Confession: Forgive me, grandfather My grandfather would have rolled over in his grave if he had read this article. After all, what connection did he have to the Jewish renaissance that's sweeping Poland today? He was a man who never refrained from verbally bashing the Poles, and he would likely have been horrified by the fact that his beloved granddaughter has already visited Poland four times in the past year, the place that became the largest Jewish cemetery in the world during World War II. And I admit it I was captivated. Poland, or "Polanya" as we called it at home, the place that was cursed for him, has become an ingratiating and welcoming place for me. I am moved anew by the authentic meetings with young Catholics, full of curiosity about Jewish culture, language, food and music. It's clear to me that part of my personality is buried in this place. There's no death camp I haven't visited this past year, but my heart has simultaneously been drawn to the vitality and liveliness that beats deep within the new Poland the Poland unabashedly in love with both Israel and Judaism. Revelation: Judaism is cool The small glasses of Zubrowka vodka with apples and the fragrant aroma of dumplings filled with sour cream, reminiscent of home, wafts over the packed tables at the Mandroga restaurant in the heart of Lublin, Poland. Hasidic music thrums in the background, and despite the fact that the scene seems more apt for a group of old nursing home patients, the place is bubbling and filled with young people shaking their bodies to the beat. "I want to have that kind of music played at my wedding," Teresa Klomowitcz, 29, tells me, with a big smile on her face. Klomowitcz is a Polish Catholic and works as a history researcher and guides tours at the Maidanek museum. She wrote her final paper at university on "The Jewish Emptiness of Lublin After the War," and when she talks about the current efforts to fill the vacuum caused by the disappearance of 3.5 million Jews from Poland during the six cursed years of World War II and the Final Solution, she gets very excited. "There are almost no Jews in Poland. None remained, but their presence still exists. You are like ghosts. Poland without Jews is an empty country, in my eyes." The Lublin restaurant is just one of many circles being drawn around history in Poland recently, calling on the Poles to recreate lost Jewish traditions. Synagogues are being rebuilt and are filled with both Jews and Poles. Festivals on Jewish topics draw tens of thousands of locals and guests. The Polish Cultural Office and the Adam Mitchkavitch Institute recently wrapped up a special year of Poland-Israel activities, the celebrations for which actually lasted two full years. Meanwhile, Israeli artist Yael Bartana is currently representing Poland in the Venice Biennale for Contemporary Art. This is not the Poland my grandfather remembered. Krakow, Vrotzlav, Warsaw and Lublin are no longer the dull cities they were during the war and ensuing Communism. They are reinventing themselves, lively, full of tourists, quickly making up the gap with the other cities in the European Union, which Poland only joined in 2004. On every corner there are restaurants, galleries, clubs and bars. There are times when I think the Poles speak my language, that they now get Israeli humor and aren't afraid of direct criticism and belittlement, even if it's stinging and direct. Kasia and Krzysztof Suszkiewicz, 26, host me at their Krakow apartment. They are observant Catholics and outwardly very Polish in their habits, but they chose to spend their honeymoon in Israel. Kasha is pregnant with a baby girl, and they say she was conceived during their visit ("I think it happened in Jerusalem"). "I'm going to call her Helena," Kasha says. "Wait a minute, maybe Sarah Cohen," she laughs, patting her belly and telling her child-to-be in Hebrew: "Meet Gal, your Yiddishe aunt." She's visited Israel twice and studied Hebrew in an ulpan. "That is the language I try to speak with my friends who are taking Jewish studies in Krakow," she says. Yes, the same Krakow that remains a city without Jews. Change: The wave that washed over Poland There are almost no Jews left in Kaziemerz , the old Jewish section of Krakow, but it's one of the hottest places in Poland. Young students have taken over and the place is full of pubs, restaurants and bustling galleries. The quarter also hosts the traditional Jewish festival, which has been held for the past two decades and is getting hotter every year. On the bus on the way to Kaziemerz, I sit down next to a Polish girl only to discover she's studying Judaism. "We have more than 100 students in our faculty and most of us are Catholics. We identify with you because with us, as with you, everything is all mixed together: the suffering, the death and the heroism," she says. Today the streets which were once shtetls are very busy. Tourists and locals fill the city. In the Shalom Gallery you can buy works by Kadishman and oil portraits of pianist Arthur Rubinstein, conductor Daniel Barenboim and others. In the books and music store on Yosepha Street, there are books in Yiddish, Hebrew and Polish on display. The Polish version of Amos Oz's "
Kasia and Krzysztof wait for me at a caf called The Heder, one of the trendiest in town. With the charm of a French caf , jazz music, some klezmer and a taste of cholent, chopped liver and tzimmes on Shabbat, this is the place to be.
