As I walked through what was once the Warsaw Ghetto, I thought of the diary entries I’ve read of Jews trapped within its walls. Leyb Goldin writes, "Intellectual! Where are you with your, with your theories, with your dreams? Your goals. You educated imbecile! Answer me…The world’s turning upside down. A planet melts in tears. And I, I am hungry.”
I hear these words not only as a cry to the world in August 1941, but perhaps more so as a plea to us today. Academic scholarship of Holocaust history is absolutely necessary. Widespread Holocaust education mandates are absolutely necessary. But Goldin implores us to think beyond formalities. The Holocaust is too barbaric to understand solely through academic footnotes and Ivy League degrees.
In Warsaw I felt the desperation more than I ever could through my studies. I felt it in the Jewish cemetery as I stood by the pile of stones under which tens of thousands of anonymous Jewish bodies are buried. I felt it in the yellowing pages of the Ringelblum archive, which a group of Jews so courageously compiled and hid despite the deadly consequences of doing so. I felt it in the eyes of survivors who spoke with us, people who had spent a lifetime mourning for the family that they lost to the Ghetto.
I am so grateful for the opportunity to have joined the World Jewish Congress and WJC NextGen in Warsaw. It was an honor to hear speeches from the Polish, German, and Israeli presidents, who all spoke eloquently about the importance of commemorating this history. But at the end of each day, all I could think of were the words of Leyb Goldin. No words—not even those of a state leader—can fully convey the reality that the beating heart of Europe's Jewish community was destroyed.
The Jewish people endured unimaginable degradation in the streets on which our delegation walked. By the end of my time in Warsaw, the only response I could muster to this assault on our people was nothing more than a solemn silence.