Olami Manhattan Took Me To Poland: Day Five (Part One)

Upon my return from Europe, I turned to my local library to further investigate the peregrinations and hardships faced by Jews during their internment in the Auschwitz concentration camps. Running my fingers along the bindings of countless volumes, I settled on an unassuming alabaster book titled Auschwitz Report. Written by Italian Jewish Holocaust survivors and fellow Auschwitz inmates Primo Levi and Leonardo De Benedetti, the book documents in shrewd and sobering detail the conditions that plagued the camp.

In the book’s introduction, Robert S. C. Gordon, a Professor of Italian at the University of Cambridge, writes, “Every story of survival in Auschwitz is a story of extraordinary circumstance, of hard-fought infinitesimal advantage (an extra sip of watery soup, a matching pair of shoes, an hour out of the cold), rare reliance on others, and above all, immense luck. Levi and Dr. Benedetti’s stories are no exception.”

Gordon, and of course the writers themselves, offer a stark and accurate portrayal of the reality behind Auschwitz survival stories. There was never a person whose survival depended solely on sheer luck. Jewish prisoners, while forced to make cataclysmic, often out-of-character decisions for their own and their families’ survival, still found ways to band together and offer what little aid they could. These seemingly minuscule acts of help were, in truth, colossal. Painfully, these moments of humanity often came at the ultimate cost to the giver. Yet the sacrifice was made knowingly, with the understanding that even in a world determined to strip them of their humanity, they would not let it be stolen.

On my journey with JRoots and Olami Manhattan, I heard story after story that echoed this premise. A nurse, captured and left to rot in Auschwitz-Birkenau, risked her life to labor for and protect an emaciated mother. Two brothers, one placed in the line to the gas chambers, the other to the camp barracks, refused separation; the ‘safer’ brother pulled his sibling from the death line, holding him upright, hiding him in plain sight, and ultimately saved his life. I heard stories of crumbs shared, onion peels salvaged from work orders, dirt eaten and spread thin among prisoners. In today’s world, such offerings would be seen as crude or unsanitary, destined for the trash. But then, they were everything, the thin and desperate line between life sustained and death within the hour.

This was a thought that returned to me often as I began to shape the fifth chapter of this journey through Poland

***

Too often, discussions of the Holocaust are quickly followed by a single, searing number: six million. This number, while historically vital, can unintentionally obscure the truth that this was not just mass murder, but a calculated, relentless series of individual killings. To grasp the true weight of this atrocity, we must not only acknowledge the six million, but focus on the one. Each victim was a person with a name, a voice, and a history. The holocaust wasn’t a singular blaze that swept across Europe, but six million deliberate, personal acts of extermination.

As we approached Auschwitz-Birkenau, it became clear that our task wasn’t just to mourn these lives but to honor them. The weight of that truth felt overwhelming.

At the entrance, Tzvi Sperber, founder of JRoots, shared the words of Holocaust survivor Shlomo Breznitz:

“Imagine that every single word in the Torah represents the name of a Jew killed in the Holocaust. But unlike the Torah, which is read in its entirety every year by Jews around the world, this holy book of names would take 75 years to read just once.”

Hearing that while standing at the threshold of Auschwitz-Birkenau, it felt as though I was preparing to willingly step into the mouth of a dormant monster. The massive central opening to the gate, once a gaping maw, had swallowed countless cattle cars, each one delivering Jews to their horrific deaths.

The infamous entrance gate and railway tracks at Auschwitz-Birkenau, where countless prisoners arrived in cattle cars, many unaware they were entering a site of unimaginable suffering and death. Today, it stands as a powerful symbol of remembrance and a call to never forget. Photo by Margaux Betesh.

Tzvi Sperber sensing the group and my hesitation, offered these words to anchor us:

“Every ounce of faith you have, in every fiber of your body, you need to tie together to be able to walk through these gates.”

From the corner of my eye, I caught sight of Rabbi Lynn, Director of Olami Manhattan, as he opened a hard-shell case and gently lifted out a beautifully adorned Torah. Moments later, now standing fully in view, he turned to the crowd.

The Torah was wrapped in yellow velvet, its mantle embroidered with the image of a tree, cut down, yet not defeated. From its stump, a new branch emerged, alive with promise, while others reached outward, strong and unwavering. It stood as a symbol of the Jewish people: nearly destroyed, yet enduring. Between the branches, a phrase in Hebrew shimmered, written in thread:

“Vezechrom Letovah” (וְזֶכְרוֹן לְטוֹבָה)
“May their memory be for a blessing.”

Rabbi Lynn of Olami Manhattan cradles a Torah wrapped in yellow velvet, its mantle bearing the image of a tree cut down but not defeated. Photo by Margaux Betesh.

