A Summer Trip to D.C.

Over this past summer, I was fortunate enough to spend two months at a summer sleepaway camp. I’ve been attending this camp since I was nine years old. I can say with the utmost certainty that the experiences I’ve had and the friends that I’ve made there will stay with me forever; they have molded me into the person that I am today. If any of you have the opportunity to go to sleepaway camp, or to send your kids there in the future, I cannot stress how highly I recommend making that decision.

My summers at camp have been the best ones of my life, and this one was no exception. One of the highlights of the summer was our trip to our nation’s capital, Washington D.C. For four days and three nights, we visited almost all of the capitol’s major landmarks and monuments. Since my camp is affiliated with the Conservative Movement of Judaism, we also looked at D.C from a Jewish perspective. I learned so much and had a lot of fun with my best friends, it was an experience I’m incredibly grateful for and excited to share!

On the first day of our trip, we woke up ridiculously early so we could make it to D.C with enough time to explore. After a long bus ride, which included a fun pitstop to my friend Danielle’s house for lunch, we finally arrived and we eager to stretch our legs and venture out into the capital. The first thing we did was a massive scavenger hunt around the National Mall. Ours, however, wasn’t your average scavenger hunt. We had to take pictures with strangers who met certain requirements, like being Abraham Lincoln’s doppelganger or wearing an outfit that reminded us of something that the head of our age group, Alec, would wear. We also had to do fun (and slightly humiliating) tasks, such as forming a human pyramid with at least three strangers or doing the hora, a traditional Jewish folk dance, in the middle of the National Mall. Although my group didn’t do a great job, we had a lot of fun trying. After we finished our scavenger hunt, we went to the JCC (Jewish Community Center) that we’d be staying at to unpack and eat an early dinner. Once we were done eating, we went on a little walk around the city before heading to bed.

After a quick breakfast of cereal, we took our first stop at George Washington University. Hillel is an organization on college campuses that provides Jewish students with a number of services related to Judaism. They help Jews meet other Jews (which is how my parents met!), serve as a place for Jewish students to worship and celebrate holidays, and provide a plethora of other helpful things. Their director gave us a tour around campus. My favorite spot was a statue of a hippo that students rub to give them good luck on exams. I’m not sure if it works, but I rubbed its nose just in case! Of course, no trip to a university is complete without a visit to their bookstore. Usually everything there is pretty expensive, but since I’m vertically challenged I was able to score a relatively cheap long sleeved t-shirt from the kid’s section. There aren’t a lot of benefits to being as short as I am, but that’s definitely one of them!

Once we finished up at the university, we went to explore around Georgetown. It’s a shopping hub popular with students and tourists alike. The most memorable part of my experience there was the Ben & Jerry’s shop that we visited. Besides unbelievably delicious ice cream, one of the things that Ben & Jerry’s is best known for is their larger than life Vermonster Sundaes. A Vermonster is twenty scoops of ice cream topped with four sliced bananas, chopped up cookies and brownies, four servings of either hot fudge or caramel, ten spoonfuls of chopped up nuts, two spoonfuls of four toppings of our choice, and whipped cream. My bunk, sixteen girls armed with nothing but the spoons in our hands, took on the Vermonster. Somehow, we managed to devour the entire thing in less than six minutes, beating every other bunk in our age group that attempted it. It was brutal, messy, delicious and the most fun I had the entire trip.

Our third day began with a visit to the Newseum. In the age of fake news, it seems more important than ever to celebrate freedom of the press, making our visit very well timed. This was the third time that I had been there, but it still managed to captivate my attention. In particular, the sight of the Berlin Wall never fails to blow my mind, especially looking at the contrast between the two sides of it. It is such an important reminder of the value of freedom of every kind, and I am so lucky to have been able to see such an important piece of history. My favorite part of the museum is the Pulitzer Prize Photography exhibit. Everything from our moments of greatest triumph to those of the greatest sorrow are portrayed there. I come from a family of photographers, and although the gene seems to have passed me over in favor of my twin sister, I still believe that photography can show a situation or idea in a way that words simply never can. Being able to see history through the eyes of a camera is truly extraordinary. This is just one of the many impactful exhibits at the Newseum. The 9/11 memorial and the exhibit showing the dangers of reporting in certain areas are both breathtaking and informative. There’s even some fun to be had in the Interactive Newsroom, where you can try your hand at being a reporter yourself. Although a career as a weather reporter might not be for me, I did have a ton of fun trying it out! Overall, I had an amazing experience at the Newseum and I hope that if you have the chance, you visit it as well.

