Funding for this program is made possible by the United Jewish Federation Foundation, the Samuel, Fannie and Irwin A. Solow Endowment Fund.

The Ira H. Gordon Endowment Fund, the Glimcher Fellows Endowment Fund, the Holocaust Center of the United Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh, the Agency for Jewish Learning, and the Grable Foundation.

Thank you for your support.

I just touched the same ones they did in the same room where they dropped poison gas.

The buildings speak, the track speak.

The barbed wire speaks.

These teachers from Pittsburgh are on an educational journey.

Seeing what happened at Nazi death camps in Poland.

My name was and you gave me a number.

The Pittsburgh teachers march with others from around the world to remember the Holocaust.

They'll be with thousands, but it's three stories they'll remember most told by the three Holocaust survivors from Pittsburgh.

This man is one of them.

I'm awestruck.

Moshe Taube has waited a lifetime to be here.

To pray here at one of the largest mass graves in the world.

His mother and sister were murdered at this place.

Murdered because they were Jewish.

Taube survived because he was on Schindler's List.

This Holocaust survivor is seeing where millions of other Jews died.

I could feel vibration and cries.

Herman Snyder forced into a Jewish ghetto.

But he escaped and spent the war years hiding from German soldiers, sometimes coming face to face with the enemy.

I really cherish these pictures so much.

And Sara Reichman, remembering the Polish family that saved her from the Nazis, goes back to a tiny village in Poland for the first time in 60 years to find that family, to thank them.

I don't believe it.

Sara Reichman, Herman Snyder, Moshe Taube.

This is an opportunity to touch heroes.

Through the stories of heroes, the teachers will touch the Holocaust and take it back to Pittsburgh classrooms.

Cause you have to come and experience it firsthand.

And they did by traveling from Pittsburgh to Poland to remember, to learn, and to teach lessons of the Holocaust.

Sara Reichman is near the end of a journey that's taken a lifetime.

She's in the final hours of a bus ride through the cities of Poland, along highways, and then deeper into the Polish countryside.

So I was right.

Remembering the fields.

Sara wants to see the farm village of Niemodlin, a place she called home so many years ago.

And she has something important to say to the people living there.

My father always told me, never forget what they did for you.

And this I'm getting emotional here.

I don't want to cry.

What happened is Sara, more than 60 years ago, happened to very few Jews during the Holocaust.

Take a close look at this picture.

This little girl with bangs and wearing suspenders is Sara Reichman.

The family surrounding her.

Not her biological family, not even Jewish.

They were Catholic.

But if it weren't for this family, Sara would not be in this picture.

She would have been murdered by the Nazis.

Poland was a war zone.

Polish Jews were either dead in concentration camps or in hiding.

Sara's father was among the Jews who had made it out of Poland to the Soviet Union.

His wife could not go with him.

My mother was pregnant at that time, and this is the reason why he did not want her to come along with him, a fact that bothered him throughout his life.

He never forgave himself for a living her behind.

Sara's mother, now with her newborn child, was hiding from the Nazis near the farmhouse of that Catholic family, the Pulit.

And she had to make an agonizing choice.

Because she was in hiding, She was afraid that both of us may be killed.

The only way to save Sara was to give her away.

I sort of compare it to Story of Moses.

He's put in the Nile river and nobody.

His family doesn't know what's going to happen to him.

And my mother did actually the same.

She put me in some kind of unseen river, and she did.

She really didn't live to to see the results of it.

Yeah.

Her mother's instincts were right.

Soon after she gave up her baby, Nazi collaborators found Sara's mother hiding with another relative and shot them both.

Sara was just a child when all of that happened.

I have them in translation.

But later in life, the Pulit told her the whole story in these letters how she was saved and how they raised her under the name of Marissa.

We watched Marissa like our own child and didn't let her cry.

We played with her and held her in our arms.

If anyone asks whose child it is, we answered that it is a cousin's child.

Her surrogate parents, Mariana and Wojciech Pulit, simply counted Sara among their own children and raised her as a Catholic and took her to this church.

Mariana Pulit was a very religious woman.