Drawn from Eicha (Lamentations) the words hold more than grief; they carry a vow. That the memory of those lost will not be hollow, but will give rise to kindness, good, and purpose.

As we began to walk through the entrance, we sang.

Some of the other visitors looked unsure, was it right to sing in such a place? Should we have remained in silence? I, too, paused at first. A moment later, I understood. If others questioned how we chose to honor memory, that was their burden, not ours. So I sang, not simply out of defiance, but out of love, duty and faith.

Our song stemmed from the Book of Lamentations:

Hashiveinu Hashem eilecha v’nashuvah, chadesh yameinu k’kedem.
“Return us to You, O Lord, and we shall return; renew our days as of old.”
(הֲשִׁיבֵנוּ יְהוָה אֵלֶיךָ וְנָשׁוּבָה, חַדֵּשׁ יָמֵינוּ כְּקֶדֶם)

Two members of our group entered Auschwitz not only with the Torah and song, but also with tefillin wrapped around their arm and head. For them, it was essential to walk into this place with their Judaism fully visible in every aspect of their being, faith worn openly and heart on their sleeve, without apology. As they recited the blessing traditionally said when putting on tefillin, they glanced around, as if daring the ghosts of our tormentors to object. The pride on their faces was beautiful, and I stopped to take a few pictures before continuing on.

Wrapped in tefillin, one member of our group stood with quiet strength. Each wrapped line a declaration: I am still here. Photo by Miriam Frankel.

Our first stop inside Auschwitz was the interior of one of the living barracks in the transit camp, whose grey wood and hollow inside was as haunting as it was bare. Leaning the Torah against a ledge, we read a portion of its text and performed Hagbah, men lifting the scroll high for all to see. The contrast was striking, the rich tones of the parchment and wooden handles against the faded, splintering walls of the barrack. The voices of those reading carried through the cold, hollow space, layering sacred words over the ache of where we stood.

Leaning the Torah gently against a stone ledge, the group read aloud from its sacred text before performing Hagbah. Photo by Margaux Betesh.

Our next stop took us inside a barrack that had once been used as a restroom, though the term seems almost too mild to capture the reality. There were no toilets, no sinks. Instead, a long concrete slab stretched across a sewer, with 58 crude holes carved into it as cold and unforgiving openings in the stone. During its use, dysentery and deadly diarrhea ran rampant, driven by the unsanitary and overcrowded conditions. Using this “restroom” meant wading through layers of human waste, often up to the concrete itself. Outside of the restroom, prisoners warned new arrivals not to drink the already limited water, knowing it was tainted from the waste’s spread and could lead to a painful, premature death. At this stage, many had no idea what awaited them, most would only come to understand the full extent of the horror much later, when they faced the crematoria.

As we stood there, the wild dichotomy of our experience weighed on me. Just moments before, two of our group members had carried their Jewish pride into Auschwitz, their tefillin visible, their faith worn like a badge of defiance. Just moments ago, we read from the torah, and lifted it high up for all to see, as joy and conviction filled the air. But now, in the face of these atrocities, this grim reminder of human degradation, the pride we had felt seemed almost absurd. How could we celebrate our identity, our survival and faith in such a place of unimaginable suffering? Yet, perhaps that was the point: in the shadow of such darkness, our Jewish pride, our very existence, felt like an act of resistance.

Continuing the path forward, we placed one foot in front of the other, until a giant pile of concrete, bricks, and pipes, ashy with filth and aged smoke remnants laid in front of us.  Sperber asks us to sit down in front of it, and take in what we are seeing. The remnants, he explains, are those of the crematoriums and Gas Chambers II, III, IV, and V. Each chamber could hold approximately 1,000 individuals per gassing cycle, with their deaths occurring within a span of just five minutes. Historical records recovered from Birkenau indicate that the gas was introduced via an ambulance with a red cross on its exterior, roughly five minutes after the victims had been sealed inside the chambers. In a calculated effort to eliminate tangible evidence of their crimes and avoid post-war accountability, the Nazis systematically destroyed the area, reducing it to the ruins that we observe today.

The crumbled ruins of a crematorium at Auschwitz-Birkenau, concrete and brick remnants of a machinery built for death. Photo by Margaux Betesh.

The only crematorium at Auschwitz not destroyed by the Nazis was Crematorium IV, which, as Rabbi Lynn explains, was instead blown up by members of the Jewish resistance. Women volunteered to be sent to the chamber, smuggling small amounts of gunpowder and dynamite hidden inside their body cavities to ensure the explosives reached their destination. The smuggled explosives were then retrieved and used by Sonderkommando prisoners (forced labor units composed of Jewish inmates) to construct a makeshift bomb, which they detonated in a coordinated revolt, destroying part of Crematorium IV and briefly disrupting the Nazi’s killing machinery.

