©Jacob Ziluck taken on the march of the living

This is a picture of me taken by my friend Jacob Ziluck. While on the March of the Living, we visited the former concentration camp Auschwitz. For me, this visit was one of the most touching and impactful parts of the trip. The bitterness of the weather and the camp really made me think about the what our ancestors went though during the Holocaust. This picture was an idea of mine and my friend. It shows me walking with the flag of Israel down an Auschwitz path bordered with tall barbed fences. This picture really touches me because although I am bearing the bright flag of Israel and seem to be walking in confidence, I am surrounded by the cold and and bare land where millions of mostly Jewish people were kept captive, tortured, and murdered. The snow that lines the grounds of the camp even though the picture was taken in April; towards the end of the cold seasons (still freezing). Knowing that some of the captives of the camp lived there all year long, even when the weather was at it’s most intense state is mind boggling. For me, the contrast of the bright blue flag to the brown and dull land around it enhances the power of what the flag represents. To think that one day thousands of Jewish teenagers would be marching through the camps where their ancestors were once held in such terrible conditions is simply a miracle.