Author Archives: Marysia Galbraith

Archives and Ancestors

31 Saturday Jan 2015

Posted by in Archives, Family, Names, Piwko, Skierniewice

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I went to Łódź in search of my great grandfather’s birth certificate. It was my first time there. I had heard Łódź is an ugly, dying industrial center, but I was pleasantly surprised to see it is full of attractive 19th century brownstones. Many are in disrepair, some are in ruins, but others have been renovated and recall the former prosperity of the city. I need to reread Reymont’s Ziemia Obiecana, a novel involving relations among Polish, German, and Jewish cloth manufacturers; as I recall, it provided a snapshot of the business relationships as well as the prejudices among them.

Plac Wolnośći, archive on the right.

Plac Wolnośći, archive on the right.

The archive is in an old building in Plac Wolności, a circular intersection which, depending where you look, evokes either socialist monumentalism or the bourgeois elegance of the century before. Archives are odd places, and archivists generally seem more comfortable around paper and books than around people. In Łódź the documents I wanted are on microfilm. In other places, I have been fortunate enough to leaf through the original record books. They are large ledgers with thick yellowish paper. Some of the hardbound covers are riddled with insect holes. The handwritten entries can be hard to read—some scribes were neater than others; some added their own unique flourishes.

Still, I hit the jackpot—records from Skierniewice dating from the 1840s-60s. I found Hiel Piwko’s birth certificate and traced his line back two or three more generations. I found out that his father and mother came from smaller towns near Skierniewice, Rawa Mazowiecka and Bolimów. These older records are in Polish, though the handwriting can still be hard to decipher. I learned that my great-great grandfather Josek was a tanner (garbarz). This is consistent with what Aunt Pat has in her notes, but Hiel’s mother is listed with a different name—instead of Lucyna King, she’s Cywia Rajch. I traced back further after getting home, and found reference on JRI (Jewish Records Indexing) to her birth certificate, which lists her as Lieba Cywia Raich. Pat also lists Babcia’s sister Libe Piwko as Lucyna, so that likely explains the first name. Lucyna, Libe, Lieba can easily be versions of the same name. Could King and Rajch be related, too?

The birth records follow a standard pattern. They identify the father, the date he came to the record office, his age, town, and sometimes profession. Next, two witnesses’ names, ages, towns, and sometimes professions are listed. Then comes the name of the mother, her age and town, and finally the sex, birthdate, and name of the child. The witnesses and father sign, along with the clerk. I’ve been paying particular attention to signatures, which are occasionally in Hebrew, but are mostly in Polish.

The language used in these record books mark the political transformations of the 19th century. After the Uprising in the early 1860s, records in the Russian partition switched to Russian instead of Polish. In Lęczyca (where I went the next day to trace the ancestry of Pinkus Kolski, who married Babcia’s sister), although the records were in Russian, peoples’ names were listed in both Russian and Polish.

I also was able to trace other historical facts about the Piwko line. Great-great grandmother Cywia, Josek Piwko’s first wife, died in 1862 at age 32, just a month after giving birth to a son Dawid. According to Aunt Pat’s records, Cywia (Lucyna) died of cholera (but at age 27). Hiel would have been just 7 years old in 1862. Three years later, Dawid died. Within a year, Josek had another son, Nusen Dawid with a new wife, Sura Burgierman. She was 24 and he was 42.

According to Aunt Pat’s notes, Josek had four wives. I am still looking for mention of the other two. Maybe I’ll find something when I get the Russian language records I collected in Grodzisk Mazowiecki translated.

Hiel Majer Piwko’s birth certificate

28 Wednesday Jan 2015

Posted by in Family, Piwko

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In mid-December, I drove across the flat plain from Poznań to the city of Łódź, where I found the birth certificate of my great grandfather, my babcia Halina’s father. So here is one more fragment that connects me to Poland, and to my Jewish heritage. From it, I learn that in Skierniewice on the third/fifteenth of November, 1854, Josek Piwko, tanner, age thirty appeared with two witnesses (I can’t read the first’s name, but he’s listed as a laborer, age forty-five; the second is David Lęczner, szkolnik [teacher?], age fifty-one) to report that he and his wife Cywia (maiden name Raych), age twenty-six, had a son Hiel Majer on the 26th of October/ 7th of November.

Hiel Majer Piwko's birth certificate, 1854

Hiel Majer Piwko’s birth certificate, 1854

Someone, maybe my great great grandfather? Signed the document in what looks like Hebrew letters. The image quality is poor because I had to photograph the image on a microfilm reader. In other archives I have gotten to page through the actual record books.

Nunia/Hanna/Anna/Maria

20 Tuesday Jan 2015

Posted by in Family, Names, Piwko

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Hanna Piwko

Hanna Piwko

I don’t know why, but I’ve been thinking about Auntie Nunia today. She was my babcia’s older sister, the only one of her siblings I knew growing up. Nunia was an extraordinary woman, though in a different way than my grandmother. Whereas my grandmother was beautiful, charming, and (to borrow a word from my mom) vivacious, Nunia was a powerhouse of energy, straightforward, and yet at the same time nurturing. From the age of ten or twelve, she was my role model for how I wanted to live my life. It seemed she could do anything, and she was never idle. She knitted our bathmats. My mom would bring her our clothes in need of repair and she would fix them all. She even darned our socks. For years, I wore a robe she made out of a patchwork of hideous fabrics. It had an orangy-yellow lining and trim, and I can’t remember now if the rest was made of scraps of loud upholstery designs or maybe just flower-power prints. I wore that robe for years, and had a hard time giving it up even after I realized I was allergic to it. Instead, I tolerated the runny nose and sneezes.

