Author Archives: Marysia Galbraith

Traveling with Babcia

31 Tuesday May 2016

Posted by in Bereda, Family, Memory

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Babcia died over twenty years ago, shortly before I returned from my doctoral fieldwork in Poland. The last time I saw her was a few months before she passed, when she was already on her way. She did not recognize me, or my brother Chris, and didn’t even acknowledge our presence. Except, she grabbed my hand—at first, I thought it was because she knew who I was, but in fact she just used my finger to scratch her ear. It was an intimate and disturbing final contact between us.

The last time we spoke was a year and a half earlier, right before I left for Poland. Babcia was already 97, in assisted living, but still sharp. She became agitated about my trip, cajoling me, “Don’t fall in love with a Polish man.” She warned me against life in Poland, she said a Polish man would not treat me well; she was afraid I would not return. She insisted there was nothing for me there, that she and the rest of the family decided to leave Poland to seek a better life in the US.

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Babcia in Florida, late 1950s.

Babcia was a mystic. She believed she could see the future, and even though I did not fall in love with a Polish man and I did come back, often it seemed like her premonitions were right. Mama also had an uncanny ability to sense things, but with her it was more psychological. Mama was deeply empathetic and could intuit the emotional states of others.

There was very little fanfare when Babcia died. I missed the funeral because I wasn’t told about it. Mama didn’t want me to cut my trip short to attend. Babcia was cremated, in accordance with her wishes. She also wanted to be buried in Poland with her husband Zygmunt who died nearly fifty years earlier in 1945, but no one seemed to have the will to make it happen. Instead, my cousin Alexandra brought the ashes home and placed them on an altar in her home, where they stayed for many years.

In 2015, when I returned from my year in Poland, we had a family reunion. I took it as an opportunity to offer to take Babcia back home to Poland. It’s something I have thought about doing for a long time, and I finally I got up the nerve to make it happen. I’m the one who can do it. I speak the language and know my way around.

At first, it seemed my cousin would be reluctant to give Babcia up. But when I visited her mother a short time after the family reunion, the ashes were there waiting for me in their metal box.

So I brought her to my home in Alabama, where she has rested in my pottery studio awaiting this trip to Poland.

I knew I would not be able to bring a metal box through airport security, but still was reluctant to remove Babcia from her resting place. I waited until the night before my departure. I apprehensively removed the screws from the lid, and found a metal tin like a paint can inside labeled with Babcia’s name and the date she died. I have been told that surprisingly little is left after cremation, but I still was taken aback that even the tin, quite a bit smaller and lighter than the box, was filled halfway with paper. A whole body reduced to little more than a quart of ashes. I transferred them to the plastic bag nestled in the bottom of the box (no doubt for this purpose), and put that into a zippered bag I got at the Black Sea in Israel. She will be buried in a ceramic urn I made.

I had read that it’s not a problem bringing cremated remains on airplanes, so I set them in the bottom of my carry-on luggage. It was detected in the x-ray screening at the Birmingham Airport. I apprehensively explained what it was as the bag was being searched. The screener was very kind. She did some sort of test for explosives but let me through without otherwise disturbing the ashes.

So Babcia is on her way back to Poland. We’ll see what happens at the cemetery. When I called several months ago to inquire about the procedure, the person I spoke with was initially very confused. However, once he understood that Babcia was cremated, she died over twenty years ago, and there is already a family plot, he told me to just call once I get to Poland and we’ll make arrangements then. I hope it’s really that easy.

The Polish Shirley Temple and her sister the poet

25 Wednesday May 2016

Posted by in Memory, Names, Poland, Polish-Jewish Heritage, Pre-World War II, World War II

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ReniaEvent1

 

Elizabeth Bellak and my mother met in Poland, when Elizabeth was just a child and mama a teenager. Years later, they reconnected in New York and have been best friends and confidants ever since. Elizabeth, her husband George, and their children Andrew and Alexandra visited us on Long Island more often than our biological relatives did. In fact, I’ve grown up calling her my aunt.

Elizabeth is as outgoing as my mother is shy. She loves to socialize, to tell stories, even to sing and dance. She dresses elegantly in heels and designer clothes, her hair and make up always perfect. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her in pants.

