Category Archives: Jewish Ghetto

Allies in Włocławek

02 Friday Dec 2022

Posted by in Association of Descendants of Jewish Central Poland, Cemeteries, Heritage work, Jewish Ghetto, Kolski, Museum, Polish-Jewish Heritage, Polish-Jewish relations, Włocławek

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Report #10 about Roberta Books and Marysia Galbraith’s trip to meet Polish partners in preparation for the ADJCP‘s memorial visit to central Poland.

Włocławek, September 12-16 and September 28

With a population of 107,000, Włocławek is the largest town in this part of central Poland, followed by Kutno which has 42,700 residents.

Włocławek will be the home base for the ADJCP memorial trip in May 2023. Roberta and I spent several days there to plan the trip and I returned a couple of weeks later to follow up on a few things. We reserved a block of rooms for the memorial trip in the Pałac Bursztynowy, a three-star hotel built to look like an old manor house, with an elaborate formal garden all around it. Roberta and I sampled the menu at the hotel restaurant. They have a good assortment of soups, salads, appetizers, and main courses, all tastefully prepared. The white asparagus soup with smoked salmon was particularly tasty. We also made arrangements with a bus company that will provide transportation during the memorial trip.

Roberta with a bowl of white asparagus soup at the restaurant in the Pałac Bursztynowy

In Włocławek, we met with partners who agreed to help organize activities for us. Included among our partners are schoolteachers Anita Kaniewska-Kwiatkowska who teaches history at the Automotive High School, Robert Feter who teaches computer science at the same school, and Monika Lamka-Czerwińska who teaches at a school for children with disabilities. They have led several award-winning programs in which their students learned about and did research about the city’s Jewish community. See for example Włocławek Zapomniana Ulica, a Facebook page that was developed as part of one of these projects. Another outcome of this project is a sign posted on Piwna Street with a QR code linking to a recorded message outlining the wartime history of the Jewish population in this place.

Włocławek Forgotten Street: Scan the QR code to hear the history of the street

On the morning of September 13, Roberta and I met students at the Automotive High School. We were escorted to the library, a room the size of a large classroom. Extra chairs filled all the space between the round tables. A reporter from the local paper came and took photos. Two students shot video for a class in television production with the plan to create a short program about our visit.

Students filed in one class at a time. In attendance were students studying psychology/pedagogy, computer science, and technical studies. This school also has classes for students with physical and mental disabilities.

Before we began, I spoke briefly with the first group that arrived, girls studying psychology and pedagogy. Their teacher Anita Kaniewska explained they will work with her on a project about Jewish history and culture and they will participate in our memorial trip. The room filled up. Over 80 students attended. We delivered our presentation in English and I’m surprised how well it went. A good number of the students understood, and those who didn’t know much English seemed attentive nevertheless.

Roberta and I took turns explaining our family connection to central Poland. Then we asked them what they knew about Jewish culture and religion, mostly as a way to fill in some details and point out similarities and differences to Polish culture and Christian faith. Finally, we invited them to ask us questions, which we answered. Their questions included:

  • What emotions do you experience when telling us your story?
  • Do you have any relatives in Poland today?
  • Did you know there is going to be a statue for Jewish people in Brześć Kujawski? There was a public pool but they closed it, because people found out it was a graveyard for Jewish people.

Afterwards, one of the teachers said she was very pleased with the students’ level of engagement. Even one of their students who has autism asked a question. Five girls from Anita’s class thanked us and told us how moved they were by our stories and our presence. They asked if they could give us a hug. It was very sweet.

Photos from our visit were posted on the school website.

We had to hurry to our appointment with the mayor. Anita accompanied us. Marek Wojtkowski, whose official title is President of Wloclawek, expressed support for the ADJCP and efforts to memorialize the city’s Jewish history. He agreed to meet memorial trip participants and to welcome us to Włocławek.

Together with Anita, we proposed two projects: a Jewish history trail with signs and QR codes outlining events that occurred in particular places around the city; and a portable exhibition on retractable panels that can be moved and set up easily. President Wojtowski supports both these ideas. He agreed to help obtain permission to mount the historical trail signs on buildings.

President Wojtkowski noted his background as an historian, and said it is important that this history return, especially for young people.  

Few traces remain of Włocławek’s Jewish community, which before the war numbered 20,000 people (20% of the city’s population). The two synagogues were burned down during the first days of the Nazi invasion on Rosh Hashana 1939. The cemetery was cleared of tombstones, and during the communist period a school was built on the site. In 2000, a group of descendants in collaboration with the city erected a memorial in front of the school in the shape of a matzevah. The text says in Polish and Hebrew “At this site Germans created a ghetto from which in 1942 they deported Polish citizens of Jewish origin to death camps.” Roberta and I lit candles for my relatives and all the others buried at this site.

