My March of the Living Experience

Treblinka was an extermination camp in Poland located between Warsaw and Bialystok that was established in May 1942. In only four hours, 17,000 people were killed daily. The Nazis destroyed the camp in 1943 to conceal their crime of killing 870,000 people, mostly Jews. Today, the only remains of the camp are 17,000 stones representing the number of people that were murdered each day. The big stones represent cities and towns that were completely wiped out.

17,000 stones in Treblinka

4/31/2000
"There is beautiful, tall, strong trees surrounding the camp making it look like a paradise from the outside, but inside hell resides…As I sit here, with the burning pit in front of me, which symbolizes where the ovens stood, someone has just lit a candle in honor of so many deaths. The fire has picked up the smell from the stones and for one second it smelled like dead bodies were being thrown into the furnaces and every piece of flesh was sizzling in the flame. ..We, as Jews, care for the human body even if it diseased, we watch them until they die. The Nazis managed to degrade the human body every way possible and as quick as they could."

Marchers 5/02/2000
"Seven thousand people were walking today on this March of the Living. Every time I turned around, there was a sea of blue jackets in front and in back of me. When I entered Birkenau, there were still people walking out of Auschwitz. If that is an endless amount of people, 6,000,000 is unbelievable to me. When we entered the camp, except for the barbed wire, it looked like a college campus. I have never seen grass so green, with such healthy flowers growing on them. I don't want to know that there is something good growing in such a terrible place. There cannot be life here, it should all be destroyed." CNN March of the Living Article

Majdanek was established October 1941 as a camp for prisoners of war and it became a concentration camp February 16, 1943. It is located in a major urban area in the city of Lublin. With no trees or walls hiding it, residents of the city witnessed the atrocities of the Nazis. Today, one-fifth of the camp is still standing and can be up and running in 24 hours.

5/03/2000
"I stood before 68,000 tons of ashes and bones, I stood inside gas chambers and prayed for the dead, I stood in front of the ovens in which thousands of people were cremated, I stood before thousands of shoes once owned by men, women and children. I stood surrounded by barbed wire , I stood inside barracks where 500 people were forced to sleep in, I stood on the ground on which innocent souls perished. I saw the flourishing yellow flowers growing on each and every spot where Jewish blood flowed, I saw healthy green grass fertilized with Jewish ashes, I stood at Majdanek and I became numb. I could not cry. I cannot understand the magnitude of this mass murder. Is this real?"

Home | Poland | Israel | Sign Up | E-mail Reyna Susi