April 25, 2014: Day 1

Our journey from Dayton to Poland had lots of excitement.  First, in Dayton, Rachel Klein coined the term #SteinBeard for Matt Steinberg's daily picture of growing out his beard.  The progression will be updated often on Twitter.  

In Washington, D.C., the short layover was spent at the Duty Free store, where many of the girls invested in nail polish.  Our last stop before heading to Poland was spent at the JFK airport, where we ran into many other March of the Living groups.  This was especially exciting because many of us have friends from around the world going on the trip that we get to see.  Also at JFK, we indulged at The Shake Shack, and consumed everything from cheese fries and burgers to specialty milkshakes.

The plane from JFK to Poland was chartered, meaning every single person on it was a part of March of the Living.  It was a huge, double decker plane, filled with teenagers and chaperones.  Abby and Matt were lucky enough to get business class, while the rest of us were stuck in coach, but we were more than happy to have a plug at our seat and a screen to occupy us.  When we landed in Poland, we knew something was up when we saw five airport workers on the tarmac snapping pictures of the plane.  Our flight was one of the biggest the Katowice airport has ever received.  This was easily noted, as it took a good three hours just to retrieve our luggage, since the same five people who were taking pictures of the plane were evidently the only five workers the airport had.  But after lots of commotion with our bags, we found the tour guide and were on our way to Bendin!

Waiting for our luggage... 

We learned that Bendin had over 30,000 jews and they were all victims to the Holocaust.  Currently, the jewish population in Bendin is little to none.  We visited a few memorials and historical jewish places, but it was upsetting that the current population in Bendin doesn't appear informed about the past jewish history their town had.  

Bendin Memorial

"Satellite Synagogues" filled Poland before the war.  There were sometimes even 2 on the same block, like Starbucks.  There were over 45 in Bendin alone.

"The Temple" old Orthodox Synagogue 

From Bendin, we went to our hotel in Krakow, and showered and freshened up for Shabbat service.  We had a very special Shabbat service because we went to an Orthodox synagogue, where traditionally the women are supposed to sit separate from the men, however us women persevered and stayed with the men in our group.  We did receive many stares and glares, but it was a different experience, being surrounded by men and praying with them.  Tomorrow we look forward to lots of walking, exploring, and supposedly great ice cream around Krakow!

-Dana Coleman

April 25, 2014