But she and my mother share a deep fondness for each other. They also share a hidden Jewish heritage that they kept silent about until recently. Elizabeth was actually Ariana Spiegel, born in eastern Poland in what is now Ukraine. Her talent was recognized at a young age, when she appeared in films like Gehenna, and was called “the Polish Shirley Temple.”

Ariana as the Gypsy girl in Gehenna, 1938.
Review of Ariana Spigiel’s performance in Gehenna. She is called the “Polish Shirley Temple.” In Kurier Filmowy 1938, vol. 12, nr.27.
Ariana Spigiel

Her older sister Renia was equally talented, though as a writer and poet. Renia kept a diary for the last few years of her short life which has just been published along with her poetry (in Polish, though there are plans for it to be published in English as well).

I can’t wait to read it.

 

ReniaEvent2

 

 

 

Tornado and Trauma

09 Monday May 2016

Posted by in Memory, Trauma

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On May 1, some friends and I ran 7.4 miles from one side of town to the other tracing the route of the tornado that tore through the heart of Tuscaloosa five years ago. I’d run the same course just a few weeks after the storm. I took photos both times.

Six sweaty runners!

With my running buddies after we traced the path of the Tuscaloosa tornado five years after it came through town. Some greenery behind us, but before the storm there would have been tall trees.

In retrospect, it is remarkable to me how little attention I paid to the severe weather predictions throughout the day on April 27, 2011. It was nearing the end of the semester so I was busy with final classes. Besides, National Weather Service warnings, tornado sirens, and weatherman James Spann’s call to “get into your safe place” had become commonplace over my 14 years in Alabama. Of course, when the sirens went off in my neighborhood, I went down to the basement with Ian, who was seven years old at the time. I also checked in on Jeremy, who had been teaching on campus. He was waiting out the storm in the basement of Phifer Hall, which had been a fallout shelter during the Cold War. So I felt reassured Jeremy would be okay there.

Jeremy is a belt and suspenders man, so our unfinished basement has a television, camp chairs, and a battery-powered radio. I watched as James Spann, who knows every town and intersection in Alabama, reported on dozens of tornados tracking through the state.

One of the biggest came straight through Tuscaloosa, leaving a trail of rubble and downed trees six miles long and a half mile wide, running diagonally from one side of town to the other. Until it happened, I would never have imagined it ever could happen. Even as reports came in about the path of the tornado, I couldn’t quite grasp it. In Northport where I live, just two miles to the north, it wasn’t even raining. It was ominously still and an eerie yellow glow filled the sky. The rain came only after the tornado passed

Understanding the scale of the damage was also slowed by the destruction of infrastructure—phone lines and cell towers down, roads impassable. Our family was lucky. None of us were harmed. The tornado ran south of campus. We never even lost power, phones, or Internet. But nevertheless, the storm touched us deeply, and in a way that still affects us.

Rosedale Court 2011
Rosedale Court 2016
Wood Manor neighborhood 2011. Metal wrapped in tree
New apartments where Wood Manor used to be 2016

Fifty-three people died in Tuscaloosa (and 252 in the state). Considering the extent of the physical damage, we’re lucky the number was not much higher. In an instant, 12% of the city was destroyed. Follow this link to a video of the tornado, filmed from the parking lot of University Mall. The voice at the beginning is James Spann reporting on the track of the storm.

The experience gives me a glimpse of what it might have been like to endure the trauma of war. In an instant everything is changed. The physical world that seemed so permanent is suddenly obliterated. And it doesn’t make a lot of sense why some people survived and others died. But as horrible as the storm was, it can’t compare to the scale of World War II. And I can only imagine how much more emotionally damaging it would have been to face a human threat rather than a natural one. The former requires accommodating the fact of human agency—that people chose to wreak that destruction on others.

The five-year-anniversary run left me unsettled. I was transported back to the shock of the days following the storm, when the magnitude of the destruction sank in. I passed by the places where people died—Rosedale Court, a housing project that was nearly leveled; Charleston Square Apartments, parts of which lost all but their foundation while others stood battered but whole; the corner of 6th Avenue and 27th Street where a University of Alabama student was sucked out of her home and dropped in a field across the street. I also passed by the places where I helped clean out destroyed homes together with a crew of two-dozen anthropology faculty and students.

