March of a Lifetime

EAST COUNTY — Since Adam Caldwell left his GreyHawk Landing home at 3:50 a.m. Sunday, he’s been on a whirlwind journey to remember history’s worst atrocities.

Caldwell and five other students, plus one adult with the Jewish Federation of Sarasota-Manatee, is participating in the International March of the Living program.

The program runs April 12 through April 26, with participants spending their first week in Poland, visiting ghettos and death camps, the Jewish Museum of Poland and participating in the April 16 March of the Living, a 3-kilometer march from Auschwitz to Birkenau, the largest concentration complex  the Nazis built.

As of 2 p.m. Monday, he still hadn’t gone to sleep after arriving earlier that morning in Poland.

“We first saw the Radegast train station in Lodz, where the Jews of the Lodz Ghetto boarded boxcars for their deportation to the concentration camps. After the train station, we went to the Jewish Cemetery in Lodz. It is one of the biggest cemeteries in Europe and its size and the ornate graves really show how vibrant the Jewish community of Poland was before the Holocaust,” Caldwell wrote in an email Monday, while on board a bus to Krakow. “There were more than 200,000 Jews in Lodz before the Holocaust. Today, there are about 100.”

Each year, between 10,000 and 15,000 individuals from around the world participate in the march, which commemorates Yom Hashoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day, by retracing the steps of the “March of Death” — the actual route taken by Jews to the gas chambers. Participants will experience a memorial service in Birkenau, as well. 

After spending a week in Poland, delegates will fly to Israel to celebrate both Israel’s Memorial Day and Independence Day.

“Right now, we are in a period of time where every day, we are losing more and more Holocaust survivors,” said Len Steinberg, program director for the Jewish Federation. “When they are gone, who else to tell their story except our kids? We can’t dwell on the past, but we want to make sure it never happens again.” 

Caldwell knows the trip will be trying emotionally, but he is eager to learn more about Poland and Israel, the Holocaust and his Jewish heritage.

“We’ve been around so long and been so persecuted,” Caldwell said of the Jewish people. “We always make it through those adversities. It’s important to hold those traditions strong because people are trying to take that away from us.”

“We can’t dwell on the past, but we want to make sure it never happens again.”

– Len Steinberg, program director for the Jewish Federation

Contact Pam Eubanks at [email protected].