:Ronnie, who hosted us, wrote

On 26.12.25, we hosted a special and exciting gathering of members of the SERVAS organization in Israel in our living room around the "journey to Poland" that we did in June 2025 (which was extended to three weeks due to the war with Iran). SERVAS is a special organization with a "soul" that I have been associated with for nearly twenty years. An international organization that focuses on encounters between people across cultures and countries: SERVUS members are hosted free of charge for two nights at each other's – which leads to significant connections on trips, reduced costs and a deeper understanding of the culture, people and life on a trip in each country.
Over the years, we have enjoyed meeting and also staying for quite a few days with SERVAS members in New Zealand, India, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Slovakia and other places; we were also happy to host from all kinds of places. The organization attracts people who love to travel and who love people. For me, this is a formula with significant "added value" in a world that can feel very alienating, commercialized, and superficial.
The meeting was around the trip we took to Poland in June 2025, a "journey to Poland" with a personal stamp that I sought in things that were particularly close to my heart. The service companies in Poland that I contacted in advance (not as hosts in their homes – because we didn't ask to do that this time – but as "day hosts"), went above and beyond. One introduced me to the Holocaust Documentation Department at the impressive "Polish Museum" in Warsaw, which tells the story of Jews in Poland for almost a thousand years. I was invited to give a two-hour testimony on camera about my father's story in the Holocaust, a conversation I will never forget. I felt like I was doing it for my late father, and I found somewhere that he was also talking about my life without feeling it… This is also a second-generation phenomenon.

Another Servus company took the initiative and volunteered to build a "virtual grave" for my father's family who perished (parents, siblings, uncles, cousins). I was deeply moved by the dozens of hours she invested without asking for anything in return, even though I tried to offer. I would like to add that this woman is not Jewish.
https://www.findagrave.com/…/barbara_go%C5%82da-duniec
Servus companies helped me get in touch with Poles who have been volunteering for years to preserve Jewish sites in Poland, Jewish and historical heritage in Poland – although a small minority, a minority with impressive and authentic activity.
On a trip to Poland, I managed – with the help of such a dedicated person – to reach the grave of a distant uncle who died in Bialystok in 1927. I am convinced that I was the first to visit the grave of this man – Rabbi Yisrael Donietz – since the Holocaust. On this journey I also arrived at the Majdanek extermination camp, where my father's beloved uncles and cousins ​​perished – an entire family was burned at Majdanek. I felt that here too I was doing it for my father who refused to go to Poland after the Holocaust.
https://www.bagnowka.pl/?m=cm&g=zoom&gal=38&img=23993
I also wrote a detailed article about all this: "Warsaw-Tehran-Tel Aviv: More than I expected".
https://www.wisdom-opportunity.com/…/%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%A9…
The meeting at our home with my friend Servus was interesting and heartfelt, and I am glad that my stories managed to "catch" others, who also wanted to tell, ask, wonder, miss. After all, we are more than eighty years after the Holocaust, but the stories That we heard – and perhaps the stories we didn't hear because they didn't want to/know how to tell – don't disappear. We, the generations that came after the Holocaust, have a great space to explore, to visit, to try to know.
A morning full of excitement, good food, friendship and humanity.
A connection to the world of the past but also a world that continues to live within us.

May we be open to hearing and learning new things – both about what was and what could be…

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