Suddenly Maciek Osika, 29, whom I met a year ago -- long blond hair down to his waist, a pierced nose and a T-shirt bearing the message in Hebrew letters "Made in Poland" -- storms into Heder. When he first introduced himself to me, he said, "They call me Majek, Mattityahu to you if you prefer," and kissed the back of my hand. "I'm a Polish patriot," he added at the time.
"You should know that the Israelis have three lovely words whose origin is here balagan (a mess), protekzia (beneficial connections) and combina (shady business plans). That shows how much we have in common," he says. "Besides that, the Polish girls are pretty, but the Israeli ones are a thousand times prettier," he concludes with a wink.
In the Alchemia (Alchemy) bar, also in Kaziemerz, the beer is poured like vodka and the music, including songs by Ofra Hazeh, is deafening. It's dancing till dawn to Yiddish songs put to a house beat. An old man sitting outside blurts out: "Being Jewish is the trendy thing right now. It'll pass."
The founder of the Jewish Festival in the city, Janusz Makush, disagrees. "This is only the beginning," he says. "When I reached Krakow in 1988, I came to Kaziemerz and discovered an abandoned neighborhood, with two synagogues, neither with a minyan.
"When I began with the first festival that year, only a small number of people agreed to come. The 20-25 people who turned up, Jews and Poles, sat in a tiny, decrepit theater. Some of the people wore kippot, although most of them weren't Jewish. Hundreds came to the next festival, lectures were organized, we established a Reform yeshiva and we made Kiddush with challot and candles. It was incredible."
The Jewish renaissance wasn't limited to Krakow, In Lublin, where the Hasidic doctrine was born, the Jewish spirit has returned to all the city's winding alleys. In Warsaw, a very active Jewish theater named the Teatr Zydowski is coming to life, where Poland's world-famous director Krzystof Warlikowski staged Hanoch Levin's Krum, which drew tremendous interest.
Folkdancing has also once again become hot in the Polish capital, and one night I meet Favel, who excitedly tells me, "It's great; yesterday we added more than 100 people to the circle."
Imagination: The symbolic return
The deepening of the love story between Poland and Judaism finds wide expression in culture and contemporary art. It turns out that many artists are not only seeking to return Jewish culture to their districts, but to us Jews as well at least symbolically.
The artists recognize that the wave of affection sweeping Poland wouldn't wash away my father's and grandfathers' pain, and hasn't washed away the painful past in relations between the two nations.
Israeli video artist Yael Bartana was chosen to represent Poland in the Venice Biennale for Contemporary Art this year. Besides the novelty that she is the first non-Pole to represent Poland in the most important exhibition in the art world and the first Israeli not to represent Israel, her exhibition reverberates and examines the renewing relations between Israel and Poland.
The exhibition features video works and manifestos in which the Poles call on the Jews to leave Israel and return to their original homes in Poland. In one of the videos, Slawimir Sierakowski, 34, pale, lean and short, stands inside a barren but huge stadium, facing 3,000 empty seats.
He calls on the Jews to return and there's something ecstatic in his monologue: "Jews, former farmers, p-e-o-p-l-e, do you still think that the old Polish lady lying under Rivka's quilt doesn't want to see you anymore? That she forgot you? You're wrong, she dreams of you every night, dreams and shakes with fear. Since that night you left and mother stuck out her hand to take your blanket she has nightmares, bad dreams, and only you can chase them away. Get the 3 million Jews Poland missed to stand by her bed and chase the nightmares away. Return to Poland, to your country."
The controversial exhibition is just part of the fixture, which is mostly virtual, calling for "a Jewish renaissance in Poland." At the biennale in Venice and at other places in both Poland and Israel, artists are being asked to sign a document calling for the Jews to return to Poland. "We miss you," a friend in Poland told me emphatically when she asked me to sign.
That's also the motto of Rafal Betleyewski, 39, a Catholic Polish artist from Warsaw. On his website, he exhibits his project, called "I Miss You Jew," in which he travels throughout Poland, placing an empty chair on streets or in villages, asking passersby to sit on it. "This is an empty chair which represents the Jew who is no longer with us," he explains to me. He insists on saying "the Jew" and not "the Jews," he declares, "because I miss a specific Jew, and I want everyone to miss the Jew that he knew, heard or read about with whom he identified. It's a personal declaration."
Thousands have already visited the site, and the "I Miss You Jew" Facebook site has more than 7,000 members. Most of the Facebook comments are complimentary, although there are some harsh responses. He, himself, is "satisfied with how things are progressing," and we ask him a few questions.
