RECAPITULATION-A TRIP TO POLAND

By

Jonathan Simon

For seven weeks I’ve lived here,Penned up inside this ghetto

But I have found my people here.The dandelions call to me

And white chestnut candles in the court.Only I never saw another butterfly.

Pavel Friedmann - Theresienstadt7.1.21 - 29.9.44

For many years I had felt impelled to visit Poland to visit the once great seat of Jewish

culture and learning and the graveyard of European Jewry.

In 1987, I was on sabbatical, initially in England and thence to Ben Gurion University

of the Negev for a research fellowship in Family Medicine. There was a window in

time that opened between the two commitments that allowed my trip to Germany and

Poland.

Poland was a very difficult country to visit alone. I went to the official Polish tourist

agency in London for their assistance. They gave me an enormous tome of two

thousand pages, it was a highly complex railway timetable with explanatory notes in

Polish. I realised that travelling by myself would be difficult and decided to join an

official tour. I had my own agenda and would conduct my own tour within the structure

of the official tour.

Poland is a country with many histories; locked between Germany on the West and

Russia on the East it could only have had a difficult story.

The history of Poland is the story of a nation emerging from tribal barbarism and

developing a national identity, which is irrevocably intertwined with the introduction

and assimilation of Catholicism. There is the appearance of Russia and its relationship

with the Russian Orthodox Church and also the minorities the Ukrainians with their

own religious affiliations and the Byelorussians.

The Order of the Teutonic Knights penetrating across the Baltic from East Prussia.

Their advance justified by overt zeal to convert the heathens in the East. Their covert

reasons to expand their trade and power to the East.

Then, there was the history of the Jews. Escaping from a hostile Western Europe, the

Jews fled the persecutions of the crusaders and the iniquitous accusation of having

caused the great plague.

The Jews were welcomed to Kraków by Casimir the Great. The Jews settled in the area

that became known as Kazimierz. Poland was a backward nation with a small class of

Recapitulation 1

landed gentry, a large peasantry and little in between. For economic development the

Poles needed a new estate, this was to be created by the importation of the Jews. The

Jews possessed many of the skills required for development; literacy, trades and

professions.

In pre-war Poland, Jews constituted ten percent of the population, between 1939 and

1969 the Jewish population diminished from 3.3 million to 5,000. This was as a result

of policies of extermination practiced by the Germans during the war and anti-semitic

purges by the post war communist regimes.

Prior to leaving for Warsaw I spent four days in Hamburg and Berlin with my father.

During this stay I learnt much about our families’ German roots. For his part he was

reliving memories from a gentler youth in the 1920’s and recalling his four years at

school in Berlin.

Dort, wo man Bücher

Verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen.

Wherever books will be burned, men also, in the end, are burned

Heinrich Heine 1797-1856 Almansor (1823)

In Hamburg we visited all the places where my grandparents’ and their parents had

lived. We went to places with unusual names like the Grindel, the Schlump, Altona and

Blankenese.

It was difficult to imagine all that had happened since his last visit. It was so strange to

visit Ohlsdorf cemetery (the Jewish section) and to find the grave of my great

grandparents. To find the tombstones of other relatives such as Selma Beer, recalled

like echoes from my childhood.

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My Grandfather’s family had originated from a village called Friedberg near Munich

and drifted northwards to Hamburg where they had lived for many generations.

The family had been observant members of the Jewish community of Hamburg,

Wansbeck and Altona. There were famous and infamous members of the family from a

murderer to Grit’s distant cousin Heinrich Heine, the poet.

We sat at the Alster Pavilion in the fashionable part of Hamburg overlooking the Alster.

We drank our Jever Pils with Steinhager schnapps near the Streits Hotel that Teddy had

frequented on his visits to his relatives between the wars. Not far from us was a

magnificent hotel called the Vierjahrezeitung (The Four Seasons). It had been the

regional headquarters of the Nazi party. Like so many place I saw, initially I noticed the

beauty of the buildings and then had their overt beauty marred by their dark history. As

we sat looking at the fashionable people of Hamburg I looked onto the Alster and saw

the reflections of the large houses that by the waterside. Willi Simon, a ships chandler

and supplier to the Hamburg Atlantic line, had lived here. He was a respected member

of the local community. He stayed and survived to commit suicide as the gestapo came

to arrest him.

We walked to Altona; it used to be a village outside Hamburg and is now near the

centre of the city. Here for generations my grandmothers’ family had lived her house

site was now a shopping mall still we found the Große Bergstraße.