Our next stop was the Capitol Building. Just like the museum, I had already been there several times, so I confess that I was more than a little bit bored. However, it’s definitely something that first time visitors should check out. The last time I was there, they were renovating the building; so much of its beautiful architecture was covered up by scaffolding. It was great to finally get to see the building in all of its true beauty this trip. The details are some of the most intricate I have ever seen. It’s really a marvel. The tour itself is also interesting and informative the first time around. The Capitol Building is definitely a must on any D.C. trip!

By far, the most memorable part of our trip was our visit to the United States Holocaust Museum. On one hand, my experience was one of gratefulness, solidarity, and pride on the behalf of my people. It was also a harsh wake-up call to my reality. As an American Jew, I have lived my entire life in the shadow of the Holocaust. There isn't a moment when I'm not consciously aware of how lucky I am that almost everyone in my family was already living in either Canada or the United States before the Holocaust began. It's strange to think that the poverty and persecution that drove my family out of Europe is what I owe my very existence to, yet it is. I am alive because of sheer luck and nothing else, and I am beyond thankful for that. Although my family managed to escape the worst of the Holocaust, it still has always had a significant impact on my life and my identity. When I was younger it mostly manifested in the classroom. My first Holocaust unit in school was in fourth grade. As the only Jewish kid in my class, I was expected to know the most about the subject, and I did not disappoint. Jewish kids grow up learning about the Holocaust from a young age. I was five the first time I heard a Holocaust survivor speak. I didn't really understand her suffering or what the tattoos on her arm meant, but I did understand that it was important. The Holocaust did not directly affect my family, but it is my past nonetheless. I am a Jew before I am anything else, which means that the suffering of my people is mine, regardless of whether I experienced it or not. My mom felt the same way and made sure to educate me, so that by the time I was nine years old I was a little Holocaust encyclopedia. Little girls shouldn't have heads filled with stories about genocide, but that is the price of survival. You carry the weight of your past with you. It isn't enough to just hold onto it, though. You have to share it. I did that for the first time in my fourth grade classroom and was confused when my peers were horrified when I told them how the Nazis would strip Jews naked, shoot them one by one, and throw their bodies into ditches. My teacher had to stop me mid-sentence because she thought that what I said was too graphic for the class to hear. I didn't understand. It had never crossed my mind that the other kids didn't have a past like mine. It wasn't normal for them the way it was for me. The load felt a little bit heavier once I realized that not everyone had to carry it, but I knew that I couldn't let go just because my arms got a little sore.

