Excerpt from Speech on Poland (adapted) 2001 March of the Living Closing Ceremony Kibbutz Hulda Tuesday, May 1, 2001 By: Jared Gordon, Toronto When we were in Auschwitz near the crematoria, I walked off to the side by myself near one of the barracks. Suddenly, I felt a hand touching mine. I looked up and it was a girl I had never seem before, from another country, taking my hand for a moment to console me. Then I looked at her face, and from behind her sunglasses, I saw one tear roll down her cheek. I never even found out her name, but that moment was very important to me.

Speech on Poland 2001 March of the Living Closing Ceremony Kibbutz Hulda Tuesday, May 1, 2001 By: Emily Kaufer, Montreal I was unsure what to expect upon my arrival to Poland. I contemplated what emotions I should feel or how I must respond to certain truths that my eyes would be subjected to. However, there was one feeling of certainty that I knew, no matter what, would remain with me throughout the entire trip. As a Jewish girl growing up in the 21st century, I was introduced to a simplistic gift, although important, posed a challenge. Both the gift and the challenge were intertwined and in accepting one, I must be ready to accept the other. The gift we were given: the ability to explore many of our families' roots with the aid of Holocaust survivors. The challenge that we must overcome: to ensure continuity among our people and to teach our children and their future generations about the treacherous enemy that our people defeated. Nevertheless, I accepted the opportunity I was given and chose to visit Poland in hope of finding an explanation to many difficult questions that perhaps do not have a correct answer. I firmly believe that without the recognition of a people's history, there is no way of ensuring that a people's present will exist nor will the survival of a people's future. Auschwitz-Birkenau, Plazov, Majdanek, Treblinka ? although all horrible places that bring back nightmares to many, each embody a large part of our people's history and ultimate survival. Thus in visiting the concentration camps we, as today's marchers, accept the challenge of familiarizing ourselves with our people's past. As a group, we traveled together over the course of one week to camps that occupied most parts of Poland. The images that were placed before our eyes at Plazov and Auschwitz, were ones that, up until this trip, were merely pictures that I was introduced to through textbooks. For the first time, though, the Shoah became as clear as possible to us. In Majdanek, our ancestors were given the chance to "rise again" in the name of our religion ? a cause that they were persecuted for. We saw a mound filled with ashes of our own family members, and those of our friends. The ashes, although appearing to be dust, held a human connection to our people's past. Treblinka was marked by the numerous stones which each represented individual communities that were destroyed in the Holocaust. The stones stretched far, and it is hard to imagine the thousands of names that were once connected to each community. In each community there are homes, and in each community there lives a family. Each family bears a name and each name is connected to a face. In the end, we learn, as the present and future generation of our people, that each face is connected to our people's history. In Poland we, as a group of Jews and as individuals, were able to enter the barracks of Auschwitz and the crematoria of Majdanek freely. We were not forced to watch our family or our friends being burned or tortured to death. Rather, we walk in together and our together ?united as one. Now we must continue our walk together in unity. We must continue to teach our friends and family, our children and even our children's children, about the gift that was given to us ? our freedom. Eventually, our teachings will create the only image for the future of our people's past. Sometimes, there are no words that can explain your emotions. Yet, there are many different emotions that can be felt to express certain words. When thinking of the horrors that filled Auschwitz or the heroism that embodied the Warsaw Ghetto, we must never forget that the survival of our people's heritage was challenged. Nevertheless, the challenge was overcome and today and for all eternity, we remember. "Lizkor" ? a simple word which, fortunately enough, ensures the survival of our present religion and the memory of our people's past.

Speech on Israel 2001 March of the Living Closing Ceremony Kibbutz Hulda Tuesday, May 1, 2001 By: Julie Shulman, Toronto "So what does Israel mean to us? Well, it is the Jewish homeland, it is a place that every Jew must fight for, and it is an incredibly beautiful country. No matter whether we are returning to our country like some Israeli-Canadians or coming to Israel for the first time like me, this visit was entirely different from any other we may have had in the past, and different from all other future visits. We came to the holiest, most welcoming and special place on earth from the most horrifying corners of our nightmares. After hearing survivors stories about the terror they endured daily, after walking to the beat of six million hearts gone silent, after staring into hundreds of thousands of eyes hidden in a mound of dust, how can we not come here with a different attitude? The overwhelming gratitude we feel for the land of Israel cannot be explained in words; here we are welcome because we are Jews. So when we walk through the streets of Jerusalem or play on the beach on Caesaria, we are not only amused ? we are celebrating our freedom. When I asked my friends how they felt about Israel during our past week here, they were quick to tell me they didn't know how they felt. But their answers of "I love it here", and "this place always does something to me" and "I am always smiling, I'm always in a good, I don't know why " speak more than a thousand words! That's exactly it! We have been having fun all week long, cherishing each moment and each breath. Where else can you eat chopped tomatoes and cucumbers, dig up 2200 year old pottery, dance in a Bedouin tent, climb a mountain, bathe in a waterfall, cover yourself in mud and float in the sea all within 48 hours? This is our home..this is an incredible place..and we will be back!

Closing Speech 2001 March of the Living Closing Ceremony Kibbutz Hulda Tuesday, May 1, 2001 By: Eli Rubenstein, National Director, March of the Living Canada I would like to conclude this evening with two short stories, one from Poland the other from Israel, that have special significance to the participants in the March of the Living. The first story comes from the childhood recollections of Hugo Gryn, who later became a leading rabbi in England. As a child he was interned in a Nazi concentration camp together with his father. On the first day of Chanuka, his father managed to construct a makeshift Menorah, and obtain a portion of hard to find margarine to light the first flame. The young Hugo questioned his father over his usage of the margarine to light the Menorah, rather than consume it to fend off the starvation in the camps that most were experiencing. His father responded: "We have learnt one thing in the camps, we can survive without food for a day or two. We can even survive without water for a day or two - but without hope we cannot survive for another moment.." For the rest of his life, Hugo Gryn remembered his father's words: "without hope we cannot survive for another moment" If there is one word that sums up the March of the Living it is the word "hope". For you young people to be able to return to Poland with survivors of the Holocaust, then travel to Israel, and from there return home and be more active in your communities - this fills us with great hope for the future. The second story comes from Israel from the period of the Six-Day War. When Moshe Dayan first visited the Western Wall after it's capture by Israeli troops he kissed its stones with visible emotion. He then said: "We have returned to the holiest of holy places, never to abandon them again." A reporter viewing the scene asked if he had become a "born-again Jew". Dayan honestly responded, "I was not religious yesterday and I may not be religious tomorrow. But at this moment, no one in Israel is more religious than I". The story illustrates the difficulty of maintaining the highs that we sometimes reached in our spiritual lives. On this trip we have all learned about the importance of our tradition, about the magic of Israel, about the dangers of anti-Semitism and the tragedy of all forms of racism or discrimination in the world today. Right at this moment we are all on a high, following our incredible two weeks in Poland and Israel. Our challenge is to try to be both better Jews and better human beings - everyday - and not to let the lessons and emotions of the March of the Living significantly diminish over time. I am certain your are all up to this challenge.