Blankenese was idyllic, how difficult it was to imagine the awfulness of the recent past

in such a place. As we sat in a pub eating bierwurst accompanied by Beck’s beer with

obligatory schnapps, Derrick struck up a conversation with a man who spoke very good

English; he had learnt his English in a British prisoner of war camp. In the background

I perceived an uneasy presence of a man who thoroughly disapproved of this

conversation as I looked at his dark expression I again felt the past touching me and

sending a chill through me.

Hamburg was a fascinating city haunted generations of my relatives, haunted by the

remembrance of Hitler, Nazism and anti-semitism.

We left Hamburg for a short stay in Berlin. Derrick had visited Hamburg since the war

but had not re-visited Berlin since he was a boy. After arrival in Germany his family

moved from Hamburg to Alt Moabit in Berlin. They lived in this suburb near the

Kleine Tiergarten (Small Animal Zoo). Teddy set up a dry cleaning and minor repairs

business in the Prager Platz called “Ihr Diene”(Your Servant). Derrick and Ken went to

a school in Zwingli Straße. As we walked down Alt Moabit, the pace increased as we

approached Zwingli Straße. Of all the buildings in this Berlin Street, there was only one

original building that had survived the bombing of the city by the allies. It was, of

course, Derrick’s school. Derrick rushed around talking to passers by to see if they

remembered the school. They didn’t. In desperation he went into a pet shop on the

corner of the street and asked the owner if he knew the story of the building, he did not.

No one local recalled the pre-war Zwingli Straße apart from Derrick.

We stayed in a delightful pension in Lietzenburger just off the Kurfürstendam, on the

first night we went in search of an Eintopft or a soup meal and found one. The

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Gedenkte Kirche was a very impressive reminder of Berlin’s past. We visited the East

by way of the U-Bahn and stopping at FreidrichStraße we entered East Germany and

were standing on Unter Dem Linden. It was here as child that Derrick had collected for

charity. The governmental buildings were magnificent as we looked toward the west we

saw the Brandenburg Tor and beyond to the Siegessäule. In 1987, it was the 750

anniversary of the founding of Berlin. As part of the celebrations there was a amazing

parade to commemorate the history. It was a unpleasantly strange sensation to see

occasional groups of Berliners wearing the stripped uniform of the concentration camps

with the characteristic yellow stars with the single word Jude written. In the parade,

there was a group of concentration camp prisoners to remember the victims of fascism.

We went by train through the Grünewald to Wannsee, here Derrick sat on a rock

writing post cards as the water from the lake washed against the shore.

It was such an attractive setting. I remembered that here, in 1942, was convened the

fateful conference the examined the “JudenFrage” (The Jewish Question) and arrived

at the “Entlösung” (The Final Solution). Chaired by Heydrich, attended by Eichmann

this was the turning point for the fate of the Jews of Europe. The conference preceded

the invasion of Russia in which the EinsatzKommando liquidated so many Jewish

communities in the Pale as they advanced into Russia. I sat beside the water and was

overwhelmed by the sadness of the memories of this place. I drank my Berliner Weiß

Bier to numb my thoughts; the Kümmel helped this.

On the last morning we went to a small inland lake Derrick visited as a child. It was

called Plötzensee. In the summer months Derrick and his elder brother Ken had visited

Recapitulation 4

this place with their father. There was a diving board, Teddy had offered Derrick one

Mark if he would dive in off the board. From the sand I watched Derrick as he

regressed to childhood before my eyes. He danced across the sand ignoring the amply

breasted German girls displaying themselves. He made straight for the diving board and

dived in. For that moment Teddy was there again, Derrick was the child overcoming his

fear and diving into the water. There was a magic for a moment, and then we had to

leave for Tegel Airport.

In the parade there was a black float naming the camps, included in the names was

Plötzensee. Why Plötzensee? We walked around the lake before it opened. There was a

memorial by the waterside. It was here that some of the high ranking officers who had

conspired to kill Hitler were hanged with cheese wire whilst the proceedings were

filmed for Hitler’s’ entertainment. So many place were tarnished with the awfulness of

memory.

In the Ohlsdorf Jewish cemetery was a garden of remembrance with an urn inscribed

with “Asche Aus Auschwitz”. This was to be in the next country I was to visit.

As we left West Berlin we could see the Wall dividing the city like an ugly crayon

mark. Who would have believed that the Wall would be down within three years?

