HAFTR marks Yom Hashoah with report on trip to Poland

It was a dark and somber environment as high school students at the Hebrew Academy of Five Towns and Rockaway (HAFTR) commemorated Yom Hashoah on Monday.

At an assembly Rabbi Gedaliah Oppen discussed his recent trip to Poland, which he took with a select group of seniors and faculty members Rabbi Moshe Hubner and Ms. Shira Oppen.HAFTR’s Abraham Scharf z”l Poland Mission was sponsored by the Scharf family.

The assembled students were mesmerized as some of the trip’s participants related their personal accounts. Rabbi Oppen spoke about a memorial depicting trees whose branches were cut off, symbolizing the lives of the six million Jews that were cut short.

Some of the seniors related examples of anti-Semitism they experienced or heard about that are still occurring today in Poland.

“Listening to our fellow students talk about their experiences was more meaningful than hearing facts stated about the Holocaust,” said junior Daniella Seelenfreund. Dena Gershkovich called their personal accounts inspiring. Renee Frenkel and Jamie Klahr thought “this Yom Hashoah presentation was more relatable because the HAFTR delegation actually went there and talked about seeing concentration camps and other sights with their own eyes and from their hearts.”

Students heard stories that were truly meaningful, especially one about a man who left his tefillin on a cattle car, escaped, went back for his tefillin, and then he was killed. He could have been free, but it was so important for him to retrieve his tefillin that he sacrificed his life.

Seniors lit candles in memory of resistance fighters.

The last generation of Holocaust survivors is aging, and it is a legacy to our young people that we all understand and remember the atrocities that occurred during the Holocaust. The mission to Poland was a life-changing experience for each person who attended, and to share it with the entire student body was a deeply personal and meaningful way to commemorate Yom Hashoah.

The seniors who participated in the Poland trip were Max Borgen, Sara Cherson, Corey Friedman, Sarah Fuchs, Joseph Greenstein, Riana Harari, Amanda Kanefsky, Jenna Kaufman, Eli Kleinworm, Daniel Margareten, Jesse Margareten, Stacie Michael, Lauren Pianko, Gabriella Shimon, and Jaimee Schwartz.