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Uncovering Jewish Heritage

Uncovering Jewish Heritage

Monthly Archives: April 2015

How Catholic were they?

26 Sunday Apr 2015

Posted by Marysia Galbraith in Catholicism, Family

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Halina Bereday, Maria Bereda(y) Galbraith

I always thought of my babcia as very religious. On her wall, she kept Jesus on the cross and a Madonna in a gilded frame. Her expressions of faith tended toward the mystical. She believed in miracles and blessings. She prayed on the rosary. She blessed my friend Kara’s baby daughter the first time she held her. She must have been about 90 then.

A bad photo, but one of the few I have of Babcia's apartment on Riverside Drive, showing her Madonna in a gilded frame.

A bad photo, but one of the few I have of Babcia’s apartment on Riverside Drive, showing her Madonna in a gilded frame.

And yet, she never took me to a church service. I wonder if any of my brothers or cousins remember going to church with her?

My mother used to say Babcia was “more Catholic than the Pope.” I don’t think mom appreciated such public expressions of faith. Sometime after 1985, Babcia moved to an assisted living facility in Flushing. It had mostly Jewish residents including many Holocaust survivors. It may have even been run by a Jewish service organization. I’m pretty sure one of our Jewish relatives helped her get a place there, though of course at the time no one told me anything about that. Babcia did not like living there. Doubtless, much of it had to do with her declining health that made it impossible to stay independent in her old apartment, but she also seemed disdainful of the other residents. She flaunted her Catholicism and rebuffed their attempts to befriend her. I don’t think the managers cared much for Babcia, either. When her health declined to the point she couldn’t take care of herself, they said they have no place for her in their more advanced care facilities. She moved for the last time to a nursing home back in Manhattan, around the corner from St. John the Devine Cathedral. Babcia spent most of her life denying her Jewish heritage. I suspect it was too uncomfortable for her to be surrounded by Jews in a Jewish-identified institution.

When my mom talked about her Catholic faith, she essentially did so in the past tense. She was very devout as a child, and wanted to become a nun. When she was fifteen, she went to a boarding school in Belgium run by nuns. One story she told me about living there was that her mother sent her a box of chocolates. She gave them all away, believing that kind of self-sacrifice was an expression of her faith. Then, that night she cried herself to sleep because she wanted one so bad.

Mama liked to sit in churches, but she didn’t go to services. Or if she did go, she didn’t take communion. She said it’s because she doesn’t go to confession. When I asked her why not, she said everything she experienced during and after the war made her grow distant from the church. Mama’s temple was our backyard. She called herself a pantheist, and said that when she wants to pray she just goes outside and meditates. Her mantra was “ocean.” For as long as she could, mama had a chair she would move around the yard depending on the sun and which flowers were in bloom. Thanks to Krystyna, she still gets out into her garden most days.

Mama in the garden

Mama in the garden

My brothers and I weren’t even baptized. Mama said it was because my dad didn’t want Catholic kids, and she didn’t stand up to him. Rather, she wanted to let us make our own decision about religion when we grew up. Was this odd? At the time I didn’t think so. My dad was an atheist. He had the mind of a scientist and just couldn’t take the leap of faith that, well, faith requires. Later in life, he tried. Maybe it was because his best friend Max became a believer. He read Thomas Merton, and even bought me one of his books. But he simply couldn’t overcome his skepticism. Instead, after retiring, he studied philosophy. My son seems to have inherited this skepticism; at the age of seven he decided God does not exist; he hasn’t changed his mind yet.

I still wonder, though, what could have turned Mama away from the church. Maybe witnessing the destruction of war made her question the existence of God. At least the Christian God, because she remained deeply attuned to God in nature. I think she said it had something to do with her injuries, the long series of failed surgeries, the scars they left behind, and then the final straw, getting tuberculosis and losing a year of her life at a TB hospital in Denver. I also wonder if it had something to do with her Jewish heritage and her failed love affair with a priest. But I’ll leave that story for another post.

Remembering the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, April 19-May 16 1943

19 Sunday Apr 2015

Posted by Marysia Galbraith in Memory, World War II

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Travel with cousin Krysia, Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

Today marks the 72nd anniversary of the beginning of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. This was largest armed resistance of Jews against the Nazis. Fighting lasted nearly a month despite the overpowering force of the Nazis in relation to the sparsely armed Jewish insurgents.