Shopping Center Mcfarland Blvd. and 13th St. 2011
Apartments McFarland and 13th St. 2016
9 1/2 Street E. Alberta City 2011
10th St. E. Alberta City 2016

For days, we all lived the storm. It seemed the whole city came together to give food, shelter, and comfort to those who needed it. But after a period of intensive engagement, I had to block it all out. I didn’t want to see any more videos of the twister. I even avoided driving through the tornado zone because each time, my shock was renewed. I couldn’t get used to the long vistas, more like the deserts of the southwest than the southeast’s dense forests. Without the tall trees dividing them, places that used to seem so far apart appeared to be much closer. The blue water tower near Rosedale Court and the Druid City Hospital became landmarks visible for miles. Even Forest Lake stood out as a blue patch surrounded by barren land.

27th St 2016. The Blue Water Tower, now a landmark, used to be obscured by trees.
Lake Ave. 2016. New bike trail.

Today the city is rebuilding. Shopping centers and apartment complexes are filling in the corridor along 15th Street and McFarland Boulevard. Greenery has returned to the landscape, though it will be decades before the trees grow tall enough to once again block the view of the water tower and the hospital.

Five years after the storm, social and economic inequalities continue to be inscribed in the landscape. The fancy houses on the hill were rebuilt almost immediately, while just a few blocks away, whole city blocks remain empty fields. Stores and shopping centers east of the university have not returned. But there are also some signs of change. Subsidized housing, functional brick boxes before the storm, have been replaced by gorgeous two-story buildings with steeply pitched roofs. The new Alberta Elementary has been designated an arts magnet school. A bike trail will wind through the heart of town. Plans have just been revealed for a new park with three fountains. You could call it a rebirth. Still patchy. But remarkable considering the magnitude of the destruction.

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The scar left from the tornado is fading. See more here: https://weather.com/storms/tornado/news/tuscaloosa-tornado-scar-fades

Council for European Studies Conference

15 Friday Apr 2016

Posted by in antisemitism, Brześć Kujawski, Commemoration, Family, Fieldwork, Heritage work, Jewish Culture, Kolski, Memory, Piwko, Poland, Polish Culture, Polish-Jewish Heritage, Polish-Jewish relations, Research Methodology, Włocławek

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Yesterday, I presented a paper titled, “Reassembling Jewish Life in Poland.” It starts like this:

It is easy to get the impression that we have entered an era of retrenchment of exclusionary national, ethnic, and religious categories, making minorities of any kind suspect. Specific objects of fear, such as terrorists, raise suspicions about broader categories, such as Muslims; the economic threat attributed to immigrants extends to all Mexicans, Syrians, North Africans, or Eastern Europeans. And Jews have once again become the object of attacks in Western Europe, leading Atlantic journalist Jeffrey Goldberg (2015) to title his recent cover article, “Is it Time for the Jews to Leave Europe?” In the current climate of exclusionary politics, the quiet emergence in Poland of efforts to embrace the long history of Jewish residence is all the more striking. Recent studies have “revisited” Jewish Poland (Lehrer 2013) and documented the “return of the Jew” (Reszke 2013), challenging the common assumption that antisemitism rests at the heart of what it means to be Polish. I have been studying contemporary memory projects, including commemorative sites, museums, and cultural festivals that endeavor to reassemble the remaining fragments that provide a window into what Jewish life (and its destruction) was like in Poland. These fragments can reveal something about the past, even if it is just in an incomplete and shattered form. Perhaps of greater significance, they can point toward the future—the possibilities for reengaging with ethnic and religious categories in ways that acknowledge difference without encouraging exclusion. 

Placing a lantern at the opening of the Lapidarium in Wronki
The Atlantic, April 2015

The figure of the Jew remains a multivalent symbol in Poland, even after the destruction of Jewish culture during the Holocaust and further erasure of its traces during state socialism. My research on Jewish heritage asks what can be done with the fragments of Jewish culture that remain, 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. Nevertheless, the steady growth of interest in Jewish culture in Poland can be seen in major projects like Warsaw’s Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews, and in much quieter ways in smaller communities throughout the country. Even President Duda, whose Law and Justice Party tends to support nationalism and exclusionary practices, recently spoke against antisemitism at the opening of the Ulma Family Museum of Poles Saving Jews. To set the stage for my reflections about reassembled fragments of Jewish culture, I first situate Jews within the disrupted history of Poland, and discuss the consequences of postwar trauma under state socialism. This is also a first attempt at integrating an ethnographic approach to the topic, through exploration of commemorative sites and practices, and a more personal one, in the form of interwoven stories about my own Jewish-Polish heritage. Building on concepts of postmemory (Hirsch) and absence of memory (Irwin-Zarecka), I consider what reassembly projects promise for the reconciliation of Polish-Jewish relations on both social and personal levels.