Auntie Nunia gave my younger brother Chris and me new blankets when I was about five. I think it was to replace the baby blanket that I was having a hard time letting go. Or maybe I just associate it with my blankie’s disappearance because I got it at about the same time. I still have this “big girl” blanket even though the blue calico has split and frayed. Maybe in homage to Nunia’s patchwork robe, I have been patching the blanket with scraps of old fabric and clothing for years. I don’t think I’ll ever catch up with all the new holes that keep forming. I guess sentiment about people and the stuff I associate with them has mattered to me for a long time.

I don’t know much about Nunia’s (or anyone’s) life in Poland. She was several years older than my grandmother, born in 1886 according to Aunt Pat’s records, or in 1889 according to her US naturalization and social security records. I remember Mama mentioning that Nunia and Babcia took a few years off their ages when they emigrated. Nunia’s exact name is also complicated. In the US, her legal name was Maria Weglinska, but her birth name was probably Hanna. I’ve also heard her called Anna, and more recently by our Israeli cousins Hanale. I onced asked my mama what her real name is—even though we called her Nunia (or maybe Niunia), I knew her legal name was Maria and I had also heard her called Anna. I remember being told that she was actually Anna Maria. In retrospect, knowing what I know now, I was probably told something to the effect that she was both Anna and Maria, and I turned it into Anna Maria in my own mind. The origin of Nunia (Niunia) is easier to explain. It is a nickname and expression of affection, sort of like calling someone “sweetie.” Niunia can also be a diminutive of Anna.

So names are not fixed elements attached to people. Nunia’s last name is only slightly less ambiguous. Her maiden name was Piwko, like my grandmother. Her married name was Cytryn after her husband Stanisław Cytryn. At least that would have been the Polish spelling. “Cytryn” means “lemon.” Last year, from looking at the registration cards of Jews who survived World War II at ŻIH (Żydowski Instytut Historyczny, Jewish Historical Institute) in Warsaw, I learned that Nunia was already using the name Maria Weglińska in Poland. It’s listed there, with a note that her means of surviving the war was “Aryan papers.”

Another ambiguity involves the nature of Nunia and her husband’s profession. I have been told she was “something like a pharmacist,” and they had a shop in Warsaw. Somewhere, I’ve seen it listed in Polish as “drogeria” which can be a drugstore, though today it is more commonly a store that sells shampoos, lotions, and cosmetics. A pharmacy is more commonly called “apteka.” Nunia’s husband died in 1927, so from then she ran the business herself.

When Babcia ran away from home, she went to live with Nunia in Warsaw. Maybe that is when their close bond solidified, despite the eight-year difference in their age. By some accounts Babcia left because she wanted to avoid marrying anyone her father chose for her. By others, she wanted to go to university. I imagine, too, that she wanted to be in the capitol city where more was happening. I also suspect it was around the time the youngest sister (and the person my mother was named after) Maria Renata committed suicide at age 17, so around 1913.

I don’t know what they did during World War I, but during World War II Nunia was in the Underground Army. She ran a printing press in the basement of her store. Mom also told a story about being forced to leave Warsaw after the Warsaw Uprising. She walked south with many other civilians and insurgents who were being led to a camp. When I asked how she escaped, she said she and Auntie Nunia just walked away. As she described it, there were so many people and lax security so they were able to just separate themselves and hide in a village. Why was she with her aunt? Where were my grandmother and grandfather? I don’t remember these details. Maybe I didn’t think to ask these questions.

I’ve found a couple of interesting documents for Maria Weglinska on Ancestry.com. The first shows her on the passenger list of the ship “Ile de France” that left LeHavre, France on April 27, 1951 and arrived in New York City on May 3rd. Under “nationality,” “Polish” is crossed out and she is listed as “stateless.” The other is a US naturalization record dated July 17, 1956 and listing an address in Roslyn Harbor, the same town my grandmother and mother would have been living in at the time. I don’t know what she did between the end of the war and the time she came to the US.

Auntie Nunia/Maria Weglinska

Auntie Nunia/Maria Weglinska

By the time I knew Nunia/Hanna/Anna/Maria, she was living in Norwalk, Connecticut on the second floor of an old house. We visited often, all six of us piling into the car for the 1½ hour trip. We parked on the street. The house was above street level, and a retaining wall of round stones separated the raised lawn from the sidewalk. Inside, a narrow, dark wood staircase led up to Nunia’s place. She always kept hard candies in a covered crystal candy bowl. There and at her daughter Teresa’s were the only places I ever ate Polish food. My mom never cooked it; she said she didn’t like it. Nunia, however, was an amazing cook. I remember the mushroom barley soup and gołąbki (stuffed cabbage) particularly. She also made the most incredible apple strudel with a lattice top. My brothers and cousins all talk about it. It seems we all remember that apple strudel. The memory has faded, but I think the apples were chopped and maybe precooked a bit, like they are in Polish szarlotka. I also picture large granules of sugar sprinkled on top, but I’m not sure about that anymore. Even though we ate ourselves silly while at her apartment, Nunia always packed sandwiches and fruit in paper bags for us to eat on the 1½ hour drive home. Somehow, I always ended up eating something right around the halfway mark on the Throgs Neck Bridge. Often, I fell asleep leaning against my oldest brother Ron’s shoulder.

