At the end of our trip, we get deep time in Eastern Poland… home to hundreds of former shtetls and the Bialowieza forest, the last primeval forest of Europe. The forest, like the Yiddish culture of our past on these lands, extends well beyond these human-made, impermanent borders. During the Holocaust, it served as a harrowing refuge for Jews. Today it’s the site of a major border crisis in which thousands of refugees fleeing war, dictatorship, and persecution in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere are pushed back and forth between Poland and Belarus in a cruel game of power and racism.
Since 2021, Belarus has lured people toward its border with promises of passage to Europe, and Poland has answered with a steel wall and razor wire, almost no access for journalists and aid workers, and “pushbacks” that send people into the forest again and again, with no chance for asylum — while Europe looks away. Over 100 have died of cold, exhaustion, and injury, with hundreds more injured and missing. Local activists and neighbors carry food, blankets, and medical care into the trees, but it’s illegal to help the refugees cross the border.
We spoke with one of those activists, who gave us an up-to-the-minute account, and walked toward the wall, glimpsing it through the trees, settling in for a conversation. The pattern isn’t hard to see. At the US-Mexico border, policy pushes people toward dangerous desert terrain, and thousands have died. In Israel-Palestine, a wall, checkpoints, and permit system decide who can move, work, and visit family, if at all. The nationalist logic is the same at each border: one people’s safety and belonging must be protected by keeping another out, and the suffering this causes is an acceptable cost. As Jews who carry the memory of closed doors and turned-away boats, we can see how this pattern repeats. We are not exceptional.
Meanwhile, all this unfolds as we walk through a beautiful forest, light streaming through hornbeams and oaks. These trees don’t need passports. The culture and traditions of our ancestors in Yiddishland knew no borders either. As Diasporic Jews, our culture and traditions travel with us.
🌳 Final info session this Thursday for our 2027 cohort .
🌳 More about the program here.