Here is Paul Robeson singing the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising song in Yiddish at a concert in Moscow in 1949:

Robeson’s rich voice communicates to me the pride and bravery of those who rose up against their oppressor. It captures a sense of determination as well as melancholy, as if the fighting was deemed both necessary and doomed.

This short of the film To Live and Die with Honor: The Story of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising gives a brief outline of events:

The video starts with incredible images of the burning ghetto viewed from outside the wall surrounding it. The narrative is a bit heavy handed, but I can’t help feeling that the resistance fighters deserve to be remembered for their heroism. The video also challenges the common perception that Jews went passively to their death in the Holocaust.

Two years ago, my cousin Krysia and I were in Poland beginning our search for traces of our Jewish relatives. We visited the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw just three days after the 70th anniversary, and met a child survivor of the Holocaust. I don’t remember her name, but I’m sure Krysia does. We walked together from Tłomackie Street to the Old City, sharing our stories. Again, I don’t remember the details, but as she described learning (I think later in life) about being adopted and raised in the US after her parents died in the Holocaust I could feel the pain and bewilderment these recollections evoked. When we got to Freta Street in what’s called the New Town (because it’s couple hundred years younger than the medieval Old Town), Krysia and I were drawn into our own family history and following our parents’ footsteps to their home on the Vistula. Before we realized what was happening, our companion had vanished. We looked but didn’t find her again. Krysia tried getting in touch with her later, but I don’t think she got much of a response.

World War II memories and associated emotions remain so real. Especially for witnesses like the woman we met in Warsaw, and witnesses of witnesses like Krysia and me.

I’ve just learned how to embed video into a post, so here is one more worth looking at:

912 Days of the Warsaw Ghetto contains striking footage of the city before and during World War II. I try to imagine my mother on these streets when, as the narrator says, “War may have been coming ever closer but it was nevertheless quite distant.” And then, how her life changed once war broke out.

What happened to Tumska Street?

18 Saturday Apr 2015

Posted by Marysia Galbraith in Polish-Jewish Heritage, Post-World War II, Włocławek

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My great grandparents lived the last years of their lives in Włocławek, a city on the Vistula downriver from Warsaw. I don’t know exactly when or why they moved there, but it was a city that experienced rapid industrialization and growth in the early 20th century. During this time the Jewish population grew to about 20% of the city’s residents. Tomasz Kawski, a professor in the nearby city of Bydgoszcz, has posted an extensive history of Włocławek’s Jews on virtual sztetl. He also showed me around the city in February.

Historically, Jews concentrated around ten streets in the center of town, including Tumska Street which runs from the Old Rynek to the cathedral.[1] This is where Pinkus Kolski and his wife Rachel (my grandfather’s sister) lived and had their store. It was one of the central shopping streets in the city.

When I visited Pini in Israel (he, too is Pinchas like his grandfather, though he has changed his last name to Doron) he and his wife Pnina told me about visiting Włocławek in the 1990s. Here is a photo of Pnina, her mother, and daughter in front of 15 Tumska Street where Pini’s grandparents lived.

My cousins in front of Pinkus and Rachel Kolski's house on Tumska Street, Włocławek

My cousins in front of Pinkus and Rachel Kolski’s house on Tumska Street, Włocławek

And this is what Tumska Street looked like the week after I returned from Israel.DSC03544

DSC03628Tumska Street is in total decay. Some of the abandoned storefronts have prewar wood paneling that hints at the street’s former glory.

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DSC03614Other houses have collapsed into a pile of rubble. Number 15 is gone completely.

A wall stands where 15 Tumska Street used to be. The cathedral is in the background.

A wall stands where 15 Tumska Street used to be. The cathedral is in the background.

I asked a few people why this neighborhood is in such disrepair. I was told the whole city is struggling economically due to the closing of many industries since the fall of communism. About 20% of residents are unemployed. Even before then, residents were moving out of the center and into newer homes and apartments in the outskirts of the city. Also, most of the former Jewish properties were nationalized under communism. In recent years, laws have changed to allow former owners to reclaim their properties, so buildings whose ownership is uncertain or under dispute have been left alone. No one wants to invest in them and risk that someone with a valid claim over them might appear and take possession of them. In fact, communal, city-owned properties nearby are better cared for than those on Tumska Street.

[1] On Virtual Sztetl, Kawski writes, “Ten streets were inhabited by over 88% of the Włocławek Jews (Żabia Street – 6.5%, Kaliska St. – 7.5%, Piekarska St. – 10.1%, Tumska St. – 5.3%, Kościuszki St. – 4.3%, Plac Dąbrowskiego – 6.1%, 3 Maja St. –  26.3%, Łęgska St. –  6.4%, Cygancka St. – 8.4%, Królewiecka St. – 7.5%).”

