“Żychlin’s Jewish past is not a footnote. It is a central chapter in the town’s history, and every step we take here helps restore dignity to those who lived, prayed, and were murdered here,” writes Michael Mooney. He joined the Żychlin Cemetery Project last year through our partner the Matzevah Foundation, and this year he returned with his daughter Ariel, a college student. Michael and Ariel brought energy and curiosity to our activities, as well as a willingness to do the hard physical labor of clearing our target site of the stubborn shrub blackthorn.
Michael wrote this Facebook post about our activities:
Ariel and I arrived yesterday afternoon in Kutno, Poland, where we are staying for the duration of our volunteer work in Żychlin. We immediately met the international volunteers who have gathered here this year — people joining us from across Poland, the United States, and several countries in Europe. It’s a remarkable group: committed, thoughtful, and united by a shared purpose.
This morning we took part in a moving ceremony in Kutno, where a fragment of a pre‑war Torah scroll from Żychlin was formally entrusted to the Museum Pałac Saski. The event brought together representatives of the Jewish community and the Catholic Church — including Chief Rabbi of Poland Michael Schudrich and Bishop Wojciech Osial — in a shared act of remembrance and responsibility for Jewish heritage in central Poland.
After the ceremony, our group continued our work at the Jewish cemetery in Żychlin, a place that holds both the memory of centuries of Jewish life and the trauma of its destruction.
Work at the Cemetery Today
• Clearing vegetation along the perimeter of a suspected mass‑grave area, where Jews from Żychlin were likely executed during the liquidation of the ghetto. This continues the work we began last year, slowly reclaiming the land from decades of overgrowth.
• Beginning the repainting of the cemetery gates, restoring dignity to the entrance of a sacred site that has been neglected for more than 80 years.
Every brushstroke and every branch removed is an act of remembrance — a way of returning visibility and respect to a place that was meant to be forgotten.
A Stop at the Żychlin Synagogue
Before heading to the cemetery, we stopped at the former synagogue of Żychlin — today only a shell of what it once was. The building is completely inaccessible: every doorway bricked shut, the interior long collapsed, the structure left to decay in silence.
One of our volunteers, Lawrence, whose father was a survivor from Żychlin, stood with us as we placed a memorial candle outside the sealed entrance. The candle remained unlit — a symbol of a light that once burned here but cannot yet return inside.
As we stood there, neighbors stepped out of the surrounding houses to watch. No one spoke.
The building was silent.
The street was silent.
Only the memory remained.
The Jewish Community of Żychlin
For more than 400 years, Żychlin was home to a vibrant and deeply rooted Jewish community. On the eve of World War II, Jews made up over half the town’s population, roughly 3,000–4,000 people. They built synagogues, schools, businesses, and a rich communal life that shaped the town’s identity.
All of it was destroyed between 1939 and 1942.
The Murder of Żychlin’s Jews
In 1942, the Jews of Żychlin were rounded up and deported to the Chelmno extermination camp, where they were murdered.
Local testimony and post‑war accounts also indicate that executions took place on the grounds of the Jewish cemetery itself. Two areas within the cemetery are believed to contain mass graves, where groups of Żychlin’s Jews were shot and buried during the liquidation of the ghetto. These sites were never formally marked or commemorated, and for decades nature concealed them.
Our work today — clearing brush, restoring the gates, and tending to the land — is part of the long process of bringing these places back into historical visibility and honoring those buried there.
Why This Matters
The Torah fragment entrusted to the museum this morning, the silent synagogue we visited, and the work at the cemetery this afternoon are all part of the same story:
A story of a community erased —
and of descendants, volunteers, and allies working to ensure it is never forgotten.
Żychlin’s Jewish past is not a footnote. It is a central chapter in the town’s history, and every step we take here helps restore dignity to those who lived, prayed, and were murdered here.
Thank you Marysia Galbraith and Bożena Gajewska
Michael (center) with his daughter Ariel and Żychlin descendant Lawrence Zlatkin
Presence matters. By spending time in the Żychlin Jewish cemetery, we’ve accumulated more knowledge about the town’s Jewish community and we’ve deepened connections with local inhabitants.
