Olami Manhattan Took Me To Poland – Day Three

To give thanks to God in times of abundance is one thing. To offer praise when you are emaciated, steeped in suffering, and abandoned to rot in the very soil from which you sprang, that is something entirely different. For most, such a state is unfathomable. Questions like, “If God truly exists, why would He not have intervened sooner?” and “Why would He allow such atrocities to unfold in the first place?” refuse to allow such acceptance. Yet, in the unspeakable horrors of the Holocaust, survivors speak of a faith that seemed to defy all logic. They tell of an unshakable connection to their religious identity, even as they were stripped of everything else.

Faith, amidst unimaginable suffering, became a profound form of resistance. For many survivors, prayer and tradition were not merely sources of comfort but crucial means to preserve their identity in a world bent on erasing it. My generation owes its existence to their refusal to be swallowed by the darkness around them.

This truth became even clearer as my journey unfolded. I realized that this unwavering resolve was at the heart of everything I encountered, the thread connecting the events of my time in Poland. In witnessing both the antisemitism of the past and the echoes of it in the present, I clung to that faith as both a lifeline and a compass. It was what sustained me through the challenges of the trip and gave me comfort when such a thing seemed impossible.

I hope the same comfort reaches you, as we delve into the third installment of my Poland series.

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Waking at Yeshiva Chachmei Lublin was a moment unto itself. Heavy purple curtains draped the large window beside my bed, and the air felt dense. As I pulled them aside, the morning sun streamed in, cutting through the quiet of Lublin. The town, to my New York-born sensibility, felt like the very definition of isolation. A far cry from the pace of Manhattan, it almost seemed suspended in time. At breakfast, students reflected on what this place must have looked like decades ago, when young Jewish scholars filled its streets, passionately debating texts and, in this very yeshiva, establishing the tradition of Daf Yomi, a daily practice of studying the Talmud.

Heading further into the building, I was struck by a brief but powerful glimpse of what this yeshiva might have felt like in its prime. Rabbi Shmuel Lynn, Executive Director of Olami Manhattan, led a group of students, most of whom had little exposure to religious education before this trip, as they studied a passage from the Tanach. Slowly, their voices rose, growing louder and more confident, their faces absorbed in the text.

Olami Manhattan students listen attentively to Rabbi Shmuel Lynn during a Tanach lesson at Yeshiva Chachmei Lublin. Photo by Miriam Frankel.

This scene of Jewish pride and learning stood in stark contrast to the building’s turbulent past. In 1939, Nazi Germany seized control of the yeshiva, devastating its interior, deporting its students to concentration camps, and leaving behind only a hollow shell. In 1945, the building, then considered abandoned by the state, was assigned to Maria Curie-Sklodowska University and used by the Medical University of Lublin until 2003, when it was returned to the Jewish community. A decade later, the building became Hotel Ilan. Despite this new purpose, Hotel Ilan preserved a sacred space for Jewish learning, allowing the community to reclaim a synagogue within the hotel, accessible from both the first and second floors. Jewish travelers from across the globe now visit Lublin to witness the yeshiva’s legacy, with groups like Olami Manhattan making journeys to pray and reflect in this historic space.

As the learning session concluded, Rabbi Lynn led the students in a niggun composed by Rabbi Meir Shapiro, the yeshiva’s founder. Widely known for accompanying the prayer “Al-Tirah,” the English translation reads:

“Do not fear sudden terror, nor the ravaging disaster of the wicked should it come. They contrive a scheme, but it will be foiled; they talk of a plot, but it will not materialize, because God is with us. Until [your] old age, I am [with you], and until [your] hoary years, I will sustain you. I made [you], and I will carry [you], I will bear [you] and deliver [you].”

I chuckled at the perfect resonance of the poetry and the song chosen to accompany it. What could have been a more fitting anthem for this moment? What better song to sing when the forces of darkness sought to strip everything away?

After several more rounds of singing, we packed our bags and prepared to leave, moving on to the next stop on our journey: the camp where many of the yeshiva’s students and Lublin’s locals were deported and murdered. A place far more haunting and terrible than I could have ever imagined.

Majdanek.

I didn’t need to pass through a gate to sense the suffocating, barren presence of Majdanek, and neither did much of Poland. The vast, desolate camp lay just outside a community, a mere stone’s throw from the lives of those who thrived in war, their backyards overlooking a living nightmare. The community’s inhabitants didn’t just ignore the camp, but profited from the misery, selling tickets to spectators who came to watch the suffering and cremation of Jewish prisoners.