We returned to England, Derrick to return to work; I, to return to Europe. I arrived in

Warsaw the next morning.

WARSAW

It was a two hour flight from Heathrow to Warsaw. Sitting beside me was a pleasant

but agitated woman. She had left Poland three years earlier “on holiday”. She never

returned instead she married and settled in Australia. Now he father was very ill in a

hospital in Gdansk and she was desperate to see him before he died. She was also

terrified of becoming trapped in Poland. I could sense this overwhelming fear of being

trapped in Poland. It must have been and similar but more devastating sensation in the

Jewish population of Poland before and during the German occupation of Poland.

Arriving in Eastern Europe had a particular oppressiveness that one noticed on arrival.

The unsmiling boarder guards that process you escape proof iron gates are very

intimidating. I passed through the border and was transferred to my hotel in the centre

of the city it was on the corner of Marszalkowska and Aleje Jerozolimskie. These

names conjured up memories from reading about the history of Warsaw.

My personal tour of Warsaw was carefully planned; my walk was to take me north to

the outer boundary of the Ghetto and return via the University district and the Saxony

gardens. Leaving early in the morning I walked along the Aleje Jerozolimskie until I

reached the famous Poniatowski Bridge that spans the Vistula connecting Warsaw with

the suburb of Praga. Looking north one could see the outline of the city on the left bank

and Praga on the right. In 1944 the ill-fated Warsaw uprising began, the Varsavians

were exhorted by the Russians, encamped in Praga, to revolt against the Germans. The

revolt was over by October. The Russians remained on the other side of the river until

the Polish resistance fighters were decimated. The Germans reduced Warsaw to ashes.

Recapitulation 5

When the Soviets liberated Warsaw in January 1945 it was empty. No one was left and

93% of the buildings were destroyed.

The Soviets who encouraged the revolt failed to support it. Such a small distance; such

an opportune delay and such a waste of life.

I turned north and reached Sienna Street at the southern border of the little ghetto and

made for the synagogue between Twarda and Grzybowska Streets. I entered the

synagogue and introduced myself in German to an old man who spoke Polish and

Yiddish. He was the Shammes and he told me how the Jews of Poland were slowly

dying of old age. Since the anti-semitic purges of 1968 in the aftermath of the six day

war only elderly Jews remained in Poland. In a short time the last Jewish communities

of Poland would be gone. He had a sad sense of resignation about him as he spoke.

I resumed my walk and continued north to Krochmalna Street to visit the magical place

that kept appearing in the stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer. The first impression was

disappointing, as all the buildings appeared to be built post war in that special Eastern

European drab style of state architecture. Then at the end of the road where it met

Zelazna Street was an original house from a time when Jews lived and thronged the

streets of Warsaw.

I walked around the corner and was transported into the Warsaw of Singer’s stories.

One could easily imagine the bustle of people pursuing their lives, visiting Singer’s

father for advice, ignorant of the coming destruction.

Continuing along the perimeter of the ghetto, I reached Chlodna Street, this had been

the border between the little ghetto and the larger northern ghetto. In order to cross

from one to the other had necessitated crossing over a bridge that had traversed Chlodna

Street.

Crossing Lesno Street I entered the southern part of the larger ghetto, as the Germans

cleared the ghetto, it shrank. First to go was the little ghetto then the larger ghetto

progressively became smaller. Initially its southern border had been at Electoralna

Street and latterly became Pawia Street. At the centre of the residual ghetto, between

Mordechai Anielewicza Street (the renamed Gesia Street) and Mila Street was the

memorial to the ghetto fighters.

Recapitulation 6

It is a moving bronze sculpture by Nathan Rappaport; there is another copy of this

sculpture at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. The area has been redeveloped into a housing

area at the centre of which is a public park. I sat on the edge of the sand pit in the

middle of the park. As I sat I watched children playing with their dog, oblivious to

history about them. The old charred bricks that made the border of the sand pit must

have been the only visible remnants of the structures of the Warsaw ghetto. It was

difficult to imagine how different this place was such a short time ago, before the war.

Continuing my walk I passed through a remembered gate that was one of the few

guarded exits from the ghetto leaving via Stawki and Dzika. I like many Jews before

me had arrived at the Umschlagplatz. (The departure point for the transports to

Treblinka).