Jewish heritage in Poland: Remembered pasts and imagined futures

17 Friday Apr 2015

Posted by Marysia Galbraith in Anthropology, Heritage work, Memory, Polish-Jewish Heritage, Research Methodology

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Here is a brief summary of my research project in Poland:

My research on Jewish heritage asks what can be done with the fragments of Jewish culture that remain in Poland, sometimes hidden and sometimes in plain sight? And what value does such memory work have? It might appear that too little is left, or that any attempt to piece together fragments will just expose more horror, trauma, and death. After all, Poland’s numerous and diverse Jewish communities were destroyed in the Holocaust. The few survivors who returned after World War II were made to feel unwelcome by inhospitable neighbors and a political regime that demonized them. By 1968, nearly no Jews were left in Poland. A collective amnesia erased most remaining traces of Poland’s Jews. Physical reminders were torn down or repurposed, and even memories were pushed out of consciousness or silenced. Can anything be gained by revisiting all that has been lost?

I explore these questions on two levels. First, on the social level, I focus on what is actually being done with physical traces of Jewish culture. I have visited Jewish cemeteries and synagogues, including the places where no marker is left of their location. I have also gone to places where active memory work is being done, including commemorative monuments and websites. I have viewed museums and archives where some materials and records are collected. I have talked with curators, artists, historians, and others who engage with the objects of Jewish memory in various ways. From these explorations, it is clear that the silence surrounding Jewish culture in Poland has been challenged at least since the Solidarity period at the beginning of the 1980s, when rediscovering Poland’s historical ethnic and religious diversity was a way of protesting state socialist nationalism which limited all kinds of expressions of difference and freedom. The steady growth of interest in Jewish culture in Poland has been manifested most recently in major projects like Warsaw’s new Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews, but also in much quieter ways in smaller communities all over Poland. I use ethnographic methods to examine the ways contemporary memory projects piece together the fragments of Jewish memory. If you know where to look, fragments of Jewish lives (and deaths) can be found even where whole Jewish communities and their most visible elements like synagogues and cemeteries have been destroyed. These fragments can reveal something about the past, even if it is just in an incomplete and shattered form. And they can point toward the future—the possibilities that might emerge out of traces of memory.

Second, I explore the fragments of Jewish culture on the personal level. Central to this is the archeology of my own hidden Jewish ancestry. I have dug up secret family photographs, pieced together the memories of living relatives, sifted through numerous archives and online records, and finally I discovered extended family I never knew I had—in Israel, the United States, and Europe. But not in Poland, where only scattered hints of my ancestors’ lives remain. In addition to tracing my own family history, I have been gathering the flashes of memory held by witnesses (and others who like me are witnesses of witnesses), as well as the efforts of contemporary Jews to revive the practice of Jewish culture and religion in Poland.

Lapidarium in Wronki

14 Tuesday Apr 2015

Posted by Marysia Galbraith in Cemeteries, Heritage work, Polish-Jewish Heritage, Wronki

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Lapidarium

I didn’t know what a lapidarium is until I went to the opening ceremony for one in Wronki, a town about an hour north of Poznan. The opening was on December 14, 2014. Here are some photos:

Lapidarium in Wronki

Lapidarium in Wronki

Sign outlining the history of Jews in Wronki

Sign outlining the history of Jews in Wronki

Piotr Pojasek speaking at the opening of the Lapidarium in Wronki

Piotr Pojasek speaking at the opening of the Lapidarium in Wronki

Placing a lantern at the opening of the Lapidarium in Wronki

Placing a lantern at the opening of the Lapidarium in Wronki

Flowers and candle lanterns placed at the monument at the heart of the Lapidarium in Wronki

Flowers and candle lanterns placed at the monument at the heart of the Lapidarium in Wronki

A stone with a tree with a broken branch, which became the logo for the lapidarium in Wronki

A stone with a tree with a broken branch, which became the logo for the lapidarium in Wronki

A lapidarium is essentially a place where stones are displayed. In this case, the fragments of the tombstones from the Jewish cemetery were recovered and placed in raised beds. The space around them is filled with small stones about the size of those that customarily would be placed on Jewish graves. Written in Polish, Hebrew, and English on a monument in the shape of a large tombstone are the words:

In memory of the Jewish community that inhabited Wronki from 1507-1939. Lapidarium of tombstones from the destroyed Jewish cemeteries of Wronki

This project represents for me the best of what can be done with the fragments of Jewish culture in Poland. It required the engagement of many different organizations and individuals, most of whom are not Jewish but who felt a moral obligation to recover these stones which were removed from the cemetery during World War II and later used to make a curb on a street in a neighboring village. For some, the lapidarium was a project of reclaiming the town’s heritage. For others it was much more bound up with faith and spirituality.

