Noa Notrika, JEWISHcolorado’s Israel & Overseas Center Manager, reflects on her journey through Poland with IST.
Evening settles over Kraków. In the courtyard of the Kraków JCC, 55 Colorado teens stand close together, singing “Shema Yisrael.” I glance at my phone: the attack on Israel has begun. Rockets from Iran are on the way.
Just hours earlier, we had walked through the remains of Auschwitz, the World War II Nazi Concentration Camp where more than one million people were murdered, most of them Jews.
A few hours before that, we learned that Israel had struck Iran, and that our group would not be continuing on to Israel as part of the decades-old Joyce Zeff Israel Study Tour (IST).
A week before that, I found out I’d be joining the IST group in Poland, as per the traditional itinerary. And so, the week unfolded, constantly shifting between “then” and “now,” between history and the present moment, and between events of the past and the reality unfolding elsewhere.
For ten years, Poland was an unresolved promise in my mind. My Israeli high school didn’t offer the traditional Poland trip, but I told myself that one day I would go. I need to go. I need to see it for myself. When the opportunity arose at the last minute to join IST for their Poland segment, I said yes. When we gathered at the Denver airport for our departure, the full weight of it still hadn’t hit me. There was excitement in the air as the teens gathered, families hugging goodbye, sending their kids off for a five-week journey. Two flights and a bus ride later, we were in Warsaw.
On the first day, we began walking through the Warsaw Ghetto, stepping through history in a city that is alive and vibrant, yet layered with profound pain. Holding that contrast wasn’t easy at first. But it mirrored a familiar tension we’ve grown used to: the ache of war and loss alongside the joy and beauty of daily life. These two realities can coexist. But being in a place so full of life and knowing how much daily suffering it once held, that was different. At the Jewish cemetery in Warsaw, one gravestone caught my eye: “Only those forgotten by the heart truly die.”
That same day, we began our chevruta (study groups), where 11 teens and I processed each day together. The leader of each group reminded the students that there is no “right” way to feel. Emotions come when they’re ready, and they show up differently for everyone. It was an important understanding to establish before the next step in our journey: from Warsaw, we traveled to Majdanek, the first place where the scale of the Holocaust hit us. There, the teens began to open up, each one in their own way, and at their own time. And each time, others were there, offering a hand, a presence, a moment of support. Often, as we walked, I found myself watching them, wondering: What are they holding? What will rise to the surface? Each time we sat down to reflect together, I was moved, not just by their vulnerability and openness, especially at their age, but by the way they helped me find words for things I hadn’t yet named myself.
Then came Friday morning, our visit to Auschwitz. I woke up early to a message in my friends’ WhatsApp group: “Hope everyone’s okay.” That’s often how I learn that something has happened in Israel. I checked the news: Israel had attacked Iran. A wave of fear swept through me. I immediately understood what this meant: danger, uncertainty, a change of plans. IST wouldn’t be going to Israel. And within minutes, we had to show up and hold space for the teens as we told them. At breakfast, we shared the news. I looked around the table and saw confusion, fear, and heartbreak. And underneath it all, that familiar knot in my chest: the weight of this moment, and our place within it.
Two hours later, we were on the bus to Auschwitz. The countryside was beautiful. The sun was shining. And then, the infamous gate with the words, “Arbeit Macht Frei- Work Sets You Free”. It felt like an out-of-body experience: to walk into one of the darkest places in history on a day when history was unfolding in real time. Some of the teens began to cry. We hadn’t yet seen anything visually graphic, but the knowledge of what this place held was overwhelming. Though we had already visited Majdanek, this felt different. The silence. The scale. The rooms filled with shoes. With hair. The barracks. The beds. The sheer volume of it all.
Later that evening, after such an emotional storm, we welcomed Shabbat together. I can’t think of anything we needed more, or that I needed more, on that day. As we began Kabbalat Shabbat, another message lit up my phone: “Israelis are advised to stay close to their safe rooms.” Again, I felt my body in two places at once. But we stood together, praying. It’s hard to put into words what we felt in that moment, but it truly felt like prayer was the only language that fit the situation.
The Joyce Zeff Israel Study Tour, its journey through Poland and what was meant to continue in Israel, is built on a powerful idea: the Jewish story doesn’t end in loss. It continues through resilience, rebuilding, through the choice to live. Over the last two years, and long before, we’ve all been learning what it truly means to keep going. To show up every day. To live balanced on the tension between joy and grief, fear, and love. It’s not easy. It comes with pain and unanswerable questions.
But it also comes with deep love. Love for our people. For our story. For what we dream of becoming. To witness Poland through the eyes of Colorado teens gave me new hope. In just a few days, I saw them transform from individuals into a true community. They held one another, and they held me through some of the hardest days. On my last evening, I sat again with my chevruta group. They still had two more days in Krakow; I was heading home as planned. I told them what I had felt all week: that their strength, their honesty, their laughter, and their vulnerability turned this unpredictable, chaotic week into something none of us expected – an IST experience condensed into one unforgettable week. Maybe the journey was cut short. But the quiet bond we formed—the one built on presence, care, and simply being there for one another—created something powerful.
That bond is a reminder to me that we must use it to build. To build a home worth living in. To build from resilience that isn’t the absence of weakness, but the ability to embrace it. And to build a future not only shaped by dreams, but grounded in the layered, complex, and beautiful reality of everyday life.