Tuesday and Wednesday are a blur. A drama of contrasts and contradictions. Horror and sadness. Hope and rebirth. A beautiful yeshiva building in Lublin from the 1920's that is being restored into a synagogue and a five star hotel by the Jewish community of Warsaw. Minutes away the site of the Majdanek concentration camp and extermination center surrounded by apartment buildings and used, by many, as a city park.
A walking tour of Kazimierz, the Krakow Jewish quarter, and the restored synagogues, kosher restaurants and an annual Jewish Arts and Culture Festival; and the Krakow ghetto from which Jews were transported to the death camps. A few of us returned to Kazimierz on Wednesday for a terrific dinner: mushroom soup, potato pancakes in gravy, pirogues, short ribs and homemade apple pie.
The Krakow Jewish Community Center, a three year old building at the center of a Jewish renaissance. We met with our colleague Jonathan Ornstein, the executive director, who spoke proudly and passionately about the ways that people are finding Judaism and the roles the JCC is playing in helping to nurture Jewish life. www.jcc.krakow.org. Jews, non-Jews, and new-Jews are on Jewish journeys at the JCC. Jonathan fondly referred to the community as the "Jewish Wild West", we all thought of him as a Jewish pioneer.
We finished Wednesday with a late night visit to the site of the Plaszow concentration and labor camp built on top of two Jewish cemeteries and the camp from which Oscar Schindler saved 1000 Jews.
This is the county where there were 3 million Jews before the Germans invaded and began to implement their plan to annihilate the us. The is where we met Rosia, a woman who survived the Holocaust with her mother, hidden and provided with falsified papers by righteous Polish friends. Rosia never left, but instead made a life for herself in Poland and today is an active volunteer and board member of the JCC. "This JCC is my promised land," she told us.
This trip is partially sponsored by the March of the Living, an annual program that brings Jews from all over the world on a journey of identity, pride and unity. Aushwitz is where the March of the Living begins with participants (there have been as many as 18,000) marching through the gates, arm in arm, and accepting responsibility to learn and teach this story. The march begins with the blowing of the shofar. They carry Israeli flags. They march from Aushwitz to Birkenau in complete silence. And they end their journey at the Yom Ha'atmaut (Independence Day) celebration in Israel.
It would be so powerful to return here on a JCC trip. Any trip to Poland would, by design, be one of contrast. This was once the largest Jewish community in the world and our experience here would need to explore this history. It is also the site of the worst genocide ever perpetrated on a people. Our experience here must acknowledge and pay honor to the memories of the martyrs and survivors as we take the painful visits to the sites
of the camps. It is a place where Jewish life is beginning to once again grow, which we could experience by taking part in JCC programs or the summer Jewish Arts and Culture Festival. Finally, it is the place we leave and travel home to Israel, the Jewish people's greatest triumph.
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