August 3, 2023
Following the amazing spirit and fun of the Siyyum, we bussed to Rzeszow and stayed at the Bristol Hotel for the night. The day started off with close to an hour of stories from Mr. Lewkowicz who told us about his childhood and some of his harrowing war experiences. I will hopefully create a second post based on my notes from his talk. Rzeszow is a medium sized city in Poland with a population of over 175,000. However, like many older cities, some areas have pretty narrow streets. Navigating a bus around these corners with cars parked on both sides is no mean feat, as we found out, with a minor mishap happening as our bus rounded a corner. The fender bender brought a bit of comic relief into a day that had some very intense moments.
Once we extricated the bus from the twists and turns of Rzeszow, we headed off to Lancut, a small town of under 20,000 people. Like most places, Lancut has grown considerably since the Second World War. There had been a Jewish presence in Lancut since the 16th century, and in the 1700s it was home to a significant number of rabbis who were important in the genesis and growth of the Hassidic movement in Judaism. These included Jacob Issac Horowitz, also known as the Seer (HaHozeh) of Lublin. The community synagogue was destroyed by a fire in the 1720s and was rebuilt starting in 1726 and was finished in 1761, with help from the Polish nobleman who’s family owned much of Lancut, Count Potoki. This synagogue is still standing; though desecrated by the Nazi’s, it was saved by Count Alfred Potoki, descendant of the original benefactor. Prewar Lancut had 1700 Jews which was 45% of the city, but the community was destroyed by the Nazis. The synagogue still stands today. Amazingly, the caretaker, a non-Jewish gentleman named Mirek, has dedicated himself to the synagogue, to the point of teaching himself Hebrew so he can provide a proper historical tour. The synagogue is not large but has a magnificent high ceiling and ornate painting on the walls, and there are likely buried treasures of books and manuscripts hidden away in the archives. We celebrated the past vibrant community by reading the Torah there, and commemorated some of the more famous individuals who came from there.
We continued in the countryside and arrived in Zolyina in the pouring rain. The dreariness matched the mood of the village. Today the town has a population of about 5000; however, Zolyina is a forgotten place that once had a small but vibrant Jewish community. We visited the Jewish Cemetery which was mostly destroyed, with its tombstones used to pave roads or reinforce walls. There are under a dozen graves that still have markers. There we heard one of the members of our trip, Chaya Lieberman, talk about her grandfather who escaped from there with her father and uncle, and was able to ultimately move to the US. His family stayed together during the war, hiding, and moving from place to place. Chaya recounted a wonderful line; “One stick is easy to break, but four is much stronger”; referring to the 4 children in the family who survived. The idea is clear; there is safety in numbers, and sticking together with family was a powerful key to survival. Of course, this is wonderful advice post war as well!
The rain continued, as did our visits to Jewish communities that were completely wiped out during the war. The township of Tarnow, which had always had a sizable Jewish population, had to absorb several thousand more when the Krakow ghetto was built. Of the 65,000 Jews in Krakow, only 15,000 were allowed into the ghetto (in an area that housed 3,000 before). The remainder fled to places like Tarnow and the village of Zbylitowska Gora. Over 7,000 Jews in Tarnow were rounded up in mid-June 1942 and shot. In Zbylitowska Gora, we marched slowly along the road to an area with 3 fenced in areas and a memorial. This was among the most difficult places we visited, as the fenced in areas were mass graves where over 700 children were summarily executed after they were rounded up, taken from their parents and ordered to lie down into pits that had been dug. It is impossible to fathom the emotion of the parents, the children, and any onlookers who witnessed this barbaric act. There were no dry eyes as we slowly left where these children were buried.
Keeping with the theme of in the Footsteps of our History, we once again participated in an amazing event that brought life to a long dormant Jewish Community. The city of Bobowa (pronounced Bobov) is the home to a large Hassidic group, which still has many members in North America and Israel. Two families on our trip (Phil and Edie Freedman and Dr Ruby and Adele Freedman) purchased a Torah Scroll that had been rescued from the Holocaust many years ago, refurbished it, and we celebrated the completion of this project by participating in the writing of the last letters into the Torah. This was performed in two stages, the first in the synagogue in the town of Bobowa (AKA Bobov), and the second was in the city of Oswiecim, the Polish word for Auschwitz. We paraded through the streets of Bobov, with Israeli Flags and the Torah and were greeting by interested onlookers who waved and took pictures. The synagogue in Bobov was beautiful and is slowly being refurbished and repainted as a memorial site. It has been decades since such an event was conducted there.
