I am sitting here, home from Poland for exactly one week, still trying to process the experience. When I was completing the evaluation for the trip, one question asked for three words that come to mind prior to the trip. A follow-up question then asked for three words that come to mind after the trip.
One of the pre-trip words I noted was HORROR. When thinking about the Holocaust, one can’t help but think about the horror of it. We learned about the worst side of humanity. The atrocities that people committed against people is really beyond comprehension.
HOPE was one of my post-trip words. The participants had the honor of hearing Howard Chandler’s story… a 96-year-old Holocaust survivor. One of the teens on the trip asked Howard what his motivation was. Howard responded, “Motivation was with the HOPE.” He mentioned the hope to outlive your enemies and the hope to reunite with your families.
Contradictions, like that of these two words – HORROR and HOPE – has become a theme of this trip for me. I see a concentration camp surrounded by beautiful trees with flowers blooming. I visit and learn about a mass grave at a labor camp, that Jews were forced to dig, and then were executed by gun into it, while I hear gun fire at the shooting range behind me. Along with the physical and psychological torture we learned, we heard about people willing to risk their own lives to save others. While walking the path of one of the lowest times in human history, I am making friends, eating amazing food, and touring a beautiful country.
As I think about the message I want to share with people about this experience, while I will remember the HORROR, I am going to choose to focus on the HOPE. A friend told me today that fear feeds fear while love creates love and peace creates peace. She said love overpowers fear, love neutralizes fear, love leads to tolerance and acceptance. So along with sharing the experience with as many people as I can, I am going to make this message, the message of love and hope, my message. As she said, plant the seeds of love and then continue to water those seeds. Love & hope will lead us in the right direction.