Christian leaders tour Poland on JUF mission

In July, 16 Christian leaders toured Poland on a JUF mission. Trip participants visited locations that were central to both Jewish life and death.

From Krakow’s lively old town to the Majdanek death camp just a few miles from Lublin’s historic Chachemei Yeshiva, to the eerily quiet forest surrounding what was the Treblinka death camp, the delegation learned, prayed, and explored together the rise and fall (and maybe rise again) of Poland’s Jewish community.

The trip was led by Rabbi Yehiel E. Poupko, JUF’s Rabbinic Scholar; Dan Goldwin, Executive Director for JUF Public Affairs; and Rabbi Scott Aaron, Senior Associate Vice President for Education .

Here’s are reflections from several of the Christian leaders on the trip:

“We must never forget how much harm can be done when evil is appeased. Humanity is capable of worse inhumanity than most people care to believe.  We must never forget the evidence of this fact.”

~Rev. Jason Poling, Rector, St. Andrews Episcopal Church, Pasadena, Md.

“Through the generous hospitality of Rabbi Poupko and other leaders from Chicago’s Jewish Federation, we were given a personal introduction to the beauty of Jewish civilization in Eastern Europe prior to the Nazi invasion. Knowing more of this history deepened the pain we experienced at Warsaw, Treblinka, Majdanek, Auschwitz, and in the quiet forest outside of Tykocin-places of unspeakable atrocity. Still, taking this journey with old and new friends gave us hope that it remains possible for our diverse religious communities to treat one another with compassion .”

~ Philip Ryken, President, Wheaton College

“There were many poignant moments. One was a wordless exchange. We were filing into Majdanek and turning in a hall just before the gas chamber. There was a monarch butterfly ahead, beating against the window. Rabbi Scott Aaron walked to the window, picked up the butterfly by its wings, carried it down an exit corridor, and released it for the summer day. It challenged me to think as a United Methodist bishop, who needs the release and advocacy I can bring? That question, and gratitude for this pilgrimage stays with me .”

~ Dan Schwerin, Bishop, Chicago Episcopal Office, United Methodist Church

“We visited five killing sites, each one representing in horrifying detail what was needed to accomplish large scale extermination. Because antisemitism is ongoing and unremitting, these sites must remain as testimonies to the evil of which we are still capable.”

~Lallene J. Rector, President Emerita & Professor of Religion and Pastoral Psychotherapy, Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary

“The depth and the breadth of the Nazi horror (and of human depravity) was more than I imagined. I had read about the concentration camps, but I did not know about the extermination centers or about the eradication of a centuries old, thriving Jewish civilization. The starkness of the places we visited drove all of this home in powerful ways. To walk this with our friends from JUF made the trip truly unique and more personal. I will process this for a long time .”

~ Danny Carroll, Ph.D., Scripture Press Ministries Professor of Biblical Studies and Pedagogy, Wheaton College and Graduate School