Once, when I was very young, may be just five or six, I went to stay a few days with Auntie Nunia. I got homesick and started crying so my dad had to drive back and pick me up earlier than planned. And once, when I was maybe eight, Nunia came to our house to take care of us while my mom went to the hospital for an operation. We loved having her there, but she was much stricter than mom. One day, she told me to sweep the living room. I refused, saying Mom never makes me do things like that. So she sent me to my room, saying I should stay there until I decide to sweep. It didn’t take me long to come out and sweep. She didn’t say anything more to me about it.

Both my parents loved Auntie Nunia. My mom said that Nunia was there for her when her own mother abandoned her. This happened at least twice in her life. The first time she was only two or maybe four, and she and her brother George were left with Nunia when Babcia went off with Zygmunt Bereda. Mama remembers being frightened by a swing in the hallway of the apartment. The second time was when Mama was a mother of four young children, and Babcia moved to Puerto Rico. Auntie Nunia stepped in and acted like a mother/grandmother to us. Babcia and my dad didn’t much like each other, but he loved Auntie Nunia. He said she reminded him of his late grandmother, to whom he was very attached.

Nunia showing off her figure at her great-granddaughter Ricky's wedding. From the left, Teresa (Nunia's daughter), Babcia, Nunia, and my cousin Alexandra.

Nunia showing off her figure at her great-granddaughter Ricky’s wedding. From the left, Teresa (Nunia’s daughter), Babcia, Nunia, and my cousin Alexandra. July 1979, when Nunia was about 93.

Nunia lived alone in that apartment in Norwalk until her early 90s. She would walk every day. She remained slim, explaining that she always leaves something on her plate. Around the time I started high school, Teresa persuaded her to move with her to Florida, but she never liked it there. She died in 1984 shortly before her 98th birthday.

Three Minutes in Poland

17 Saturday Jan 2015

Posted by in Jewish Culture, Memory, Pre-World War II, Research Methodology

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Glenn Kurtz’s book Three Minutes in Poland: Discovering a Lost World in a 1938 Family Film (2014) recounts a project similar to my own, of piecing together fragments. Kurtz’s journey began with a film recorded during his grandparent’s visit to his grandfather’s native town in Poland. Seeing the places and faces on film inspired him to learn all he could about the town and its prewar inhabitants—what life was like in Nasielsk, how it was disrupted by World War II, the fate of those who perished, and what became of those who survived. It’s a fascinating story of discovery, tacking between information revealed in archival records and the stories recounted by survivors and their families. He makes use of the same archival resources I’ve been using—JewishGen, Ancestry.com, Yad Vashem, Warsaw Database, ship manifests of passengers, archival photographs. And extraordinarily, out of these fragments, he was able to find some of the people in the three-minute film, or find people who remembered them and could tell some of their story.

These stories bring the fragments, and the town, back alive. Still partial, still shadowy, but alive. I see this particularly in the words of Morry Chandler (Moszek Tuchendler), whom Kurtz found in Florida with his wife, children, and grandchildren. He appears momentarily in Kurtz’s grandfather’s film jumping out and smiling in front of the camera. For Morry, looking at himself and his town on film, and recalling the people he lived with in Nasielsk reminded him he ever had a childhood, and that he was happy:

It’s looking back and saying, Yes, there was a world. Other than what we have lived all these years, knowing what happened. It was a real world there. I mean people were going about their business. Kids were running, and doing all the things that kids do. And here I look at myself, and I see it was a happy face.

The book models two guidelines for my fieldwork: first, how to weave together fragments into a coherent story, integrating as well the gaps and inconsistencies that remain. Information is labeled along a scale of likelihood; the probable, the possible, and the still unknown outnumber what can be unambiguously confirmed. The book also provides a model for working with personal accounts. It corroborates Greenspan’s argument for ongoing contact with survivors, which provides the space for new stories to be recounted, for the revision or elaboration of past accounts, and for interviewers to ask questions that lead to new explanations and deeper insight into survivors’ experiences. (See Henry Greenspan’s “The Unsaid, the Incommunicable, the Unbearable, and the Irretrievable,” Oral History Review 2014, Vol 41, No. 2, pp. 229–243).

Kurtz writes, “Memories, like artifacts, are tightly wound bundles of information. Pull one thread, try to identify one figure, and the whole bundle unfurls.”

Zygmunt Bereda’s death notice

12 Monday Jan 2015

Posted by in Bereda, Family, Post-World War II

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Though not specifically related to Jewish heritage (since he was Catholic), here is the death notice of Zygmunt Bereda, my grandmother’s second husband and the stepfather with whom my mother grew up. I found a reference to it online, and then tracked down the issue of the newspaper at the library of Adam Mickiewicz University.

Zygmunt Bereda death notice, Życie Warszawy 14 October, 1945

Zygmunt Bereda death notice, Życie Warszawy 14 October, 1945

The text reads:

Zygmunt Bereda

Son of Szymon and Maria (maiden name Fijałkowska)

Industrialist, citizen of the capitol city of Warsaw, member of the main board of the Yacht Club of Poland, president of the Polish Association of Confectioners, president of the board of the firm L. Lourse

After brief suffering died on 10 October 1945 at the age of 58 years.