I stood there remembering the story of Dr Janusz Korczak and the 200 children from

the orphanage. I could see them walking in orderly ranks from the orphanage to the

Umschlagplatz to be loaded onto the cattle trucks and be taken to their deaths in

Treblinka.

Throughout Warsaw were touching memorials to Polish people whom the Germans

killed. There were many plaques adorned with the red and ribbon of Poland and

flowers. Where were the memorials to the Jewish Poles who had been so ruthlessly

identified, isolated and exterminated? Where were the memorials to the 500,000 Jews

who perished in the Warsaw ghetto?

I did not wish to stay in Muranow any longer and went to the old city (Stare Miasto).

This was lovingly restored immediately after the war. It is beautiful reconstruction of

the old city before its destruction during the Warsaw uprising. What a contrast to the

old ghetto area.

Recapitulation 7

As I walked down Krakowskie towards Nowy Swiat, I passed the Hotel Bristol. It is a

European peculiarity that in many European cities and towns there are Hotels called

Bristol.

Paderewski had owned this Hotel Bristol, a man who played such an important role in

the musical and political life of Poland. It was from this hotel that SS Brigadenfuhrer

Jürgen Stroop conducted the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto.

The next day I accompanied the tour to the old city. We were shown the regal palaces

of the Szlachta (nobles) and we visited a number of important churches. In the crypt of

one of the churches was the tomb of Roman Dmowski. As I stood by the silent tomb I

mused about his conflicts with Josef Pilsudski. Their political battles for the future of

Poland after its reconstitution in the wake of the First World War. It was an argument

rendered meaningless by the passage of time. Dmowski wanted a Poland for the

Catholic Poles but excluding the many minorities. These were the Ukrainians, the

Byelorussians, the ethnic Germans in Silesia and the Jews. In the late thirties, spurred

by a poor economic situation and innate anti-semitism Dmowski accompanied by the

church encouraged the boycott of Jewish traders, which accelerated the pauperisation of

the already harassed Jewish population.

Pilsudski wanted a Poland for all Poles; he died before this dream could be achieved.

Dmowski gained power but Poland could assert its future the Germans invaded. They

selected the Poles for Slave labour, recruited the Ukrainians to assist them and decided

to ghettoise and exterminate the Jews.

Throughout Poland the churches were well attended. The people found solace in their

Catholicism, an unusual feature in an atheistic communist bloc country. I was to learn

during my stay about the ability of Catholicism to endure and carry with it the dormant

seeds of Polish nationalism as it had during the 200 year sleep from the partition of

Poland and its re-emergence after the First World War.

When we returned to the foyer of the hotel, we found anarchy where we had left order.

The foyer was bustling with trade representatives from all over Eastern Europe. I

escaped to a quiet corner of the foyer. I was engulfed by a whirlwind of people, babble

and a tour guide who looked punch drunk and thoroughly bemused. His name was

Mario. Although I was surrounded by this tumult of people I was treated as though I

was invisible. There were crescendos of accents from agitated Brooklyn to retired

Miami. These variants of American accents were all around me. They all seemed to be

arguing simultaneously with each other and the tour guide. The central question would

appear to be “Where could they obtain suitable kosher food in Warsaw?” There were

many answers to this question from many participants but as no one was listening the

babble continued. A Rabbi shouted and called the bickering rabble to order. There was

a momentary silence. The Rabbi issued an edict, “Whilst in Warsaw, you will all eat

vegetarian!” Peace at last, no; a feisty little woman stood up and angrily responded,

“You can speak for yourself, I shall eat what I want!”

It was the Jewish heritage tour of Eastern Europe. Mario had never attempted to guide a

tour like this before and judging by his harassed face would not consider it again. There

Recapitulation 8

were forty people from America, five of whom were Rabbis from different

congregations on the Eastern seaboard. Each Rabbi vied with the others for moral

ascendancy and the religious leadership of the group. The group were singularly

unimpressed with this conflict and studiously ignored the varied and contradictory

halachic admonishments from their fellow tourists.

In Budapest, the previous day, kosher food had not been a problem there was a kosher

restaurant in the city. Warsaw was another matter. On the periphery of this babbling

group, I was befriended by a retired head nurse and her silent hen pecked husband from

Florida. She told stories of the group, their experiences and conflicts.