The stones come back. Photo credit Michele Hoferitza
Toward the end of the day, a man living a few doors down from the cemetery stopped by to tell us he had found a tombstone in his garden about three years ago when he built a fence. He noticed from the lettering it came from the Jewish cemetery but didn’t know who to contact or how to return it. He just kept it leaning up against his new fence until he heard we are in town. With the help of a couple of volunteers, he brought it to us in his wheelbarrow and now it stands beside the one that was returned several days ago. People have told me that tombstones return once residents know that someone is taking care of the cemetery. Our presence here in Żychlin attests to that.
Two returned matzevot
A candle lantern still burned in front of the first tombstone that returned, a reminder of the informal ceremony we had in the morning, lead by Żychlin descendant Lawrence Zlatkin. He told us about his connection to the town; something has drawn him back 5 or 6 times since he first came in 1985 with his father.
Lawrence shares his father’s story by the first returned Matzevah
Raphael Zlatkin was born in Żychlin in 1924 and he was just a teenager when the war broke out. His younger brother was sent to a work camp, but he managed to avoid capture. He didn’t want to leave his mother all alone. Then, he was warned that staying was a death sentence so at the age of 17 he signed up for transport to a work camp. He spent two years in Auschwitz working in food procurement and making himself indispensable to his captors. He was able to smuggle food to his younger brother and others he knew from Żychlin, helping to keep them alive. In January 1945, as the Soviet troops were approaching Raphael elected not to stay, instead traveling west where he spent time in two other camps before he was finally liberated. From his modest beginnings in a basement apartment at 3 Narutowicza Street in Żychlin, he became a successful businessman in the US.
Lawrence said Kaddish in Hebrew and then in English, explaining it doesn’t say anything about the dead but it rather praises God and calls for peace. Everyone laid stones on the tombstone as a mark of remembrance for those who were buried in the cemetery.
In the afternoon we visited the Community Center where Henry Olszewski had an exhibition about the Jewish history of Żychlin, with photographs of the synagogue and biographic details about Jewish inhabitants including Raphael Zlatkin.
Exhibit by Henryk Olszewski
Not everyone could attend because they were hard at work helping UA Archaeology graduate student Claiborne Sea run the GPR (ground-penetrating radar) across the sites we had cleared. He showed the other students how the machine operates and gave them opportunities to operate the device. Claiborne’s work has only begun. It will take weeks to process the data and analyze the results.
More from UA archaeology graduate student Michele Hoferitza:
I figured I would post about our Europe trip a week at a time, but this week in Poland is going to need some extra explanation, and there are too many photos to dump. We are here as volunteers for the Matzevah Foundation, a US-based organization that works to preserve Jewish cemeteries in Poland. Many were simply obliterated by Nazis, and others were sites of mass execution before gas chambers were systematically used. Both are the case for our site in Zychlin, where LiDAR data has shown two depressed areas under dense growth of blackthorn. We have cleared a significant area in order to do a GPR survey to verify a mass burial site. It has been a lot of physical work, but it feels amazing to be part of this project. We are not just uncovering history, but living it. As we have worked, a few local people have brought old Jewish headstones they have found on farm property, recognizing that these monuments were taken to desecrate the memory of those who died. Restoring these is a sacred work of healing and remembrance.
Students do a surface survey led by Michele
From Steven Reece of the Matzevah Foundation:
While some volunteers continued to clear the overgrowth, the main activity was an introduction to the Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) that was used to evaluate the mass grave within the cemetery. Students from the University of Alabama learned how to use the equipment and take some initial findings. The GPR investigators will need time to analyze the results so those will come at a later date.
We also held a commemorative ceremony where Lawrence Zlatkin said Kaddish. About 25 people joined us today including Grzegorz Ambroziak, the major of Żychlin.
Thank you to the many local volunteers who joined us again today…your efforts made a big difference in what we were able to accomplish!
From volunteer Michael Mooney:
On the final day in Żychlin, our team completed an incredibly meaningful day of volunteer work at the Jewish cemetery. While some of us cleared overgrowth, the main focus was introducing Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) technology to evaluate a suspected mass grave on site. Students from the University of Alabama learned to use the equipment and began initial surveys; the results will take time to analyze, but we hope they’ll shed more light on the tragic history of Żychlin’s Jewish community.