Q: What led to your starting with this enterprise-
A: The whole thing started when I read Jan Tomasz Gross's book "
Neighbors" [which details the slaughter of the Jewish community of Jedwabne Poland, at the hands of their own neighbors]. I realized that the Polish educational system lied to me and that the Polish mythos was missing something. Until I read that book, I didn't even know the Poles had any part in the slaughter. In light of this information, I decided to go on a journey."Condemnation: Victims or hangmen
This journey that Betleyjewski mentions is shared by many Poles seeking to reconcile the ghosts of the past. Even the wave of support for Judaism currently sweeping the country, as strong and flowing as it may be, cannot wash away this ugly past.
In Poland, there are two clashing approaches. The first is the narrative adopted by most Poles, which sees the Poles as also being among the World War II victims, shirks all their responsibility as active Nazi collaborators. The second begins to peel away the wounds of the past to deal with the skeleton in the closet.
Almost everyone interviewed in the article made a point of noting to me, more than once, that the largest number of Righteous Gentiles certificates distributed by Yad Vashem were given to Poles.
When I tell one of them that my grandfather always told me: "The Poles were collaborators. They were even worse than the Nazis," my interviewee reacts angrily: "Our government ran away and there was one army unit that did not cooperate with the Nazis, so how can you call us collaborators-"
"I know what the Israelis think about us," another friend tells me. "They only connect us to the death camps. We are 'anti-Semites,' 'murderers' and 'collaborators.'"
"I'm sad that they teach the Israelis to be afraid of us," Kasha says, opening the wound that worries the Poles more than anything about their relations with Israel the delegations that visit the death camps. Most Poles I spoke to said that the Israeli youth experienced Poland as a death museum and receive the narrative claiming the Poles took an active and willing part in running the death camps. Kasha, who is working toward a doctorate dealing with the Israeli delegations to Poland, tries to paint Poland as a place without any anti-Semitism. "Look, there are no security guards at the synagogues like there are all over Europe. Nothing's ever happened in all the years I've been living here."
Dr. Anna Maria Orla-Bukowska, a social anthropologist at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, adds: "It hurts me that you only write about Poland in the context of the death camps. You must remember the camps were run by Germans. It bothers me that in America and where you live people think we are 'anti-Semites' and 'the stupid ones.' That's incorrect. It's important that you learn the history of that period from our side. It's important to me. It's important for Poland and for you, too."
"I am a Pole," Makosh says, summing up the phenomenon. "I know that 3.5 million people who lived here, our brothers and sisters, were murdered. There were Poles who helped the Germans, who were informers. And suddenly we have been left here without the Jews. Do you think six years of tragedy caused by the Germans needs to wipe away 800 years of living together-"
The other approach, of brave confrontation with the past, is led by Gross, the author. The Poles see him as one of the figures most responsible for the Jewish renaissance, the awareness, and he's the target for harsh criticism by many Poles. Gross published three books that stirred a storm in his country:
"Neighbors," which described the Poles' slaughter of Jews in Jedwabne in 1941; "Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland After Auschwitz," which describes the slaughter of the Jews of Kielce after the war in 1946, and his newest book "Golden Harvest," which is being widely discussed today and recalls Poles digging for money in Jewish graves at Treblinka after the war,No one's apathetic when it comes to Gross, and the most radical responses to his work come from nationalist Poles who prefer to remain "martyrs," and deny their part in murdering the Jews. "Recently," Gross told me, "many Poles have approached me, shaken my hand and asked to know more and more about the truth."
Gross tells me that his mother, a Christian Pole, was active in the Polish underground, and she saved her Jewish husband, Gross's father. Gross himself studied at university in Poland, and in 1968 was jailed during student demonstrations. A year later, during a wave of anti-Semitism, he immigrated to the U.S. with his parents. "Poland is a country drenched with Jewish blood, and the Poles should mourn this. Until my book came out they showed no interest and didn't talk about it. They preferred to blame Communism, and mainly claimed that Poles saved Jews and were killed for their sake, and did enough for the Jews during the war.
"True, there were many good Poles and many books and stories have been written about them," Gross says. "But I also know of those who until this very day do not admit they saved Jews, because they still are afraid to do so. I write about what wasn't discussed and wasn't told. I have no doubt that thanks to my books, there are increasing numbers of Poles who are ready to deal with the past, to talk about it and make their peace with it and with the Jews."
Teresa Klomowitcz, the Maidanek guide and researcher, agrees with this approach, summing up candidly: "I believe you have to study difficult stories about the war for any reconciliation, although I have no idea how I can reconcile with you in my grandfather's name."
Expression: The new Jews
Olga Karnes, 17 1/2, and Ana Golinaska, 18, are young women who volunteer at the Krakow Jewish Community Center (JCC). "Many come to volunteer or find work for the summer," they say. In Ana's home they talked about their Jewish heritage. "Even though we are fervent Poles, I knew that some Jews remained in Poland, and I dreamed of meeting them," Olga says and reveals that there are families in town still hiding their Jewish roots, "because it's like coming out of the closet."
