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To remember the past

A two-week trip to Poland and Israel changes the lives of five local teenagers.

By TIFFANI SHERMAN
Published June 6, 2007

On Friday at Temple B'nai Israel in Clearwater, five teenagers 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, 17, a rising senior at Seminole High School.

Flashenburg discussed the weather, which was beautiful the entire time they were in Poland, except for the day they were at Majdanek, a Nazi concentration camp near the city of Lubin, where thousands of Jews died in gas chambers and crematoria. The teens walked into the gas chambers. They saw and smelled the thousands of pairs of shoes worn by the victims. 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. 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, 18, a 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. "

"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."

The experience retraces the March of Death, the 3-kilometer walk between Auschwitz and Birkenau, the largest Nazi concentration camp. Thousands took that walk on the way to the gas chambers at Birkenau. Instead of the somber occasion some teens thought it would be, it was the opposite.

"It was more rejoicing to be alive, " said Stephanie Gold, an 18-year-old recent graduate of East Lake High School. The trip almost didn't happen for Stephanie.

When she told 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 not take the fun trip?" Robert Gold, 47, said. "I thought she was crazy."

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

"No matter how prepared you think you are, you're stripped bare, " the teenager said.

[Last modified June 5, 2007, 22:23:37]