His wife, daughter, and two absent sons inform family and friends that the funeral service will be at the Powązki chapel on Monday the 15th at 11 in the morning, after which the body will be put to rest in the family grave.

I can only imagine what it must have been like to survive the war only to die months later like that. According to his death certificate, he died of a heart attack.

My grandmother would have been 51.  Their home and businesses were destroyed, and shortly thereafter, the postwar government nationalized what little of value remained.

I’ve been told that even then my mom did not want to leave Poland. She was emotionally fragile after all that had happened in the war, and also she did not want to desert her fatherland. As it became obvious that Poland would not be free, and that prewar elite and Home Army soldiers would be persecuted in the communist system, she finally relented. She and my grandmother joined my uncles in England at the end of 1946.

Memory and forgetting in Poznan, part 2

29 Monday Dec 2014

Posted by in Heritage work, Jewish Culture, Memory, Polish-Jewish relations, Poznan, Synagogues

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Monument to the victims of the Poznan labor camp

Monument to the victims of the Poznan labor camp

Despite the cold, Anka, Małgosia and I visited a few other sites associated with Jewish culture and history. The monument to the victims of the Poznan labor camp is on Królowa Jadwiga Street even though the actual detainment site was a block away in the old football stadium. The socialist-era monument is a tall concrete pillar with what looks like a menorah at the top. Anka pointed out the dedication on back of the monument stating it was erected on the 40th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising; even sites commemorating local events reproduce the idea that the Holocaust happened elsewhere—in cities such as Warsaw and Krakow.

The actual stadium was abandoned in the 1990s when a new one was built for the Warta football team. Warta is Poznan’s smaller club, rival to Lech, who got a big new stadium for the European football championship Euro 2012. Małgosia conducted ethnographic research in which Warta fans turned out to be the only ones who know the function the stadium served during the war. Essentially, it was a work camp where Jews were briefly held before being shipped off to the death camps. Many detainees were shot right there on the spot. We walked through the broken down gateway, up a set of stairs to an earthen berm surrounding what used to be the playing field. Today, the site is covered with trash, and trees grow everywhere including where the bench seating used to be. Only the concrete supports of the benches are left. Goal posts stand on the field, left over from 2012 when local teams competed in a kind of lighthearted protest against the massive outlay of funds for Euro 2012.

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Looking out from the old football stadium toward the outdoor market and new high-rises.

Looking out from the old football stadium toward the outdoor market and new high-rises.

For the most part, this is forgotten space, despite its proximity to the center of the city. It is separated from Królowa Jadwiga Street by a dilapidated outdoor market. On this frigid day, there were no customers, just very cold sellers who urged us to their buy their wares. I was told the outdoor market used to be bigger. When they were in high school, it was the place to get real Adidas and blue jeans. With all the competition from new shopping centers, the market has shrunk. There is an ongoing debate about what to do with the old stadium—what primary purpose should the space fill? Should it be a place for sports activities? A nature preserve? A place of commemoration for those who suffered and died there? Or should it become another housing development or mall?

What is the origin and meaning of this sculpture? Why is it in the newly named Square of the Righteous among Nations of the World?

What is the origin and meaning of this sculpture? Why is it in the newly named Square of the Righteous among Nations of the World?

Heading back toward the center of the old city to thaw out at a café, we chanced upon an unmarked, decaying stone sculpture. I think it was Małgosia who said it suggests some sort of Holocaust memorial. Then we noticed the sign designating the area as “Square of the Righteous Among Nations of the World.” I’ve since learned that this is a new name, approved by the city just this year.

We made two more brief stops on our tour. We peaked into the Church of the Most Holy Blood of Christ (Najświętszej Krwi Pana Jezusa) on Żydowska (Jewish) Street, where I showed Anka and Małgosia the ceiling frescos depicting Jews profaning the host.

Frescos over the alter depicting the profaning of the host

Frescos over the alter depicting the profaning of the host

In Sinners on Trial, Magda Teter outlines the historical context in which this story was told:

On Fridays, as late as 1926, and perhaps even up to the eve of World War II, in a small Catholic church on what has been known as “the Jewish street,” a few meters off the main market square in the city of Poznań, the faithful did not sing the prayer Kyrie Eleison, “God Have Mercy, Christ Have Mercy.” Instead, the church followed a liturgy that diverged markedly from the approved official liturgy of the Catholic Mass. The song’s text that replaced the words of the Kyrie Eleison told of Jewish desecration of the host in Poznan:

O, Jesus, unsurpassed in your goodness,

Stabbed by Jews and soaked in blood again

Through your new wounds

And spilled springs of blood

            Have Mercy on Us, Have Mercy on Us, Have Mercy!

The hearts of stone from the Jewish street

In the house once known as the Świdwińskis’

Sank their knives in You

In the Three Hosts, the Eternal God

            Have Mercy on Us, Have Mercy on Us, Have Mercy!

The song recounted the story of three hosts stolen by a Christian woman from a Dominican church in Poznań in 1399. According to the story, she delivered the three hosts to Jews who desecrated them, “stabbing” them with knives. Unable to dispose of them, the Jews took them outside the city and buried them in swamps. The hosts miraculously emerged to reveal themselves to a shepherd boy. The Christian woman and the Jews were punished by the magistrate, and the Church of Corpus Christi was constructed on the site after the miracle (2011: 89-90).