Throughout the day, we made several poignant discoveries—including human bones exposed above ground, among them the leg bones of a toddler—painful reminders of the atrocities endured here during the Holocaust. In a remarkable moment, a neighbor living four houses away approached and revealed he had a Jewish headstone in his garden, likely displaced when Nazis destroyed the cemetery. The stone, belonging to a 96-year-old woman named Beila, will now be returned to its rightful place, helping to reclaim her memory and dignity.
We also held a moving commemorative ceremony at the cemetery, with Lawrence Zlatkin reciting Kaddish in memory of those lost. Roughly 25 people attended, including Mayor Grzegorz Ambroziak and many local residents, whose dedication made all the difference.
At the end of the day, before leaving the cemetery, we gathered to respectfully bury the bones we found—ensuring those whose remains were uncovered received the dignity and rest they so deserve.
Our project is part of ongoing research led by Professor Marysia Galbraith of the University of Alabama—a descendant of Żychlin Jews—who documents these histories, stories, and testimonies of survivors and witnesses to ensure that the past is not forgotten.
A Guest Post by Michael Mooney of the Matzevah Foundation
Day two has wrapped up for the Matzevah Foundation, our core team of volunteers, three individuals from a local reintegration program, and several local residents who stepped forward to lend their hands. These community members have their own reasons for joining us—personal, deeply-felt convictions about the importance of this work. They rarely say much about it, but their quiet presence speaks volumes. Their support adds a layer of silent solidarity that is deeply moving.
Our main task today focused on continuing the physically intensive work of clearing the brush and thick overgrowth from the depressed area believed to mark the site of a mass grave—just outside Żychlin. The sunken terrain could be the final resting place of hundreds of Jews—families and children—who were massacred during the German occupation of Poland. Step by step, we’re reclaiming this space from years of neglect, trying to bring dignity to a site long obscured both by vegetation and silence. Evidence and testimonies collected over the years suggest this area may be one of many unmarked mass graves, now hidden within the landscape yet never truly forgotten.
Before the war, Żychlin was home to a thriving Jewish community, with Jews making up over 40% of the town’s population. They had their own schools, synagogues, businesses, and institutions woven into the daily life of the town. The Nazi invasion brought devastation—ghettoization, mass deportations, executions, and widespread destruction. Few Jews from Żychlin survived the war.
Later in the day, our group visited what remains of the town’s historic Jewish quarter. Only the gutted walls of a 19th-century synagogue still stand—silent and broken. The cheder (Jewish school) and mikveh (ritual bath) that once operated nearby were destroyed long ago. The courtyard is cracked pavement, overrun with weeds and scattered debris. There is no plaque. No sign. Just the vacant presence of what was once central to community life.
Żychlin synagogue
As we surveyed the site, a few residents peered from behind curtains or doorways, then disappeared back inside. One person reportedly remarked to a member of our team that the synagogue “should just be torn down.” Is this concern about safety and dereliction? Or is it also a quiet wish to erase uncomfortable history—to bury the memory of a tragically obliterated community? Is forgetting easier than remembering?
Near the clearing at the suspected grave site, we stumbled upon a weathered old sign—almost completely obscured by plants and exposure to the elements. The sign matches a photograph taken about eight years ago at (or near) this same location that once surfaced online. Most of the paint has worn away, but a few phrases remain legible:
– **”WSPÓLNY GRÓB”** – “In this place rest”
– **”ZAMORDOWANYCH”** – “Murdered people”
– **”W CZASIE OKUPACJI PRZEZ”** – “During the occupation by”
– One barely visible word at the bottom: **”HITLEROWCÓW,”** meaning “Nazis”
Metal sign indicating a collective grave is nearby
This style of memorial wording is common on World War II-era markers around Poland. It typically refers to civilians—often Jews or resistance members—murdered by the Nazis and buried in unmarked sites like this one.
Even in its deteriorated state, that plaque whispers a truth: this place is hallowed ground. And while some might look away, we cannot. Our work is about remembrance, dignity, and bearing witness to what many would rather forget.
When I return home, I plan to read *Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland* by Jan T. Gross. The book tells the horrifying account of how, in 1941, the Jews of Jedwabne were not killed by distant Nazis, but by their own non-Jewish neighbors in an act of unspeakable violence. The story Gross tells echoes here in Żychlin and many other towns across Poland—places once filled with Jewish life, now emptied of memory, unless someone comes to uncover it. https://amzn.to/3Ixc0rK
Tomorrow, on Day Three, we’ll begin with a sobering visit to Chełmno—the extermination camp where most of Żychlin’s Jews were murdered and incinerated for the simple “crime” of being Jewish.
