Lessons of Holocaust Hit Hard in Poland as Regent Students Hear Israel Missile Alerts During Death Camp Tour

JERUSALEM, Israel – During this time of growing antisemitism, Regent University's Israel Institute is educating students about how the Jewish people lived before World War II. As part of the course, the students took a recent trip to Poland

Organizers chose Poland to give the Institute for Israel Studies students a key historical perspective. After Poland, the students were also going to visit Israel.

Michele Bachmann, distinguished professor at large with the Israel Institute at Regent University, explained, "We would start with Poland...so the students could see Jewish life in Europe and what it was like leading up to the Holocaust prior to World War II. And then we wanted to take them to Israel afterwards, so you could see some of Israel's past and Israel's present, connecting the Jewish people to the situation for them in Israel today in a way that no one could have planned."

February's fighting with Iran, however, prevented the Israel visit, so Bachmann extended their time in Poland.

She told CBN News, "Part of that included a trip to one of the death camps called Majdanek. And when we were there, something happened that none of us expected."

At the top of a hill at Majdanek are ashes of the Jews killed there, and from that vantage point, those condemned to death could have looked down at ongoing life in their hometown of Lublin. 

"In real time we saw death and life during the time when they were condemned to die in this death camp," Bachmann recalled. "So we were talking about the past, but what we saw was also contemporary because the (Iran) war was ongoing in Israel."

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While traveling to the Polish sites, as evidence of the current situation in Israel, Bachmann would receive electronic notifications when the Jewish state came under missile attacks.

She noted, "The entire time when we went up to look at this memorial of the ashes of all of the Jews, my Apple Watch was blowing up. The sound was going off one after another because missiles were coming in. And all of a sudden, the Holy Spirit just spoke to my mind that said, 'See, nothing's changed. It's the same.'"

As part of the gravesite visit, Michael Eglash, co-founder of IsraelAmbassadors.com, prayed the Jewish Kaddish prayer and then the group prayed for Israel's safety in the attack.

Regent student Madison Hardiman shared how this moment affected their lives.

"There's a whole city with skyscrapers and where people lived, even back then. There's no way that they (the Poles) didn't know something was going on because Majdanek was on a hill, and they chose to say nothing."

She added, "And your phones were going off constantly, and it just shows that it's still happening today. We're still seeing that same persecution against the Jewish people, whether it be through gas chambers then (or) now, it's rockets."

Abigail Thomas, another student, observed, "When we're standing there, and we're looking at the place where 18,000 Jews died in one day, and we were getting alerts on Dean Bachmann's phone about the missiles coming into Israel – and it showed both, in one sense, the cruelty of what happened with the Holocaust and how many people died. And just the way it was enacted was unimaginable. But also the prevalence of it continuing to today."

Thomas said the trip pointed her toward the future.

"Walking away from it was something that I knew that I'm walking away with a mission. And it's not just something that I've learned. It's something I need to carry out in my life. That support for Israel, and just sharing my story of being able to go... my life continues just to share the true reasons why we must support Israel and what truly happened during the Holocaust."