Memorial to Włocławek’s Jewish Community at the site of the Jewish cemetery and the wartime ghetto

Meeting with Mirka Stojak, September 28

When I returned to Włocławek on September 28, I met with Mirka Stojak, who for over 20 years has been meeting with and assisting Jewish descendants who have visited Włocławek. Mirka has documented the lives of Włocławek’s Jews in historical texts, prose, poetry, and on her webpage Żydzi Włocławek. Each year, she gives presentations at schools where she tells the stories of the city’s Jewish residents and reads her original poetry and stories. She has also worked with students on theatrical and musical productions on related themes. Longin Graczyk of the Ari Ari Foundation has worked with Anita and Mirka on other projects. Most recently, Mirka led a “Sentimental Walk” around historic Włocławek in which she told the stories of Jewish residents who used to live at various addresses. The Ari Ari Foundation and the local government where among the sponsors of the event. The ADJCP is listed as well!?!

Poster for the “Sentimental Walk”

Mirka will join Anita and Longin on the organizing committee for our memorial trip. She is also happy to prepare a presentation or to lead a walk for our visit, though she does not speak English so it will need to be translated.

Since retiring last year, Mirka has devoted even more time to writing. I bought her latest book Pamięci Włocłaswkich Żydów (In Memory of Włocławek Jews), a combination of history, stories, poems, and the memoir of Jakub Bukowski, who turns out to have been a neighbor of my cousins. Bukowski mentions Mirka Kolska, my mother’s first cousin, was one of classmates.

I visited the city museum to see the extraordinary exhibition of faience pottery. This industry was started and dominated by Jewish industrialists. Many of the woman who painted the floral designs were Polish. During the war, the industry was taken over by the Germans and then passed into Polish hands after the war. During communism, the factories became the property of the national government. The last factories closed right around the time communism fell. They were unable to reorganize within the emerging capitalist economy.

I hope we include the exhibition in our memorial trip.

Part of the faience exhibit in the city museum

Would You Live in the Ghetto?

20 Monday Aug 2018

Posted by in Commemoration, Jewish Ghetto, Krakow, Memory, Podgórze, Post-World War II, World War II

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The Stare (Old) Podgórze district of Kraków, nestled between the Vistula River and the hilltop Bednarski Park, has experienced an incredible resurgence over the past several years. What used to be a neglected part of the city, with crumbling townhouses and drunks who congregated in the town square, has become the home of restaurants, cafes, galleries, and museums. A new pedestrian bridge links Podgórze to the heart of Kazimierz; the rhythm of footsteps over the pedestrian walkway causes sculptures suspended from wires to totter like the acrobats that are depicted.

 

Pedestrian Bridge connecting Podgórze and Kazimierz, Krakow.
Sculptures of acrobats suspended on wires, by Jerzy Kendziora.
A biker pedals by a sculpture of an acrobat suspended on wires, historic Podgórze in the distance.
The pedestrian bridge between Podgórze and Kazimierz, Krakow.

Old Podgórze is also the place the Nazi governor Hans Frank selected for the Krakow Jewish ghetto on March 3, 1941. “Within two weeks, 18,000 Jews were ordered to move to 320 buildings, whose ‘Aryan’ residents had previously been forced to vacate.” [1] Presumably, the district was selected because of its distance from the center of town, further isolated on the other side of the river. By March 20, Podgórze was closed off by a high brick wall; whether the symbolism was intentional or not, the undulating curves along the top edge evoked Jewish headstones stacked side by side. The ghetto shrank in 1942, when residents were taken to their death in camps like Bełżec, and was completely liquidated on March 13-14, 1943. The ghetto existed just two years, but the fact that it existed at all in this very place clashes uncomfortably with the district’s rebirth.

I have written about Podgórze before, and about the way the district captivated me. In fact, I’ve sometimes remarked that if I were to buy an apartment in Krakow, I would want it to be in Podgórze. But that was before I knew what happened there during World War II, before I started to explore my Jewish heritage, before historical markers brought difficult history back into the public sphere, and before the phantom walls of the ghetto became part of my inner map of the district. When I visited Krakow earlier this summer, I decided to rent an apartment in Podgórze to get a better feel for the place. Could I live there, knowing what I now know?

I found a place right in the heart of what used to be the ghetto, in a newly renovated building right beside a ruin, and across the street from the iconic red brick mikvah building that now houses one of the city’s most prestigious art galleries.

 

Podgórze, crumbling ruin beside new renovation.
Former mikvah, now Starmach Gallery, Podgórze, Krakow

I took long runs past St. Joseph’s Church on the Podgórze Market Square, over the hills of Bednarski Park, and through the narrow streets.

