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

≈ 4 Comments

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. 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 19^th 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

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

Information sign next to the synagogue, Lutowiska

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 18^th 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

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

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.

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”

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.

Jews in Wielkopolska

14 Saturday Mar 2015

Posted by Marysia Galbraith in Heritage work, Polish-Jewish Heritage, Polish-Jewish relations, Poznan, Wielkopolska, Wronki

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Partitions of Poland

Regions in Poland still reflect the different administrative regimes within the Russian, Prussian, and Austrian Empires that controlled Polish territory from the late 18^th century until World War I. The experience of Jews in Poland varied across these boundaries, as well. It’s a bit like the continued influence of North-South differences in the US, particularly with regard to African Americans’ experiences. History can dig channels that influence the flow of events far into the future.

Map source and more information about the partitions of Poland: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/466910/Partitions-of-Poland

Wielkopolska Province, where I’m living, was under German/Prussian control during the period of partitions. Older residents in particular tell me this German influence has contributed to the region’s sense of order and relative economic success. Historically, regional residents were more interested in taking pragmatic steps to improve daily life (what has been called “organic work”) than in romantic battles for independence that were destined to be defeated. Some refer to this region as “Polska A” in contrast to the more backward and poor “Polska B” in eastern Poland. Some also complain that in recent years state and EU funding have tended to go to other regions of Poland, and that this is a residue of outdated perceptions that Wielkopolska is the least in need of development aid as well as distaste for the German influence that makes some consider the region “less Polish.” Channels can be redirected.

The highest percentage of Jews in Wielkopolska dates back to the first half of the 19^th century. Jewish outmigration after then has been attributed to a number of factors. The first is economic; Jews saw more opportunities for themselves in larger German cities. They had often been educated in German schools, spoke German, and could move west without crossing political borders. Second, the German state offered rights of citizenship for ethnic and religious minorities. Many saw more opportunities to study at universities and build careers or businesses in what they perceived as the more developed west. Third, especially from the late 19^th century and continuing when Poland regained independence after World War I, Jews were escaping growing Polish anti-Semitism. The National Democrats, with their platform defending the purity of the Polish state against ethnic and religious minorities, were particularly strong in Western Poland. Many Jews continued from Germany to the United States, chasing the promise of greater social equality as well as economic opportunities. In the interwar period, Palestine became the preferred destination.[1]

By the time World War II started, Jews constituted a tiny proportion of the population of cities like Poznan and towns like Wronki. In Poznan, there were maybe 2000 Jews, while in Wronki there were perhaps 30. This early emigration and the small numbers affect the kind of memory work that can be done in Wielkopolska. Many Jewish institutions (hospitals, schools, and even synagogues) had already closed their doors well before the war; Jews were less visible for the Poles who remember prewar life. There is another issue that has tended to limit Polish scholarship about the Jews of Wielkopolska. They often identified more closely with German culture than with Polish. This is visible even in the material fragments that have been recovered. I am thinking for instance of tombstones commonly inscribed in Hebrew on one side and in German on the other.

So overall, the fragments of Jewish life in Wielkopolska are older, the memories are more distant, and fewer residents have had direct experiences with Jews and Jewish culture. These factors pose a challenge to heritage work—it can be harder to find artifacts worthy of preservation, and more difficult to convince local residents and funding sources that these stories need to be told.

[1] I’ve read and talked to a lot of people about this, but thanks especially to Tomasz Kawski for explaining it so clearly.

Memory and forgetting in Poznan, part 2

29 Monday Dec 2014

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

≈ Leave a comment

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 40^th 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.

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?

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

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 Marysia Galbraith in Cemeteries, Heritage work, Jewish Culture, Polish-Jewish relations, Poznan

≈ 1 Comment

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.

Poznan continued to expand so that by the early 20^th 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 Marysia Galbraith in Cemeteries, Heritage work, Jewish Culture, Poznan

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Akiva Eger

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

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?

More about Lesko

22 Saturday Nov 2014

Posted by Marysia Galbraith in Heritage work, Lesko, Synagogues, World War II

≈ 8 Comments

While he was in Poland in August, my older brother Wiley had some valuable insights about Jewish heritage and about our family. This was his first time in Poland and his fresh perspective gave me a lot to think about.

This is what he posted on Facebook about Lesko:

“The largest structure in Lesko, Poland is a synagogue yet there are no Jews. Larger than the church. Not only are there no Jews there is no memory that there were any Jews. Let’s remember that 3,000 human beings, Jews, were murdered from this town, half the population, and there are those that care.”

The interior of the Lesko Synagogue.

Inside the synagogue: List of 3000 residents of Lesko and surroundings murdered by Nazis during the years 1939-1944.

About this photo, my brother’s commented, “Someone took the time to list the names. Thank you.” About me he remarked, “Taking the time to read the names and remember.”

Today, the synagogue belongs to the county (gmina) and is used as an art gallery. Just this month, I learned that the gallery is closed from fall to spring because the building has no heat. The Dom Kultury (Community Center) which manages the building wants to apply for funds to renovate the synagogue. The most pressing problem is moisture issues. Water creeps through the old stone walls and plaster, weakening the structure and even damaging the art housed within it.

Uncovering Jewish Heritage

Category Archives: Heritage work