In the Footsteps of our History Part 1

We begin the next phase of our trip, entitled “In the Footsteps of our History”, in the city of Warsaw. Let’s first address the question, why Poland? Why should we explore the Holocaust via Poland’s second world war ruins, rather than through, for example, Germany, when Nazi Germany were ultimately responsible for the horrors of the Holocaust? The truth is that the majority of the imprisonment, killing and the full-blown machinery of the liquidation of the European Jewish population was meticulously planned by the Nazi’s to take place in Poland. 

The Jewish community in Poland had existed since the 11th century. Pre-war Poland was home to 3.3 million Jews, living in the large cities as well as in many towns and villages. Many villages had populations that were 50% Jewish. In Warsaw, the capital of Poland, there were over 350,000 Jews in a city of 1.3 million people. Jews represented all walks of life, from the ultra-observant and those that built large Academies of Torah Study, known as Yeshivot, to highly secular, academic, and business-minded individuals, and everything in between. At the end of the Second World War, only approximately 11% of Polish Jewry survived (1% of Polish Jews who were in Poland during the war); close to 50% of the 6 million who were murdered were of Polish Jewish origin. 

The second facet is the sheer number of Jews who were transported from the surrounding European countries, as well as places as far as North Africa and Greece, to concentration camps in Poland. The number of concentration camps in Poland far outnumbered those of any other country including Germany. This horrendous outsourcing of the labor and killing factories was clearly intentional, to shift blame and focus to others. Thus, for one who delves into the history and wishes to visit the places where so many lives were lost, Poland is the focus. 

This visit will not only be about the lives that were brutally taken during the war, but as the name of the trip implies, it will also be about the lives that were lived for the hundreds of years that Poland had Jewish communities. Many of the participants on our trip are children of Holocaust survivors, including several with roots in Poland. This theme will come up as we record the details about the places we will visit. Examining the richness of life of a community that spanned 900 years is not only important to remember but provides many crucial lessons. Today, people talk about living in the moment; many think that their perspective, based on the events of the day, the philosophies, cultures, or fads of the moment, is the only perspective that is required. This is problematic thinking. We all need the perspective of history to understand where we come from and where we are going. Let’s take an example: Nazi thinking about Aryan’s being a superior race was rooted in Eugenics. This was not some purely evil underground take on life; eugenics was a supposedly well-studied, highly academic pursuit that was the basis of political decisions, not only in Europe, but in North America as well. The Nazi philosophy was clearly the most perverse application of eugenics, but even in the US, there were successful political movements based on the pursuit of a superior race. These lessons of history must not be buried. 

Furthermore, to not understand our own roots means that one does not acknowledge where one has come from and what has influenced one’s practices, thoughts, even cuisine. We all need to know where we came from, to celebrate the richness of our collective histories. This is indeed a key part of the journey that we will be participating in, even if it’s for a brief 7-day period. 

Sunday June 30th

Barbara and I left Israel and flew to Warsaw to begin the Poland trip. The flight was smooth, and despite a bit of an annoying 90-minute wait for luggage (with no explanation and for almost all the passengers of our plane) we got out of the airport and moved on to The Intercontinental Hotel in downtown Warsaw. The first observations we had were how clean and modern Warsaw looked. I had been to Poland on a community trip with high school students in 1996, which was only a few years after the fall of the USSR. At that time, Poland still looked very “Soviet”. Large grey cinder block buildings, unkept streets and very poor roads. More about that in a bit. However, since Poland joined the EU in 2004, there have been major improvements. The Intercontinental is a very modern hotel and the Warsaw skyline is dotted with tall modern buildings, and has shopping centers with all the stores you would find in any big city. Plus, the streets and roads are smooth and well paved, as opposed to some places we know….

The group that we are joining consists mostly of people that we know from Cote St Luc, and a few others who are somehow connected, such as relatives of participants living elsewhere. There was a group of 12 who arrived early and we had dinner arranged at one of Warsaw’s Kosher restaurants, Kosher Delight. The meal was great and besides catching up with people, there were two other highlights. A Rabbi who was stationed in a border city in the Ukraine, R’ Yechiel Levitansky, gave us some insight into what it was like to be under the siege of the Russian invasion, including a harrowing escape with his family via a 20-hour car ride into Poland. We were also joined by a large group of Israeli high school girls. The restaurant was relatively empty when we arrived, but then the noise and excitement level certainly rose when 4 high school classes joined in!

Monday July 31st

Monday was travel day for many in the group, so we had the luxury of a relatively late start for the tour. We took a walk around the area; in fact, the hotel is right next to where the Warsaw ghetto was. A few blocks from the hotel we saw a new exhibit which marks the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, entitled Ghetto Burning. It’s based on a graphic novel about the uprising and it’s graphic in many ways, hammering home the lessons of history about Jewish resistance and ultimately about loss of life. That it’s in the heart of the downtown area is quite impressive. 

We left the hotel to pick up the new arrivals at the airport, and then set off for what turned into a 12-hour day of stops, visits to sites, and testimonials. The trip is being led by Tzvi Sperber, who founded J-Roots 17 years ago. J-Roots runs historical education tours to many Jewish communities, past and present. Tzvi is a master educator, drawing his audience in with a combination of history and emotion, emphasizing that while 6,000,000 is an insurmountable number to comprehend, it is made of individuals who deserve to be remembered. 

We drove from Warsaw to the village of Dabie, a few km from our ultimate destination, the Chelmno death camp. Dabie had been home to 1100 Jews who perished at Chelmno. We visited the site of a cemetery, that had been ploughed over and was now in a corn field. We later visited a synagogue, completed in 1885, that is now used as an apartment building. However, the top floor still has the painted walls that surrounded the ark which housed the Torah Scrolls, sadly in tremendous disrepair. 

Nearby is the Chelmno death camp. I will say upfront that it is impossible to include all of what Tzvi and Rabbi Reuben Poupko shared with us about each site. I could not possibly do it justice, and honestly, much of it is too painful to re-write. (I can share some material from them to whoever asks, and I would highly recommend joining one of these trips).  Suffice it to say, Chelmno was the first of the death camps, and possibly lasted the longest. Chelmno was a testing ground for different ways to carry out mass exterminations. Prior to gas chambers, they used large vans with the exhaust reversing into the storage compartment to kill the victims. All told, Chelmno was the burial place of 300,000 Jews and others who were deemed expendable. 

We moved on to the city of Lodz, some 45 minutes away. Lodz is a city not far from the German border, and upon the invasion of Poland in September 1939, was under German rule as an annexed area. Prior to this, Lodz was home to 240,000 Jews, many coming to the city in the late 1800’s due to the large garment industry there, predominantly built by Israel Poznansky, who developed many of the industries in Lodz. His massive red brick manufacturing complex is now home to a large shopping and entertainment complex, and his huge 3 story mansion, which covered a large city block, is a museum.  To this day, his tomb or mausoleum following his death in 1900 is considered the largest Jewish grave in the world. 

The Jewish population of Lodz was one of the first to be cordoned into a ghetto, in March 1941. The Lodz ghetto also lasted the longest, until 1944. Over 250,000 individuals had been imprisoned in the ghetto, with most either succumbing to disease and hunger, or perishing following transport to Chelmno, Auschwitz, or other camps. The stories of the Lodz Ghetto are harrowing and are backed up by the fact that there were two photographers who chronicled much of what happened there. There are a sizeable number of Montrealers who were survivors of the Lodz Ghetto, making the stories not only more meaningful but more harrowing.  

We completed the round trip back to Warsaw at 11:30 PM, and will be setting out for the Warsaw ghetto on Tuesday.