 

St Józef’s Church, Podgórze
Fragment of Jewish ghetto wall, Lwowska Street

I visited the remaining fragments of ghetto wall. A short section on Lwowska Street includes a plaque on which is written in Hebrew and Polish: “Here they lived, suffered, and died at the hands of Hitler’s torturers; from here they were taken on their last road to the death camps.” A larger section separates a school yard from the park; I came upon a group of Israeli teenagers whose armed guards asked me what I was doing there. I came to see the wall, I replied. I watched for a bit as their animated tour guide seemed to be reenacting the experiences of ghetto captives.

 

Tram stop at Ghetto Heroes’ Square
Tram stop at Ghetto Heroes’ Square

I waited for trams at Ghetto Heroes Square, sitting on the chairs that are part of the memorial to those who waited at this very spot to be transported on that final road to their deaths.

 

Map of Podgórze, including Jewish ghetto boundaries.
Memorial in Ghetto Heroes’ Square

Could I be witness to this on a daily basis? Maybe if I lived in Podgórze, but outside the borders of the ghetto? But that seems no better—to put myself in the position of those who watched from outside the walls.

So my love of this space—a quiet corner just a short walk from the heart of the city—battles with the discomfort of flashes of a painful history.

Could I live there? Could you?

[1] Potel, Jean-Yves. 2010 Koniec Niewinności: Polska Wobec Swojej Żydowskiej Przeszłości. Translated by Julia Chimiak. Krakow: Znak. P. 128.

Holocaust Remembrance Day in Włocławek

29 Monday Jan 2018

Posted by in Cemeteries, Commemoration, Jewish Ghetto, Memory, Polish-Jewish relations, Włocławek

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Thanks to Mirosława Stojak for all the work she does to preserve the memory of Jewish history and culture in Włocławek.

Here is a video from Holocaust Remembrance Day (January 27) when she and students and teachers from the Automotive High School visited the memorial at the site of the World War II Jewish ghetto, also the prewar Jewish cemetery.

Flim credit: Q4.pl, http://q4.pl/?id=17&news=170583

The interviews are in Polish, but even if you can’t understand the words, you can see that these people remember the Jewish history of their city. And they are passing on those memories to the next generation.  They lit candle lanterns in front of the commemorative monument, and the students placed pebbles upon which they had written words like “traditions,” “love,” and “memories.”

There’s more about Włocławek’s Jews on Ms. Stojak’s website Zydzi.Wloclawek.pl. The tagline of her site: “Ku pamięci, z nadzieją, na pojednanie,” “In memory, with hope, for reconciliation.”

More Jewish Heritage Work in Kutno

26 Wednesday Apr 2017

Posted by in Cemeteries, Heritage work, Jewish Culture, Jewish Ghetto, Kutno, Memory, Names, Polish-Jewish Heritage, Polish-Jewish relations, Synagogues, World War II

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This is part II about heritage work in Kutno. The first is Jewish History of Kutno.

While in Kutno, I visited the Society of Friends of Kutno (Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Ziemi Kutnowski). The organization has been active since the early 1970s, and has put out an annual periodical about local history and customs for about 20 years. Most issues of the publication contain an article about Jews. In 2016, these articles were compiled in a book along with other historical materials about Kutno’s Jews, including Holocaust witness reports and photographs, and a list of people who lived in the Kutno ghetto.

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Outline of the History of Kutno Area Jews, published by the Friends of Kutno

The chairwoman of the Friends of Kutno Bożena Gajewska is an energetic and upbeat woman. She accepted the position because of her interest in local history and her desire to promote that history among local residents. She isn’t paid for this; she volunteers for the organization after getting off work. The Friends of Kutno have their office in a historic wooden villa that was recently renovated by the city. Most of their funding comes from grants. Over the years, they have placed historical markers where the synagogue, Jewish cemetery, and ghetto used to be. Other recent projects related to Jewish culture include field trips for local residents to the Polin Museum in Warsaw, to a production of a Sholem Asch play at the Yiddish Theatre in Warsaw, and to the Chełmno Extermination Camp, where Kutno Jews were transported when the ghetto was liquidated. Kutno was selected as a site where the Museum on Wheels (a traveling branch of the Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews) would visit; this happened in August 2016.

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Marker reads, “In this place the 18th century synagogue stood. It was destroyed by the Nazis during World War II, evidence of the hatred of one human to another, and to his works.”