The day ended quite late, as we arrived in Krakow to prepare for the next day, the visit to Auschwitz
August 4th, 2023
To be honest, I don’t think any place sends shivers down the spine of anyone who knows anything about World War II as the Auschwitz concentration camp. Auschwitz I was a forced labor camp and the area known as Birkenau was also part of the Auschwitz complex. With the slogan over its gates “Arbeit Macht Frei” (Labor makes you free), this was the most well-known and deadly of the death camps. Over 1.1 million Jews perished there, either from the extreme conditions due to forced labor, or in the gas chambers. Many were sentenced to work for a few months and then killed. Auschwitz was specifically chosen as it was situated near multiple rail lines, leading it to be the unloading point for Jews from as far north as Norway, as far East as Greece and from areas of North Africa, such as Tunisia and Algeria. In addition to the Jews killed there, several hundred thousand Roma (also known as gypsies) were imprisoned or killed there, as were Poles, Russians, and other victims of the Nazi horror. However, the number of Jews killed dwarfs them all.
The Auschwitz Museum incudes horrendous displays of looting of items from jewelry and watches, to glasses, dishes, clothes and shoes of all sizes, even hair (from shaving of bodies done to humiliate the Jews). The visit to Birkenau included viewing the cramped barracks, the ruins of the gas chambers and crematoria and learning about the horrendous life of the prisoners as well as the acts of heroism and resistance. Even simple things such as trying to hold a makeshift Passover Seder or welcome the Sabbath were highly risky, yet people tried not to completely lose their humanity. We learned of Dr Gisella Perl, an obstetrician who tried her best to save Jewish women who may have been sent to Auschwitz while pregnant. Dr Perl survived the war, and despite the hardship and unspeakable sights she saw, she went on to having an award winning career in hospitals in New York and Israel. We learned of other acts of heroism among the female prisoners, who had worse conditions than the men, and yet defied the Nazis by lighting Shabbat candles in the barracks and trying to preserve what little shards of hope they had. It is incredible what people will do despite the hardest of hardships, and we can learn many important lessons from these small but heroic acts of defiance.
As mentioned above, the Freedman family celebrated the completion of the Torah Scroll in the city of Oswiecim. For those who have never witnessed this type of event, it is a major celebration. Consider this: the Nazi’s went into communities, took out the Torah Scrolls and burnt untold numbers of Torahs. For a new one to be competed in Auschwitz is the ultimate justice and emphasizes who ultimately prevailed in the Nazi quest to eliminate all traces of the Jewish people.
August 6-7, 2023
After this incredible week of heart wrenching sites and the highs of celebrating the restoration of a small amount of life to the destroyed communities of Poland, we were all very glad for Shabbat to finally arrive. No bus travel, a more relaxed schedule, great food and drink…what more could one want. The group came together for enthusiastic prayer services, including praying in two synagogues that date back several hundred years. We took a long walk through the old Jewish Quarter, and visited Lewkowa street, which is named for the family of Josef Lewkowicz, who regaled us with stories about how life was when he was a young man in pre-war Krakow, when 25% of the population was Jewish. At the Corner of Lewkowa street is the Remah Synagogue and cemetery, where Rabbi Moses Isserles, the renowned expert in Jewish Law, wrote the definitive commentary of European (Ashkenazi) Jewish Practice. What was very interesting about the Jewish Quarter is the fact that not only is it preserved, but the shops and restaurants in the area reflect the Jewish character of yesteryear. The restaurants serve gefilte fish and other traditional Eastern European foods (not all of them such delicacies, such as “Gesi Pipiq” or Goose pipik) as well as humus and falafel. The bars play klezmer music, and the shops sell “hamsas” and other artifacts. While much of this is meant for Jewish tourists, the outdoor terraces of restaurants such as Ariel and Klezmer-Hoiz appeared to be filled with people of all nationalities. The street names include Abrahama, Jacoba, Jeruselema, and others, all reflecting the former large Jewish presence. There are at least 4-5 very old synagogues as well as a new Chabad centre and three Kosher restaurants in addition to the many “Kosher-style” ones.
