The end of the road is paradise.
Having started in Terezin and walking to Prague, a few of the original group had an itch to scratch and wanted to complete the mission. In the intervening year and a half, Regenesis had spent a good deal of time with the Lake District Holocaust Project learning about the Boys, the Calgarth Estate where they were rehabilitated, and hearing and watching recorded first-hand eye witness accounts of their arrival and rehabilitation.
We had become focused on two facts:
- Sir Ben, one of the Boys, had planted an acorn found at Auschwitz at exactly the spot that Calgarth once stood, now The Lakes School
- The Boys instinctively called their temporary home “Paradise.” Whether that reflected where they had come from or simply the beauty of the Lakes that we often take for granted, I’m not sure. In Yiddish, the idea of paradise extends beyond a physical place to one of harmony – the Garden of Eden.
So, when we discovered that the Boys had landed at the RAF airfield in Carlisle, there was only one route we could choose to reach Calgarth: along the River Eden. Although it was a challenging waterside route, we liked the symbolism of walking through the garden of Eden to the Boys’ accommodation.
On arrival at Calgarth, we continued the Regenesis tradition of laying stones beneath Sir Ben’s Tree which was beginning to flourish. By then, the tree had acquired another name: the Tree of Life echoing Sir Ben’s own description of Calgarth as the place where the Boys “came back to life.”
Mission accomplished. Regenesis had now walked every step from Terezin to the Windermere.
