Sister, brother take summer trips to remember Sister, brother take summer trips to remember (September 15, 2004)

By Jessica Scott
Special to the Almanac

What is the one thing that keeps a student from slipping over the brink into insanity during the school year? It's not the elation felt at the end of a hard year. It's not the glory of saying goodbye to a disliked teacher. It is the summer vacation and the thoughts of sun, swim, and summer trips.

Most students do the usual: Hawaii, San Diego, L.A., New York, maybe Europe -- locales known for their fun, beaches and tourist attractions.

But how many traveled this summer to Israel, during this time of heated political conflicts and violence, or to Poland?

Well, two students from Menlo-Atherton High School happened to do just that. Brother and sister Josh and Ari Citron of Menlo Park, a senior and a junior at M-A, ventured into Central Europe and the Middle East.

While Ari went to Poland and Israel to see -- among other sights -- concentration camps from World War II, Josh went to Israel and worked in a hospital in Jerusalem.

Both brother and sister have traveled extensively with their family, including another brother and sister, Coby and Talia; their mother, Judy; and father, Sloane, publisher of Gentry Magazine in Menlo Park.

Concentration camps

Ari, currently a junior at M-A, covered two continents this summer. For two weeks, she viewed concentration camps in Poland with a group of teenagers, ages 16 and 17, from Camp Ramah, (which has locations all over the United States and Canada). They continued their trip with another six weeks in Israel.

In Poland, Ari and her companions saw firsthand the camps, where, during World War II, vast numbers of Jews and others were killed, tortured and starved.

Ari says that she "thought everyone would be crying, but not one person ended up crying the entire trip"; they were too shocked to cry.

Until they arrived in Israel. There, she said, what they learned of the Holocaust was just "too powerful for anyone to grasp," or, it seems, to ignore.

Though inspirational in many ways, this trip primarily encouraged Ari, as she notes, to "spend more of my time doing things I enjoy doing, because life can be taken away so soon."

Israel

Though both siblings traveled in Israel, Josh's work was of a very different nature. Josh says he chose to forgo the usual summer vacation in favor of volunteer work in Israel because, "I love the area and wanted to help victims of terrorist attacks."

With help from family friends and their connection to the president of Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, Josh was able to experience life as a doctor, a profession he hopes to pursue in the future.

Work in the hospital consisted of helping nurses and performing heart checks using an electrocardiogram, an instrument that measures the heart's rhythm.

He also got to view surgeries and work with female soldiers spending their second year of military service at the hospital. (In Israel, men must spend three years and women two years in military service.)

Although it seems odd that a hospital would allow a 17-year-old to help out with such work, Josh explains that "there are not many volunteers at the hospital, partially because of the dangerous surroundings."

Despite the dangers, he says, "I was not afraid because of my trust in Israeli security." Overall, Josh felt that he "contributed and actually helped people."

Both brother and sister believe their summer vacations were eye-opening and worthwhile experiences, and encourage others to take such a trip, if only, as Ari says, to increase their understanding of the world outside of a history textbook.

INFORMATION

For more information on Camp Ramah, see www.ramah.org.

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