I focused on Włocławek for my case material: Places embodying the “absence of memory” such as the swimming pool in the Jewish cemetery in Brześć Kujawski, the crumbling buildings formerly owned by Jews in the center of Włocławek, and the monument to the Jewish ghetto in the schoolyard that used to be the Jewish cemetery. I discussed what such places communicate about the history of Jewish life (and death) in Poland, as well as the personal, emotional resonances of such places.

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Pre-World War II facade on Tumska Street, Włocławek

Then, I contrasted the impression left by the the Facebook page, “Włocławska Zapomniana Ulica (Forgotten Street of Włocławek),” in which students and teachers at the Automotive High School in Włocławek document “Places of the Holocaust close to us.” The site features historic photographs, brief histories, and excerpts from interviews with local historians and residents who remember the Nazi occupation of the city. This is heavy stuff, and yet the project reflects a different orientation toward the past than do the crumbling buildings on abandoned streets and the swimming pool in a burial ground. It is a public display of intangible heritage, a space for documenting the murder and destruction that occurred during the Holocaust in very personal, localized terms. The Facebook page announces, “These events happened here, on our streets.” It is all the more notable because the primary organizers and audience in this project are young people, probably in most cases the post-postmemory generation that was supposed to be too distant from events to feel any personal connection to them.

And the story doesn’t stop here. I am looking forward to visiting the high school students and their teachers in June. And now my cousins are also interested in the project and maybe even getting involved with it somehow. The ethnographic and personal strands of my work continue to become more strongly intertwined.

 

Włocławek Youth Document Jewish History

10 Sunday Apr 2016

Posted by in Heritage work, Jewish Culture, Kolski, Memory, Piwko, Polish-Jewish Heritage, Post-World War II, Synagogues, World War II, Włocławek

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When I visited Włocławek last February, I was disheartened by the crumbling historic buildings that were formerly owned by pre-World War II Jewish residents. Still, I met a few people actively involved in documenting and preserving the memory of the city’s Jewish population. They include: Mirosława Stojak, who writes about Włocławek’s Jews and manages the website zydzi.wloclawek.pl, Tomasz Wąsik, the historian and director of the Museum of History in Włocławek, and Tomasz Kawski, a historian and professor at Kazimierz the Great University in Bydgoszcz, and author of several books on the history of Polish Jews.

And now high school students in Włocławek have been collecting photographs, writing historical accounts, and doing interviews with people who remember the events of World War II. Their work can be seen on their Facebook page. Here are just a few of the photos they have posted. The synagogue on Królowiecka Street:

Synagogue on ul. Królowiecka, Włocławek

Synagogue on ul. Królowiecka, Włocławek

The synagogue on Zabia Street:

Synagogue ul. Żabia, Włocławek
Synagogue ul. Żabia, Włocławek

 

And here the synagogue in flames:

The synagogue in flames. Source: http://www.4ict.pl/szlaki_pamieci/
Jews in front of the burned Włocławek synagogue. Source: http://www.4ict.pl/szlaki_pamieci/

The students write on their Facebook page:

“On September 24, 1939, Germans ordered Jews they selected to bring a barrel full of tar to the synagogue on Żabia Street. Then they forced them to ignite the fire.

In this way, one of the prettiest synagogues in Poland ceased to exist. The synagogue on Królowiecka Street met the same fate.”

“24 września 1939 roku Niemcy nakazali wyznaczonym przez siebie Żydom wprowadzenie do Synagogi na ulicy Żabiej beczek wypełnionych smołą. Następnie zmusili ich do wzniecenia pożaru.
“Tym samym przestała istnieć jedna z najpiękniejszych Synagog w Polsce.
Podobny los spotkał Synagogę przy ulicy Królewieckiej.”

So while horrible truths are communicated, this project and the Facebook page that documents it stand out to me as a marker of hope. A new generation of Włocławek residents are learning about this difficult history, and returning the story of what happened to the city’s Jews to the center of the narrative about their hometown.

