When I think about writing about our experience in Poland it almost feels like two different posts
because the thoughts are so different, so contradictory that it’s hard to imagine them in one coherent post, but then I realize that’s kind of the point. We chose to go to Poland as part of the Ride for the Living program and the experience is built to confront the darkest era of Jewish life in Poland and then literally put our backs to it and ride into the Jewish present while helping to raise funds and awareness of the work happening at JCC Krakow to help ensure a Jewish future in Poland.
When I arrived in Poland it was a very strange feeling – as I heard Polish spoken and looked at the faces around me, I couldn’t help but feel unease. Was I safe with my Jewish star necklace out? Was the person standing next to me related to those who didn’t object to the murder of my family (both my literal immediate family and the overall Jewish family), at best, or actively participated in it, at worst? Did I really want to be “touring” in a country about which my grandmother once said “why would I ever go back there?”
I can’t say that the trip erased all of these thoughts, but I did come to realize that there’s a lot more to the story than I initially internalized. Before the trip, I’d summarize what I knew about Poland as “there was a lot of Jewish life, then it was decimated, Poland was under the Soviets, now it’s not.” That’s really an insufficient picture of a country with a long background.
Here’s some of what I learned:
the history of how so many Jews came to live in Poland (short version – it was more inviting than many other countries across the centuries)
Krakow had a rich and interesting history for many centuries before the 1920s (which is about when it entered into the storyline I knew)
The official Polish storyline at Auschwitz acknowledges the devastation done to the Jews of Europe, but it was notable that there’s not much talk of the Polish involvement in the perpetration of these terrible acts. It is explained that Germany invaded Poland, took control, victimized Polish citizens who they saw as inferior, took their land to “Germanize” Poland, and put many Polish Slavs in work camps, killing about 2 million non-Jewish Poles, in addition to the 3 million Jewish poles
Details of Auschwitz that I have no words strong enough to explain the horrors and terrible treatment of fellow human beings, both on a grand scale (such as the efficiency built over the years of construction such that by 1944 the Nazis could kill over 400,000 Hungarian Jews in just 8 weeks) and on an individual personal level (such as a moment captured on film by an SS solider as an old man with a cane is at the front of the selection line and you can see the Nazi in charge pointing to one side, which we know is pointing this man to his death.)
All the people I interacted with personally in Poland were kind and welcoming, even with my Jewish star necklace on display
The Free Palestine protest/encampments in Old Town Krakow were small and quiet and mostly around the university (ignored by the majority of people who walked by)
Jews living in Poland now feel safe and secure
The Jewish community in Poland is still growing as people are newly discovering their Jewish roots. This surprised me since I thought hiding was related to the Shoah, but with under Communist rule it was also not good to be Jewish, so people are just finding out NOW. We met several people who learned of Jewish roots in their teens or later. As Jonathan Ornstein, CEO of JCC Krakow, pointed out, there is no greater tribute we can pay to the victims of the Holocaust than to help their descendants connect to Judaism.
The hard truth is that all over Europe we find sad and troubling history for Jews – pogroms, expulsions, codified antisemitism and policies. What is uplifting is to see the efforts of places like JCC Krakow and JCC Budapest (which we visited after) that are working to do what Jonathan said – to connect the descendants of Holocaust victims to Judaism. This is actually work that happens all over the world, as survivors found their way to the US, Canada, Israel, UK, etc. It can and should be our grand mission as a people.
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