Searching for Our Roots

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Where to start?? Maybe with how this trip came about and where we're going....
Today at 3:00 pm, we leave on a trip back in time to be in the places where my father and his family lived, and for many of them, died. Most of the next 11 days will be spent with a planned tour organized by the "Zaglembie World Organization. Zaglembie is the term used for the area of Poland that included the towns of Bedzin, Sosnowiec, Zawiercie, Dabrowa Gornicza, Wolbrum, Czeladz, and the region towns) The visit is a getting together of all generations of Zaglembie survivors who live in Israel and those who live abroad. We shall be 3 full days in Zaglembie, the birth place of our ancestors. Our group will be a special International Delegation to commemorate the very important and significant heritage of the Jewish community of Zaglembie."

So... joining this group tour was my cousin Meir's idea, but he and I have talked about taking a trip to Pilicia and Sosnowitz together for the past few years. Once we all agreed to take this trip, we also arranged to add a few days on our own before joining the group. Rita and I will meet Meir in Frankfurt on Sunday morning. after picking up the car and Meir at his hotel, we'll be on the road to Weimar. Our reason for meeting in Germany was to be at the site of Langenstein-Zwieberge, a sub camp of Buchenwald, which is where my father was liberated from at the end of the war. After some research and e-mailing I made contact with the Director of some kind of memorial/museum that is there. Our plan is to stay overnight in Weimar, which is near Buchenwald, and go to the KZ L-Z in the next morning, July 4th (Ironic date). We will go back to Frankfurt Airport at the end of the day and fly to Katowice, Poland. Early the next morning, July 5th, I arranged for a driver to meet us at our hotel and take us to Pilicia, the town where Feders have been documented living since the late 1700s. Learning that recently was quite incredible but more on geneology in another post. By dinnertime on Monday we will join the group and travel with them in the Zaglembie region, to Krakow and to Warsaw, staying 2 or 3 nights in each place, until we return to NJ on July 13th. Its a once in a lifetime trip...starting it off with very mixed feelings....I've always thought why would I want to go to places where there was so much death and hatred? Somehow over the last couple of years, as I've researched my father's history during the Holocaust, I came to the realization that visiting these places would make them more real and would be an opportunity to learn more about his life and what he survived and to honor the memory of those that didnt survive. I don’t think it'll help me to understand because what happened in these places is beyond anyone's ability to comprehend. More thoughts on another day...boarded the first leg of this flight.

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