 

 

Swimming in the Synagogue?

20 Sunday Mar 2016

Posted by in Commemoration, Jewish Culture, Polish-Jewish Heritage, Post-World War II, Poznan, Pre-World War II, Synagogues, World War II

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How, realistically, can Jewish heritage be preserved in Poland? Some projects are easy to get behind, like the lapidarium in Wronki. Others fall into more problematic ethical territory. The fact remains that there are many more sites in need of preservation than there are funds for such projects. And yet, I would argue that because of the magnitude of the destruction of Jewish life in Poland, every fragment has enhanced value.

The survival of a building as grand as the New Synagogue in Poznań is thus of particular worth. As with most remaining synagogues in Poland, the New Synagogue was not destroyed because it was repurposed. The Nazis converted the building into a swimming pool; after World War II, it remained a municipal pool until 2011. Although there has been ongoing public debate about more appropriate uses of the space, which at some point was passed back into the hands of the Jewish Community, the main reason the pool was finally closed was because of its deteriorating condition.

The New Synagogue was built in 1907 on Stawna Street between Wroniecka and Żydowska (Jewish) Street, just a few blocks from the central market square of the old city. Intended for Poznań’s wealthier Jewish citizens, the imposing structure had a seating capacity of 1200 and a large copper-covered cupola. Its size and grandeur is all the more striking, considering the Jewish population of the city was under 6000 when the synagogue was built, and further dwindled to perhaps 3000 right before World War II (statistics from Virtual Sztetl).

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Poznań’s New Synagogue in 1907 when it was first opened and in 2011, around the time the swimming pool closed (photos from: http://www.januszmarciniak.pl/synagogue)

As these photos show, the German occupiers also removed the cupola and other ornate features, leaving a far less elaborate structure. For several years, starting in 2004, artists like Janusz Marciniak were involved in installations and commemorative events that used the pool as a focal point. Some of these include Marciniak’s  Atlantis (2004),  Alphabet (2005), and 9/09/1939 (2006).

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Poznań’s New Synagogue in 1907 when it was first opened and in 2011, around the time the swimming pool closed (photos from: http://www.januszmarciniak.pl/synagogue)

The Jewish Community, together with others interested in preserving the New Synagogue, proposed restoring the building to its prewar shape and condition, and housing a Center for Dialog and Tolerance. Unfortunately, the plan failed to gain the institutional support and financial backing necessary for it to be realized.

But now there is a new plan in the works, to turn the synagogue into a hotel. In and of itself, that is not the worst outcome; investors will preserve and upgrade the structure, which will include a mini-museum with information about the building’s origins and the history of Poznań’s Jews. So while a museum, or memorial, or center for dialog and tolerance would be preferable, at least the synagogue won’t be torn down, as some city leaders suggested as recently as 2006.

Artist’s rendering of the proposed hotel project. The prewar copper-clad dome is reimagined in glass. Photo from article in Gazeta Wyborcza
Elements of the pool being disassembled. Photo by Łukasz Cynalewski

But putting another pool in the synagogue is, as my husband put it, kind of tone deaf. It’s insensitive to the cruel history of the place.

A recent article in Gazeta Wyborcza about the planned hotel begins with the following fable:

(my translation) “Summer 2020. Early morning at the hotel on Wroniecki Street at the corner of Stawna Street. In a luxury room in the former Jewish synagogue Alessandro Gianini, a tourist from Rome, wakes up. He flew into Poznan the night before and stayed in the modern hotel with intriguing architecture. In the guidebook, he read that the glass copula of the building recreates the old outline of an imposing synagogue. Now he wants to look around the city.

“But before Alessandro sets out for the Old Market Square, he goes down to the second floor for a swim in the hotel pool. The swim helps to relax and awaken him. He changes, and full of life goes down to the ground floor to the restaurant. After a light breakfast and a cappuccino, he heads to the exit. In the hall, however, he sees an open door to a small space. A sign in English hangs on it: “Museum of the Jews of Wielkopolski.”

“Intrigued, Gianini looks inside. He sees large boards–reproductions of sepia-colored photographs. On the first of these–a long swimming pool under a high vaulted ceiling. On the wall of the pool–a fascist eagle.