Nothing like spending the whole day on your feet the day after an overnight plane trip. But our group is intrepid.
Dinner on Friday night
The day began with a walking tour “The Unremovable Traces of the Warsaw Ghetto” led by Dr. Szymon Pietrzykowski of the Jewish Historical Institute. We started in the JHI in the lobby where the stone floor retains the burn stains caused by the fire bombs that destroyed the Great Synagogue in 1943 after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
Great Synagogue in Warsaw. Photo source: WikipediaBurn marks dating from the destruction of the neighboring Great Synagogue in 1943.
We visited places where the former location of the ghetto walls are marked by metal plaques in the sidewalk, buildings reconstructed after the war, sites where important Jewish institutions were destroyed and never rebuilt, and places significant to the Jewish Ghetto Uprising and the archive of Jewish life in the ghetto collected by historian Emanuel Ringelblum.
Jewish Historical Institute on Tłomacka StreetThe building that replaced the Great Synagogue. Note the arched feature evocative of synagogue windows.Location of the ghetto wallTraditional courtyard, one of the few showing what prewar Warsaw was likeMonument where part of the Ringelblum archive was found in milk cans under the rubble on Nowolipie Street
Our tour continued at the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, led by our guide Martina.
Our group at POLIN in the reproduction of a wooden painted synagogue Model of the Great Synagogue
After six hours of walking, we were ready to sit down. Paula, whose ancestor Tema Walfisz Jakubowicz grew up in Żychlin, treated us to a well-deserved meal. Many in our group got to try pierogi for the first time!
In my last post I asked who was the young person who continued our work in the Żychlin Jewish Cemetery. Through Henryk Olszewski, I received this message:
First and foremost, I’m a Zychliner who respects the history and memory of people. I’m always aware of the legacy that has been left to us from past times. I believe above all that places such as the cemetery have a special status and shouldn’t be neglected. That cemetery shouldn’t look like it looks and that can be changed through actions such as those that occurred recently. If people can fly across the ocean to fix something there, so can we. It is a shame to look at the synagogue etc. If these symbols disappear, there will be nothing left in our city of Jewish culture except a few photos, so let’s take care of it.”
They know about 2 tombstones that have been in someone’s yard since the war and want to bring them back to the cemetery, hopefully in time for our next visit.
The regional newspaper Nowy Łowiczanin took notice of the ADJCP cemetery restoration project in Żychlin, publishing three articles in July 2024. Two local reporters visited us while we were working. Dorota Grąbczewska explained the project was a collaboration between the ADJCP, Matzevah Foundation, Bożena Gajewska of the Association of Friends of the Kutno Lands (TPZK), and local volunteers. She quotes me explaining the need for regular cleanups, at least twice a year, so the place won’t look abandoned. In her article, Aleksandra Głuszcz wrote about additional volunteers including the graduates of the Żychlin primary school who worked hard painting the fence and made an effort to speak with us in English, even though some of us know Polish. In addition, inmates from the correctional facility in Garbalin came as part of an educational program. They learned about the history of Żychlin’s Jews and also helped with the clean-up. Aleksandra also detailed the memorial service, which I described in Closing Words at the Żychlin Cemetery, Until Next Year.
Dorota followed up a week later with an article about the restored grave monument for the first rabbi of Żychlin, Shmuel Abba (1809-1879), who is remembered as an important Hasidic rabbi, Talmudic scholar, and practitioner of practical kabbalah. Local amateur historian Henryk Olszewski found out that stonemasons in a neighboring town were hired to manufacture the monument, which covers the remains of the older, damaged monument below.
Our work has reached others, as well. A group of young volunteers came a few weeks after we left and continued the restoration, clearing out the overgrowth around the main memorial monument and uncovering a pathway made of pavers in front of it. Nobody knows who they are or why they came, but we thank them for their contributions. The place looks cared for now, a proper tribute to those who lie in rest.
Henryk Olszewski shared these photos with me including the collage he made of the monument as it looked 35 years ago, and how it looks cleaned up.