She went once a week for sure to church.

I remember going with her.

I remember celebrating the major holidays, Christmas and Easter.

The Pulits never told Sara or anyone else that she was Jewish.

They were afraid that their name may be given to the Germans.

And of course, the punishment for that for hiding a Jewish child would be death.

Sara remembers bits and pieces of her six years with the Pulits.

I really have very good memories that I was loved and and it was safe for me.

And I do remember very well the village of Niemodlin.

And she's about to see it again for the first time in 60 years.

My memories are memories of a little child.

She still remembers the scent of lilacs near the house.

She also remembers the day it all ended.

After the war, the Jews who survived tried to look for remnants, tried to look for anybody who was left of their families.

That's when this woman came looking for Sara.

She was an aunt who had survived the Holocaust.

And she found Sara in Niemodlin.

She arrived in this village 6:00 in the morning and Mrs.

Pulit was baking bread.

Saras Aunt told Marianna Pulit she had come for the child.

Marianna really was crying.

She was crying and she was she was she.

My aunt said she probably was praying.

The Pulits said no, they wanted to keep this little girl.

But during that time, Jewish organizations were trying to reunite families torn apart by the Holocaust.

And they did so by offering money to families who had taken in Jewish children.

The Pulits themselves destitute after the war, reluctantly agreed to take the money and let Sara go.

It was very difficult for them.

And understandably difficult for Sara as a six year old girl, but she eventually understood why her aunt desperately wanted her back.

She had no choice.

Her parents were gone.

My mother was gone and another brother was gone.

They were all killed and she knew that I may be alive.

And she went and she was determined to get me.

And that's the way it was supposed to be.

Sara would marry and raise a family in Pittsburgh.

She now teaches in Jewish day schools and maintains a strict Orthodox Jewish lifestyle.

It's with a husband and her younger years.

But through the years and through those letters, Sara stayed in touch with the Pulits.

When they were married, when their children were baptized.

Their mother always considered m a family member.

She was always interested in how my children are growing.

If they learn well.

And our health and so forth.

And of course, the Pulits did so much more.

They risked their lives.

And my father asked Mrs.

Pulit, why did you do it?

And she said, because of faith and compassion.

They were simple people.

Of the original Pulit family, only Sara's surrogate sister, Genovefa is still living.

She's elderly now and has a large family of her own.

Sara wants to see Genovefa again.

And as Sara's bus approaches Niemodlin, I'm nervous.

Yes.

She's about to finally show her gratitude in person.

I don't believe it.

She walks to the house where Genovefa is waiting.

They are all there.

She remembers you.

Later you'll see the reunion that becomes a defining lesson for all those who traveled from Pittsburgh to Poland.

Oh my gosh.

60 years after the war ended, that people are learning and trying to prevent another tragedy.

I see buildings where the Nazis committed their atrocities against humanity.

But unlike the Holocaust victims held captive in Hitler's death camps, Herman shares a different story.

The story of a carpenter who had the rare chance to fight back.

And now I'm going to rip.

Well in Europe, in Poland, I was making windows and doors and cabinet.

And Herman Snyder brought those skills to America.

He built many of the homes you see on this Pittsburgh street.

I think it was in 1958.

I built one, two, three, four.

Herman is now 85 years old, enjoying a good life and good health in Pittsburgh's Squirrel Hill neighborhood.

He doesn't build big houses anymore, but he still does small jobs in the carpentry trade, he's known all of his life.

When you are mentally and physically alert and healthy, you are strong.

And I think that's why I survived.

I was born in a town called Givenchy.

I live in a town where everybody knows each other.

You go to school there, you have friends there, and you never think that they will come in a few years, that everybody will be killed.

Will be shot.

You can't even imagine.

Nobody would have imagined it when this photo was taken in 1931.

It's the Hebrew school Hermann attended in Poland.

He's one of the children in the picture, but he's no longer sure which one.

The village was small, about 1500 people, 70% Jewish.

Bricklayers, carpenters, shoemakers, tailors.

Herman was supporting himself as a carpenter when the Germans arrived in 1941.