“Surprised, the Italian looks at the caption below the photo: “In 1940 Nazi occupiers profaned the synagogue, removing the Star of David from it and building a pool inside of it.

“Alessandro suddenly feels ashamed. Because of his morning swim in the place where 80 years earlier Nazis showed complete contempt for the feelings and religion of Jews, and then sentenced them to a horrible death. He is ashamed and embarrassed. And more than anything surprised that history could be repeated in this cruelly perverse way…”

(the original Polish is in the article)

I don’t know anything more about these plans, except for rumors I heard while I was in Poznań last year, and the contents of this article. Perhaps if they do include a pool, it will be located in some new addition to the structure, in a less offensive place than the main sanctuary. I certainly hope so.

Southern Conference on Slavic Studies

18 Friday Mar 2016

Posted by in Anthropology, Cemeteries, Heritage work, Identity, Jewish Culture, Memory, Polish-Jewish Heritage, Polish-Jewish relations, Wronki

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The Southern Conference on Slavic Studies has its annual meeting right here in Tuscaloosa starting today until March 19. Tomorrow, I will present a paper about my heritage work in Poland. Here is the abstract:

From Curbstones to Commemoration: Reincorporating the Memory of Jewish Life in a Polish Town

The figure of the Jew remains a multivalent symbol in Poland, resilient even in the face of the destruction of Jewish culture during the Holocaust and erasure of its traces during state socialism. 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? The growth of interest in Jewish culture in Poland can be seen not just in major cities, but also in smaller communities throughout the country. I focus on one commemorative project in one Polish town to illustrate changing, though still contested, orientations toward the history of Jewish residence in Poland. Specifically, I examine the rescue of fragments of Jewish tombstones from a street curb where they rested for sixty years, and the decade-long effort of multiple stakeholders to return the stones to a place of commemoration. I argue that an essential component of the project was to reincorporate the history of Jews into the wider history of the town—a kind of making what was regarded as “other” (“obcy”) into something that is one’s own (swój). The Lapidarium of tombstones from the old Jewish cemetery in Wronki has literally become a place on the map, and has returned the memory of Jewish lives to town residents and visitors. The fragments of tombstones, historical sign, and commemorative marker reveal something about the past, even if it is just in an incomplete and shattered form. And they point toward the future—the possibilities that might emerge out of reassembling Jewish life in Poland.

In memory of the Jewish community that inhabited Wronki from 1507-1939. Lapidarium of tombstones from the destroyed Jewish cemeteries of Wronki
Lapidarium of Jewish Tombstones, Wronki
Lapidarium of Jewish Tombstones, Wronki
Stone offering on the monument at the lapidarium in Wronki

This is my first effort to make sense of one of the most inspiring heritage projects I witnessed while in Poland last year–the lapidarium of Jewish tombstones in Wronki. I describe the project as a collective representation–symbolic of an inclusive concept of Wronki history (and by extension Polish history). Jewish residents, although they are no longer present, nevertheless comprise an essential element of that history. As such, this new resting place for Jewish tombstones represents the return of the memory of Jews back into the center of town and the center of residents’ consciousness.

But more tomorrow–my panel is from 10:15-12 PM at the Embassy Suites in downtown Tuscaloosa.

Jewish Krakow 1992

01 Tuesday Mar 2016

Posted by in Cemeteries, Fieldwork, Jewish Culture, Kazimierz, Krakow, Memory, Poland, Polish-Jewish Heritage, Polish-Jewish relations

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During my photography expeditions in 1992, Krakow’s Kazimierz district caught my eye. Kazimierz has long been associated with Krakow’s Jewish population. It became a separate city for Jews when new regulations restricted their access to Krakow’s center during the 15th century. Before World War II, Kazimierz was incorporated into Krakow, but still most residents were Jewish. After the war, a tiny Jewish community congregated in a few remaining Jewish organizations. Despite their small numbers, the district continued to be associated with Jewish culture.

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A menorah motif on the fence around the green space on Szeroka Street, 1992

Over the past 25 years, Jewish life has returned to Kazimierz. It’s an eclectic community of people who define their links to Judaism and Jewish culture in a wide range of ways, including Poles who have recently rediscovered or reconnected with their Jewish heritage, Jews from the US or Israel or elsewhere, and people who simply appreciate Jewish culture. This is not a return to the prewar Jewish community; it is its own unique hybrid. Erica Lehrer describes the disparate strands that are woven together in Kazimierz in her book Jewish Poland Revisited: Heritage Tourism in Unquiet Places. It’s well worth reading for anyone interested in understanding something about what’s happening in Kazimierz today.