Steven Reece, who has been coordinating cemetery clean-ups for twenty years through the Matzevah Foundation, believes that that a successful project entails more than the physical labor. He emphasizes the importance of the connections that are forged among descendant communities and contemporary inhabitants, and the knowledge that is gained through those interactions. Steven’s goal goes well beyond leaving behind a neat cemetery. He tries to shape the conditions that will sustain the care of Jewish heritage and memory.
Our memorial gathering on July 4, at the end of our work in the Żychlin Jewish cemetery, indicates we are on our way to establishing lasting relationships and we have a plan for continued maintenance of the cemetery.
Before and after: the beautiful wildflowers were taller than Bożena when we started. See the painted gate, cleared brush, and new sign when we finished. Photo credits: Marysia Galbraith
The ceremony was meant to be informal, yet local volunteers, representatives from the regional government, a journalist, and neighbors joined the descendants to show their respect for the work we had done and the people who came before us.
Beforehand, the young ladies who had helped paint the gate and remove brush, presented the visiting volunteers with Ptasie Mleczko, chocolate-covered marshmallows (my son’s favorite!), to thank us for giving them the opportunity to help on our project. I, in turn, thanked them with gifts carrying the UA New College logo.
A gift of Ptasie Mleczko (chocolate-covered marshmallows) from the young volunteers. Photo credits: Marysia Galbraith
We gathered in front of the memorial monument, now cleared of brush.
After I expressed my gratitude to everyone who contributed to our project, Gmina Secretary Waldemar Bartochowski moved us with his remarks, “I want to thank you, as the older generation, for showing the younger generation respect for tradition and, above all, memory. What you do works against the loss of memory and identity so the younger generation can build a better future.”
Closing remarks in front of the memorial monument. Photo credits: Bożena Gajewska
Steven Reece followed, “I am the animator, the helper and supporter for this work. You all are a good example of what is possible when we as a community come together to care for the memory of your former neighbors. I want to invite you to continue this work in the future.” He shared a psalm in Polish.
The last speaker was David Goren. He said, “This very emotional. I am amazed at the ability of us to make this bridge.” Gesturing to the family that joined us from next door, he added “Having three generations here is unexpected, and neighbors, too.” Then, to the young volunteers, he offered, “You brought the spirit, and you brought the spirit of your families.” David offered special thanks to Bożena, who worked so tirelessly with so much heart. He finished with Kel Maleh Rachamim (Prayer of Mercy).
We concluded by lighting candle lanterns and placing stones on the monument. Liana had gathered plain stones, but Bożena brought ones painted white with messages in black: “zachor, “pamięć,” “we remember,” and the Star of David.
Placing stones on the memorial monument. Photo credits: Bożena Gajewska
We thought that was it, but Bożena had one more surprise for us: a sign for the gate identifying this as a Jewish cemetery. She thought of it two nights ago, ordered it the next morning, and picked it up shortly before the ceremony.
Bożena Gajewska surprised us with a sign for the cemetery gate. We will work with various heritage organizations to get a more permanent marker. Perhaps in time for next year’s clean-up? Photo credit: Bożena Gajewska
Our last two days in Żychlin highlight the importance of presence. If we hadn’t stayed here several days, we probably wouldn’t have learned everything we did. As we cleared more of the stubborn blackthorn bushes, the cemetery revealed more secrets. After seeing the progress we were making, the inhabitants of Żychlin opened up to us, too.
Agnieszka Olszewska, a local amateur historian, leads us through brush and brambles to the site of a collective grave (note the back of the rusted sign barely visible at top left). Could these boulders be the remains of a memorial stone?
How would you respond if a group of foreigners come into your town and started weed whacking a cemetery? My guess is most of us would just watch from a distance, curious and a bit suspicious.
By Wednesday, people started telling us stories they pulled out of the depths of their memory. Others claimed ignorance about the town’s Jewish history, but the more we engaged in conversation, the clearer it was they knew more than they had initially let on.
ADJCP member David Goren, whose ancestors came from Żychlin, accompanied me to ask some of the neighbors about the cemetery. We collected important testimony that will help us bring Jewish memory back in this community.