For a month or so, Five weeks, everything was quiet.

Then the Germans forced the villagers into ghettos and kept us there isolated.

Herman knew something worse would come, so he climbed the ghetto wall.

I jumped over and I walked all night and I ran away from ghetto.

Herman would stay on the run for two years.

Those who couldn't escape the ghetto would be murdered like Herman's family.

This photograph was taken at the site where they were killed.

Shot them, put them in the ditch, and then more and more and more.

I'm the only one survived.

My own, my whole family.

My whole family was.

And there is this picture of Herman himself.

When I showed it to my wife, I think she fell in love with me.

It was taken during those two years when Herman was on the run from the Nazis.

He traveled with small groups, hiding in the forest, on farms or in villages.

And while he wasn't part of the organized resistance, Herman's group sometimes encountered the enemy.

One day, they came face to face with four German soldiers.

It is not a story he tells easily.

Each of us took one.

We took their pistols, their the machine guns, whatever they had, we took it away from them.

And I don't want to get into specifics of what happened to them.

I was asked many times this the end for them.

They all four died.

I thought they were superior.

They belong to the superior race here.

We were scared before.

Now they were scared asking us to forgive them for what they did.

And that's the end of it.

Herman says his only chance at survival was escaping and fighting back.

His story moves the teachers traveling with him from Pittsburgh.

They consider him heroic.

I think the teachers are caring not only the memories of the victims that perished, that were killed.

I think that they're carrying something really important.

And those are heroes like Herman.

Herman Snyder, whose perspective on religion and faith is different than that of most Holocaust survivors.

It's the opposite that happened to me.

I have to tell you.

No faith in God.

I became an atheist when if God would be around, something like that wouldn't have happened.

Still, his lesson of survival is one of inspiration to this inner faith group of Pittsburgh teachers.

Why did I survive for?

I was left alone.

Will I be able to love again?

Will I be able to live as a human being again?

Sometimes I wish I would have died on the battlefield, but in time everything cures in time and I start to live.

I have a nice family and they helped me to survive.

And.

And I hope I'll live another 15 more years.

Make 100 and then I'll even know more.

Moshe Taube has traveled far to reach this place in Poland.

It's a place he's wondered about for years.

You will see later why Taube and others on this trip are moved by what they're about to see.

It's because they know why he came here.

Its because they know the story of this cantor from Pittsburgh.

Music has been my companion and my source of consolation, all my life.

It sustained me.

That music sustained me in the hours of tragedy and facing death.

Those memories of tragedy and death are still with Cantor Moshe Taube more than 60 years later.

In the quiet sanctity of Pittsburgh's Beth Shalom Synagogue, Cantor Taube reflects on one of the darkest times in world history.

Before the Holocaust.

Before the German invasion of Poland, Moshe Taube lived a comfortable life as a young boy in the Jewish section of Krakow.

Then, as he is today, Moshe Taube was deeply religious and musically gifted, a gift encouraged by his mother.

She made sure that I have a musical education, that I studied piano.

Moshes father, Emanuel Taube, owned a shirt factory.

My father did his best.

He worked very hard to provide.

My sister was a sweet little thing, a sweet girl, very docile, well-behaved.

Like many Jews in Krakow, the Taube family had heard Adolf Hitler speak.

Crazy stuff.

Yelling, inciting the crowd to to frenzy.

But never imagined what awaited them.

According to my childish perception, what they thought that it was lots of hot air.

It was just a show by a crazy dictator which will never come to pass.

Nobody believed that a nation, of a Beethoven, of a Brahms, of Goethe, would resort to a genocide.

Nobody believed it.

After the Germans invaded Poland in 1939, the Taubes, like other families, moved several times in hopes of avoiding the Nazis.

Ultimately, they ended up in the Krakow Ghetto, where Jews were packed into deplorable housing in a walled off area separated from the rest of the city.

And then the Nazis came for the Taube family.

My last image of them was when we together were herded together by the Germans, and on the way to be put in cattle cars.

Moshes mother and little sister Nina were taken away by train.