Pani Bożena says she’s noticed that orientations toward Jews have improved since the Polin Museum has opened. Thanks to the Museum, you can talk about Jews, whereas before, the word “Jew” had negative connotations, and was even used as an insult. This made people unsure what to call practitioners of the Jewish faith. Polin has helped to rehabilitate the term. While this may seem like a manifestation of the particularly fraught relationship between Poles and Jews, Mark Oppenheimer just published an opinion piece in the New York Times (Sunday, April 23, 2017, “Reclaiming ‘Jew’”) in which he notes that it’s the same in the US. “Jew” is almost never used as a noun; rather, the adjective “Jewish” is used, as in “Jewish people” or “I’m Jewish” (never “I’m a Jew”). Oppenheimer quotes the comedian Louis C. K. who called “Jew” a funny word “because ‘Jew’ is the only word that is the polite thing to call a group of people and a slur for the same group.”

The Polin Museum has also contributed to a surge of activity related to Jewish history and culture throughout Poland. This has led some townspeople to complain to the Friends of Kutno, “Why is everything always about Jews?” Bożena says she reminds these people that the Friends are interested in all aspects of regional history, and Jews were a part of that history. They address plenty of other topics, as well. For example, they recently published the biography of a native son who was an ultra nationalist during the period when the majority of Kutno residents were Jews (I can’t remember his name but maybe someone reading this can remind me).

Pani Bożena drove me to see some historical sites around town. The Jewish cemetery is on a hill overlooking a neighborhood of concrete apartment buildings. The hillside is covered with tall grass and wildflowers, and crisscrossed by dirt tracks where people walk their dogs, kids play, and people hang out. Many leave their trash behind. The Friends of Kutno recently put up signs around the cemetery that say “Here is the resting place of Kutno Jews, who settled in the city from the beginning of the 16th century. The cemetery located on this hill was established in 1793. Jews were buried here until March 1943. Please maintain its solemnity.” Below this historical information is the reminder, “Keep in mind as you go into this vast expanse that this is a cemetery; people are buried here, you walk on their graves, even though there are no longer tombstones…” Further, the sign states the cemetery is a registered monument and thus legally protected, and any vandalism is subject to a sentence of imprisonment. Nevertheless, within just a few months, four out of six such signs were vandalized. The metal poles were snapped at ground level. Bożena condemned the destruction, but also minimized it as the work of thoughtless hooligans (as opposed to a deliberately antisemitic act). In September, the poles were replaced and the signs stand once again.

Bożena showing me the new sign at the Jewish cemetery in Kutno
An older monument at the top of the cemetery hill

We passed people with dogs as we walked to the top of the hill to an older monument. It contains the same historical information as the new metal signs in Polish and Hebrew (but not the reminders about proper behavior and legal issues), and is shaped like two adjoining tombstones. Heading back down the hill, past some children playing, we saw the bases of some grave markers peaking out of the grass. Many tombstones were recovered and are stored at the Kutno Museum.

Bożena dreams of building a fence around the cemetery so there will be a more substantial barrier against further vandalism. They have received all the necessary approvals, but are in need of funding.

From the cemetery, we went on to the site of the ghetto, which is outside the center of town on the grounds of a former sugar factory. The factory was used by various industries after the war, but now is closed. The buildings, some dating from the late 19th century, stand behind a high fence and a guard patrols the site. Historic markers tell the story of the ghetto. A granite plaque reads:

Here on the terrain of the former Konstancja Sugar Factory

Germans established a ghetto for the Jewish population of Kutno and the surrounding area.

After its liquidation in 1942, the surviving Jews perished in the camp at Chelmno.

Honoring their memory, the People of Kutno.

Kutno, April 1993

A more recent sign contains a bit more historical information in both Polish and English (if you want to read it, click on the photo below to enlarge it).

Former site of the Kutno ghetto.
Wall plaque at the site of the Kutno ghetto
Historical marker in front of the main gate of the factory where the Kutno ghetto used to be.

Bożena told me that over 8000 people lived in the ghetto from 1940-1942. Those who got there first occupied all the most obvious places, so later arrivals had to build shacks from scrap wood, or find ways of populating balconies and any other inhabitable space throughout the large factory hall. In 1942, they were all transported to the camp at Chełmno by train (the tracks are right across the street from the factory) and by truck.

Thinking about the people I met in Kutno (and elsewhere), one thing I am trying to sort out is why Christian Poles get involved in Jewish heritage projects. Not surprisingly, the reasons are varied. One is interested in historical artifacts; he has no political agenda. Another of my companions tried to place this history into a more pro-Polish framework. He explained that the Nazis forced Christian townspeople to do horrible things as part of a strategy to damage relations between Poles and Jews. “All people really want is to live in peace (Chcą w spokoju żyć)”, he continued, “Poland is in the heart of Europe, a pretty terrain that has historically been attacked from all sides.” Others feel personally drawn to Jewish culture. One of my acquaintances in Kutno believes she has Jewish heritage. She seems to understand my quest for my own family history. “It’s important to know where you’re from,” she told me. She hasn’t found anything as concrete as my family photograph (the one I use at the top of the blog) to confirm her feeling that she has Jewish roots. All she can point to are allusions in family stories she remembers from childhood, and sometimes people have told her she looks Jewish. But anyone she could have asked has passed away.