Teter goes on to suggest that this story might have been used as a rationale for building a new church on Żydowska Street. Pani Alicja, the head of the Poznan Jewish Community, told me that she has been waging another battle to have an informational plaque installed in the entranceway of the church explaining that the story of the profaning of the host is a legend, not historical fact. To date, church representatives have only agreed to post an explanation in the basement where most people will never see it.

The exterior of the former "new" synagogue in Poznan. The words "Pływalnia Miejska" (City Pool) can be made out above the long windows. The pool was closed just three years ago in 2011.

The exterior of the former “new” synagogue in Poznan. The words “Pływalnia Miejska” (City Pool) can be made out above the long central windows. The pool was closed just three years ago in 2011.

Our final stop was the former synagogue near the end of Żydowska Street. When built in 1907, it was considered the “new” synagogue. It could hold 1200 worshipers, and was richly ornamented with a copper dome. During the war, the Nazis stripped off the dome and transformed the synagogue into a swimming pool. It continued to function as a pool even after the Jewish Community regained possession of the building in 2002. Małgosia has seen the interior. She described how the bottom of the sanctuary was tiled with the pool at the center, but the upper part remained just like a synagogue. She also said she has been in the attic above the wooden beams of the sanctuary which is still filled with old papers and books. The building is in bad shape and in need of major renovation. Efforts have so far failed to turn it into a Center for Dialog and Tolerance (see this essay by Janusz Marciniak, which includes photos of the exterior in 1907 and today. An essay by Teddy Weinberger describes his visit to the synagogue when it was still a pool; he includes photos of the interior as a place of worship and as a swimming pool).

Memory and forgetting in Poznan

29 Monday Dec 2014

Posted by in Cemeteries, Heritage work, Jewish Culture, Polish-Jewish relations, Poznan

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Małgosia and Anka at the Jewish cemetery. The building in the background holds trash bins for surrounding apartments. The resident we spoke with felt uncomfortable about having them in a cemetery.

Małgosia and Anka at the Jewish cemetery. The building in the background holds trash bins for surrounding apartments. The resident we spoke with felt uncomfortable about keeping the trash in a cemetery.

In early December, I visited the Poznan Jewish Cemetery for a second time with Anna Weronika Brzezińska, a professor at the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at Adam Mickiewicz University, and Małgosia Wosińska, a doctoral student at the same institute. We chose the coldest day of the season for our tour of sites associated with Jewish culture. Still, it was great to get the perspective of other ethnographers on some of the places where Jewish heritage is marked and unmarked in Poznan.

The gate into the courtyard was locked as usual, so Anka pushed the buttons on the intercom until a resident answered and buzzed us in. Anka shared her knowledge of the history of the cemetery (see some of this in my previous post). On a copy of a map from 1900, she pointed out how large the Jewish cemetery was, and how it abutted two large Catholic cemeteries. All were established in what at the time was the outskirts of the city to make room for development of the city center.

Commemorative graves and old tombstones recovered around the city. The apartments overlooking the site were built just outside the cemetery walls in the early 20th century.

Commemorative graves and old tombstones recovered around the city. The apartments overlooking the site were built just outside the cemetery walls in the early 20th century.

Poznan continued to expand so that by the early 20th century, there was another initiative to reclaim these cemeteries for other purposes. First, buildings were built along the roads, including the apartments on Śniadecki Street (visible on the other side of the wall behind the tombstones) and the Poznan Trade Center (Targi Poznańskie) on Głogowska and Grunwaldzka Streets. During World War II, the Jewish tombstones were removed and repurposed for roadways, sidewalks, and other building projects. The Catholic cemeteries (which already seem to have been at least partially missing in the 1927 photo) were also damaged, though they were not the object of systematic wartime destruction as was the Jewish cemetery. After World War II, in the 1950s, the socialist government liquidated what remained of all of the cemeteries in this area. This served a dual purpose for the secular socialist regime—so the land could be developed, but also because the cemeteries were affiliated with religions.

It changes things to realize it was not just the Jewish cemetery that was redeveloped, but also Catholic ones. Later, when we passed a park across from the train station, Anka said it used to be yet another Catholic cemetery. Taken together, they indicate a general attitude about the past—a willingness to forget, especially when specific ties to specific people are broken. State socialism also had its effects—the challenges of normal everyday life that made Poles reluctant to look to the past or the future, and the authoritarianism with which urban development was realized. This isn’t to say that Jewish memory wasn’t deliberately erased from the city landscape, but rather to put those practices into a broader context of erasure and rebuilding.

The commemoration project was controversial. Months earlier, Pani Alicja at the Gmina Żydowska explained to me that they can’t reclaim land that has been built on. This would have ruled out most of the former cemetery land because it is under the Poznan Trade Center. The only alternative was in the courtyard, but some residents protested against putting it there. I asked Anka if residents had known beforehand that their homes overlook a cemetery. She said maybe, but they would have had other things on their minds. Also, many families moved into the area after the war ended so they would not have ever seen the cemetery.

As we headed to a back gate to look at the other side of the cemetery wall, an elderly man approached on his way out from his apartment. He gladly unlocked the gate for us and paused to chat. He said he has only lived there since the 1970s, but his wife remembers playing in the empty field behind her apartment when she was a child (in what used to be the cemetery). She sometimes came across human bones sticking out of the sand.