One of the most beautiful things about my camp is that we all carry the burden of the Holocaust on our backs. Our shared past is one of many things that brings us closer together, and I think our time at the Holocaust museum exemplified that. I held hands with two of my friends, Zoe and Talia, as we walked through the museum. They are two smart, strong, and beautiful Jewish women who, like me, had the opportunity to be standing because of incredible luck. The three of us standing together was living proof that Hitler failed. We were proud Jews standing in a museum dedicated to our people, mourning, loving, and supporting each other as we went. I watched as Talia pointed with shaking fingers to the village her grandmother lived in on a map, tears rolling down her cheeks as she no doubt dared to wonder what might have happened if her grandmother hadn't made it out in time. I broke down when I saw a sign about a mother desperately trying to push her children out of a gas chamber, but Zoe held onto me and we kept moving on. All around us, people from our camp were feeling and acting in the exact same way. The love and support I witnessed that day filled me with pride in my friends, my camp, and my people. However, the one interaction that has stuck with me the most since then was not something that I was happy to hear. A boy around my age was visiting the museum with his family. His mother was urging him to go look at a display, but he shrugged her off. He told her that it was boring, and my heart snapped in two. How could this boy look at what happened to the the Jewish people, to my people, and find it boring? How could he see the cramped and dangerous conditions Jews were forced to live in at concentration camps and shrug it off? What level of emotional disconnect is required not to feel some degree of sadness at the sight of the emancipated bodies of Jewish prisoners? Six million Jews lost their lives, and he had the audacity to call it boring? It shook me to the very core. This horrific event that has been the backbone of my entire life was reduced to nothing more than bad entertainment by that boy. It sickened me. Bored people don't pay attention, and when people stop paying attention to history, it repeats itself. I'm extremely privileged to be living in a country where I am free to practice my religion. However, the Holocaust, among many other incidents in our past, has taught us that the freedom and safety I enjoy right now is only temporary. Before the Holocaust, Western European Jews had fully assimilated into society. They had equal rights under the law. They were doctors, businessmen, lawyers, and proud citizens of their respective countries. The law, however, didn't protect them from the gas chambers, and the countries that they were so proud to be a part of turned on them anyway. Anti-Semitism has always existed, and will always exist. Even in this era of prosperity for the Jewish people in North America, people still discriminate against us. My friends have pennies thrown at them at school, and several of them are afraid that if they openly identify as Jewish at school they'll be bullied. I too have experienced my share of anti-semitism. In eighth grade a few boys at my school and I were working on a science project when they decided to start telling Jew jokes. There were several of them, the most memorial being: "What's the difference between a pizza and a Jew? A pizza doesn't scream when you put it in the oven!" I was horrified by what they were saying, but I didn't tell anyone. I justified it by saying that it wasn't real anti-Semitism. At least, I thought, I wasn't the one in the oven. But then the jokes turned into bomb threats to JCCs and vandalism of Jewish cemeteries. The effects of these events were palpable. The JCC that we were staying at had a brand new metal detector at the door. Institutions don't just get metal detectors for fun. They get them because there's a legitimate threat, which terrifies me more than anything.

I thought that it wouldn't get any worse after that, but it did. In Charlottesville, literal Nazis marched and killed a counter protester. Although that in itself is horrifying, it isn't what terrifies me the most. Nazis are always going to exist, after all. Their presence did not surprise me, nor did it really scare me. What did shock me was when our president did not immediately call out the protesters, instead claiming that "there is blame on both sides." The difference between the Nazis in Germany during the Holocaust and American Nazis today as that the former had power and the latter did not. Nazis, and Anti Semitic people in general, are not a real threat until they are given a seat of power. So, when the leader of the free world didn't strongly come out with a statement of intolerance towards the protesters in Charlottesville it sent a very clear message to every Jew in America. There had been moments in my life where I didn't feel like I completely belonged, but I had never questioned my safety before. Thanks to our current leadership, I do now. If I can't count on our president to protect my people, how much longer can I depend on this country as a safe haven? Unfortunately, every answer that comes up is bleak. The Jews have always been wanderers, strangers in other people’s lands. For the first time in my life, I feel unwelcome in this one.

The boy at the Holocaust museum made me wonder about the price of not paying attention. There is a whole section of the museum dedicated to the role of bystanders in the Holocaust. Now that our current president is taking that role, I am certain that he, like the boy at the museum, must have not been paying attention to the reality of the situation at hand. If he had known and understood the vicious, hateful worldview that the people he refused to condemn supported, than he would not have dared to claim that there was "blame on both sides." I say this because I believe in human decency, and because I think we live in a time where being a bystander is the norm. I'm not saying that another Holocaust is in the immediate future. Instead, I think we all need to start making a more conscious effort to notice what's going on around us and to do something when it is wrong. If there's anything I've learned from the Holocaust museum, it's that we all need to be paying attention. The cost of silence can be anywhere from inconsequential to six million. Let us hope that we never find out again.

The day after our trip to the Holocaust museum, we packed up and headed back to camp. From laughing our heads off as we embarrassed ourselves in front of strangers to supporting each other through the holocaust museum, our D.C. trip further solidified the close bond that I have with my camp friends. Being able to share the Capitol and all the memories we made there meant the world to me, and I will never forget the amazing few days we spent together there. We came back from our trip with a little more knowledge than we had before, tons of great memories, a few more pounds thank to The Vermonster, and a sense of pride in ourselves and our people that had grown even stronger than it was before. It was one slice of an amazing summer, and I can't wait to make more memories both at camp and on trips next summer!

By Rina Sclove

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