But what’s clear from my visits to Kutno is that fragments of Jewish history remain, and some have been marked as such thanks to the efforts of a small group of residents who think it is important to include the stories of Kutno’s Jews in the history of their town.

Podgórze: Below the hill and through the ghetto

16 Monday Jan 2017

Posted by in antisemitism, Commemoration, Jewish Ghetto, Krakow, Memory, Podgórze, Polish-Jewish relations, Post-World War II, Reclaimed Property, World War II

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When Krysia and I visited Poland a few years ago, we walked to her friend Wanda’s apartment in Podgórze, a district across the Vistula River from Krakow’s Old City. Historically, Podgórze was an industrial part of town, and also the site of the Jewish Ghetto during World War II. Until recently, this was not a particularly desirable place to live. I went there for the first time in 1986 when my Polish teacher invited me for dinner. She lived with her doctor husband and baby daughter on Limanowski Street in a ground floor apartment that was a converted storefront. The building was grey and crumbling, and the tram rumbled by loudly and frequently. They couldn’t wait to move somewhere better. In 1992, I met a high school student whose classmates joked he was “from the country” because he lived in Podgórze. Even though you could see Wawel Castle on the opposite shore of the river, Podgórze was considered a remote corner of the city.

I really discovered Podgórze in 2005 when I was back in Kraków for 5 months during my first sabbatical leave. I made a point of exploring all the city’s parks and playgrounds as a way of entertaining my two-year-old son; long afternoon walks were often the only way I could get him to nap. Podgórze charmed me. The buildings along the tramline on Limanowski Street were still grey and crumbling, but there was also a lovely triangular plaza and a beautiful church with a hillside rising up behind it. Maybe that’s the source of the name—Podgórze means “below the hill.” Climbing up the curving street from the plaza, large houses with fenced gardens replaced the apartment buildings, and then a massive park appeared on the right. And yet, despite these explorations, I still didn’t know that I had been moving in and out of the borders of the former ghetto, where the Nazis had forced Jews to live (and die).

Plaza and church in Podgórze
Heading up the hill
One of the large houses on the way to the park

Wanda, a long-time resident of Podgórze, pointed out traces of that difficult era as we walked to her apartment. It was the first time I actually connected the contemporary streets of Podgórze with the places associated with the Holocaust. Just over the bridge, we entered Ghetto Heroes Square (Plac Bohaterów Getta), the site where Jews were assembled before being transported to work, the ghetto, or the camps. It wasn’t until December 2005 that a monument commemorating these historical events was installed. The monument is comprised of 33 large chairs arranged in rows throughout the plaza and 37 smaller chairs scattered around the edges of the square and at the nearby tram stop. These serve as a symbol of the people whose material possessions were taken from them as they were selected for the ghetto and elsewhere. The idea was “to tell the story of the place through the configuration of the urban space itself, so that the memory of the absent ones would be manifested through the presence of everyday objects which compose the urban furniture” (Bordas 2006). The chairs make an impression, especially the big ones. They look like they should be functional but they’re not–another way they symbolize the way ordinary life became abnormal.

Chair monument in Ghetto Heroes Square

Ghetto Heroes Square

Wanda led us to a nearby street where a fragment of the ghetto wall still stands. Its characteristic scalloped top makes it resemble side-by-side tombstones. Flowers rested at the foot of a historical marker, an offering made during a commemorative event in March. Wanda also pointed out where a gate of the ghetto used to cross the street near her apartment. For 23 years, Wanda lived on that street. But then the prewar owners—Jews—regained ownership of the property and doubled the rent. Faced with the option of paying 2000 zloties per month or move, Wanda decided it would be better to invest that kind of money in a place she could own herself. That way, she doesn’t have to worry about being displaced again.

Like many Poles, Wanda feels personally affronted by former owners reasserting their claim over property. These feelings are complicated.

It seems only right that descendants of victims of the Holocaust be compensated. Regaining ownership of a building can only to the slightest degree address what those families lost.

And yet, losing their home to the prewar owner seems particularly unfair to the generation that endured years of communism, and never was able to accumulate much wealth in their own lives. Since the end of communism, prices have risen, unemployment has become common, and wages remain modest. Often it’s the poorest residents who live in former homes of Jews because the government took over their management and made them into low-cost housing for those in greatest need. This affordable housing was a small oasis of security in unsettled times. Many such residents today are elderly; others are unemployed; some have problems with their health or with substance abuse. They don’t have many options.

