Where Was God in the Shoah and Other Big Questions

---

Thank goodness for the wonderful breakfast buffet the hotel provides. It's a chance to sit together with fellow travelers and talk before the long journeys ahead in the day. Getting to know each other' stories and impressions and create new connections.

All the more important because this journey through a vanished world-the traces of which we are deciphering- carries with it for me a tremendous sense of the need to affirm life and blessing in the face of such total devastation and absolute brutality that the disappearance of Polish Jewish life represents for me.

A stark example was yesterday's trip. We drove far to the east in the direction of Ukraine. Our first visit to the village of Markowa was to visit the newly opened museum dedicated to rhe Poles who saved Jews during the war. In this little village off the beaten path even for rural Poland there were many Jews in the surrounding tiny towns who coexisted with the Poles, who were mostly farmers. One of the farmers, Josef Ulman and his wife Victoria and their six children under the age of nine hid eight Jews in the farm - adults and a child- for two years until they were reported on by another local and two henchman of the Nazis came and shot all the Jews and all the Ulmans on the spot. Victoria was pregnant and went into labor during the execution. Thus on this spot in memory of the courage of the Ulman family the idea took shape to create a museum to explore the ways and motivations and stories of the the righteous Gentiles. That the museum is so off the beaten path does make me wonder how the word will get out about it as a chance for Poles to learn about these kinds of heroes in their country.

But this museum and then our trip to the city of Tarnow and to the pits in the forest outside of the city left me with feeling of disbelief despite all the years I've read and thought about the complex story of Jews in prewar Poland and the effects of genocide. Before the war Tarnow, a provincial city on the way between Kraków and Lwow boasted a Jewish community 20,000 strong out of 56,000 inhabitants- 45% of the population. A varied mix of Hasidim, acculturated professionals, Zionists, socialists- Jewish pluralism in its complexity- contributed to the vibrancy of the place. The building that housed the mikvah in the Hasidic neighborhood- the building still exists because the city was not destroyed by the Nazis or the Soviets - is as big as a small opera house! Its majestic design even today in a dilapidated state speaks to the sense of rootedness and dignity even of the city's religious Jews.

A historian who gave us a brief lecture earlier in the week said that in prewar Poland the new state and its right wing nationalist party that ruled in the mid thirties until the war wanted to get rid of what was described as Poland's main problem- way too many Jews in their newly emerging state- but their preferred policy was mass emigration not mass extermination. And in fact between 1918 and 1939 around 400,000 Jews left Poland, even after the tightening of immigration by so many states. But most Jews stayed out in their homes, their cities, their villages, mostly very poor and many very politicized to fight for their rights in this land of their ancestors, whether as socialists, communists, Zionists, democrats...even traditional Jews in their gaberdine garb got political. This land was also their land even if the propaganda screeched that they were a foreign element after 800 years living all over every inch of territory and helping the land known as Poland thrive.

In Tarnow the Nazis were especially brutal. I'm not sure why- I missed the explanation. From the dignified market square in Tarnow, right off of which is the street named back then and today, Jewish Street- where stores and a grand synagogue could be found- the round up began in1942 that transported somewhere between eight to ten thousand Jews (and over the six years of occupation three thousand Poles) to the outskirts of the city to the forest where they were shot into pits with either a single bullet to the head, grenades exploded into the pits, or babies bodies throw against the forest trees to save bullets.

We walked from the road as the sun set to the location of what is still considered the largest site of these kind of extermination sites that dot the countryside. Dogs from the houses along the road barked and it got chillier as we approached the forest. At the site there is a monument and marked spots that are what researchers believe are the location of the pits. The hardest one to gaze upon was the one that may have been a pit designated for the 800 orphans taken from the orphanage who are believed to have been separated from the rest. A group of us said Kaddish for all these unknown children. Of the thousands murdered here researches have been able to identify the names of only 180 individuals. The rest we have no idea who they were.

This site really put me into confrontation with the human capacity for evil in a way I have not felt before. I still don't know what to do with the feelings of desolation. Certainly to be grateful for my life. For the young people on this voyage who are not Jews and yet want to understand and learn. For the Israelis, most older and themselves the children and grandchildren of survivors and who are educators seeking understanding. For the long and deep conversations on the bus and in the cafes at night in many languages where our common humanity coexists with the specifitybof our different stories and histories.

---

Photos

International educators
Educators from Lithuania, Latvia and Israel. And New York!

Breakfast
The varying generational cohorts on the trip adds to the richness of our encounter.

Polish Countryside
This is the kind of landscape where most of the shtetls were located in southeastern Poland.

Familiar and Strange At The Same Time
Everyone of these sites has important Jewish memories associated with them.

Ulica Zydowski
Jewish Street in Tarnow right off the market square.

Back of the Mikvah
I didn't catch the front in a photo. See how big it is!!

Comments

[Sarah Siegel]

Hard, but essential reading
It was hard to read, especially the detail about the babies and the tree trunks, but I figure if you can be there in real life, the least I can do is read about it. Also, am glad to hear about the great people who are there with you. Please keep your posts coming.

[Sarah Siegel]

Im eshkachaych ...
The next blog entry isn't yet inviting comments, but I'm compelled to comment after reading it, so I'll comment here: How touching to see the mural of Jerusalem with the statement underneath in Hebrew, "Im eshkachaych Yerushalayim ...."/"If I forget Jerusalem ...." Your version is, "Im eshkachaych Polin/Polska ...."