Żychlin descendant David Goren with our tireless Polish partner Bożena Gajewska. After a physically demanding day of weed whacking she went home and baked us raisin and date pastries
The Wujcikowskis live across the street from the cemetery. They had already shown us kindness, letting all the volunteers use their bathroom. David had noticed historical photos in their flower shop suggesting they had lived there a long time. In fact, the large property and house have been in the family since before the war. When Katarzyna (Kasia) didn’t know the answers to our questions, she escorted us to her parents Henryka (Henia) and Grzegorz Wujcikowski who came out of the farm building next to the flower shop. They greeted us warmly. Though they weren’t sure they could help us find old photographs of the cemetery, Grzegorz shared his family history with us. The property originally belonged to Grzegorz’s father’s uncle. Because it was one of the finest houses in town, some of the occupying Gestapo moved in and fenced the land to raise horses. Grzegorz’s aunt and uncle weren’t forced to leave, instead sharing the three-story house with the Germans. After the war, Grzegorz’s parents joined their aunt and uncle, who had no children of their own, and eventually became the owners of the property.
Grzegorz was born after the war. He knew Moshe Zyslander, a Holocaust survivor from Żychlin who emigrated to Israel. In 1989, Zyslander led the initiative to build the memorial monuments in the Jewish cemetery, as well as the surrounding gate and fence. When the Wujcikowskis learned about Zyslander’s plans, they returned the tombstone fragments that the Germans had taken from the cemetery to build a pig sty, the same farm building where Grzegorz and Henia had been working when we arrived. The stones removed from its walls make up the bulk of the 50 tombstone fragments embedded in concrete mounds in the cemetery. Whenever Zyslander returned to visit the cemetery, he would stop by the Wujcikowski’s for a visit.
The Wujcikowskis showed kindness to Jewish descendants in the past and continue to do so today.
Descendants Marysia, Liana, and David took our student volunteers out for ice cream. They were a great help, painting the gate and clearing brush. They didn’t seem to know a lot about the Jewish history of Żychlin but seemed interested in learning more
I’ve been very concerned about properly marking and memorializing the mass graves in the cemetery. Reports in the archive of the National Institute of Memory document the shooting of 200 people in 1942. Other sources indicate that when the ghetto was liquidated, the infirm were shot on the spot rather than being transported to the Chełmno death camp. For the site to be designated officially, it’s important to obtain testimony from witnesses. We were able to talk to two people who were not witnesses themselves but were told about the murders by a close relative who saw what happened.
We spoke with the neighbor next door to the cemetery the day before we started our work. She confirmed she knew we were coming; the city had informed her. She showed us where the city had dropped off a dumpster for the brush we cleared. A big goat was chained up outside the cemetery along the dirt drive leading from the road. “We put her there to eat the grass, so the drive is passable,” she explained.
Over the next two days, she and her son were in and out of their yard feeding their fowl, doing their farm work, and keeping a covert eye on us. As we cleaned up on our third day of work, David and I approached their fence to invite them to the memorial service we planned for the next afternoon. Mrs. Anna came over with her son Marcin and grandchildren Marceli and Lena. Anna has observed the comings and goings at the cemetery since she married over 40 years ago. Her husband, who grew up in the house, did so even longer, until his death in February.
Anna remembers how nice the cemetery looked when she first married. People used the space as a kind of commons; they walked their dogs or sunbathed, and her son played soccer with his friends. On holidays (the Catholic holidays like All Saint’s Day), the family would light a candle lantern at the monuments in remembrance of the dead.
As the cemetery became overgrown, people started going there to drink, play music, and get into other kinds of trouble. Anna’s husband would chase them out, threatening to call the police. She understands people sometimes want to get together and drink, but why destroy a cemetery? Why walk their dogs there? The last time she was at the Catholic cemetery where her husband is buried, people were walking their dog there, too. It isn’t right. She doesn’t understand why people would destroy monuments, either. Why? They should respect them. Although she sometimes contradicted herself, her overall orientation towards us and the cemetery was benevolent. It also suggests a growing recognition that the Jewish cemetery is a sacred space.
Then, Anna confided something that might help us get the mass grave demarcated: a personal account of the crime, albeit second-hand.
When her father was a young boy, about the age her 9-year-old grandson is now, he walked across the fields to see what was happening at the cemetery. He witnessed Jews being shot, their bodies falling into a trench. He was so frightened he peed in his pants and ran home to his mother.