We also visited Krakow’s city square, a beautiful classic eastern European square and the largest city square in Europe. It was a mixture of old-world architecture and modern stores. The main church and clock tower is known for ringing in every hour with a combination of chimes and a live bugler who plays and then waves to the crowd. Krakow, the seat of the Nazi General administration of Poland, was not bombed, as opposed to Warsaw which was 80% destroyed.
As we neared the end of the trip and the end of Shabbat we engaged in a session where we talked about what this trip meant to people in the group. I will reflect more on that in the next installment. Shabbat ended with the Havdalah prayer which I led with beautiful harmonies by the Hassidic choir that had joined us in Lejansk. They were 5 very talented singers (and their keyboardist) who really added to the spirit of the events and the prayers on Shabbat. They sang and harmonized with us, chatted and laughed with us, and really captured the mood with their music.
Sunday was the official end of the weeklong mission to Poland. To be honest, the denouement could have been a let-down, but in the spirit of this amazing trip, it was anything but. For those who have seen Shindler’s List, the award-winning Steven Spielberg movie, the primary settings of the movie were Oskar Shindler’s Factory and the Plashow forced labor and concentration camp. Mr. Lewkowicz, who grew up in Plashow, was one of 750 Jewish men from the town who were conscripted to build the camp at the age of 13. The site of the Plashow camp was the Jewish cemetery; the entire area was bulldozed, and the conscripted members of the Krakow Jewish community had to remove the headstones and the remains. Just picture what it would be like for someone to be ordered to disinter remains of friends and relatives to build a labor camp. I will append a full accounting of stories from Mr. Lewkowicz; they are frightening and harrowing but also show what resilience, faith, chutzpah, and a bit of good luck can lead to.
Plashow includes a memorial to a woman named Sarah Schenirer, who in 1917, established the first school for girls that taught traditional Jewish texts and subjects that had previously only been taught to boys. The Beis Yakov (House of Jacob) school system continues to exist today and is found in most major Jewish Communities world-wide. Ms. Schenirer passed away at age 52, before the War, but the profound positive influence she had on women’s education continues to this day.
We completed our tour in the rain at the Rema Synagogue cemetery. Interesting choice for a finale, no? Like everything else on this trip, there was a clear purpose set out by the tremendous educators who led the mission, Tzvi Sperber and Rabbi Poupko. Just as Krakow was a major centre for Jewish life in Europe, the cemetery is the resting place of many great individuals, including a list of rabbis who were important contributors to the classical Jewish literature, with their commentaries on Talmud and Jewish law. Our visit represents a continuum, starting from biblical times, to the codification of Jewish law from the 3rd-6th centuries, to the writings of great European and North African rabbis over the millennia, to our using these same texts today. This great confluence of history and preservation of traditions may be one of the most important secrets to the preservation of the Jewish people despite the horrific attempts to uproot us in Second World War.
More to come soon
Barbara and Bruce
Links to the previous posts
https://mazers-in-jerusalem.blogspot.com/2023/08/in-footsteps-of-our-history-part-1.html
https://mazers-in-jerusalem.blogspot.com/2023/08/in-footsteps-of-our-history-part-2.html
Wednesday night after a day of work and touch ups in the apartment, like hanging pictures and installing bathroom heaters (if you need a handyman, we were given the name of an absolute gem!) we went grocery shopping and decided to stop for dinner on the way. In true Israeli fashion we stopped at a restaurant at a gas station on the highway. Israel is famous for having the best food at these highway stops. Let me introduce you to BP, a Bistro and Diner that was packed (we waited 15 minutes for a table) and had some of the most interesting grill and delicious diner food you’ve ever seen. 
