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To remember the past

A two-week trip to Poland and Israel takes a group of young women and men back to a dark time in history, changing their lives forever.

By TIFFANI SHERMAN
Published June 3, 2007

Madison Flaschenburg greets congregants after the service at Temple B'Nai Israel in Clearwater on Friday night. Flaschenburg is one of five teens from the congregation who spoke about her experiences at the March of the Living.
	[Times photo: Ted McLaren]

ADVERTISEMENT [Times photo: Ted McLaren] Stephanie Gold, 18, wipes away a tear while listening to one of her peer's stories during the service at Temple B'Nai Israel in Clearwater on Friday evening.

CLEARWATER - On Friday, the same night a young boy said prayers to become a Bar Mitzvah in the service symbolizing passage to Jewish adulthood, five older teenagers talked about a much different but still life-changing journey. They shared their experiences with the March of the Living, a two-week trip for teens to Poland and Israel, retracing the steps millions of Jews took during the Holocaust. They traveled April 11-25 and were in Poland for Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, and in Israel for Yom Ha'atzmaut, Israel's Independence Day. The trip "not only altered my life, but changed my future, " said Madison Flashenburg, a 17-year-old rising senior at Seminole High School.

"I understand the responsibility I have as a witness, " she said to the Temple B'nai Israel congregation through her tears.

Flashenburg talked about the weather, which was beautiful the entire time they were in Poland, except for the day there were at Majdanek, a Nazi concentration camp near the Polish city of Lubin, where thousands of Jews died in gas chambers and crematoria. The teens walked through the rain and the cold and into the gas chambers. They saw and smelled the thousands of pairs of shoes worn by the victims at the camp. The weather seemed fitting for what they were seeing and feeling.

"As we were getting on the bus, the raindrops reminded me of the tears we were crying, " Flashenburg said. Then it all changed. "It just happened then that the rain stopped and out came a rainbow. It was so beautiful."

To go on the trip, each of the 8, 000 teens from dozens of countries had to attend three months of weekly classes to prepare them for what they were going to see. Each week they learned about something different.

"It touched the tips of many icebergs, " said Sonia Wilk, 17 and a rising senior at Largo High School. They heard from survivors and kept journals, but all the studying couldn't prepare them for everything.

"Walking through the camps in Poland, I was not just seeing history, I was living it, " said Jerelyn Petracco, an 18-year-old recent graduate of Seminole High School.

"I closed my eyes and heard the screams of the women and children as they were gassed, " she said during her speech. "I now know I have to make others aware of what I saw."

That's the point of the March of the Living. According to the organization's Web site, part of the mission is to create memories that allow marchers to educate their peers and others about the Holocaust. The first trip was in 1988, and there have been 17 since.

"Once you have heard a survivor's story or have gone through what we have, you become a witness, " said Zack Levine, 18, a recent graduate of Largo High School. "Now I feel it is my duty to share all of my experiences."

One such experience is how the March of the Living got its name.

It's the retracing of the March of Death, the 3-kilometer walk between Auschwitz and Birkenau, located near Krakow and the largest of the Nazi concentration camps. Thousands took that walk on the way to the gas chambers at Birkenau. Instead of the entirely somber occasion some of the teens thought it would be, it was just the opposite.

"It was more rejoicing to be alive, " said Stephanie Gold, an 18-year-old recent graduate of East Lake High School. "It's a once-in-a-lifetime chance that will stay with me forever."

The trip almost didn't happen for Stephanie. When she first talked with her father about it, he didn't understand. There were two trips available: One was a fun trip to see the sights in Israel, and the other was the March of the Living.

"Why would you want to do this and put yourself through this and not take the fun trip?" 47-year-old Robert Gold said he asked his daughter. "I thought she was crazy."

Now, like the others who went on the trip, she is changed.

"You think you know how you're going to react to every situation, but when you're there, your emotions take over, " she said. "No matter how prepared you think you are, you're stripped bare."

[Last modified June 2, 2007, 19:05:29]