Remembering Together

On the 81st anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (War Hero monument, above), I think back to June 2019 and my first trip to Poland. Our inaugural Taube Foundation Jewish Heritage Tour was led by renowned Holocaust scholar, Deborah Lipstadt, who now serves as US Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Antisemitism. The trip was a most memorable one. Our first stop in Warsaw was the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews for a private tour led by distinguished scholar and Chief Curator of the Core Exhibit, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, a native of Toronto, below right, with Deborah.

The museum traces the story of the Jewish people over their thousand-year sojourn in Poland. Legend has it that when the first Jews arrived there in the Middle Ages, so stricken were they by its attributes that they said, Po Lin , which in Hebrew means, Let us stay here. And stay they did, for a millenium, building many communities, and contributing much to the growth and development of commerce, the arts, science, and technology until the upheaval of World War II and the Holocaust ‘s devastation of a people and culture.

Next stop was the Jewish Historical Institute where we perused the Ringelblum Archive. This material includes many hundreds of writings that were recorded during the war and buried underground in milk cans in the Warsaw Ghetto and later retrieved - a priceless collection and window into a culture that was virtually obliterated along with the 3 million Polish Jews who perished in the Holocaust. To learn more about the fascinating story of historian Emanuel Ringelblum and the Oyneg Shabes Archive, see the film Who Will Write Our History based on the book by scholar Sam Kassow.

In Krakow we were joined by scholar and guide Tomasz Cebulski who escorted us across the massive historic market square and on until we reached an important landmark and institution, and his alma mater, Jagiellonian University. As he explained, when the Nazis entered Poland they made Krakow their seat of power, and one of their first tasks was to take over the university, expel all the Jewish students, round up all Jewish professors and cart them off to concentration camps. Below, drawing of Sonderaktion Krakau, November 1939.

A visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum was a powerful and somber experience. Led by Deborah and Tomasz, we toured the grounds, went inside existing barracks, saw hundreds of photographs of prewar Jewish families, piles of shoes, glasses and human hair, the Book of Names and mounds of ashy rubble inside the infamous gates. The final image, below right, is one of hope - a group of students wrapped in blue and white.

As we left the site, a group of cyclists rode by, a contingent of the annual Ride for the Living, which commemorates the Holocaust and honours the renewed Jewish community of Krakow.

Ride for The Living 2019

The finale and a highlight of our tour was visiting Sandomierz, a centre of Jewish life in Krakow for centuries. The beautifully restored and still functioning Remah Synagogue of famed Rabbi Isserles is very special, and the annual Jewish Cultural Festival draws tens of thousands. Many Poles are newly discovering their Jewish roots. On Friday evening we participated in a communal Shabbat Dinner, courtesy of JCC Krakow.

Above, from left - ceiling of restored Remah Synagogue; shabbat candles and communal dinner, JCC Krakow; Jewish Cultural Festival of Krakow crowds

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