel for a two-week, emotion-laden trip to study the Holocaust. In Poland, the centerpiece of the experience is a march from Auschwitz to Birkenau — this year 10,000 people are expected to march on

Yom HaShoah, which was marked on Thursday — memorializing the Jewish victims of both Nazi death camps; in Israel, students celebrate Independence Day and enjoy hikes, parties and swimming in the Dead Sea.

But while the trip works to build Jewish identity and a sense of connection to Israel, its impact on Poland has always been more ambivalent.

When the program began in 1988, Poland was still under communist rule and Jewish life was largely hidden or forgotten, the Jewish revival that has taken root in recent years just barely underway. The trip took teens to Auschwitz (as well as Treblinka, Majdanek and other camps along with cemeteries and former shtetls), excluding any contemporary Polish context from its itinerary. There was little chance for participants to meet with Polish Jews, see Jewish institutions or pray in functioning synagogues, both because it was not a priority of the trip and because these were new or nonexistent.

But things have changed.

Today, Poland is home to eight Jewish communities, Jewish institutions are flourishing, plans are underway for a new Museum of the History of Polish Jews and Poles are eager for contact with foreign Jewish visitors.

But has March of the Living taken this local Jewish revival into consideration when planning its trips?

Poland has opened up to its Jewish past and looked toward the future, but while some observers say March of the Living has started doing the same by opening up to Poland, others feel the trip has not done enough to counter the ingrained negative images of the country.

Ruth Ellen Gruber, a journalist who covered Poland during communism and post-communism and attended early March of the Living trips, said she was disturbed by Jewish students traipsing through Auschwitz and coming away with the message that the death camp is the reason to be a proud Jew.

“That shouldn’t be what makes you feel proud to be a Jew — what should make you feel more proud to be a Jew is 1,000 years of civilization and culture produced by Jews living in Poland,” said Gruber.

She added that the Jewish experience in Poland should not be defined by death, as the program has often portrayed it when it contrasts dark Poland so starkly with lively Israel.

Instead, participants should meet Poland’s multiple rabbis and the surviving communities, she said.

“My hope for the March is that it really does become a march of the living, that living doesn’t mean only we are living, that living means to recognize this living society and take into account the fact that things are changing. Many Poles and the Polish government are anxious and eager to come to terms with the past and develop good relationships [with Israel and Jews].”

Jan Gebert, media assistant for the Union of Jewish Religious Communities in Poland, said that students from Poland want to have contact with March groups.

“I understand people are coming to study about and commemorate the Shoah, not commemorate Jewish-Polish dialogue or study the history of Jews in Poland,” he said, adding that many groups are not interested in speaking to Polish Jews.

But despite negative reactions from certain March of the Living contingents, others are branching out, including the Canadian chapter. According to Eli Rubenstein, national director of March of the Living Canada, this year’s trip will highlight three elements for participants: the prewar history of European Jewry, contact with the local Polish-Jewish community and dialogue with non-Jewish Polish peers. Rubenstein noted that efforts led by the Canadian chapter have been embraced by groups worldwide.

“[We] began to realize ... you’re in Poland and see death camps and all of a sudden people start to blur the lines between anti-Semitism and the Holocaust,” said Rubenstein of the potential danger for the trip to conflate Poland and Germany and both countries’ responsibility for the fate of the Jews during World War II. “Instead of blaming the Nazis, people started almost to replace the Nazis with the Poles.”

Rubenstein noted that while the March started as a Jewish identity-building program, its current goals reflect a broader interest in global tolerance, and Canadian students are often taught about Rwanda, Darfur and other examples of contemporary genocide as a way of understanding the Holocaust. And Canada this year has actively recruited international groups to donate books to the Jewish library project in Krakow.

David Machlis, vice-chairman of International March of the Living, the umbrella organization for groups worldwide, said that many leaders are much more open to incorporating local Polish-Jewish communities in their activities than they would have been in the past.

“We’ve talked for a while about evolving the Polish-Jewish growing community into our programs,” said Machlis.

Rabbi Michael Schudrich, Poland’s American-born chief rabbi who has served the country since 1990, has noticed the change.

“When the March first began, the attitude was if one stays in the diaspora one goes to Auschwitz, so the only hope for Jewish survival [was] Israel. That message has evolved.”

Rabbi Schudrich said that in the past the community of recently discovered Polish Jews with fragile identities felt alienated by the trip.

“When you’re sitting alone in synagogue and a group of 100 people walk through and don’t say hello ... the Jews of Poland felt unempowered by the experience, like ghosts,” said Rabbi Schudrich.

But he is quick to add that the program has, in recent years, developed a greater sensitivity to the Polish Jewish community and Poland more broadly, with some groups meeting with local Jews and delving a bit more deeply into nearly a millennium of Jewish history in Poland.

Annamaria Orla-Bukowska, a professor of sociology at Jagiellonian University in Krakow who takes her students on the Polish part of the March annually, said she, too, has heard her students spouting more anti-Polish sentiment than anti-German remarks.

But she said she believes it is important to continue the trip in order to expose young people to the effects of intolerance and hopefully change their attitudes.

“The person who comes to Poland and leaves Poland with an anti-Polish attitude and doesn’t crack the window open, how do they expect Poles who are anti-Jewish to change their anti-Jewish attitudes?” she asked.

Julia Weiss-Schwalb, who participated in the March in 1996, remembers being struck by how gray and dreary Poland felt, that “there was no color literally and metaphorically anywhere in Poland” and that she wasn’t sure if it was the weather or the way she felt as she journeyed throughout the country.

“Although I don’t necessarily think the March devoted much time, effort or energy to exposing us to modern-day Poland, I’m OK with that,” she said. “The nature of the program made me think that 17-year-olds do not need to be visiting concentration camps. It actually made me want to go back to explore Eastern Europe a bit more, to get to know it better.”

Rubenstein, of the Canadian chapter, spoke of how the change in the March’s marketing plan reflects the changes he sees in the trip’s philosophy.

“Earlier brochures would say, “Poland is the anguish of the past, Israel the hope of our future,” he said. “Now brochures say, ‘Hope is not just in Israel, it’s in Poland.’”

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