The 5th MIssion to Poland

I am writing this week's blog after participating in the 5th Mission to Poland sponsored by the IGDCB who returned home yesterday after a six-day tour of historic sites .  The group included six graduates of the Center and their guide dogs and escorts, an additional blind participant and his escort, the tour coordinator, and guide.
During our six day visit to Poland we toured centers of Jewish life in Warsaw, Lublin, and Krakow, and visited  Treblinka, Majdanek, Auschwitz, and Birkenau.  Blind members of the group were able to perceive these places by touching and by listening to vivid descriptions offered by the guide and their escorts.  The group conducted a small memorial ceremony at the crematorium in Birkenau and  members lit a candle and read or recited names of family members who were murdered in the Holocaust.  The visit ended with the March of the living on Holocaust and Heroism Memorial Day on April 24th.  All of us felt that the visit was a difficult but meaningfuland   enlightening experience and that the six days that we spent together in Poland helped us to better understand this period in our history that was characterized by unspeakable evil conducted by the Nazis  as well as heroic deeds of Jews and those who aided them.

The group at Auschwitz with IDF Chief of Staff and IGDCB graduate Achia Klein

Remembering the victims at the memorial at Majdanek

The delegation marching from Auschwitz to Birkenau in the March of the Living