I’ve been back to Wronki a few times and talked with a number of people involved in the project. I’ll fill out this story in future posts.

Nunia on a camel

10 Friday Apr 2015

Posted by Marysia Galbraith in Family, Memory

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Israel, Maria Weglinska

Nunia on a camel in 1972 at about age 86

Nunia on a camel in 1972 at about age 86

When Nunia was in her mid-80s, she went to Israel. I remember my mom’s wonderment as she described Nunia’s continued vitality. The image that proved it is a photo of Nunia perched upon a camel. The photo is stamped 1973, but cousin Yvonne in Israel remembers showing Nunia around Jerusalem in 1972. Back then, the date in the white edge of photos specified when the prints were made, so maybe Nunia didn’t develop the film right away.

Another camel photo.

Another camel photo, printed in January 1973. Yvonne says these photos were taken near the Dead Sea.

Nunia made an impression on the Israeli cousins, too. She kept a very busy schedule during her visit. When asked about it, she responded, “I can rest when I die.”

I don’t remember any mention of Israel when anyone talked about the trip. Rather, I remember being told Nunia went to Egypt. I was only nine at the time, so maybe I misremember, but my brother Chris remembers this, too. He says even then it seemed odd to him that she went to Egypt and yet there were no photos of the pyramids. Could this have been another instance of hiding the family Jewish connection? If so, it was a bizarre way to do so. Why not just say she went to “the Holy Land,” a common way Christians refer to Israel? I can’t help questioning my memory here—could I have been told she went to the Holy Land, but Egypt stuck in my nine-year-old head because it is the place I associated with camels and desert (and pyramids, which as Chris said were not in the photo)?

One thing I know for sure. I was never told Nunia went to visit family. I feel a deep sense of loss about this, especially since meeting my Israeli family. I’m also deeply embarrassed.

Could this be the Tel Aviv airport?

Could this be the Tel Aviv airport?

Gallery

More photos of the Lutowiska Cemetery

04 Saturday Apr 2015

Posted by Marysia Galbraith in Cemeteries, Jewish Culture, Lutowiska

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This gallery contains 1 photo.

Lutowiska’s Ecomuseum of Three Cultures

03 Friday Apr 2015

Posted by Marysia Galbraith in Cemeteries, Heritage work, Jewish Culture, Lutowiska, Memory, Polish-Jewish relations, Synagogues

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Nestled at the Ukrainian border in the Bieszczady Mountains of southeast Poland, Lutowiska integrates the remnants of the village’s multiethnic past in a walking trail called the Ecomuseum of Three Cultures (here’s a brochure and map ekomuzeum_trzy_kultury-2).

When I moved to Bieszczady in 1992 to do my dissertation fieldwork, some residents of the region had only just started to exercise new postcommunist freedoms by talking openly about their Ukrainian heritage. For the first time, they felt free to speak Ukrainian in public. But neither then nor now, has anyone ever spoken to me in a similar way about their Jewish heritage. Either no one is left, or no one wants to admit it. In Bieszczady, silence persists with regard to the topic of Jews. This is all the more startling when you realize that the prewar towns—Lesko, Lutowiska, Ustrzyki Dolne, Baligród—were all sztetls. Jews outnumbered Christians. According to a guidebook from 1914 (M. Orłowicz Ilustrowany Przewodnik po Galicyi, republished in 1998), Lutowiska had 1700 Jews, 180 Poles, and 720 Rusyns (the name used for the Ukrainian speaking population).

A former Jewish home across the street from the school in Lutowiska

A former Jewish home across the street from the school in Lutowiska. Characteristic for the time, it was made of wood with a stone foundation.

Today, Lutowiska is a large village on the road that runs south from Ustrzyki Dolne into the high mountains of Bieszczady National Park. Immediately after World War II, it fell on the Soviet side of the border, but it was annexed to Poland in 1951 as part of a land swap. Residents were forced to move, as well; those from the chunk of Poland that was ceded to the Soviet Union were moved to the region between Ustrzyki Dolne and Lutowiska that had been depopulated during and after the war. I did my original fieldwork with some of the children of these resettled farmers who never got used to the rocky, hilly soil and colder weather of the higher elevations and longed for the rich, flat farmlands they were forced to leave behind.