After reflecting on the shattered remains of the crematoria and gas chambers, and hearing some stories of the families who faced extermination in these very ruins, we find ourselves compelled to acknowledge not only the suffering that occurred here but also the quiet defiance that emerged in its midst. Among the most haunting testimonies is that of Filip Müller, a Jewish slave laborer forced to perform the horrific task of removing corpses from the gas chambers and carrying them to the crematoria. Müller bore witness to countless atrocities during his time at Auschwitz-Birkenau, but one moment remained etched in his memory, a moment of profound Jewish pride and unyielding resilience in the face of certain death.

He described a group of Czech Jews who, refusing to go silently into the gas chambers, instead chose to resist through song. “Their voices grew subdued and tense,” Müller recalled, “their movements forced, their eyes stared as though they had been hypnotized… Suddenly a voice began to sing. Others joined in, and the sound swelled into a mighty choir. They sang first the Czechoslovak national anthem and then the Hebrew song ‘Hatikvah.’” The act of singing, deeply symbolic, and fiercely forcing the Nazi’s to see their faith, was met with brutality. Nazi guards beat the singers, attempting to crush what they perceived as a final act of defiance, and refusal to surrender to their commands.  “It was as if they regarded the singing as a last kind of protest,” Müller wrote, “which they were determined to stifle if they could.”

For those prisoners, the only comfort left was the possibility of dying together, united in identity and hope. As Müller writes, “And when they sang Hatikvah, now the national anthem of the state of Israel, they were glancing into the future, but it was a future which they would not be allowed to see.” At this time, the modern State of Israel had not yet been founded, and the British Mandate for Palestine was still in effect, with Britain administering the land following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. Yet in that moment, through the resonance of their voices, they declared allegiance to the Jewish people, and the land of Israel, claiming a measure of agency and demanding their alignment be known. “To me,” Müller continued, “the bearing of my countrymen seemed an exemplary gesture of national honor and national pride which stirred my soul.”

Today, standing where that act of resistance once took place, our voices proudly echo the same melody sung there eighty years ago, declaring the same allegiances, now with the modern state of Israel as a reality rather than a dream.

Our final stop in Auschwitz-Birkenau is the old wooden barracks, originally designed to house 52 horses but repurposed to confine thousands of Jewish prisoners at night. Upon entering this somber space, I am immediately struck by a profound sense of discomfort. It is clear that no provisions were made to allow prisoners to sleep in any manner that could be considered remotely comfortable or humane. The barracks were equipped with three-tiered wooden ‘bunk beds,’ which were little more than narrow shelves. There were no mattresses or cushioning on any level. Prisoners who slept on wooden slabs on the top bunks, were painfully exposed to the elements. Harsh weather would often cause leaks through holes in the roof, allowing snow, sleet, and rain to fall directly onto those below. The prisoners had no blankets or linens to protect them from the cold, relying only on their thin uniforms to shield them from the frigid conditions.

Our final stop: the old wooden barracks, once stables for 52 horses, later used to imprison thousands of Jewish men, women, and children. Photo by Margaux Betesh.

The middle and lower level bunks posed additional hazards. Prisoners on these levels were vulnerable to the bodily fluids and diarrhea of those above them, exacerbating the already appalling sanitary conditions and causing the mass spread of disease. Access to clean water here was limited, and sanitation practices were virtually non-existent thanks to the cruelty of their tormentors, intensifying the suffering within the overcrowded space.

Those on these levels were also vulnerable to trampling or crushing by the Kapo guards, who would leave their rooms at night to torment those easily accessible. One Kapo, in particular, wielded a metal bar the length of a bunk and used it to strangle multiple prisoners within reach, treating their suffering as a twisted game. If Kapos and human waste did not harm you, infestations of vermin, rats, and bugs would.

After Sperber presented the heartbreaking testimonies of both the perished and the survivors, we slowly exited the barracks, inhaling the fresh air outside with a newfound appreciation for our daily lives. We became acutely aware of the privileges we often overlook: the comfort of a warm bed and linens, the nourishment of a well-balanced meal, simple aspects of life that, though frequently taken for granted, are in reality profound blessings.

Surrounded by the remains of Auschwitz-Birkenau, students bear witness not only with their eyes, but with their hearts. Photo by Margaux Betesh.

As we left Birkenau and made our way to Auschwitz I, the sentiments we had shared lingered in the conversations around me. One woman reflected on the comfort of her family home, contrasting it with the brutal ‘shelter’ of the camp, while another acknowledged that this sobering experience was exactly the reality check she needed. These thoughts stayed with me as I passed through the infamous metal gates of Auschwitz I, crossing from one site of unimaginable suffering, a camp of death, to another, where the torment took the form of forced labor.