Dear Marchers,

I am so excited that the trip is soon upon us. We are now less than two months from departure and time is flying by. Before you know it we will be seeing each other in Krakow!!

It has been an absolute joy to follow your work on the online class. Some of you are really engaged in the learning and I am so thrilled to participate in your conversations.

Although all of your comments have been really enlightening and insightful, I would like to highlight two comments from the second module that I found to be particularly illuminating:
Do you think that you could have still lived in Germany with all of these restrictions?

"I 100% would have wanted to leave and think it would have been EXTREMELY hard to keep living there. Looking back and knowing what I do, I easily can say that I would have left because of the growing antisemitism. However, Jews could not have known what was coming and it's easy for us to say we would have left but we need to remember that people's whole lives were in Germany, they couldn’t just leave that easily. Also, I had never heard of the Alteration of Family and Personal Names Law before. When I read that I was absolutely stunned. WHY DON’T THEY TEACH US ANYTHING ABOUT THE HOLOCAUST IN PUBLIC SCHOOL? I didn’t realize that they took away peoples identities so early on."
- Aliya919
Would you have been desperate to leave the country given the climate of legalized anti-Semitism?

"There is no doubt in my mind that I would have been desperate to leave there. There was no longer any work or educational opportunities for Jews to participate in. Socially they weren’t allowed to do regular things like go to the movies or enjoy the opera. And then there were just straight up racist things. When people talk about racism against the black community, I hear a lot about assuming certain names automatically if someone is black. So the requirement for guys to change their names to Israel and girls to Sara is straight up disrespectful to the religion (not that all these other things aren’t), and to the Jewish people whose parents named them these things probably because of a family member or some deeper meaning. Just thinking about living here and the Jews living here is making me angry."
-Annah Clymer
The fact that so many of you are engaged in the learning process even before the trip really portends well for us. I know that this process will help you comprehend the material better on the trip itself.

For those of you that have not begun the learning yet, please log on from the beginning, the modules are currently all open. Please note that we are now beginning module 3, and we would like to be working on it together over the next two weeks.

I would also like to draw your attention to our participants only webinar scheduled for March 11, 2019 at 9pm EST. This webinar will help us better understand the origins of Anti- Semitism and how it laid the ground work for the Holocaust to occur. You do not want to miss this amazing opportunity to engage with the rest of your marchers in this group learning environment. We will send details for how to access the webinar as we get closer.

I look forward to reading your amazing posts throughout the week.

Keep up the great work!!!

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Meir Tannenbaum