So one possible explanation for the silence about the Jewish residents who were brutally murdered during the war is that very few prewar residents, those who would have had personal memories of Jews, remained in Bieszczady. Of course, this isn’t a sufficient explanation. It seems that many forces converged to produce this absence of memory. The state socialist government evoked Marxist internationalism to deemphasize ethnic differences while at the same time trying to solidify Poland’s claim over the land by Polonizing the resident population. Church rhetoric, too, frequently demonized Jews. Certain stereotypes persist in everyday discourse—Poland was weakened by Jewish domination of commerce, and Jews running the contemporary press constantly criticize the Church and the government. Some repeated a phrase they said Jews used to tell Poles, “the streets are yours but the buildings are ours.” But mostly in my experience, not even disparaging stereotypes broke the silence surrounding the topic of Jews; they simply were not talked about.

This backdrop of silence makes it all the more remarkable that, when a group of young Lutowiska residents got together in the early 2000s to explore ways of promoting their village, they decided to view the region’s multiethnic history as an asset rather than a liability. They were not specifically interested in Jewish heritage. Rather, they had a more pragmatic goal: to create attractions that would encourage tourists passing through on their way to the high mountains to stop for a while in Lutowiska. To achieve this, they developed a project called the Ecomuseum of Three Cultures, a 13 kilometer walking trail with information tablets at various sites associated with the village’s cultural and natural history. The three cultures were distinguished most clearly by faith—Roman Catholic (generally understood to be Polish), Uniate (generally understood to be Ukrainian), or Jewish. The trail includes views of the high peaks of the Bieszczady Mountains and the site where the classic Pan Wołodyjowski (1968) was filmed. It winds past the 19th century Catholic church, the former site of the Uniate church, and the ruins of the Jewish synagogue.

One of the main designers of the museum, Agnieszka Magda-Pyzocha, teaches at the local school. She explained to me that nearly everyone forgot that the synagogue ruins still stood right at the heart of the village. For years, the old walls were used by the Polish Army’s Border Patrol as a trash dump. Agnieszka explained:

I remember when I was a child I walked there and saw that some stones stood, trees growing out of them, and nearly nobody knew. By looking in various sources, talking with people, and looking at photographs, we discovered that this was the synagogue that used to be here. Several truckloads of trash were carted away, the whole place was cleaned, and in this way it became an attraction that most residents had known nothing about for all these years.

Synagogue ruins and information sign, Lutowiska

Synagogue ruins and information sign, Lutowiska

An information board next to the synagogue ruins outlines the history of Jews in Lutowiska. It points out that, contrary to popular belief, most Jews were poor. Most were petty traders and craftspeople, though a few were farmers. The wealthiest Jews in Lutowiska were the Rand family. Mendel Rand started out as a traveling trader of sewing supplies. He worked hard enough to buy a country inn (karczma), and eventually bought the home of the local nobleman. On June 22, 1942, Nazi soldiers instructed Ukrainian peasants to dig trenches near the Catholic Church. That evening Ukrainian police gathered 650 Jews remaining in Lutowiska and neighboring villages Two Nazi officers shot them all, and had them buried in the trenches. A teenage boy escaped and hid in the Jewish cemetery, but he was discovered and brought back. Only seventeen-year old Blima Meyer survived; she was pulled out of the mass grave still alive (A. Potocki, Żydzi na Podkarpaciu 2004).

Lutowiska synagogue ruins

Lutowiska synagogue ruins

Information sign next to the synagogue, Lutowiska

Information sign next to the synagogue, Lutowiska

A boy connecting with his Jewish roots.

A boy connecting with his Jewish roots.

The Jewish cemetery is on a hill that is visible from the synagogue, but to reach it you have to go down to the school, back around the playing fields, and up a dirt road. It holds as many as 1000 headstones, some dating back to the 18th century. The cemetery was easier to get around in November than it was in August because the grass and weeds had died back. It is on a hill, with a steep slope to one side that is also covered with tombstones. Many stones are decorated with lions or deer (on males’ graves only), birds or candles (females only), crowns or torahs (for men with knowledge of the torah). In places, trees have grown into and around the grave markers. As Agnieszka noted, there is no graffiti or trash in the cemetery. She also told me a group of students from Dartmouth were there for about 3 days this summer. They built steps up to a gate they installed, cleaned some of the stones (they had an expert help them do this), and cut the grass. On the Internet, I saw Dartmouth Rabbi Edward Boraz organizes service trips to a different Jewish cemetery each summer. It’s called Project Preservation.

