Jewish Kraków

I have finally found free time to write. Our group is in our van leaving Kraków heading northeast toward Kielce. For miles and miles all we can see is the yellow wheat countryside with pockets of green trees and scattered red-roofed, yellow and white houses.  It truly is a beautiful country. With this time, I will describe and reflect on the activities of the past few days. On Sunday in Kraków, we met with Minna Zielonka Packer, a filmmaker and screenwriter, who produced “Back to Gombin,” a documentary film which described the Holocaust in Gąbin (Yiddish: Gombin), a town that had 2,500 Jews before the war, yet only 210 survived, one of the survivors being Packer’s father.

After our film-screening with Packer and discussion with JCC director Jonathan Ornstein (see previous blog), we had a tour of Kazimierz led by our very own Maciek Zabierowski. Kazimierz was once a separate town, established in 1335 and named after King Casimir the Great, the Polish king who allowed the first Jews to come to Kraków. During the 15^th century, 25 percent of Kraków was Jewish, yet in 1495, the Jews were kicked out of the city (blamed by the Poles for starting a severely destructive fire) and were forced to move to Kazimierz. Today, the district of Kazimierz boasts seven synagogues, the oldest synagogue (“Stara Synagoga”) from early 15^th century. The synagogues survived the Nazi occupation because they were made into warehouses and used by the Nazis. We then visited the Remuh Synagogue, famous for its rabbi, Rabbi Moshe Isserles, who codified the Ashkenazic law in the ha-Mapah. Rabbi Isserles is buried in the cemetery behind the synagogue which was the next part of our journey. Now in Jewish cemeteries, all the men have to have their heads covered—all the women, their shoulders and knees. Of course this was the day I wore shorts and a tank top, so I had two cloths; a pink one to cover my legs, and a silky red one to cover my shoulders. Needless to say, half way through the cemetery, I lost my “skirt” and as I scrambled to pick it up and cover my knees (and not to be sacrilegious) my shoulder covering fell off, rendering me one big, uncovered mess ;). Ok, back to being serious…

The Remuh Synagogue

Of the 60,000 Jews living in Krakow before the war, only 2,000 survived the war, although only a hundred or so Jews live in Kraków today. Yet in multiple spaces there exists traces of Jewish life, from the restored synagogues and faded painted Jewish store names to the empty places in the doorways where the Mezuza, a small rectangular case which holds a small parchment scroll with Deuteronomy 6:4-9 and 11:13-21, once was placed. Deuteronomy 6 was familiar, especially the second sentence which I remember memorizing as a child.“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.  Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

The Jewish cemetery behind the Remuh synagogue.

            Also located in the formerly Jewish Kazimierz is St. Catherine’s Church (Koscióla St. Katarzyny) of the Augustinian order, which is one of the oldest monasteries in Kazimierz, established in the 14^th century by King Casimir the Great. Father Krysztof, who works on Jewish-Christian reconciliation dialogue, was our guide of the monastery and the church. As I walked in, I couldn’t help but wonder what the Jews in our group feel when they see images of Christ and Christ crucified.  How are their thoughts, feelings different than what I feel when I walk into a synagogue? Where I might find myself more in awe of the Hebrew script on the walls, the sculpted Ten Commandments, the alter where the Torah scroll is kept—these are all predecessor elements of my Christian faith. But for Jews, given hundreds of years of antisemitism in the Catholic Church and among individual Christians, Jewish perceptions of Jesus and the symbol of the cross will be a very different one. Although we learned in 1942, 8 of the friars of the monastery were rounded up by the Gestapo and taken to Auschwitz, it was not for rescuing Jews, but for being in possession of a radio, which was illegal for Poles under Nazi law. However, the church also served as a refuge for Jews after the war, especially after the Kielce pogrom in July 1946.

Zach and Shelby in St. Catherine's.

            From St. Catherine’s we proceeded across the Vistula to the Plac Bohaterów Getta (formerly Plac Zgody) which is the location of the Umschlagplatz for the Kraków ghetto. Once the location where thousands of Jews were deported, the empty space now serves as a memorial with empty chairs spaced throughout the square—yet another reminder of the life, creativity, genius, contribution that was lost between March 1941 and March 1943. Our day through Jewish Warsaw ended at Plaszów concentration camp, located a few miles from the site of deportation. It was also the camp ‘made famous’ in Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List (although we learned that while the camp commandant, Amon Göth did shoot Jewish laborers, it was not from the balcony of his house, as the vivid scene in the movie shows).

Memorial at Plaszow concentration camp.

On our way back to the old town, Suzanne, Zach, and I each had a Żywiec and split a Zapiekanka—a Polish specialty of a long loaf of bread, cut lengthwise, covered in sauce, cheese, and toppings of your choice. We asked the vendor what one of the Polish words was in English, and her reply of “green peppers” sounded complimentary to the rest of the toppings we wanted. Well, the green peppers were actually pickles but we made do, and it was quite an enjoyable moment watching the activity on the market square, discussing the day, and imbibing Polish beer.

Zywiec break.

A light to the weighty end of the day, was the opportunity to skype with Jason and wish him a happy birthday, despite the waning internet connection and thunder storm outside which made it difficult to hear. I only wish I could have spent the day with him to celebrate.

The last days in Kraków and onward to Warsaw to come….