"There are those who lack courage, and those who are only looking for their Jewish roots. Recently I heard about a woman who only at age 90 told her granddaughter that she was Jewish. Another girl at the JCC says: "My grandmother doesn't admit it."
We ask: "Maybe she's simply not Jewish."
"She is," the girl responds. "I investigated our family history, but she's still traumatized by the anti-Semitism we had here once, by the war, and the Communist days. And she says that a Jew means trouble. Look, at her age "
They all say that the word Jew is no longer a pejorative term in Poland. "It's just the opposite," say Matusz and Ishbel, two young Poles who discovered their families' past recently. Matusj even adds that he was circumcised and that he takes an active role in all the flourishing Jewish life here.
JCC head Jonathan Ornstein is an American Jew who immigrated to Israel, served in the Israeli army, but has been living in Poland for the past 10 years. "There is a renewed rebirth here. There are families that changed names, lived under the cloak of Christianity and now have returned to us, and it's incredible and exciting, and it's not happening anywhere else in Europe.
"There's anti-Semitism all over the world, but in Poland it's showing up less and less. Objectively, Poland was the country where the most Jews in the world lived. Most of them were murdered, and for almost 40 years one was forbidden to talk about this. Now when it's permitted, the Poles want to know what happened to those who were an inseparable part of their country.
"The Jews and Israelis have to be smart and understand where our situation as Jews is better. In Poland 2011 it's good to be a Jew. It would be bad for us to continue to believe that only the Scandinavians helped us, and not understand that things have changed. Judaism must adapt itself to change. Wake up, look what's happening today in Poland, in this Jewish center. There's a whole new generation that no longer suckles anti-Semitism at its mother's breast."
A woman comes into the room and listens to what the JCC chief has to say. Her name is Barbara Czachowska and she's 26 years old. "It's a matter of identity for me. Not long ago I discovered that my grandmother was Jewish. It was Easter. A relative from Cambridge who was staying with us saw my mother and me getting dressed to go to church. She asked where we were going and looked a little confused for a moment when we told her what seemed obvious that we were going to church."
"She told us: 'But you're Jews.' We were in shock. We couldn't grasp it. We didn't know what to say. Slowly it seemed only natural to us because we always felt something different, and I can't explain what. It turns out that my grandmother was Jewish but was afraid to tell. The way history treated Polish Jewry led to her keeping it a secret."
Barbara's story represents the new situation in Poland. Her grandfather was a Polish Catholic, her grandmother a Jew. "They lived in Gleiwitz, in southern Poland, and my grandfather was an anti-Semite. My Jewish grandmother used to enjoy telling him all the time that she was his punishment, and they'd laugh about it. Only today do we understand what my grandmother meant."
"Do you still go to church-" I ask.
"It's been a custom for years. It's hard to stop, certainly not in one day," she says. "But I'm thinking of stopping and beginning to go to synagogue."
On a previous visit, about a year ago, I met Pyotr Mirsky, a 30-year-old with classic Slavic features. He introduced himself by saying: "I'm Pyotr Menachem Mirsky. I want to become a newly penitent Jew." I thought he was joking.
We met again two weeks ago. Pyotr Mirsky today follows all the mitzvot, including keeping kosher, Shabbat and the holidays.
"At the beginning people thought I'd gone mad, but today they accept it," he tells us. "It started because of the Jewish music. We didn't have very friendly chats at home about Jews, but rather the opposite. Some family members were anti-Semites and didn't talk about our roots, some of which may very well be Jewish. But a few years ago I heard Jewish music and I was hypnotized. I fell in love with the energy and I began feeling a spiritual connection to that music, and I didn't know why."
Pyotr, who fitting to a Polish Jew loves gefilte fish, even was circumcised. "The Jewish spirit that has been blowing through here recently made the whole process easier," he says, "but there are still some relatives I don't tell."
Unification: "Lecha Dodi"
I ended my last visit to Poland with Shabbat eve prayers in the Jewish Museum in Krakow. The manager of the museum Jakub Nowakowski, 100% Polish, stood proudly and looked at his Reform rabbi, Tanya Segal, sing and dozens of Poles, Jews and non-Jews join in.
The boy sitting next to me mistakenly turned "Lecha Dodi" (Come my beloved ) into "Eicha Dodi," (Where are you, my beloved). It didn't sound like a phonetic mistake to me, but rather a poetic expression of what he was feeling in his heart.
(Poland 2011)
טעינו? נתקן! אם מצאתם טעות בכתבה, נשמח שתשתפו אותנו