Amongst the group was a successful entrepreneur who had escaped from Eastern

Europe in the sixties. He had anticipated that kosher food would be in great demand

when the group entered Poland. He came equipped with luggage full of kosher food

purchased in New York. At night, the corridor outside his room was a flurry of activity

as fellow tourists darted in and out of his room entering with money and leaving with

their hands full of kosher smoked salmon, pumpernickel, cheese and sausages. As the

night wore on the bartering reached frenetic heights with trading occurring between

various people and their newly acquired kosher food supplies. By this time salamis

were being rushed to different parts of the hotel, pickles were exchanged and quiet

descended on the hotel. The next day the Jewish heritage tour was leaving Warsaw for

Prague. I would miss their vibrant presence.

In the foyer a knot of forty people left the hotel, last but not least was Mario. His final

words to me as he left the place were “Who are the Jewish Heritage Tours?”

KRAKÓW

The next morning we left for Kraków, it was pleasant to leave the city; soon we were in

the country driving south towards Radom and thence to Kielce. As we drove through

Kielce, a memory flickered in my mind. Had not Kielce been the site of some

happening significant in Jewish history? I asked our guide what had happened in

Kielce. She looked blank, said it was a small place in which nothing very much had

happened. She went on to her next task.

We continued driving through the Polish countryside, it was fascinating to watch the

farmers and their families working the fields, using scythes to cut the barley, tying it

into sheathes and throwing it onto the horse drawn wooden trucks. The children were

playing amongst the sheathes on the truck. Little had changed there for three hundred

years. Looking at that lush countryside it was easy to imagine the same sight at the

height of the Polish-Lithuanian empire when immense wealth had been generated by

the Vistula grain trade

So much remained unchanged that it took a conscious effort to conjure up the images of

Jewish settlements interspersed in this pastoral setting. Only 50 years ago; but now all

gone, having substance only in a diminishing number of individuals’ memories.

Recapitulation 9

We arrived in Kraków, what a magnificent city, it was all that Warsaw was not. It was,

physically, untouched by the war and retained the ambience of a cultured medieval

university town. The tour took us to the central market and to nearby, Florianska, a

street unchanged by the passage of the last five hundred years. If only the communities

of the cities had been as immutable as the stones.

We visited Wawel castle, the site of the Royal line of Poland. Here was the throne of

Casimir the Great and the site of the popular marriage between the Lithuanian Grand

Duke Wladislaw Jagiello and Jadwiga, daughter of Louis of Anjou. Kraków was the

centre of the Polish Lithuanian alliance and the greatest era in Polish history. In the

crypt of the Cathedral were the tombs of Jadwiga, now a Saint and Josef Pilsudski, the

great man who during that brief inter war re-emergence of a free Poland had wanted

broadly based Polish republic to enjoyed by all its citizens. During his life he fought the

narrow Polish nationalism of Roman Dmowski. They were both dead by the time the

Germans invaded in September 1939.

After the war and the loss of 11 million Poles, the re-constituted Poland was closer to

the country that Dmowski had envisaged. It was free of minorities within its borders.

The Germans were defeated and expelled; the Ukrainians and Byelorussians were back

under the direct rule of the Soviet Union, the Poles were under the control of the Soviet

Union until 1990 and the Jews were dead.

Looking from the parapets of Wawel castle I saw Kazimierz, the old Jewish quarter

named for Casimir the Great. I left the tour and made my way to a narrow necked road

shaped like a bottle called Ulica Szeroka (Broad Street). It was a beautiful street. There

were a number of old and now unused synagogues, as I walked down this road I felt a

strange familiarity. It was a familiarity generated by the pre-war images of this place

that were captured by the photographer Roman Vishniac during his journey through the

Jewish communities in Eastern Europe immediately before the German invasion. It is a

poignant testament to both him and the Jews.

Recapitulation 10

I reached the end of the road and had arrived at the Great synagogue of Kraków. It is

now a museum run by non Jews. I signed the visitor’s book, the attendants looked

bored, it was of no interest to them that someone had travelled from New Zealand and

was interested in their museum. Their presence made this museum so much more empty

than if they had not been there. Their indifference was insufferable.

As I walked through this area I remembered that in pre-war Kraków there had been a

Jewish population of 60,000 now there were less than 400. The Jewish community of

Kraków were nearly gone.

I was reminded of the once vibrant community here by the names of the streets; Ulica

Josefa, Estery, Isaaka and Jakuba these converged on the old Jewish market, now

deserted. Compared with the photographs taken by Vishniac the street now appeared

lifeless; peopled only by the ghostly images remembered from the pages of a book.

