Page 110 - Witness

The questions, the doubts, the need to confront the evil and to somehow overcome it through a demonstrated allegiance to life, were the prevailing sentiments evinced by the students who have participated in these trips.
As one student wrote:
THE FIRE WITHIN ME
The fire in which my feelings burn is forever growing stronger. This trip represents more than the sites at which millions perished. It means life, hope, dreams, and the future. Being a part of this future, I wish to experience the past.
When the wind ceases to blow,
When the trees refuse to grow.
When the mountains no longer touch the sky,
And the stars do not shine bright.
That is when the children cease to remember Kristallnacht.
As the children of the future
As the hope our mothers bore
We must learn of the horrors past
To prevent the world from more.
—Robyn Hochglaube, March of the Living, 1992
One of the responses to the Holocaust might be that the human experiment is a failure, given the depravity of human conduct in this era. On pilgrimages to Holocaust and genocide sites in Europe, the students deny this conclusion by recommitting themselves to the concept of universal dignity and by valuing the human rights of all members of the human family.
The students uniformly reflect the conviction that the course of history can indeed be changed. As one African- American student wrote upon her return from the March of Remembrance and Hope, “They say that history
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