Jewish Warsaw

A weighty Thursday greeted us, as we discussed the Holocaust in Warsaw. Maciek and Tomek led our group to various sites and monuments of importance where we learned about the 340,000 Jewish residents in Warsaw before the war and about the 100,000 who, living on 200 calories a day, died of starvation and disease within the ghetto. Maciek also showed us several New York Times articles from the war years which described what was happening in Poland—one of the articles even went as far to report that the construction of walls to fence in the Jews was not antisemitic, but a health precaution against typhus. I was first amazed by the knowledge available of the Holocaust to the U.S. public, but also discouraged how that knowledge was interpreted and disseminated by the reporters. Did the readers really believe this? The rationale of ghettoizing Jews to prevent typhus, for instance, was the same the Nazis were telling the citizens of Warsaw. Were our grandparents and great-grandparents generation also victim to mis-information? Yet what about the articles that truthfully conveyed information? How could one filter out what was truth, what was exaggerated, what was (accidentally) misinformed, and/or what was propaganda? Or, since many of these articles were consistently printed in small sections at the papers’ end pages, did they even read them?

We proceeded to the Jewish cemetery of Warsaw, which is both a monument to the Holocaust and to the Jewish community in general, and the saw grave of Adam Czerniaków, head of the Judenrat, who committed suicide in July 1942 as the Germans demanded more and more Jews to be deported. By the end of July 1942, 16,000 Jews each day were expected to come to the Umschlagplatz to be deported to Treblinka. In three months, 300,000 people were sent to death camps. Marek Edelman, last surviving leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (who died in 2009) is also buried in the Warsaw Jewish cemetery, as well as Janusz Korczak (Henryk Goldszmit), the Director of the Jewish orphanage in the Warsaw ghetto, who famously went with the children to Treblinka although his life could have been saved. We finally reached one area of the cemetery known as “Ghetto Field.” There are no gravestones, just a field where Jews who died in the Warsaw Ghetto between 1941 and 1943 were brought and mass-buried. So many Jews were buried here before the war, in a weird way, seeing tombstones with the date of death before 1939, I was glad that they never went through what their children and grandchildren did…

Maciek guiding out group in the Warsaw cemetery.

A definite highlight (if that can term can be used appropriately on such a day) was standing in front of the still-under-construction Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich (Museum of the History of Polish Jews) which, when it opens, will be the largest museum to Jewish history in Europe. The museum, which is purposefully on the site of the former ghetto, is also right next to the afore-mentioned Ghetto Uprising Memorial (designed by sculptor Nathan Rapaport) completed in 1949. We also saw the Miła 18 memorial, where the leaders of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ŻOB) committed suicide in a bunker during last days of the Warsaw Uprising rather than be killed by the Germans. Mordechaj Aniekewicz (commander of the ŻOB) (Miła was one of the busiest streets of pre-war Jewish life in Warsaw). Sadly, these last sights are a blur to me, as my mind (and body) was set on finding a restroom (in typical Holly fashion).

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Memorial in front, Museum of the History of Polish Jews in back.

After a lunch of zucchini pancakes and sour cream (on my part) at what was a former communist cafeteria (or at least made to look like one), we proceeded to the Jewish Historical Institute (ŻIH), where we met with Edyta Kurek, the Deputy Director. Emmanuel Ringleblum archive, and his infamous collection of archival materials documenting daily life in the Warsaw ghetto.

In the evening, our group had the privilege to meet with Michael Schudrich, the Chief Rabbi of Poland at the Nożyk synagogue. Rabbi Schudrich began the discussion by asking (given everything that has happened), “Why should there be any Jews left in Poland today?” He answered in a series of colorful stories detailing how Poles rediscovered their Jewish roots after 1989. Examples ranged from one Pole whose grandmother would have separate dishes for meat and milk saying “it was healthy,” or another grandparent who only wanted her granddaughter to date Jewish men. It was extremely difficult (if not impossible to retain one’s Jewish identity under Communism. Thus the options for Jews in post-war Poland were as such: If one wants to say, “I am a Jew,” then he or she would need to leave post-Holocaust, Soviet-occupied Poland. But if one wants to stay in Poland, he or she understood that meant giving up being Jewish, and in many cases not even telling your family that you are Jewish (after 50 years in some cases!)

Over the past 23 years since the fall of Communism, thousands and thousands of Poles have realized they are Jewish, many of them wondering why no one ever told them. Yet Schudrich rightly reminded us, today we really cannot imagine what it is like to live in fear for 50 years (To which he also added, “Then again, you guys can’t even imagine what it is like to be 50 years old!”), and that we must understand that this ‘scared’ generation was trying to protect their family from unwanted persecution.

When Rabbi Schudrich opened the floor for questions, I asked him what were his main challenges being the chief rabbi of Poland.  He quickly responded with a question: “How do you make a Jewish community with people who are discovering their Jewish identity?” He replied by saying, “I don’t know. We’re making it up as we go along. It has never been done before.” The Jewish community in Poland has to focus on making people feel comfortable being in touch with their Jewish background. A major difficulty lies in the fact that more conservative Jewish communities don’t see these ‘new’ Jews in Poland as Jewish because they do not keep kosher or the men were not circumcised. Yet Schudrich’s response (which also ties directly into fundraising to support his new(er) Jewish community) describes the story of how parents and grandparents kept something from their children and now their children want to know the truth, how can you deny them from what they want—what they deserve—to know? You can’t. Thus if there are three words to describe the Jewish community in Poland today, Schudrich concluded: “Work in Progress.”

Our group with Rabbi Michael Schudrich.