Recapitulation 11

I crossed the Vistula and went on to Zabloçie as had the Jewish residents of Kazimierz

when the Germans had expelled them and ordered them into the ghetto. Here was

another Jerozolimskie Street not as grand as the Street of the same name in Warsaw; it

did not lead to a beautiful bridge but to the area where the Jews of Kraków spent their

last weeks as a community.

Across the road in Lipowa Street was the site of the Deutsch Email Fabrik or Emalia as

it became affectionately know to its employees. It was here that the enigmatic, bon

viveur and Abwehr provocateur, Oscar Schindler ran his business. He was to be the

only gentile to save more than 1,000 Jews from certain death. He saved these Jews here

in Kraków, he pursued them and had them released from Auschwitz-Birkenau and

Gross Rosen concentration camps.

His friend Amon Göeth was in command of the forced labour camp at Plaszów three

kilometers away from Emalia. Göeth’s brief was to repeat his successful liquidation of

the Jews of Lublin. To destroy the Jewish life and people of Kraków.

From that southern area of the city called Podgorze, I returned to my hotel and as I sat

on the lawn looking towards the distant Carpathian mountain range that separates

southern Poland from Czechoslovakia. I reflected about the historical forces that had

raged before the final curtain was closed on the history of the Jews of Eastern Europe.

In the North there had been the greatest seat of Jewish learning and orthodoxy, Vilna in

Lithuania. Elijah the Gaon relentlessly resisted the pietist movement emanating from

the South. The Baal Shem Tov had emerged a new religious force from his small Inn at

foot of the Carpathians. The Hassidic movement that followed him was one of the great

forces of Eastern European Jewry.

In the West was the irresistible tide of the European enlightenment (Haskalah) and the

increasing assimilation that accompanied the release of the Jewish minds into Western

Europe. The emergence of the Jewish people in the West was lead by Moses

Mendelssohn. The face of Judaism in Western Europe was changing rapidly.

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In the East were the restless Jewish masses trapped in the Pale of Settlement, ruled by

the oppressive and unsympathetic Tsarist regimes. Many were escaping to America

from the 1890’s onwards to find a new life away from tsarist tyranny. From this terrible

oppression emerged other non religious forces such as communism and Zionism.

From these historical force emerged several choices for the masses. There was often

overlap between these choices.

The first was ZIONISM; this analysis concluded that the only solution to Jewish

suffering was the establishment of a Jewish State preferably in Palestine.

The second solution was EMIGRATION, to leave for another country outside Europe

that might offer greater toleration.

The third solution was ASSIMILATION; give up much of the burden of Jewish identity

and language for the language and identity of the dominant culture.

The fourth solution was POLITICAL UTOPIANISM, consisted of advancing the cause

of a just socialist society where all are equal and are given equal opportunities. These

structures when in place in Eastern Europe were neither just nor based on equality nor

did they help the problems of the Jews. With the advent of Stalinism State socialism

was discredited as the actual political manifestation of Marxist theory. Europe's’ Annus

Mirabilis 1989, the year of the collapse of State socialism may lead to a democratic

future for the people of Eastern Europe but with the demise of the universal hatred of

the Soviet Union and its dominance has allowed older forms of hatred to emerge. There

is a nauseating resurgence of anti Semitism in Eastern Europe and Russia. One wonders

where it will lead in its latest incarnation.

The fifth and last solution was RELIGIOUS INTROSPECTION; maintain religious

observance and tradition at all costs. Do not be affected by new thinking, it is deviant

and is heretical. Let the secular forces do what they will. God will provide and be the

only absolute answer. Regardless, what mankind does to the Jews, the Jews will persist.

(Whatever the cost)

Before the war was a time of change, there were many torrents of thought. There was

argument and dissent between the various Jewish factions. So great was the conflict

between these groups that it reduced the possibility of effective response to the

increasing threat of the rise of the Nazi party. The Zionist thought the Jews should

return to Palestine; the Bund sought redemption through a change in the political order

and the emergence of International Marxism. The Hassidim saw redemption only in

God. It was, therefore, easier for the Nazis to act than for European Jewry to react.

Recapitulation 13

OSWIEÇIM

I had a dream

A dream so terrible:

My people were no more,

No more!

I wake up with a cry.

