All posts tagged: the holocaust

Confessions of a Jetsetter w/ Avi Wisnia

“Imagine Hell. Now imagine being rescued from hell, and returning… I can’t. I am trying very very hard, and I can’t. I am on a bus about to enter Auschwitz-Birkenau in the south of Poland, watching my grandfather as we slowly drive by the wooden-shelf bunks where he slept as a prisoner in the concentration camp for 3 years of his life, and I can’t even imagine. Can you? We started in Warsaw, where my grandfather grew up. We traveled through the Polish countryside to end up where my grandfather ended up during the Holocaust, in Auschwitz. He often says he has two lives: one before the war, and one after the war. It was immensely intense to witness those two worlds overlapping here.  There is something profound about traveling back to the land where your family comes from and touching its soil. Poland in winter is not a particularly inviting place, but I nevertheless felt the warm pull of the land’s history. It was like there was something still lingering in the air, waiting …

Confessions of a Jetsetter w/ Miss Jetsetter

“Venice, Italy surprised me beyond words while I was visiting…I was in my early 20s and was taking a minor in Shakespeare at the time of my trip. Up until that point, my greatest interest besides traveling was Holocaust history & Shakespeare. I would have never thought that reading the play “The Merchant of Venice” would have linked my two interests as much as it did… Do you know where the word “ghetto” comes from? Well during a class session I learned that the word “ghetto” was first used in Venice, Italy to describe the part of town that the Jews were forced to live in during WWII. Many of these Jews, living in the Ghetto, were sent to concentration camps in the early 1940’s. The town is really off the beaten path and finding the right bridge to take to cross over can be a bit confusing. Visiting was actually overwhelming and weighted heavy on my heart. There’s such a strong sense of the past in the air and the plaques depicting their history sure …