Looking out across the field from what is probably the site of a mass grave in the cemetery. This view probably looked pretty much the same over 80 years ago when Anna’s father ran across the field after witnessing the murders
Henryk Olszewski is a local amateur historian whom I have known for ten years. He had a stroke two years ago and has been slowly recovering. He manages the website and Facebook page Żychlin Historia with his wife Agnieszka. He has an unconventional way of presenting information and sometimes his posts perpetuate stereotypes about Jews and Polish-Jewish relations, but he’s a dogged researcher.
Agnieszka visited us at the cemetery with photos she and Henryk took in 2019 of a rusty sign; though the white lettering has faded, enough remains to make out “Wspólny Grób zamordowanych w czasie okupacji przez Hitlerowców” (“Collective Grave of those murdered during the Nazi occupation”). She, David, and I walked around the back of the cemetery, and after a few false turns, we found an entrance to a clearing where the back of the sign was visible. We also found some large boulders. Could they be fragments of a commemorative stone? We asked a few people why there are places in and around the cemetery that are less overgrown or even barren of vegetation. One possibility could be that the lye spread over mass graves made the soil infertile.
Not much is left of the lettering, but it appears to say “Wspólny Grób zamordowanych w czasie okupacji przez Hitlerowców” (“Collective Grave of those murdered during the Nazi occupation”). Photo credit: Agnieszka Olszewska
Thursday evening, Steven and I visited the Olszewskis at their home. While they treated us to pierogi, stuffed pancakes, and a plateful of tasty cakes, I asked Henryk to remind me the name of a man I met during my first visit to Żychlin. Of course he knew, and immediately picked up the phone to call Józef Kowalski so I could check on a story he told me. Józef confirmed that his grandfather, who was a young man during the occupation, was called out by the Gestapo one night and ordered to dig a ditch in the Jewish cemetery. His grandfather, his mother’s father, told him the story directly. Józef also confirmed the ditch was where the people shot in the cemetery were buried.
The dissonance between the social nature of our interactions and the horrific topics we discussed doesn’t escape me. And yet, these kinds of connections are what make possible the recovery of difficult memories. Our work goes beyond the restoration of the physical space of the cemetery, to something deeper. We’re also restoring the memory of the people who inhabited the city over 80 years ago, and the events that took them away forever.
As we cleared underbrush, we found a few stones like these that appear to be fragments of tombstones
I have been calling my project a family memoir since the beginning, well before I read In the Garden of Memory (the English translation was published by Weidenfield and Nicolson in 2004). My family’s story overlaps with author Joanna Olczak-Ronikier’s in other ways, too. The social world of Warsaw was intimate enough that it seems likely our families knew about each other even if they weren’t directly acquainted. Joanna’s relatives, the Horwitzs and the Mortkowiczes, were central figures in the social circles my Babcia also frequented, those occupied by writers, artists, publishers, and professionals. Both families have Jewish origins, and each assimilated, though to varying degrees.
Joanna, her mother Hanna Olczak, and her grandmother Janina Mortkowicz didn’t deny their Jewish origins in the way my mother and grandmother did. Still, they frequented many of the same places around Warsaw. When Janina, then Horwitz, was a child, her “consolation prize” for check-ups at the dentist were a visit to Lourse Café on Krakowskie Przedmieście for chocolate (15). This was in the 1880s, so decades before my grandfather Zygmunt Bereda gained an interest in the business. During the 1930s, Joanna’s cousins attended the same high schools as my mother and uncle. Girls attended the Klementyna Hoffmanowa High School, while boys went to the Stefan Batory High School.
The book also gives me some insight into marriage customs during my Babcia’s generation. “According to Jewish tradition, finding suitable husbands for one’s daughters was a basic parental duty,” Olczak-Ronikier writes. “Marriage was too serious a matter to be contracted for love. After all, it concerned two people’s future, and that of their offspring. The older generation took charge of bringing the couples together, involving family, friends and a professional matchmaker” (32). Things were changing rapidly in the late 19th century, though, and just like I have observed among Babcia’s siblings, older children were more bound by tradition while younger children were more inclined to choose their own pathway. In Olczak-Ronikier’s family, the younger children were drawn to socialism and communism.