What I dreamed was true:

It had happened indeed,

It had happened to me

Itzhak KATZENELSON 1866 – 1944

Is pronounced Osh-wen-shim in Polish, Oshpitsin in Yiddish and 32 miles to the South-

West of Kraków. On arrival in Oswiecim the most imposing image is the station with

its bold letters spelling OSWIECIM. It is a railway terminus surrounded by a light

industrial complex. The land is flat and is near the coalfields of Katowitz a well known

feature in this area called Silesia. During the great annexation of Poland by East

Prussia, Austria -Hungary and Russia this area was administered by Austria-Hungary.

Its Germanised name was Auschwitz.

When the Wehrmacht re-possessed this land to liberate the Sudeten Germans they

recalled the town by its former German name Auschwitz.

I visited the camps in Oswiecim alone. I started by becoming attached to English

speaking group who were being escorted through the State museum which is located in

the camp called Auschwitz I. Amongst my group was an American woman and her

voluble eleven year old daughter. Initially, the guide did not wish the girl to accompany

her mother, as she was too young. After a brief argument it was decided this child could

come. I entered the camp area with awful feelings of foreboding. There was a cast iron

sign over the main gate that declared “Arbeit Macht Frei” This cliché of Nazi double

talk was created at Dachau, a cynical and meaningless statement and a foretaste of the

ambiguous language of the death camps. ‘Work makes Free’, how meaningless in an

Recapitulation 14

environment designed to destroy the human spirit, the human body and then to

extinguish not only life but also any memory of that individuals existence.

The young girl pestered the guide incessantly, “Where were the people killed? Can I see

Block 11? Are there still bloodstains on the firing wall? There seemed to no end to this

girl immature and insensitive questions.

We entered a Block house and saw a cabinet of possessions, children's’ clothing and

plaits of young girls hair just as it had been when it was cut off on the last day of some

young girls life.

The tour and the exhibits focussed on the arrest, detention and execution of Polish

academics, which were amongst the first to be arrested. Their experience was well

represented; it did seem to displace the magnitude of the suffering of the Jewish people.

Although it was not included in the official tours you could visit Block 27. It was

identified with a plaque written only in Polish “Historia Martyrologii Zydow”. I could

stand the questions of the young American girl no longer and left by myself to visit

Block 27.

On leaving the State museum I sat on a low wall and watched the faces of the people

coming and going. It was an outing with sideshows. There were the ice cream stalls,

soft drink sellers, people laughed and joked. It was a nice day out.

I found my taxi driver and asked him to take me to Birkenau. It was two kilometers

away across the roads and a winding railway line and as the car swung around a corner

I saw the silhouette of that famous entry watchtower come into view. I saw the

watchtower, as it stood perched over the railway entrance to the camp. Through here

trains laden with condemned humanity passed for processing in the death camp.

Here was no notice that said “Arbeit Mach Frei”. This was the entry to a recreation of

Dante’s Inferno, if anything were written it should have been “Lasciate ogni speranza

voi ch’entrate”

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The camp at Birkenau had been left as the Red Army had found it on January 27th

1945. They do not bring tours here. I was alone in the camp. There was a road that ran

beside the railway line; slowly I started to walk down the metal road. It was difficult to

walk here, as I felt weighed down by the impact of the emotions triggered by entering

this unbearable place of slaughter. I arrived at the entrance to the women’s camp. On

the wall of a hut that was next to the railway line was a large photo that reflected the

process of arrival and selection on the ramp. It was like a large mirror that had borne

witness to such terrible events that they had become etched on its surface. Here the

wretched deportees were unloaded and were disembarked by shouting SS officers and

their dogs, kapos and inmates assisted them. They were separated into lines of men and

women and children. With a flick of a doctor’s thumb they were separated, to the left;

the gas chambers, to the right; the barracks for life of uncertain brevity.

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In August 1944 Allied aerial reconnaissance missions were flown over the industrial

resources of Silesia. One set of photographs that I saw published in Martin Gilbert’s

‘Auschwitz and the Allies’ captured the process of selection and diversion to the gas

chambers from the air. There was a column of ant like creatures shuffling forwards

along the metal road by the railway line. They were moving towards the half open gate

of Krema II, half welcoming them to the last half hour of their lives. The ovens were

fired, the sonderkommando awaiting them. Hopefully, many of the victims retained

hope of a shower, work, food and a chance of survival.

I retraced the steps of the people as they walked along the metal road; from the

women’s camp it was another 500 metres to the gateposts on the perimeter of Krema II.

There was an unbearable awfulness as the reality of this place kept screaming into my

mind.

