By Jeff Lipton
Hisiger described standing in a gas chamber used during World War II to kill countless Jewish men, women and children. "It doesn't hit you right away that you're standing in a gas chamber," the 16-year-old said last week, days after returning from her trip. "But then it's the most chilling experience that you can imagine. I had chills running up and down my spine."
Hisiger missed two weeks of school to take the trip to Europe to commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Day, after which she flew to Israel to celebrate its 60th anniversary. Joining thousands of students from around the world in Poland on May 1, she retraced the steps of the March of Death, the 3-kilometer walk from Auschwitz to Birkenau, the largest concentration camp complex built by the Nazis. Victims of the Holocaust took the walk to the Birkenau gas chambers, and as a tribute, the recent marchers re-enacted the trek, in what has been dubbed the March of the Living.
"It was exciting to see so many people join together for a cause that was so important," said Hisiger. "The whole trip was a totally different experience, one that you can't really understand or explain unless you were there."
She said she was somewhat concerned for her safety in Poland during the march, because there is still rampant anti-Semitism there, but, she explained, "There was a lot of security around us."
"It was definitely well worth it," Hisiger said of the trip, which began April 28 and ended back at home on May 11. "I missed a lot of schoolwork, but something like what I experienced during those two weeks cannot be replaced."
The other local high school girls who took the trip were Marin Shapiro of Lido Beach, Stacey Weinberg of Island Park, Samantha Frankel of Hewlett (a student at Lynbrook High School), and Jill Berkowitz, Dana Goldstein and Alyssa Langenthal, all of East Meadow. The girls are members of the Nassau-Suffolk B'nai Brith Youth Organization, which sponsors the trip every other year. To qualify for the trip, the girls had to write an essay, and were interviewed to determine if they were emotionally prepared for what they would experience.
"As I look back and reflect upon the past two weeks, my life has been changed forever," said Langenthal, who kept a journal of her trip. "The things that I saw and experienced are imprinted in my memory for all eternity."
Langenthal said that the first concentration camp she saw was Treblinka. "As I walked down the cobblestone path, it was so surreal," she said. "I was walking the same paths that 800,000 innocent people marched to their deaths."
At Auschwitz she went numb, she said, adding, "One of the most terrifying things that I saw there was piles and piles of hair, glasses, prosthetic legs, suitcases and shoes. When I saw the actual amount of these things, my heart dropped, and the chills ran down my spine. It was so hard to realize that I was actually standing in Auschwitz, the camp that I have learned about and seen pictures of so many times."
Visiting the death camps was extremely emotional for her, Langenthal said. "From the very beginning, entering the showers and then a gas chamber, I was completely terrified," she recalled. "Walking through the gas chamber and seeing the blue on the walls from the gas and, even worse, the scrapings from fingernails on the walls, was just horrific. And yet as I walked out the exit of the chambers, I just stood on the grass, realizing that no one ever stepped foot onto this ground after entering that room."
She said the trip to Israel for the 60th anniversary of its independence, on May 8, was nothing short of amazing. "I couldn't wait to increase my pride in Judaism and learn about the culture of my homeland," Langenthal said. "I experienced some of the most fascinating things I could have ever dreamt of" - including kayaking on the Jordan River.
"I was so thankful that I was able to take part in the March of the Living," Langenthal said. "It gave me a better understanding of what actually occurred during the Holocaust and the chance for me to share what I saw with others. The trip has allowed me to become closer to my Judaism and the realization that Israel is a place that you should visit and experience."
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