They were taken on October 22nd, 1942.

To the death camp.

That death camp was Belzec in Poland, small but notorious for its high murder rate.

Regina and Nina Taube were among the victims.

There, they were put in gas chambers.

Their memory and their martyrdom never left me for one minute.

I'm always thinking about them.

Moshe and his father were sent to a forced labor camp.

By a miracle, myself and my father were somehow saved.

That salvation came in the form of this simple sheet of paper, now old and yellowed.

Look at number 22.

You'll see Moshe Taube, known then as Maximilian, and his father, Emanuel Taube, number 24 on Schindler's List.

The list is an absolute good.

The list is life.

Most people know about Oskar Schindler because of Steven Spielberg's film Schindler's List.

Schindler was a well-connected German businessman who used his pull with Nazi officials to keep Jews working in his factory and out of death camps.

He was a man of great charisma, of great influence upon his fellow Germans, and he used this influence in his encouragement to make possible the salvation of the 1200 Jews.

After the war, workers on the list became known as Schindler Jews, and Schindler became known as a righteous Gentile, a term describing non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.

It is my strong belief that Oskar Schindler was an emissary from God.

Glad to meet you.

Welcome.

Before his trip with the teachers on their educational visit to Poland, Cantor Taube, has been taking his lessons of the Holocaust to the classroom, like this eighth grade class at Saint Joseph Regional School in the Port View suburb of Pittsburgh.

I had faith that I will survive the war.

His visit means a lot.

Teacher Sally Gooch and her students have studied the Holocaust for weeks.

They did their homework on Cantor Taube too.

We read Cantor Taubes story.

A piece of bread was something to dream about.

Since he was a Schindler's List survivor.

We went to the computer room and researched Schindler's List and a few of the students actually watched it.

Stephanie asked me whether I lost any hope while I was in the concentration camp.

This is a very difficult question.

I had great faith in the Almighty, in spite of the fact that we experienced a like an absence of the Almighty.

Like like he would turn his face away from from all of us.

I still had faith.

He had that air about him, that he was.

He wanted to talk about it, but it was painful.

But he needed to do it to let us know what it was like.

Having no hope of living every day, he thought could be his, like last day or his last couple of hours.

We were hungry and you don't know, thank God.

And I wish you, you you would never know what hunger means.

It's unimaginable.

And from this small Catholic school in the suburbs to this public high school in downtown Pittsburgh, things may look different, but the lessons are the same.

Did she die?

Yeah.

No.

So this is probably her Americanized name, Charlene Schiff.

This is Melissa Perlman's 10th grade honors literature class at CAPPA, the Pittsburgh high school for the Creative and Performing Arts.

We are going to begin with your presentations.

Melissa teaches the Holocaust through the study of personal journals, with each student researching a different Holocaust victim.

My person was Robert T Omen.

Her name is Paula Watchman.

The person I did was Mosay Filming.

Four months before he turned 14, the Germans invaded Hungary.

There were other Jews who had come to hide in the underbrush as well.

We've been ordered to climb into the trenches that we dug.

We are to be deported tomorrow.

It's November of 1937, and I am in prison because the Nazis believe that everything that is different is wrong.

Any day, any moment.

I could be next.

I could be the next to die.

This will be my last entry.

I really teach the Holocaust from the perspective of tolerance.

Extreme example of what can happen when people who are different are not respected.

Now, Melissa Pearlman and Sally Gooch are part of an interfaith group taking their teaching to a new level.

They are among 30 teachers traveling in Poland with survivors Moshe Taube, Sara Reichman and Herman Snyder.

The goal is for teachers to bring eyewitness, hands on experience back to the classroom.

The trip was organized by the Agency for Jewish Learning in Pittsburgh.

I really believe that we have to invest in teachers in education only, because that's the only way to make this place a better world.

You teach students that they can change such an event from happening by their individual human behavior, the way they respond and they treat their parents, fellow students, their siblings, those who are very different from than they are.

To think that my footsteps will take me into a whole nother realm.

I don't think I'll ever teach the Holocaust in the same fashion.