Tombstones in the Lutowiska Jewish Cemetery

Tombstones in the Lutowiska Jewish Cemetery

Agnieszka likes to visit the cemetery: “It’s peaceful there, and sometimes it’s so pretty when the sun is setting and the light is falling a certain way. I lie down in the grass between those tombstones, birds sing, I feel peaceful and some sort of connection.”

At first I couldn’t find the plaque marking the site where 650 Jews were murdered by Nazis. Between the Catholic church and cemetery, there was a monument to those killed at Katyn and another for victims of Ukrainian aggression. I asked someone walking by and she explained the place I was looking for was up the road on the other side of the church. Notably, she knew, and was very pleasant about sharing the information with me.

Monument at the mass grave, Lutowiska

Monument at the mass grave, Lutowiska

And there it was, a short way off the road down a shrub-lined pathway—a simple monument with two plaques. I almost cried when I saw it. The inscriptions read:

Mass grave for Jewish and Gypsy victims of terror murdered in 1943 [sic] by Nazis

In memory of 650 victims of fascism shot here by the Gestapo in 1943 [sic]—The people of Lutowiska 1969

It is disturbing to stand on a place where hundreds of people were brutally murdered.

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I was deeply moved to see perhaps a dozen candle lanterns and a bouquet of red roses left at the site, probably earlier that week on the occasion of All Saint’s Day. Granted, it’s barely marked from the street. There is just a small sign on a tree saying “National Memorial, Places of Martyrdom.” But it is well maintained. It has not been forgotten as have so many other places I’ve visited associated with Jewish life.

Marker for "National Memorial, Places of Martyrdom"

Marker for “National Memorial, Places of Martyrdom”

Thanks to the Ecomuseum of Three Cultures, Lutowiska feels like a place that has embraced its history, even the tragic events. They have literally cleaned the trash out of the synagogue ruins and marked the site with a sign that hints at the life Jews had there, and how it ended.

Purim po Polsku

03 Friday Apr 2015

Posted by Marysia Galbraith in Jewish Culture, Poznan

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Gmina Żydowska Poznan, Purim

As I look forward to the Passover celebration at the Gmina Żydowska (Jewish Community) in Poznań, I’m remembering Purim which occurred last month. Purim is a fun holiday; people dress up, give gifts, and tell the story of Esther who outsmarts the evil Haman and saves the Jews. The celebration also involves feasting and drinking.

Hamentashen

Hamentashen

The evening started with a brief introduction to the holiday, conducted in the form of questions and answers. Purim is celebrated on 14 Adat (on the Hebrew calendar) in most places, on 15 Adat in walled cities. I learned that Purim is particularly associated with Jerusalem, which is why holiday preparations were already in full swing when I was there in February. The candy stores, basket sellers, and costume shops in the Mahane Jehuda Market were busy with customers.

Four things should be done on Purim; the story of Esther is told, donations are given to the poor, presents are given to family and friends, and you are supposed to have fun. Everyone was given a gift box that included a booklet in Hebrew, a noisemaker, toys, and snacks. Copies of the story of Esther were passed out, and participants took turns reading it out loud. Any time the name “Haman” was mentioned everyone stamped their feet and sounded their noisemakers. Haman was advisor to the Persian King Ahasuerus who conspired to kill the Jews, but he was outsmarted by Mordecai and Esther, Queen of the Persians. Celebration and feasting are supposed to commemorate these events.

Everyone received a gift box

Everyone received a gift box

Guests filled two long tables; some wore funny hats. There were visitors from Israel, Germany, and the US, and I sat beside Jose Maria Florencio, conductor for the Pomeranian Philharmonic in Bydgoszcz. A native of Brazil, he came to Poland 30 years ago to get a masters degree and never left. After discovering his crypto-Jewish heritage, he converted and is now a practicing Jew.

Głos Wielkopolski published an article with more photos.

Photo by Waldemar Wylegalski, Głos Wielkopolski 3-5-2015

Photo by Waldemar Wylegalski, Głos Wielkopolski 3-5-2015

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All original text and images are copyright © Marysia Galbraith. Please contact the author before quoting.

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