Now, community members walked their dogs and jogged through the camp, either unaware or indifferent to the history beneath their feet. I watched, stunned, as a couple passed by, laughing, the woman’s giggle filling the air, as if the ground beneath them wasn’t soaked in suffering. Did they know where they were? It seemed impossible they didn’t. I wondered if I was the one who was out of place, stuck in a moment, unable to move on, while the world moved forward. But then I dismissed the thought. In a place defined by irrationality and evil, there was no way to make sense of it, nor should there have been.

Inside a building labeled “bad und desinfektion,” a visceral pressure gripped my lungs, an overwhelming urge to scream clawing at me. Shower heads hung from the low ceiling, and blue blotches stained the walls. My mind raced, haunted by the testimonies of gas chambers disguised as showers, of the scratch marks left by people desperately clawing for air, only to be met with the searing, suffocating sting of Zyklon B.

On the wall of the Majdanek gas chamber, a Jewish prisoner likely scratched ‘Am Yisrael Chai’, ‘The Jewish People Live’, a powerful message of defiance before facing death. Photo by Margaux Betesh.

The nausea only intensified through the day as testimonies from survivors were read by JRoots Founder, Tzvi Sperber. Sperber told us of Halina Birenbaum, a Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau survivor. Birenbaum’s mother had been taken from her outside the desinfektion building at Majdanek, and later, Birenbaum herself was sent to a gas chamber, only to be spared when the Germans ran out of gas.

In her later years, Halina Birenbaum wrote a poem titled “She Was Waiting There.” The poem poignantly conveyed the profound grief and longing for her mother that resurfaced as she revisited Majdanek in adulthood. Sperber had a student read it aloud to our group while we stood before the gas chamber. In that moment, not a single sound dared to break the silence, the only evidence of our breathing being the visible mist in the cold air.

Rachel Morgan, a student of Olami Manhattan, reads Halina Birenbaum’s poem ‘She Was Waiting There’ aloud to the group outside the Majdanek gas chamber. Photo by Margaux Betesh.

Once the poem ended, Sperber reminded us that we are the fortunate generation, the only one where every Jew who entered the gas chamber could leave through the door, not the chimney.

From his iPad, the haunting notes of “Esa Ainye” filled the room, composed by Yitzchak Rosenthal and sung by Shalsheles. The song’s message resonated deeply: “Behold, He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.” A student behind me murmured, “How could God let this happen?” I, too, wrestled with the same question and offered him a silent, understanding glance.

The music, mingled with the weight of the moment and where we stood, became unbearable for many. The chamber echoed the loudest cries I heard on the entire trip, wails that reverberated off the unforgiving stone walls. The weeping, which had begun slowly, like the soft murmur of a distant storm, soon swelled into a gut-wrenching downpour. It was a sound that still lived in me, as sharp and agonizing as it was in that moment. I would be lying if I said it hadn’t haunted me since.

Majdanek gas chamber with blue stains on the walls, the lingering sting of Zyklon B. Photo by Margaux Betesh.

One by one, we exited the chamber, each of us moving at our own pace. Desperation and longing collided with the bittersweet taste of freedom, and I found myself suspended in a moment of unbearable tension, struggling to reconcile the weight of history with the freedom of the present. I still have yet to fully gather my thoughts, to compartmentalize where the past and present had collided, and to find my place in the story we had witnessed.

Eli Mayer, an actor known for his roles in “Amid Falling Walls” at the National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene and “Ride the Cyclone” at Arena Stage and McCarter Theatre, had joined me on the trip. In a later interview, he discussed his heritage and connection to Majdanek.

Eli Mayer stands in front of the guard tower, reminiscent of the scene his ancestor, Tsafania-Gedalia Kipnis, may have witnessed during the liberation of Majdanek. Photo by Margaux Betesh.

Mayer traced his lineage to Tsafania-Gedalia Kipnis, a talented painter and set designer from Minsk, Belarus, who had served as a translator for the Soviet Army during World War II and as part of the Soviet battalion that liberated the Majdanek concentration camp. Fluent in German, he helped capture German soldiers, and during one translation, a desperate Nazi soldier, parched and pleading for water, asked Kipnis for assistance. Kipnis coldly replied that the soldier could drink his own blood.

After the war, Kipnis created two powerful paintings based on his memories of liberating Majdanek. One depicted a guard tower. The other showed a tallit (Jewish prayer shawl) caught on the barbed wire, which Mayer described as both a “white flag of surrender” and a “flag of triumph and resistance.” Years later, Mayer discovered that another artist, who had also witnessed the scene, had independently created a strikingly similar painting of the tallit on the fence. Mayer was deeply moved to have this testament to survival woven into the fabric of his own family’s story, saying, “It was such a powerful scene that two separate painters, one of them a Jewish Yiddishist, painted it and immortalized that moment of liberating Majdanek through Jewish eyes.”

Thanking Mayer for sharing his story, we wrapped up our interview, and I closed my eyes.

I had much to think about.