Day 9: Kolin

Day 9:  Kolin

Finally, we arrive at our destination.  Kolin is a small town with a population of about 30,000, approximately 60 km east of Prague.  It was at one time a center of commerce in east Bohemia.  The earliest gravestones in Kolin predate those in Prague by a few years and certainly Jews lived in this area continually for six or seven hundred years before being uprooted during the Shoah.

After an hour drive and a short walk we entered what was the Jewish ghetto. While much has been renovated, there were signs of what the ghetto must have looked like, dingy, dirty and grey.  We walked along the main road through the ghetto to the main square - which has clearly gone through some fixing up of its own in in recent years.







After orienting ourselves we entered a building which led, through the back, to the synagogue.  Here we were!  This is the place where our Torah resided for, perhaps, 250 years!  What an amazing feeling to be standing in that place.  Our host, a young non-Jewish man, who is in charge of tourism in the city ... and therefore, over the synagogue as well, told us all about the synagogue in Czech while our guide translated.  He is clearly very proud of the synagogue and even locked his office for 'lunch' so he could spend as much time with us as we wanted.  Our tour guide Kamila was very impressed with the restoration work that has been done since her last visit here 7 years ago.

We then joined together in a memorial / dedication service.  At the encouragement of all, I stood where centuries of rabbis had stood, where very few rabbis have stood since 1942. After a few readings I asked everyone to join me on the bima in front of the open ark as we placed there a beautiful book containing pictures and descriptions from our Torah renewal project this year.  (Thank you Rabbi Shawna and Isaac!)

What an incredibly powerful moment, to be standing in front of a now empty ark, where our precious little Torah lived for so many years ... and to place there a remembrance of our being there and of our community's sacred work over this past year to make that Torah once again a living, vital part of a Jewish community.  

Following tears, pictures and a shehechayanu, we moved upstairs to the ladies gallery to view an excellent exhibit about the history of Jewish Kolin and environs.

While we were there, the sun broke through for the first time during our stay.  It was as if the community we were coming to honor and remember wanted to make sure we were appropriately welcomed.

All in all we spent a great deal of time in the sanctuary and it was only with some reluctance that we left this place we had been looking forward to seeing for so long.  The good news is that the Synagogue has been restored, it is a center for concerts and communal events ... and next year, in early June will host a memorial to the 70th anniversary of the deportations.  So, there is still a chance that you might also visit!

We walked back to the square where we were guided by the young man from the tourist office to 3 locations on the town square where brass plaques in the sidewalk mark the location where Jewish families lived prior to their deportation.  One thing is quite clear from the location of these three families, directly on the town square.  Jews were a very prominent and important part of the community prior to World War II.  This important project is one in which I hope we will participate, helping to memorialize the Jewish history of this town and remind all who come of those who were brutally taken and lost from the community.

Following a picture on the town square most of us made our way to a newly opened Pizzeria in a corner of the town square ... to relax for a bit, take advantage of free wifi, and enjoy some very good pizza.

Then it was off to the new Jewish cemetery.  Here members of the Jewish community began to bury their dead following their exit from the ghetto.  In other words, in this part of the world, anything existing only since the American Revolution is 'new'.  We visited a memorial build and dedicated in the early sixties to the lost members of the community.  Here we each found the names of those we had been carrying with us over the course of our journey.  We joined together once again in a brief memorial, each reciting the names of those we had carried before joining together in kaddish.

The 'new' cemetery has quite a bit of open space remaining ... but no Jews left to be buried in this sacred space.  I couldn't help but think that these names, all listed together on one memorial, should rightfully, each eventually, had their own plot in this land that will remain unused.

After some quiet viewing of the cemetery, we boarded the bus and bid farewell to Kolin.  After so much planning and so much anticipation, it is hard to believe that this moment we had all looked forward to for so long had now passed.  Of course there is still more to come ... but this was the impetus and now our task has been completed.  We went, we prayed, we remembered.  We will carry the memory and the names with us forever.

zichronam livrachah ... may the memories of these precious souls remain a source of inspiration and blessing for all time.



Tomorrow:  Terezin and a visit with Irene -- a survivor from Kolin.