Wanda was one of the lucky ones with the wherewithal and the financial means to buy her own place. But still she carries the resentment with her that she sometimes translates into resentment of Jews more generally. Who was looking out for her rights when the apartment was returned to the prewar owners? What did some rich foreigner need with her building? Why should they get even wealthier at her expense?

In fact, prewar owners are reclaiming properties all over Poland, and even though they are not all Jewish, the greatest resentment is directed toward those who are.

Ghetto Memory Trail marker
Star of David crossed out–on a storefront in Podgórze

In Podgórze, you can see both the effort to acknowledge sites of Jewish heritage, and also signs of continued antisemitism.

Wanda loves her neighborhood and doesn’t want to live anywhere else (even though she has to spend part of each year in the US to earn enough money to pay her mortgage). The apartment she lives in now is new construction on top of a historic townhouse; an additional floor was added to an existing building. As we climbed the three flights of stairs, she explained that when she bought the place, all that was there were the bare walls. This is standard practice in Poland. The buyer has to select, purchase, and install all the flooring, fixtures, wall coverings cabinets, and appliances. The apartment is long and narrow, with a wall of windows and a sleeping loft. Wanda said she bought it at the peak of the market; today she could find something for half that price. But that would mean moving again.

As we ate a generous spread of Polish dishes, including stuffed cabbage (gołąbki) and two kinds of pickles, Wanda said that Podgórze has become one of the most popular neighborhoods in Krakow. The new heritage sites and museums—including the Ghetto Heroes Square, the Schindler Factory Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art—have brought with them tourists and the amenities that tourists expect. People are moving out of the center of the city because it has become too crowded, cars are restricted on most streets, there are few stores with everyday necessities, and the prices are too high. Podgórze is desirable because it has good public transportation, is within walking distance of the city center, and because of the park, the trees, and the hill that I find so appealing.

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The new pedestrian bridge across the Vistula River to Podgórze.

How Żychlin Remembers, part 2

01 Thursday Sep 2016

Posted by in antisemitism, Jewish Ghetto, Memory, Polish-Jewish Heritage, Polish-Jewish relations, Post-World War II, Pre-World War II, stereotypes, Synagogues, World War II, Żychlin

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The next morning I met Tadeusz Kafarski for a tour of the city. He was with Józef Staszewski, the director of the Żychlin branch of the Association of Children of War. Because Józef was born in 1929, he remembers wartime better than Tadeusz, who was only a year old when the Nazis invaded. The two sometimes disagreed about details, but together they reconstructed for me Jewish life in Żychlin. As they pointed to the buildings that stand here and now, their descriptions transported me back and forth through time, to prewar life, wartime murder, and communist era absence. I had the odd sensation as I did so many times on this trip of being both here (in the present) and then (in the past), my mind trying to reconcile what stood before my eyes with what used to be. My guides led me back in time with varied fragments of information:

On Łukasieńskiego Street, we passed concrete apartment buildings built in the 1970s on the site of the second, larger Jewish ghetto.

Mr. Helmer, the richest Jew in town, lived across from the market square, to the left of Narutowicza Street, in what is now a well maintained two story building.

One block south, near the synagogue (the blue Star of David on the map below) on Kilińskiego Street, we passed the former home of a Jewish doctor, a building that used to be a dairy collection point, and another that was the preschool Tadeusz attended. A man named Merc lived nearer the synagogue. Behind some houses was the Jewish slaughterhouse, but Christian Poles also bought meat from there.

Jews and Poles lived side by side, even though this part of town was predominantly Jewish. Today, this section of town is run down though these particular buildings seem in good shape.

Map of Żychlin 1940-42 showing the ghettos in red, the first one is on the left and the second is on the right. The dark green shows the main areas where Jews lived--note that most were not in what became the ghetto. That meant gentiles had to move out of those areas when the Jews were forced to move in.

Map of Żychlin 1940-42 showing the ghettos in red, the first one is on the left and the second is on the right. The dark green shows the main areas where Jews lived–note that most were not in what became the ghetto. That meant gentiles had to move out of the ghetto areas when the Jews were forced to move into them.

As we wound through the dusty streets, the contemporary residents stared at us suspiciously, though some who know my guides greeted them, “Dzień dobry (Good day).”

The patch of tall weeds in front of the synagogue (on Jana Kulińskiego Street) used to be a fenced garden. The garden continued to be maintained after the war, even though the Polish residents used the synagogue as a warehouse, as did the Nazis. The lower sections of the windows were bricked in and new doorways were installed in the sides of the building to facilitate loading and unloading.