He said some residents didn’t like the idea of the memorial, but he had no objection. On the contrary, it was a neglected space before, with broken-down garages and lots of trash. He tries to tell people about the history of the place when they visit. However, there aren’t many visitors. The few who come are usually from abroad. He hasn’t witnessed any ceremonies occurring in the courtyard. This seems odd to me. Surely some heard the prayers and chants during the Kaddish in September, but I didn’t see a single person look out their window. When asked Anka and Małgosia about this later, Anka defended the residents, saying only bathrooms and kitchens face the courtyard. Most people have no reason to look out those windows.

The resident also told us about a large wooden cabinet adorned with three carved roses that his wife’s family found in their apartment when they reclaimed it (during the war, all Polish residents were forced out and Nazi officers lived there). Once, they had a visitor who asked if they had Jews in the family, explaining that the cabinet probably came from a prosperous Jewish family around Lviv. Perhaps a German officer liked it, claimed it, and brought it back to Poznan. The number of roses (one, three, or five) represents increasing status within the Jewish community.

As we prepared to leave, Małgosia remarked that Jewish culture remains hidden in plain sight, even in places like this where the effort has been made to preserve it. Because of the locked gates, most people can’t come in.

How do you remember Jewish lives when nothing remains?

27 Saturday Dec 2014

Posted by in Cemeteries, Heritage work, Jewish Culture, Poznan

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A defining question of my study is turning out to be: How do you remember Jewish lives in Poland when nothing remains? Or when there are only scattered traces?

I certainly started with next to nothing when I began the search for my own family story. Since then, I have found so much—most extraordinarily many living relatives. I’m gathering up the fragments of the past—a half remembered story, a photograph, a birth record. And pieced together, something fuller is emerging. It’s still impossibly far from the rich lives that have passed, but it nevertheless gives me a much better sense of where I come from.

All this resonates with an article I read in the Atlantic, which although it is about the tension between science and belief in God, makes the point that the more knowledge we gain the more we become aware of how much we still do not understand (“Why God Will Not Die” by Jack Miles, December 2014, pp. 96-107). Miles explains, “Scientific progress is like mountain climbing: the higher you climb, the more you know, but the wider the vistas of ignorance that extends on all sides” (p. 100). Maybe this is what my search is destined to be like. Every relative I find points to many more ancestors and descendants who remain to be discovered. Every historical artifact hints at another vast realm of Jewish culture that remains hidden.

So how do you remember Jewish lives when nothing remains? When I met pani Alicja Kobus, the head of the Gmina Żydowska (Jewish Community) in Poznań, she told me about numerous ways in which the Gmina has fought to commemorate Jewish heritage throughout the region. Pani Alicja calls herself a bulldozer; she keeps at it no matter what obstacles she faces. She doesn’t give up. She also attributes her success to cudy (miracles), and to the material and spiritual support provided by numerous allies. Among the projects she described to me, one stands out—the reclaiming of a section of the Jewish cemetery. The story is pretty extraordinary.

The Jewish cemetery on Głogowska Street was established in the early 1800s, in what at the time was the outskirts of the city. The Poznan city leaders liquidated a number of cemeteries in the city center, including the old Jewish cemetery near what is now Plac Wolności, so the city would have room to expand. A photo taken in 1927 (on the webpage of the Poznańska Filia Związku Gmin Wyznaniowych Żydowskich w RP/ Polish Branch of the Union of Jewish Communities in the Republic of Poland) shows the Trade Center in the foreground and the Głogowska Street cemetery in the background.The cemetery was devastated by the Nazis during World War II, and the tombstones were either destroyed or carted off for construction projects. During the communist period, the adjoining Targi Poznańskie (Poznan Trade Center) was expanded into the former cemetery site.

Pani Alicja says it took something like eight years to create a memorial at the cemetery site. She focused her energies on a strip of land between some apartment buildings and the Trade Center, where a row of mismatched, ramshackle garages stood. Reclaiming the space for a cemetery memorial required the support of city officials, local residents, and international interest groups, including the descendants of Rabbi Akiva Eger, a highly regarded Talmudic scholar who was buried in the cemetery in 1837.

As pani Alicja tells it, opponents to the project were slowly persuaded, or they met with misfortune. One elderly woman refused to sell her garage, saying “I don’t want Jews in my courtyard.” Alicja responded, “You already do have Jews in your courtyard” (pointing out that the whole space was within the cemetery grounds). Not long after, the elderly woman passed away. A member of the city government who opposed the project got caught up in a scandal and resigned. Other residents were swayed by the promise that the neglected space would be renovated, with new gates and building facades. Finally, in 2007, the commemorative site was completed.

The memorial site is hard to spot from the street. The best clue is the Stars of David that ornament the new metal gates closing off the courtyard from the busy street. Inside the gate, granite plaques mounted on the archway wall outline the history of the cemetery, the rabbis who were buried there, and the international sponsors of the project (Committee for the Preservation of Jewish Cemeteries in Europe, and the British descendants of Rabbi Eger). The text is repeated in Polish, Hebrew, and English. In a narrow strip of grass sloping up to a plaster-covered brick wall (where the garages used to be) stand six tombstones commemorating Eger, his wife, and other descendants who were also rabbis. The black stones are inscribed with Hebrew writing. White gravel fills a rectangle in front of each stone, the foot marked by a metal roofed glass enclosure for candles. Old stone tombstones lean against the wall, while a few stones with large, rough writing are scattered on the grass. These grave markers were found around the city, many dug out of roadways and other wartime construction projects.