By the next generation, Joanna’s mother Hanna was the first and only family member to marry a non-Jeweven and to change her religion. Olczak-Ronikier says, it “did not provoke any particular reaction among her relatives” (184). She was not excluded from the family because of it, unlike my grandmother Halina, whose father sat shiva and treated her as dead after her marriage to a Catholic. Olczak-Ronikier’s family was far more secular than Babcia’s, though. Perhaps in part this is because the Piwkos lived in provincial cities where the pull of religious tradition was stronger. My grandmother was drawn to Warsaw for the opportunities it offered for her to remake her life.
Another parallel I see between our family stories is in the internalized antisemitism Joanna experienced. As a child in the 1930s, she didn’t want to be Jewish, especially when she became the object of the anti-Jewish taunts of other children. She explains, “Among Jews who had decided to assimilate, a huge role was played by ambitions relating to the level of Polonization they had achieved. When the parents, through their looks, language and religious customs, were a reminder of the environment that the children had made such an effort to get out of, family love and loyalty were severely put to the test. Nowadays it is hard to imagine how painful this process of tearing oneself away from one’s roots must have been” (71).
Maks Horwitz, her great uncle, put it this way: “They were ashamed of their origin. Understandably, they never denied it among those who knew about it. But even here, in deed, word and gesture they tried to prove and convince others that they felt themselves to be completely and utterly Polish and that they were entirely rid of their Jewishness” (111).
Members of both families survived the war by adopting Aryan identities. Babcia was able to live more in the open than Olczak-Ronikier’s family because she had been distanced from her Jewish origins since the 1920s, and also because her Catholic husband was well enough positioned to bribe the Nazi authorities to look the other way. As in my family, the women of Joanna’s family took a few years off their age on their false documents (92). During the Warsaw Uprising, when the area they lived in was overrun by the Germans, Olczak-Ronikier’s family escaped via the underground sewers, as did my mother. With the destruction of the capital, both families took the same path out of the city, traveling with a crowd of refugees south to Krakow, where they remained until the end of the German occupation. (268)
Joanna’s cousin Ryś Bychowski was born the same year as my mother. He attended Stefan Batory High School, just like my Uncle George who was just a couple of years older. It seems likely they knew each other, and its possible they could have been friends. Their lives might have overlapped during the war, as well. Ryś escaped to safety in the US with his parents in 1941, only to volunteer for the Polish Airforce, which operated out of Britain. My uncle was a paratrooper, while Ryś became a navigator. Ryś joined as a Polish patriot, unwilling to remain in safety when his people were subject to Nazi oppression. For him, the fact that he was Jewish only added to his resolve. He wanted to liberate Poland and the Jewish people. While in Britain, he confronted the horror of the mass annihilation of the Jews, made even more unbearable when his friends and comrades exhibited indifference, or in some instances satisfaction, that the Jews were killed. Olczak-Ronikier explains, “His Polish-Jewish identity had always seemed something quite natural to him, yet in view of this and similar episodes he came to the conclusion that he had to make a choice” (295). He decided he could never live in Poland again, even though he remained committed to the fight against Nazism.
A photo from my grandmother’s papers taken in Warsaw right after the war. From the left: Mirka (Rachel’s daughter), Rachel (Babcia’s sister), Czesław Mochorowski, and Nelly. The boy who is standing is Bogdan, Rachel’s grandson, the son of Samek and Nelly. I don’t know who the man on the right or the boy at the very bottom are.
The evolution of Ryszard’s view of Poles helps me understand the deep anger and resentment so many Jews feel toward Poland. It’s something I have recognized before, and wondered why they direct their fury more strongly toward Poles than to Germans. In a letter to his father in 1943, Ryś Bychowski explained in clear and emotionally resonant terms; “I do not want to be a second-class citizen ever again […] Above all I’m afraid of knowing the whole truth about the reaction of Polish society to the extermination of the Jews. I cannot live with or talk to, I am not able to work with people who found it possible to ignore their destruction, occupy their homes and denounce or blackmail the survivors” (296). This was an intimate betrayal, not by a sworn enemy but by comrades and neighbors. It was exclusion from the group he felt himself to be a part of. No wonder it cut so deeply.
Żychlin mayor Grzegorz Ambroziak sent me photos of daffodils blooming around the memorial to the city’s Jewish community. These flowers, planted by local school children, are a symbol of remembrance. Daffodils are also associated with the upcoming anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which started on April 19, 1943.
These small markers of remembrance matter. They offer a time and place to contemplate what used to be, what was lost.
Uncovering Jewish Heritage 