Day 2. Warsaw to Krakow

Day 2:  Warsaw to Krakow

Following dinner last night we returned to the hotel where we found the lobby buzzing with ... Israelis!  A large group of Israeli youth as swell as a large group of Israeli soldiers (in uniform). Many Israeli students and many Israeli soldiers visit this country in order to better understand the imperative of a Jewish homeland.  (it doesn't take being here long to gain that understanding!) 

Our morning began with. A visit to the Nozyk synagogue, the only remaining synagogue from pre war Warsaw. Built in 1902 the Synagogue survived for two reasons: it was part of the 'small' ghetto from which the Jews were deported and then this part of the ghetto was closed off and secondly because it was used by the Germans as a stable.  One of the only 'survivors' of the war it was like all survivors the beneficiary of circumstance and a great deal of Lucks.  Today the Nozyk synagogue is an active Orthodox  shul for the small Warsaw Jewish community.


We then visited the "new" Jewish cemetery dating to the early 1800s after Jews gained the right to officially live inside the Warsaw city limits and to have their own cemetery there.  Approximately 200,000 are buried there, 100,000 from before the war and another 100,000 from the ghetto ... Most of whom are buried in a large mass grave.  We also visited the graves of some prominent Jewish and Polish individuals such as the great Hebrew and Yiddish author Y.L Peretz.

We then went to pick up lunch at a beautiful and very modern mall across the street from the cemetery.  I couldn't help but think about the fact that this brand new mall was located in what was 70 years ago the ghetto.  Such a strange juxtaposition ... As there is all over this city and country.  It is impossible for me not to feel it ... To look at the elderly and wonder who they were during the war, too look at apartment buildings that stood inside the ghetto walls, now inhabited by Warsaw citizens and wonder if they know of the tremendous suffering that took place in their building, in their apartment ... Even in their bedroom?

We ate lunch on the bus while traveling to the town of Gur.  In the mid-19th century this little town became the capital of one of the most prominent Hasidic movements, the Ger Hasidim.  Founded by the great Hasidic master Yitzhak Meir Alterand followed by his equally prominent grandson Yehudah Leib Alter (the Sefat Emet) this is the largest Hasidic group in Israel today. Only two Jews remain in the town ... One of which we met, hearing his amazing story of resistance and survival in the Warsaw ghetto.  Today the 'synagogue' has been 'restored' (really just a large empty room).  But it remains a place of pilgrimage for the followers of the Ger rebbes.

After visiting their graves in what remains of a cemetery decimated by the Germans in their search for stones with which to build roads and buildings, we headed off for one more Jewish shtetl, the town of Kuzmir.

Kuzmir is a beautiful little village on the Vistula River a few hours south of Warsaw.  Today it is a popular Polish summer vacation spot.  In the early 1800s Rebbe Yehezkel ben Tzvi Hirsch Taub founded the Kuzmir-Modzitz Chasidic dynasty.  They we're especially known for their musical talents ... And are widely recognized for the beautiful niggunim they composed.  Chasidic legend has it that it was members of this group, deported by the Nazis and sent to Treblinka that composed the melody to Maimonides article of faith "ani ma'amin" .


On the long drive from Kuzmir to Krakow we experienced the first of what would be many personal connections when we stopped in the town of Kielce for dinner. This, as it turns out, was the ancestral home of Irv's mother's family.

As we left Kuzmir to begin the 5hour drive to Krakow, we all had a similar sentiment:  this would be a beautiful country if it weren't Poland.  While much better over the last 20 years, especially with the growing of Democracy, this is still a country steeped in anti-semitism ... Where soccer fans disparage the opposing team by calling them "Jews", where the Nuremberg laws remind in force until 1961,  where we could find in a Kuzmirs gift shop  little "rabbi statuettes" each prominently holding a bag of coins.  Oy.  I guess it's not easy to overcome  8 centuries of anti-semitism.

And tomorrow, Auschwitz.