What’s left of the Żychlin synagogue. Note the windows used to extend much father down, and the more recent doorway (now blocked) added when the building was used as a warehouse. The weedy area in the foreground used to be a fenced garden.
Pan Józef beside the site of the well and mikvah
Worn stones–something I learned to value as a student archeologist. These were used in place of asphalt before World War II

As a child, Józef went inside several times with his parents, though he could only describe the general layout of the interior. The candlelit altar was on the east wall, the main entrance on the west. Above the entrance was a balcony that would have been for the choir in a church but in the synagogue was for women to pray in. In a neighboring building, the rabbi would change. On the other side of the synagogue were a well (with the best water in town) and mikvah. After the war, everyone used that bathhouse.

Józef said, “There is just one faith; Jews believe in God just like we do.” He declared children played together regardless of religion. He described distinctive aspects of the Jewish population. Men wore head covers and beards. They would take their shoes off in the synagogue, but had to keep their head covered. The Jewish “priest” was the only one with side curls. He wore a black hat, black clothes, and a white shirt. Jews stayed home Friday and Saturday; they didn’t work. They held their hands at their waist and rocked as they prayed. They read scrolls. Jews used to bury their dead in a sitting position with money on their eyes. Men carried the unclothed, shrouded body to the cemetery. They returned to God as they began. When they left the cemetery after the burial, mourners dispersed in different directions . He asked why and was told it was so the spirit doesn’t return home with them.

Are these personal memories or stereotypes picked up from other sources?

My guides told me about a man named Rozenberg. They pointed to the yard of his bakery, and then we walked around to what used to be its storefront on Narutowicza Street. Rozenberg lived in a multi-story home on the other side of the street. He married a Christian named Czajka. Jozek said the Rozenbergs’ children Krysia and Rudek were Jewish. He played with the boy. After her husband died, Czajka married her brother-in-law, a judge. They had two more children. After the war, the family was harassed by the police so they sold all their buildings and went to Israel. One child moved to Norway.

The Germans occupied the town on September 15. At first, they didn’t treat anyone harshly, but they did take their property—first the stores and richer buildings owned by Jews, and then jewelry and everything anyone had that was valuable.

The main entrance to the ghetto used to be across from Rozenberg’s bakery. This was the second ghetto, established later for the poorer Jews. The first ghetto, where the richer Jews were sent, was on the grounds of an old factory outside the center of town. As Jews were forced into the ghetto, Poles whose homes were within the ghetto territory had to move to homes on the other side of the street—homes that had been emptied of their Jewish residents.

In July 1942, the second ghetto was liquidated. It took five hours because thousands of people were loaded onto wagons, and then everything was removed from their homes and segregated into piles. Some Poles helped, forced to work under threat of death. My guides disputed claims that Poles plundered Jewish possessions. They insisted the Germans took everything valuable, then piled up all the remaining dirty and broken things and burned them.

We crossed the street to the main square. Right there in front of the church there used to be a row of market stalls run by Jews. The church owned the land, but didn’t have any problem with Jewish venders. We continued behind the church and across another market square to the town library. This solid stone structure was originally built for Hempel, the Nazi mayor of the town remembered for his cruelty.

My guides Tadeusz Kafarski and Józef Staszewski in the town square
The Żychlin town square
Director of the Żychlin Library, Ewa Andrzejewska
Nazi Mayor Hempel’s villa is now the Żychlin Public Library

Tadeusz told me the wartime mayor’s villa was built with tombstones from the Jewish cemetery. Jews were pressed into service carrying the heavy stones. It was backbreaking labor made more difficult by the extreme heat. When one of the workers asked for a drink of water, the Nazi officer shot and killed him. Then, he held up a stick threateningly and asked who else wants a drink. No one dared ask for water after that. Józef told the story a little differently. He said the man who asked for water was dragged to the nearby lake and drowned.

Pani Ewa Andrzejewska, the director of the library, said her aunt who took care of Hempel’s children described him as ruthless, “A typical German.” He furnished his house with things he took from the richer people in the city. He rode a white horse. She also suggested my guides were a little too invested in showing Poles in a positive light to me—emphasizing heroism and victimization and minimizing complicity. She said that on one hand, Jews and Poles lived peacefully together. She was raised to not feel any prejudice. But on the other, many have negative sentiments toward Jews. She even went further to say Poles are genetically indisposed toward Jews. I challenged her on this saying that since sentiments toward Jews have changed over time, it’s a matter of history, not biology. She still didn’t agree, and repeated that Poles have a problem with this.

A dream of mine would be to help preserve and maybe even rebuild the town synagogue. My hosts said the TMHŻ has looked into turning it into their meeting space. Ewa said the ownership of the building is in dispute. So for now it just sits there, slowly crumbling away.

