Driving back from the airport, I felt like I had at least a year's worth of experiences to share with my parents, and my friends. It was hard to adjust initially to the day-to-day routine in the "real world" after what I had been through. It took a while to even begin to sort out the last two weeks, and the present was largely ignored. The march gave me a radically changed perspective on my world. Suddenly all my worries about college, the prom, and other assorted madness seemed not so terrible in the great scheme of things.
Another thing I felt in the weeks after the march was an incredible bond with all those who I'd been on the March together with. It seemed like only someone who had been on the March could understand my thoughts. Naturally, I was bombarded with questions after coming back, and I often found myself at a loss for words to describe the past two weeks. Much as I desperately tried to give my friends some idea of what I had seen and felt, I knew that no matter how much I tried to explain to them, no matter how many pictures I showed them, nothing would ever come close to the experience itself.
One thing that I did realize was that we must make sure to remember
all that we saw and heard. Simply remembering, though, is useless
unless we do something about it. Unfortunately, the last generation
of survivors is slowly dying out, and soon there will be no one
who can claim to be an eyewitness to the horrors of the Holocaust.
While we may not have been there at the time, we, those who have
been to Poland, are among the very few who can testify to what
remains of that era. We can relate the stories of the survivors
with whom we spoke and describe the sights which we saw. As members
of this tiny minority who have seen the evidence first-hand, it
is our obligation to tell the world about all we saw. Our obligation
of remembrance is best fulfilled through education. Only by teaching
the lessons of the Holocaust can we hope to prevent similar tragedies
from occurring in the future.