My teaching will be more emotional than it has been.

I know that I will probably shed a few tears in front of the kids when I relate to them, the stories that I learn.

And what the teachers see on day one of their trip will bring tears.

It's just eerie, eerie, and almost unbelievable.

David Lyons teaches history at North Catholic High School in Pittsburgh.

Actually, inside there is more or less imagine what some of those people were feeling or sensing and, you know, just the enormity of what was taking place.

He hasn't seen anything like this in 40 years of teaching.

Its just shocking.

Just shocking.

Today, the ominous sky and steady rain seem appropriate as the teachers get their first look at a concentration camp.

It's probably much too green.

Probably shouldnt be green.

This camp is called Majdanek.

The spring of 42 transports from all over Europe begin to arrive to Majdanek.

Majdanek is in southeastern Poland, just outside the city of Lublin.

It's a museum now, but was a killing factory during the height of its operation between 1942 and 44.

This is rare film of Majdanek.

When the Germans fled, the Soviet army arrived.

They found thousands of living prisoners in the camp and plenty of evidence of mass murder.

An estimated 350,000 people died here, mostly Jews, Soviet POWs, and Poles who resisted the German invasion.

The group from Pittsburgh enters the shower rooms, which doubled as gas chambers.

Some are curious.

Others aren't so sure they wanted to go in.

In the shower room, the Pittsburgh group is overcome, crying, watching quietly, listening intently, or observing through an educator eye.

I said, I'm almost invariably you found the bodies when they opened up the gas chamber.

They found the bodies in a pyramid fashion.

And that being that the the air right, the right.

Classic example of survival.

The fiddlers.

Yes.

Survival of the fittest.

And they enter here and they see this showers.

The tour guide explains how the showerheads actually did spout water to confuse or to calm the prisoners.

Suddenly it's open its water.

It's water.

It's a real shower.

They're very happy.

It's constant down.

But these canisters of the pesticide Zyklon B are evidence of what happened the other times, when Zyklon pellets were dropped from holes in the ceiling and mixed with hot air blown into the room.

The blue stains on the wall are the residue of the poisonous fog.

From the gas chambers where people died, to the crematorium where the bodies were burned.

The Pittsburgh group continues in the rain.

Inside this dark building, few people talk.

Most sing or pray and stare quietly at the ovens.

The doors are lit by candles.

The steel rods you see leading into the ovens are guide rails for the bodies.

Inside the openings, you can still see human ashes.

Before some bodies were burned, they were dissected on this metal table so the Nazis could recover gold teeth or valuables that might have been hidden in body cavities.

I'm struggling with not getting it, not understanding how this all happened, how the world could let this happen.

Being here and standing in that room where they gassed those poor people.

To enter into the, the first room, the showers was really overwhelming to feel sort of the claustrophobia that exists.

And I just touched the same loss they did in the same room where they dropped poison gas.

Like a system, like a machine, like a factory.

Every day killing these people.

You feel presences.

Here voices and stuff.

It seems like it could have been yesterday.

I think that we're standing on the ground where people live, their last minutes of life, or mothers, and seeing their kids for the last time, knowing that that was their last day, their last moments.

Just unbelievable.

The survivors that are traveling with us, I think that they show us incredible strength.

They're impressed by all three survivors from Pittsburgh.

And they're impressed at meeting a survivor from Israel who once lived at this camp.

She lifted the hand.

And she asked why.

She shouted.

Why?

Why did you burn my family?

Why did you burn my people?

To shame?

Why did you take my name?

My name was Mariam Yahaw.

And you gave me a number.

The teachers get a last look at Majdanek.

I get a picture of this.

At this stone monument honoring those who died here.

And they will see a much larger living memorial the next day.

18,000 people converge in Poland for an international event called the March of the Living.

They proudly carry the names of their countries and cities on flags and signs.

The Pittsburgh teachers and survivors stand out in their bright yellow hats.

They walk under gray skies.

They stop to meet others along the way.

Shalom!

Shalom!

As they walk through the streets of a town called Oswiecim.

The mood is uplifting.

