JERUSALEM, Israel – Many people around the world agree that the October 7th, 2023, massacre by Hamas was the worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust. During a recent trip to Poland, Regent University students saw for themselves in real time how the forces behind the Holocaust are still active in the world today.
Dr. A.J. Nolte, leader of the Institute for Israel Studies at Regent, wants the Poland experience to provide students not only a sense of the Holocaust, but also what Jewish life was like there.
“It’s important to understand that piece of it as well, because that piece of it in particular, Christians don’t usually get,” Nolte explained. “And so that was something that we pushed for, to really have a trip to Poland that was going to cover not only the loss but also give you a sense of what was lost. What was the 700-year community, the largest Jewish community in Europe? What were they like? How did they live?
Nolte believes the goal is for the students to understand the overall impact the Holocaust had on Poland, Judaism, and the Jewish people.
“I think it was really meaningful for students to see this as this was a living, vibrant community, and it was destroyed. And also to get them to think through, as Christians, how do we think about anti-Semitism? How does this happen? And what’s our moral responsibility for responding to that?”
He added, “And I think it provided a sense of urgency and context. And one of the most common comments that I heard from students afterwards is, ‘We can’t let any kind of antisemitism slide. And we’ve really got to respond to this,’ and particularly with their peers.”
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The students visited death camps, and also the cities of Warsaw and Lublin, and other sites in Poland.
Jason Bauer reflected on the “systematic aspect” of the extermination of the Jewish people.
“Like you have in Birkenau the train that took them exactly where the most convenient spot would be, whether it can be dictated towards the (death) chambers or towards working; and just – it’s almost like a factory, like you view human beings as just cattle so you can just point: you’re gonna live, you’re gonna die, you’re gonna live, you’re gonna die…you see the pure evil that the human race can be and you want to defend against that more. Because I don’t want to see, you know, things like that happen in my society,” he said.
Zoe Abbott had read about the Holocaust and seen it depicted in movies. “But nothing compares to actually seeing it and seeing the atrocities that happened, seeing firsthand the shoes that were there, the hair,” she stated. “I think that’s something that I’ll never be able to comprehend or see from just a book or a movie. It’s something you have to experience in person.”
Rose Van Sanders had researched the Warsaw Ghetto before the trip. She found the Holocaust to be worse than she ever imagined.
“The level of how systematic the Nazis were with using the hair of the women they already killed,” she observed. “That completely shocked me because that is something I never heard before. And then we saw like a blanket that had been made from human hair, and just, it’s very horrific.
As a Christian, Sophia Webster feels called to think about good and beautiful things. Then she saw the true existence of evil.
“Being there and you’re seeing the sites, and you’re seeing all the faces, you realize what tremendous loss was experienced during that time. All these people with dreams and ideas are just gone like that,” she noted.
Webster said that although she felt a sense of hopelessness over the loss of those people, she’s hoping to make a difference now.
Webster remarked, “And I know what propaganda was used to turn people against the Jews during World War II. You still see some of it today. And so I think it encouraged me to be more vigilant, and also to have this righteous anger to fight against any sort of hatred in the future, whether it’s for the Jewish people or any people group because we’re all important to God.”
Nolte also hopes they see the difference between this outcome and what happened after October 7th.
“I want them to understand that, you look at Poland, and this community is gone. But you look at Israel. This is a living Jewish state.”
He continued, “And the difference between Auschwitz and Majdanek and the 10/7 sites is that after you visit Be’eri or Nir Oz or Kfar Aza or the Nova site, they didn’t win this time. In fact, Israel is not only alive, it’s resilient; it’s thriving. It’s pushed back. And the answer to, if we really mean “never again,” Israel is the answer to never again.