Leaving town the next day, I was once again stopped at the railway crossing as a train sped by. I didn’t mind having one last moment in this town where my great grandmother lived. I felt saddened and rooted by what I had learned, and grateful for the acquaintances who showed me Żychlin as it is now and as it was then.

How Żychlin Remembers, part 1

01 Thursday Sep 2016

Posted by in Bolimów, Jewish Ghetto, Memory, Polish-Jewish Heritage, Polish-Jewish relations, Post-World War II, Pre-World War II, Sobota, Synagogues, World War II, Żychlin

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My visit to Żychlin began and ended at the railway crossing. I had meandered up from the highway, passing through the small communities of Bolimów and Sobota where my ancestors lived over a century ago, and had to stop as a train sped by. I called pan Henryk to make sure I was on the right road. He assured me I was, and met me a few minutes later. Henryk, whom I met in 2014 through his website Historia Żychlina, had arranged meetings, tours, and interviews for me with resident fans of local history.

Bolimów synagogue, now the police station at 6 Farna Street
Central Square, Sobota

Tadeusz Kafarski, Vice President of the Association of Enthusiasts of Żychlin History (TMHŻ) joined us for a look around the train station. He and Henryk pointed across the tracks where during World War II transports took 2500 Jews from the Żychlin ghetto to Kulmhof (Chełmno) Camp near Poznań. They debated exactly where the trains had stood, but later, Henryk and his wife took me to a platform across from the main train station, saying that is where it happened.

Pan Tadeusz describing the transports that took away the Jewish residents of Żychlin in 1942.
Żychlin Train station, boarded up and unused
Looking across the express train tracks to the platform where Jews were loaded onto transports
A closer look at the same platform

The station building signals the effects of communism and its demise on this community. My guides told me the prewar station was imposing and beautiful. The postwar building that stands today—boarded up in places, broken windows and graffiti in others—is more functional than attractive. Its size shows that this used to be a major stop on the route from Moscow to Berlin. But since the express tracks were laid following the fall of communism, only a few trains stop here each day. Instead, every few minutes, one zips by at breakneck speed. The place was deserted, except for a group of teenagers who were hanging out.

Tadeusz told me he remembers the transports as they left the station with their human cargo in 1942, even though he was only four years old. During the war, when his family was forced to move from their home, as were many residents, they were resettled in a former Jewish residence. From the street it looked like a normal cottage with a living room on one side and a kitchen on the other. A distinctive feature of this house, though, was the stairs from the kitchen to the basement and the door from the basement to the courtyard behind the house. This private entrance was used sometimes by the men of the family who didn’t want to be seen returning in their dirty clothes.

Others whom I met during my visit shared similar memories of childhood. Janusz Tomczak, who was a teenager during the war, remembers seeing the land covered with wagons. Only later, he understood that these belonged to the Jews who were being taken to the camps. Józef Staszewski was with some older boys when the ghetto was being liquidated. It was a few days before Easter. He was a scout at the time and he made a vow to God he that he would choose death before he betrayed his friends. A couple of blocks from where they stood, Nazis loaded people into wagons and took them away. Now he knows that the captives were segregated by age and ability, and the children and elderly were led to special vehicles and then gassed inside them.

To be continued….

 

Cousins in the Warsaw Ghetto

22 Sunday Nov 2015

Posted by in Bereda, Cemeteries, Jewish Culture, Jewish Ghetto, Kolski, Warsaw, World War II

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My cousin Pini (Pinchas) Doron, reminded me that his grandfather and namesake died in the Warsaw Ghetto. This is the story he sent me this morning:

“The Okopowe Cemetery is the old big cemetery in Warsaw that we visited with the whole family in 1995, including Pnina’s (his wife) parents.

“Her mother used to run from the Ghetto through the cemetery to the fields to bring potatoes to her family when she was 13 years old.

“Amazing stories.

“I have seen in your post the stone sign for the people who died in the Ghetto. As I told you, my grandfather Pinchas Kolski died in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1940 and was buried in a temporary cemetery inside the ghetto. As we know, in 1940 they no longer allowed anyone to bury the dead  in the Okopowa Cemetery outside the Ghetto.

1941RachelMirkaKolskiAtPinchasGraveInGhetto

Mirka and Rachel Kolski at Pinchas Kolski’s grave in the Warsaw Ghetto. He died in 1940.

“We have this picture of Grandmother Rachel Kolski and her daughter Mirka (see the white sleeve with the [Star of David]-I think this was before they introduced the yellow star)?

“Mirka told me that after this visit to the grave, they managed to escape the Ghetto and to meet your step grandfather (that would have been Zygmunt Bereda) who hid them.”