And that is surprising because most people know this place better by the name the Germans gave it when they invaded Oswiecim, set up a concentration camp and called it Auschwitz.

The sign at the entrance reads Arbeit Macht Frei, Work shall set you free.

Nobody went free.

An estimated 1.3 million died here.

Worked to death.

Starved.

Shot or gassed.

It was the largest Nazi concentration camp of its kind, made up of Auschwitz and a nearby companion camp called Birkenau.

The connection between the two camps provides the backdrop for this international event.

The March of the Living symbolizes what used to be called the March of Death.

Taken by inmates herded two miles from Auschwitz, the work camp to Birkenau, the death camp.

The marchers enter through the recognizable gate at Birkenau.

Walking along the railroad tracks that once carried cattle cars filled with people.

Many leave notes in memory of family members who perished here.

And Hershel.

Bullock, Leopold Jehoshaphat.

All the while they hear a voice from a loudspeaker reading an endless list.

Infant.

Names of Holocaust victims and their homelands.

The marchers represent many religions, many ages.

Some are with large groups, some walk alone or with the help of others.

This Holocaust survivor traveled to Auschwitz from Berlin.

He lost mothers, grandfathers, grandparents.

The whole family.

100 people, were killed here.

I think we're trying to say to the survivors, I know you're getting old, but we won't forget the lessons that you've, that you've been trying to tell us about.

As the crowd files into Auschwitz-Birkenau, they make their way to an outdoor arena set up for the annual March of the Living ceremony.

Security is tight because international leaders are here, including Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

He speaks in Hebrew, honoring the survivors and urging young people in the crowd to always cherish and protect their freedom.

I'm saying this.

Nobel Prize winning author Elie Wiesel speaks in English and from personal experience.

He survived this camp and others.

Men, women and children were robbed of the last dignity granted to all humans.

The dignity of dying in peace.

As the ceremony ends, torches erupt atop the crematorium commemorating those who died.

Then the Pittsburgh teachers experience what they've only read about before.

An up close look at Auschwitz-Birkenau, now considered the world symbol of Nazi terror and genocide.

Much of the landscape, fencing and architecture is intact.

Like the inmate barracks where prisoners were stacked into crude bunks.

The buildings speak, the tracks speak.

The barbed wire speaks everything speaks of sadness, of tragedy.

But it's the personal effects taken from the prisoners that stuns these Pittsburgh teachers.

They walk from building to building at Auschwitz, just staring at what's left behind.

Eyeglasses, shoes.

Luggage, pots and pans, human hair.

Artificial limbs.

Unbelievable.

That human beings could do those kinds of things to other human beings?

Relief that it wasn't me.

Sadness that it had to be somebody.

It's just a lot.

I felt like I was walking on these people, you know, that they're still here.

It was a lot tougher than I thought it was going to be.

I didn't think that that would happen to me like that.

But it's okay.

You can't forget.

I think this solidified my conviction that that people are capable of great good and capable of unspeakable cruelty.

And if anyone doubted that before coming here, I think.

I think it really brings it home.

It's a part of me now.

It's a memory that I will never forget.

And I think it will make me a better teacher.

There's no way to learn this in a book or from hearing from someone else their experiences.

You have to come and experience it firsthand and see people's reaction and hear their stories.

What I try to do is really use the country, use Auschwitz as the textbook.

Doctor, Zipora Gur, from the Agency for Jewish Learning in Pittsburgh organized this interfaith trip.

It's an aggressive itinerary, logistically, and as you would expect emotionally.

First, they came for the communists.

And I did not speak out because I was not a communist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.

And then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for me.

The best way to teach lessons of the Holocaust is to go where it happened, and talk to those who lived it.

You know, when we teach heroes are in stories, heroes are in pictures.

But you don't get to touch heroes.

And this is an opportunity to touch heroes.

Can you tell them one good story about Schindler?

One good story.

On this day in Krakow, the teachers get an unexpected surprise when they go to the Schindler factory.

It is normally closed to the public, but the Polish caretakers take a liking to this group from Pittsburgh and let them inside.