The site is closed to the public because it is in a private, locked courtyard. The first time I visited was when rabbis and others came from Zurich and England to say the kaddish on the anniversary of Eger’s death. They gathered around the grave and sang and prayed for about an hour, nodding as they read in unison. The visitors were all male; they wore black hats and long coats, their payot curled in front of their ears. Observers from the Poznan Jewish Community watched at a respectful distance, except for a few key members including Pani Alicja who stood with the visitors.

Kaddish for Rabbi Akiva Eger, October 6, 2014

Kaddish for Rabbi Akiva Eger, October 6, 2014

It struck me that throughout the kaddish, I didn’t see a single resident of the surrounding buildings. As it got dark, I could see the lights in many apartments. Didn’t they hear the singing? Weren’t they interested in what was happening right outside their windows?

Maria Bereda(y) Galbraith, scars and all

07 Sunday Dec 2014

Posted by in Family

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My friend Justyna wrote, “It just occurred to me: would you trust me enough to show me a picture of your mom? I’ve heard and read so much about her that now I just wonder what she looked like during the war and before and after. It just came to me (the desire to see her) strongly today.” She’s right, of course. I write this blog with a picture of my mom in my head so it makes sense to post some photos of her.

Mama in Poland

Mama in Poland

I only have one photo of Mama from Poland. It’s a tiny headshot, perhaps for some form of identification? I would guess she’s somewhere around 20, so it was taken sometime during World War II. I found it among the papers my brother kept when he cleaned out the house in preparation for the renovation. I submitted this photo, along with my mom’s verification papers confirming her service in the Polish Underground, to the Warsaw Rising Museum. It’s posted in their virtual archive of partisan’s biographies:

http://www.1944.pl/historia/powstancze-biogramy/Maria_Bereda__Fijalkowska

Though washed out and unfocused, the photo shows my mom’s remarkable eyes—deep set and sad—and her thick, wavy hair. As a kid, I loved the way her soft curls felt, and wished my thin stringy hair was more like hers. Luckily, as an adult, my hair became wavy, though never as soft. What strikes me about this photo today is how much my brother Wiley resembled her when he was around the same age.

Mama on the roof of Whittier Hall

Mama on the roof of Whittier Hall

This next photo is one of several taken in the 1950s on the roof of Whittier Hall, the dorm my mother lived in when she was a graduate student at Teacher’s College, Columbia University. My mom showed me these when I was child. She was very proud of her figure, and liked these photos because they were taken from far enough away that her scars didn’t show. These are the kinds of things my mom told me.

Mom says she arrived in the US with a bandage on her nose. I don’t know if she had 22 surgeries like my brother remembers, but there were many of them, first to reconstruct damage sustained in the war, and then to fix up botched surgeries. Surgeons took skin grafts from her forehead so the skin on her new nose would match her face. This is why she always kept her bangs long and blunt down to her eyebrows—to cover the scars left on her forehead. Even after the surgeries stopped, she continued to wear a bandage because she was afraid of what people would think of her scars. She proudly explained how artfully she crafted a small bandage that just covered the bridge of her nose. My dad never saw her without it before they married. When she finally dared show her face without the bandage, Dad told her he was relieved; he thought her scars would be far worse. You would think it would be a powerful message to my mom that maybe she didn’t need to be so self-conscious, that maybe her scars weren’t as bad as she pictured them in her own mind. Even years later, she seemed to wonder at the fact Dad married her with a bandage on her nose. I think it’s a tribute to his character.

But it’s also a tribute to something that was very special about her. While at Whittier Hall, she never lacked for dates. Her friends were even jealous that she, a woman with a bandage on her nose (this is my mom speaking), would get more attention than they did from handsome men. One was Hale, Dad’s roommate whom she only dated once. She said he looked “like a Greek god,” but there was no chemistry between them. Dad, by contrast, was also good looking but in a more normal way, and very shy. When he started coming by Whittier Hall, Mom’s dorm-mates were envious that she was going on dates with a man who drove a jaguar.

Galbraiths1964

The Galbraiths on the patio behind the house, summer 1964.

Mom and Dad had a volatile relationship. Neither was very happy and they fought a lot. In this photo from the summer of 1964, Mama is pregnant with Chris. She is holding me, with Ron beside us and Wilan by Dad. I was about one year old, Wy was two and a half, and Ron was six. After the four kids left the house, my parents rediscovered common interests and actually got along much better. I would like to have posted a photo of them together later in life, but I don’t have a digital copy with me.

The Galbraiths with Babcia outside Babcia's apartment on Riverside Drive sometime in the early 1980s, Mama in her beret.

The Galbraiths with Babcia outside Babcia’s apartment on Riverside Drive sometime in the early 1980s, Mama in her beret.

Mom struggled with her waves. She would wear a scarf like a headband after washing her hair so that her bangs would dry straight. She put on a beret when she went out to hold her bangs in place against the wind. I became her mirror. It was my job to make sure her bangs were in place at all times. She’s beyond caring now, but I still do it automatically. Her hair is thinner now, brilliant white, but still soft and wavy. I love to stroke it, and I always adjust her bangs.

In more recently years, Mama switched from berets to brimmed hats. Here we are at Friendlies in 2007. She loves ice cream, especially chocolate.

In more recently years, Mama switched from berets to brimmed hats. Here we are at Friendly’s in 2007. She loves ice cream, especially chocolate.

Mama and Chris on the patio, 2008. Mama was already sick but still able to communicate with us.