Scattered on the ground were myriad fragments of shattered brick, clear on one side,

charred on the other. These were the bricks of the chimneys that had belched orange

flames and acrid smoke into the Silesian air offering up the Jewish people to heaven.

There were no tourists here; it was as it had been left. This was the most eloquent

memorial.

ÇZESTOCHOWA

The next day we went to Çzestochowa a place of pilgrimage for 3,000,000 Catholics

every year. Here was the monastery of Jasna Gora, which held the Holy relic, a painting

of the Black Madonna, hanging over the high altar.

Our guide a monk was delightful, helpful and articulate; he took us on a tour of the

monastery. We were taken to a repository that held all the most important Church

Recapitulation 17

treasures. Eventually, we arrived in a special room with the most important treasures

well protected and guarded. Amongst these treasures was an oil painting of Lech

Walesa, he was dressed in prison garb looking grim but over his heart was a picture of

the Black Madonna. In a nearby cabinet was his Nobel Prize. This afforded an

interesting insight into the relationship between the Church, Polish nationalism and the

free trade union movement.

Recent events in Poland and comments by Archbishop Glemp and Lech Walesa have

shown the continuing existence of an echo from Poland’s past. They have both been

known to make anti-Semitic comments. They represent an interestingly ghastly new

phenomenon in Eastern Europe; that is the persistence of anti- Semitism in the absence

of a Jewish population.

We were lead to the priest’s robing chamber leading to the high altar of the monastery.

We entered the Church, standing with our backs to the walls, close to the famous

painting of the Black Madonna. In front of us devoted peasants were walking around

the altar on their knees in simple devotion to their Lady of Jasna Gora.

One could feel the strength of their belief and understand how appalling it would be if

one’s very life was an affront to that faith.

In Çzestochowa there were many memorials to the Red Army, to Saints and to martyrs.

In pre-war Çzestochowa there was a Jewish community of 28,500. They were annexed

into a ghetto and transported to Treblinka. Even after the war there was a small Jewish

community in the town. This remnant left after the government lead Anti-Semitic

campaign in 1968. There is now neither Jew nor any trace that Jews were ever resident

in Çzestochowa, apart, of course, from the headstones in the cemetery.

LODZ

The drive back to Warsaw travelled north east on a motorway. I noticed a signpost to

Lodz on my right; during the war the Germans had renamed this city Littmanstadt. It

was a textile centre, after the occupation the Germans created a large ghetto. The ghetto

was presided over by its own Jewish emperor, Chaim Rumkowski. There is an

extraordinary account of the day to life in the ghetto. The chronicle is one of the fullest

remaining accounts of the day to day life for the Jews in a ghetto. Many Jews were

transferred eastward to Lodz before their final destination, which was often to be a

small village called Chelmno to the northwest.

As we travelled towards Warsaw, I remembered what had happened in Kielce. I went

forward to tell the tour guide that I had recalled the events in Kielce and told her that

there had been a pogrom. She seemed uninterested and replied that these things were

very common in Polish history. I reminded her that the unusual aspect of this pogrom

was its date. It occurred in 1948. 42 Jews were murdered and many others wounded. It

led directly to the emigration from Poland of some of the remaining Jews.

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CONCLUSION

The end of the era of Jewish presence in Poland was yet to come. Despite the Polish

Jews’ experiences in the killing fields of Poland many stayed on and attempted restart

their lives.

In 1968, after the Six Day War another wave of government inspired anti-Semitism

swept Poland. Jews in official positions lost their jobs. This latest resurgence of the

European disease was more than most of the remaining Jews could tolerate. 35,000

Jews left Poland and now the Jews of Poland are nearly gone all that remain are pockets

of elderly Jews and their sad recollections. The Jews are now a harmless piece of

human archaeology that can be studied as an academic curiosity or as subject for books

and articles in the National Geographic magazine.

The Poles are a proud and defiant nation, they have held fast to their traditions,

individuality, Catholicism and language. The Church is a highly political organisation

which has acted as repository for nationalism, spiritual and moral resistance. It also

harbours and has propagated deeply seated anti-Semitic sentiments.

It is a country upon whose soil has been suffering on scale rarely seen before or since in

the brief history of humanity.

Poles, Jews, Soviet soldiers and in the end German soldiers died.11 million died and

one hopes this will not be repeated.

Poland is a country smitten with diseases. Our tour guide said that when Russia

assumed control of Poland it caught a disease. The Jews must have caught another.

Recapitulation 19