1200 Polish Jews were safe that way.

None of them would be here had it not been for Oskar Schindler.

He's the German businessman who saved 1200 Jews from the Nazis by employing them in his cookware factory.

Oskar Schindler died in 1974.

For now, the buildings where 120 people survived the Holocaust by making pots and pans are empty and in disrepair.

But the teachers are inspired by this chance to look around, and glad to hear about the plans to turn the Schindler factory into a museum.

You can hear the stories, you can see the people and think that because these people worked here, they were saved.

People like Moshe Taube of Pittsburgh, who survived because he was on Schindler's List, but his mother and sister were not on the list and were killed.

Taube is finally going to see the place where they died.

I'll be devastated, but I have to do.

I have to do it.

Belzec was designed to receive to receive the Jews from Krakow, where I was born.

The Germans built Belzec in southeast Poland.

It is not as well known as the other death camps, but was a milestone in Operation Reinhard, Hitler's plan to annihilate Polish Jews.

Belzec was the Nazis first mass extermination camp, where they perfected their gas chambers, and at its peak of operation, Belzec could gas 3500 people at a time.

It's estimated that half a million people died here.

Still, Belzec is considered the forgotten camp.

Unlike at Buchenwald, Dachau, Auschwitz and Majdanek, the Nazis left little evidence at Belzec.

They cremated bodies and buried the remains in large pits.

In 1943, the camp was liquidated and all buildings destroyed.

There is no archival film and very few photographs.

All the more reason Moshe Taube wanted to visit the place where his mother and sister were murdered.

I'm amazed.

And what he sees as one of the biggest graves in the world.

And I am awestruck, and I am completely lost.

The Belzec site is now an unconventional and haunting memorial, covering what used to be the entire camp.

It's a symbolic burial ground that seems like an endless field of jagged stone blast furnace slag mixed with ash and barren soil.

And this is where my mother and my sister are among those stones.

I feel them crying out to me.

I hear them crying out to me.

Continue.

And be strong.

This is what I feel.

A long stone walkway cuts a path through the rocks.

Cantor Taube walks the entire length in the rain and with purpose.

While I'm here, I would like to pray for their souls.

When he reaches the back of the memorial, the cantor finds himself in a large alcove.

There, a remembrance wall is covered with the first names of people who died here.

This is awe inspiring, and it is extremely, extremely painful.

He finds what he's looking for.

His sister's name.

And his mother's name.

And then the cantor fulfills a promise he made to himself.

I touched those names.

To identify with them and to show them that I didn't forget.

And I will never forget.

I'm taking home the satisfaction.

The feeling of tremendous relief.

My mother and my sister.

Only a few teachers join Cantor Taube at Belzec, but they will all join the survivor, Sara Reichman, for that long awaited reunion and a most important lesson of the Holocaust.

The Polish family were Polish Catholics.

Sara Reichman doesn't usually talk in public about how she survived the Holocaust, but she is today as a bus filled with Pittsburgh teachers takes Sara closer to the family that saved her from the Nazis.

My mother was pregnant at the time and she went into hiding.

The teachers hear how Sara's mother was on the run with baby Sara, and how, with time running out, Sara was handed over to a farm family.

The Pulits.

They would raise her as a Catholic and not tell her she was Jewish when the war ended.

A relative came for six year old Sara, and she never saw the Pulit family again.

This far actually.

The bus ride from Krakow to the farm village of Niemodlin has taken hours.

Sara sits quietly.

She reads from a prayer book as she gets closer to Niemodlin, and to her reunion with her surrogate sister, Genovefa.

Sara is anxious.

You said the green, the green and the fields.

It's true.

She begins to recognize the village.

So if you could take later the picture of this.

This.

The bus pulls down a tiny country lane.

Further down the road, in the courtyard of a picturesque cottage.

Genovefa and her family are waiting as Sara's bus arrives.

My goodness, I don't believe it.

After more than 60 years, Sara and Genovefa are together again.

Genovefas children, grandchildren and other members of the Pulit family take turns meeting the woman from Pittsburgh they've heard so much about.

