My small gold coin

I’m a senior at a yeshiva high school and today I just got back from a class trip to Poland and Israel which was about two weeks long. A little background: I’m very interested in family history and genealogy, having done a lot of research on such in the past. On the trip, I had the zchus of visiting Tiktin (Tykocin, Poland), where my great-great grandfather is from, something that I had been very excited about. When we arrived in the town, the first thing we saw was the Great Synagogue which has been converted into a Jewish museum. There, they had a dispensary where you can buy a gold coin with an engraving of the shul on it, as a souvenir. Of course, I went to the machine to buy one to keep as a memento, but the machine would only accept money in zloty or Euros; it also accepted credit cards but the scanner wouldn’t work with the Visa I had. Someone from the museum staff saw I was having difficulty with the machine and when I explained to him that my family came from there and I wanted to bring a coin home with me, he took out his credit card and bought it for me. I was very grateful for his generosity and offered to pay him back, but he refused, telling me to put it instead in the shul’s tzedakah box. He then told me that, if I was interested, he could go research in their archives for any documents they might have on my family in the town, saying it was his job and would be his pleasure. This absolutely blew me away. I thanked him and took my coin with me back to the bus. Throughout the trip, I had taken this small gold coin with me, from Treblinka, where Jews from Tiktin not killed in the forests were sent, to the Kotel, where the Jews from Tiktin, as well as all over the world, have prayed for the coming of Moshiach. This is just something that has been on my mind for the past week and with the liberation of Auschwitz, I thought it would be appropriate to post here.