But back in 1992, the main site of active Jewish culture in Poland was the Remuh synagogue and adjoining cemetery.

Remuh cemetery, 1992. Stones left on a tombstone
Inside the Remuh synagogue courtyard, 1992
Remuh cemetery, the synagogue in the background, 1992

These are some of the older graves in Kazimierz, with the distinctive vaulted grave covers.

Part of the cemetery is surrounded by a wall made of fragments of tombstones. During World War II, many of these stones had been repurposed around the city as sidewalks and roadbeds, but they were recovered and placed in this wall.

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Wall around the Remuh cemetery, composed of fragments of tombstones recovered from building projects after World War II.

I also visited the larger Jewish cemetery off of Miodowa Street. Here are newer graves, dating from the 19th-20th centuries, including some postwar burials. The opulence of some of the tombstones attests to the prominence of the people buried here.

New Jewish Cemetery, Krakow 1992
New Jewish Cemetery, Krakow 1992
New Jewish Cemetery, Krakow 1992
New Jewish

But much of the cemetery was in disrepair. The tree above that is engulfing a tombstone attests to the length of time this neglect had lasted.

A final place that caught my eye, pointed out to me by a friend, Krystyna, was some graffiti inside the courtyard of a broken-down (though still occupied) building in Kazimierz. Someone painted a Madonna, but where her face should have been was a tiny door. I don’t remember what was behind the door, but it looks like there might have been

Madonna graffiti, Kazimierz 1992
Madonna painted in a recess of a courtyard full of trash and broken down walls, Kazimierz 1992

electrical circuits or perhaps water pipes. I remember Krystyna being captivated by this image. An artist herself, she wondered about its larger meaning: who would have drawn it, and why they would have put it where a door replaced the face? And why place it in a trashy courtyard in Kazimierz? I can’t remember if she said anything explicitly about the placement of Catholic imagery in the former Jewish district, but I think she did. And I certainly ponder this. It wasn’t a reclaiming of territory for Catholics–if it had been it would not have been placed where it was without a painted face. It was meant to be ironic, I believe. The Madonna of Trash and Disintegration.

 

 

Hiding in Plain Sight: Lesko 1992

29 Monday Feb 2016

Posted by in Cemeteries, Jewish Culture, Lesko, Memory, Polish-Jewish Heritage, Polish-Jewish relations, Synagogues

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Funny what we forget. I got an SLR camera for my ethnographic fieldwork in the early 1990s, thinking it would be an important tool for documenting everyday life. I even experimented with shooting and developing black and white film (this was a film camera). The photos are interesting because they capture things I deliberately went out to photograph. As it turns out, fragments of Jewish culture figure prominently; they’re the subject of 28 out of 112 photos. Here are some of them from Lesko:

Tombstones (some painted) in the Lesko Jewish Cemetery. 1992
Marcin beside a tombstone taller than he is. 1992
Front facade of the former synagogue in Lesko. 1992

This ornate facade of the synagogue features the Ten Commandments and the inscription in Hebrew: “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven” (see Virtual Sztetl). The building was partially destroyed during World War II, and rebuilt in the 1960s and 70s. That’s when the round tower was enlarged and the curved roofline was added. You can tell because the newer features are made of brick instead of the original stone. Here are photos of the interior and exterior of the synagogue in 1932 (from fotopolska.eu):

Lesko Synagogue 1932
Lesko Synagogue 1932 interior

 

Last spring, I learned that the iron railing that used to surround the central alter is now a balcony on a building in the center of town. I actually took this photo of it in 1992, but had no idea where the balcony came from.

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The balcony on this building used to be the iron railing around the alter in the synagogue, Lesko 1992

It’s one of the prettiest buildings in town, especially since it was renovated and repainted golden orange. Still, this railing brings to home the fact that fragments of Jewish life and its destruction are hiding in plain sight. I suppose its appropriation is what preserved this particular part of the synagogue. But knowing what it is and where it came from, it seems horribly, terribly, out of place.