When I saw the whole family standing there.

It was overwhelming for me.

It was such a welcome.

I did not expect such a welcome.

They were in their Sunday best, as you would say.

After a while, the impact of this long awaited reunion sets in.

I was very touched, moved by Sara.

Knew the reunion would be emotional.

Still, she invited the Pittsburgh teachers to see it.

They respectfully keep their distance, but soon everyone from the bus is invited inside.

The teachers and others on this trip are touched by the hospitality of the family.

They watch and listen through a translator, as Genovefa and Sara share their memories.

She said that at the beginning she never thought she would ever see Sara again.

She was like her sister.

She grew up with them and she.

She was brought here when she was eight months old, so she became part of the family.

Genovefa talks about the courage of her parents and how they sheltered a Jewish child when few others would.

They reflect on the tragic times of their childhood.

We didn't come here only for the memories, you know.

We came here for celebration of life.

The Americans are charmed by their hosts.

Genovefas family is curious about their Pittsburgh guests and eager to show Sara around the village she has come so far to see.

I wanted to know.

I knew that I lived in a village.

How did it really look?

And she'll find out.

Just a short distance up the lane is the original Pulit farmhouse where Sara lived as a child.

My, my aunt sat here with me.

I remember that.

She remembers the green, the fields, and even the scent of lilacs.

I always loved lilacs.

Here is the lilac tree.

I don't know if it's since then.

Sara lingers a while.

I wanted to see it again one more time with the eyes of a grown up.

But there is more she wants to see in the village of Niemodlin.

Sara and Genovefa make their way to a modest Catholic church.

I love the church to see the church.

This is the church we went to.

It's the church where Genovefas mother took them as children.

It's Papa Tuck, young Pavel.

As they leave, the elderly church caretaker approaches Sara.

She says she remembers me.

So some 60 years later.

What did she say?

She said she remembers when I was so little.

And there's one more stop just across the street at the cemetery in Niemodlin, Genovefa leads the way to the graves of her parents.

Sara places flowers on the tombstones of the people she once called mother and father.

Mariana, Pulit and Wojciech Pulit.

Richer than gold.

Stronger than death.

Sara's reunion with Genovefa ends with a party.

They exchange gifts and reflect on Sara's trip to Niemodlin.

Bonding between the two after all these years of not seeing each other, that was something, I guess, to be, to behold and to witness.

She would like to meet again.

And the people were wonderful.

The meeting was spontaneous and very nice, and she felt very proud that she belongs to this family.

I think that it was very important to to meet the family and to really acknowledge what they did.

Sara knows this is the last time she will see Genovefa, and the others from Pittsburgh will not see these people or this place again.

Still, this one visit sends them home knowing the importance of what happened here.

These people really showed living faith at a cost that you just.

I just couldn't imagine that they would be able or willing to have the possibility of losing everything to save somebody they didn't even know.

That's hope for the future.

I really cherish these pictures so much.

My story would live for the future is there are people that no matter how harsh the conditions are, how terrorized they would be, they would still do what an inner calling tells them is the right thing to do.

When people say never again, we have to make a choice to love one another, to respect one another as human beings.

What will you tell your students about today?

That we've been charged with never forgetting.

I have my experience that I can say this is what I did.

This is what I saw.

This is what's really there.

Now that she's brought back pictures, it's even more real than it was before.

The story that I can share with students, teaches kindness and teaches tolerance.

It worries me that you won't have Sara or Herman or Moshe to really tell their stories directly.

I hope that we can tell those stories to our children.

You can change a world, and teachers have a tremendous responsibility to be able to do that.

Giving the lessons of the Holocaust.

For more information on the Holocaust, contact the Holocaust Center of the United Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh 412-421-1500.

Funding for this program was made possible by the United Jewish Federation Foundation, the Samuel, Fannie and Irwin A. Solow Endowment Fund, the Ira H. Gordon Endowment Fund, the Glimcher Fellows Endowment Fund, the Holocaust Center of the United Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh, the Agency for Jewish Learning, and the Grable Foundation.

Thank you for your support.