Mama and Chris on the patio, 2008. Mama was already sick but still able to communicate with us.

Rosh Hashanah, Poznan, September 26, 2014

30 Sunday Nov 2014

Posted by in Jewish Culture, Poznan, Synagogues

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It seems fitting that I would celebrate Rosh Hashanah for the first time in Poland, considering that generations of my family lived and worshiped here. It’s our removal that is bizarre, not our presence on Polish territory.

I have been told there are only about sixty Jews in Poznan today. Most Jews in this part of Poland left when the region was under Prussian rule in the 19th century. The story contained in a number of sources is that they left because larger German cities farther west offered them more economic opportunity. I can’t help wondering, though, if they were also seeking a place with greater freedom and less persecution (a subject for further research). Over 20% of the city’s population was Jewish in 1837, but by 1922 only 1.2% were, about 2000 residents (Rafał Witkowski, 2012, The Jews of Poznań, Poznań: Wydawnictwo Miejskie Posnania). By contrast, 30% of Warsaw’s citizens at the time were Jewish.

I met the head of the Poznan Jewish Community (Gmina Żydowska), Pani Alicja Kobus, shortly before Rosh Hashanah. She has the energy and charm I remember in my grandmother and her sister, my Auntie Nunia. Pani Alicja established the Jewish Community about 15 years ago. She said nothing was happening in Poznan related to Jewish culture and heritage so she had to start from scratch. All the momentum was in Krakow and Warsaw, and much of worth in and around Poznan was being forgotten. So she negotiated with the city, and got permission to begin operations in a space the city gave her in a rough part of town. Through persistence and a lot of work, she managed to reclaim the former Jewish Community Headquarters, the building that houses the Jewish Community offices today. She said that she has had to fight for everything. She is a bulldozer. She only goes forward; she doesn’t give up. She doesn’t let obstacles stand in her way, even when people refuse her or tell her what she is trying to do is impossible. She attributes her success to this level of effort, along with the unfailing encouragement of others, as well as divine intervention. She often refers to God and miracles.

I asked pani Alicja if I could attend the events she was planning for Rosh Hashanah. She said I could, adding, “We’re such a small community, we have to be open.

I really didn’t know what to expect when I arrived at the Jewish Community Headquarters the evening of Rosh Hashanah. The building is unmarked. Last time, I had to be buzzed in. This time a few people were standing outside. One greeted me as I arrived and told me the door was open. As I climbed the wide wooden staircase to the first floor, I heard the sound of many voices. The main room was packed with people standing and sitting around two long tables laid out with tablecloths, candles, and all kinds of dishes. Two large, round challah were placed at the head of one table, and each plate had a large challah roll on it.

Pani Alicja greeted me from across the room and invited me to sit near the head of a table already full of people. She introduced me to several of the people around her. The atmosphere was warm, and the conversations friendly.

Pani Alicja got the attention of the crowd. She expressed her joy at seeing so many people (I counted over fifty, but there were more; I never saw everyone at once). She called our presence there a miracle (cud). “Just look around you,” she said, noting there were guests from the US, Germany and Israel. She lit the candles at the head of the table. It was a moving moment for me.

The synagogue is one floor up, in a smaller room with high ceilings and windows. Pews fill the back, with room to seat about 30 people. The men sit behind a partition on the side by the windows and the women sit on the side by the door. A table with a lectern faces the pews. A cabinet in the corner behind the table holds the Torah and the crown, gifts from international donors. Along the wall by the door is an old synagogue pew with faded Hebrew lettering. Pani Alicja told me it dates back to the 1800s. Someone had it in his attic, and she convinced him to donate it to the synagogue.

Rabbi Jaakov has the long ringlets (peyot), black coat and hat characteristic of Hassidic Jews. He spoke to us in Polish, explaining a little about the ceremony, how it differs from a typical Shabbat, and how to read the prayer books, which contain a combination of Hebrew, transliterated and in Hebrew lettering, and I think Polish translations. He promised to guide us through the ceremony, telling us which page to turn to in the prayer books, and explaining the various prayers and songs. In other words, he took on a teaching role as well as leading the service. He read the prayers and songs in Hebrew, with his back to us, swaying forward and back.

Some men were given prayer shawls, and removed the Torah from the cabinet. They took turns carrying it around for everyone to touch. Many also kissed their hand. There was a call for a young male volunteer to blow a horn, the shofar. One said he has tried but couldn’t. Finally someone stepped up. He was supposed to make one long and then three short toots. His first attempts didn’t produce much sound. Eventually, some awkward sounds came out. Pani Alicja remarked it was important “tylko żeby było” (just to make it).

http://www.gloswielkopolski.pl/

Rosh Hashanah, Poznan Jewish Community, September 26, 2014. http://www.gloswielkopolski.pl/

After the service, everyone returned downstairs to the tables, which were covered with a variety of dishes. Besides challah, there was carp in vinegar, beet salad, tsimis (sweet carrot salad), pomegranates, and various meat dishes, which guests identified as kosher. Rabbi Yaakov blessed the bread, which was broken and passed around. There were plates of honey to dip the challah into. Pani Alicja made a toast, and the feast began.

The event was strange and familiar at the same time. My secular upbringing makes any religious service unfamiliar. Here, especially, everything was new to me—the language, the rabbi’s motions, the separation between women and men. But the feeling was not strange—that of solidarity, of connection to something bigger than we are. It felt, oddly like a kind of homecoming.