Jewish Poland 1st day - Tel Aviv to Warsaw & background - Monday 28 Nov 2016

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These are our personal views, our thoughts and our feelings of our trip to Poland. Don and I have no direct relationship with the Holocaust. Our families fled Russia and other Eastern European countries at the end of the 19th Century to escape the pogroms. Therefore, we went with general knowledge of the Holocaust (also called the Shoah) but no specific personal emotion. This narrative contains historical notes as an aide memoire in our dotage and for readers to remember the conditions and treatment of Jews before and during WW-II.

After spending the evening in the Ganey Canaan at a wedding (which we thoroughly enjoyed) we set off to Israel's TLV airport in our finery. We changed into our travel gear and went to check in. However, check-in wasn’t until 2:30 am and it was only 1.30 am. So we sat around waiting. Eventually we were checked in and allowed to go to the lounge before boarding. After a very uneventful flight (thank G-d) we arrived in Warsaw. As we flew in we passed over fields edged in ice and snow - a taste of what was to follow.

There were seven of us on this El Al flight enroute to join 23 others who flew the slightly earlier LOT flight and were waiting for us at Chopin Airport. Our group were on a tour of Jewish Poland - four camps, many synagogues and cemeteries, museums and some living communities. We were travelling with 28 from our synagogue Kinor David and friends, led by Rav Zvi Koren and our tour guide Sara Pellach. Sara is the daughter of a survivor of Auschwitz and more will be revealed as we go along. Then it was off on the bus for a tour of Warsaw.

The city is built on the Vistula river which was very important for transport of goods and people. As we drove around Warsaw on a very grey day we saw typical communist style buildings, grey and square blocks. In order to brighten up the buildings after the fall of communism many blocks were painted yellow and orange. 98% of the city of Warsaw was destroyed during WW-II. After WW-II the country went immediately from German occupation to communist control within the Soviet bloc. Interspersed with these grey buildings are now modern glass blocks.

Some history: Over the centuries Poland was a huge country whose borders went from France to Constantinople. It was a shelter for Jews from the pogroms starting with the expulsion from the UK in 1215, then for the Jews expelled from Spain (1492) and Portugal (1496) in the Inquisition, and others. Poland was established in 952 and the capital was Krakow. However, due to attacks from the Swedes and Tatars, King Sigismund III moved the capital to Warsaw in 1586. Warsaw became part of the Prussian Empire in 1806 during the third partition of Poland. In 1918 Warsaw became the capital of the newly independent Republic of Poland. In 1939 Germany invaded Poland and so started the round-up of the Jews to the Warsaw ghetto and the concentration camps. Before WW-II the population of the city was 1 million out of which there were 380,000 Jews. The Golden Age for Jews was 1586 to 1760. Jews lived according to the Torah. The end of the Golden Age corresponded to the Enlightenment. Even though there were so many Jews they were not allowed to own land until the 20th Century. This is because it was expected that the Jews would be temporary and owning land gave legitimacy to the Jews. The Jews were forced to speak the local language as well as Yiddish and all children had to have a basic education - language, maths, Polish history etc.

There was a centre of learning in Lublin with a large Yeshiva. Many famous rabbis came from Poland for example Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik of Netziv, also known as Reb Chaim Brisker whose ohel we saw in the Jewish cemetery.

First stop the Jewish cemetery. This is quite an interesting place. It was razed by the Germans and contained some 200,000 graves but only 2000 have been found. Some survived and some have been rebuilt by families. One of those which has been reconstructed by the family is that of Adam Czerniaków. He was a community leader during the German occupation. He was taken to the Warsaw Ghetto and asked for the names of all Jews in the town. Rather than give away the Jews he swallowed cyanide in 1942.

Many of the stones have symbols which show something about the person buried. For example candlesticks depict a woman, hands depict a Cohen (priest), a snake (as in the medical sign caduceus) shows that the person was a doctor. Some of the gravestones had poems made up of acrostics in the same way as Ashet Chayil. We also saw the mass grave of 7,000 people. Whilst standing by the ohel of Rabbi Soloveitchik we sang “Ani Ma’amim” (I believe) to the tune composed by Azriel David Fastag in a cattle car on his way to Treblinka. A very moving moment.

On the way out of the cemetery we set another tone of the whole trip - many loo stops. At the toilets which had no toilet paper and no hot water but hot radiators, we met a group of Israeli kids who were on their Grade 12 trip to Poland.

Looking across the road from the cemetery we saw the Warsaw Ghetto wall. The word ghetto is believed to come from the Italian for “foundry” because the first ghetto in Venice in 1516 was established on the site of a foundry. Or it comes from the word borghetto (Italian) - a diminutive of the word borghetto, a borough or area. The ghetto was 20% of the city area, but was meant to house the Jewish third of the population of Warsaw i.e. 1/3 million people. Many of the cemetery gravestones were dated 1943 - the date of the uprising of the ghetto which was put down violently and the Jews were killed,

Back on the bus and on to the Umshlagplatz - the square where 3000 Jews were rounded up and held until they were shipped off to Treblinka. Before the war this was the market square. The market was active on Mondays and Thursdays which coincided with the days that the torah was read in the synagogue. Today there are no Jews living in the area. Then back on the bus to the street leading to the Polin museum.

The Polin museum depicts the history of Poland and the connection with Jews from its inception to the Shoah. The street leading to the museum is lined with marble monuments to writers, rabbis, women etc who were massacred in the Warsaw uprising. We saw the site of Mila 18 (Leon Uris wrote a book about the Jewish uprising called "Mila 18") and stopped to look at the stone dedicated to Rabbi Nissenbaum. Rabbi Isaac Nissenbaum (1868 - 1942) was an active Zionist who attended the first Zionist Congress and later served as secretary on the formation of Mizrachi. He moved to Bialystok in 1901. After the resolution to build a homeland for Jews in Uganda failed he moved back to Poland, to Warsaw. For 30 years he preached at the “Moriah” synagogue and once a month on Shabbat gave his drashot (semons) in Hebrew. He refused to leave Poland at the time of German occupation and was murdered in the Warsaw ghetto in 1942. Another stone was dedicated to writers and one of the names was Janusz Korczak. He organised children into orphanages, produced a children’s newspaper, trained teachers in children’s moral education, worked in juvenile courts assisting children, and wrote children’s books. He too had the opportunity to leave Poland but decided to go into the ghetto. He left behind a diary. He founded an orphanage in the ghetto. When the Germans wanted the orphanage evacuated he marched with dignity with 200 children through the streets of the ghetto to the train taking the children east for “resettlement” - a euphemism for death camp.

Our guide at the museum was Alexandra who is not Jewish. Her knowledge and enthusiasm for her work was contagious. She described in detail the relationship with Jews and Poland for 1000 years. The museum is delightful. The exhibit begins with a forest mural and a quote from S.Y.Agnon because 'polania' sounds like 'here rests God' in Hebrew. A few hours was not enough to see the history in depth. Alexandra pointed out various important issues over the centuries but one can spend many, many hours strolling through the sections reading all of the detailed descriptions and watching all of the videos. This is not a history of the religion in Poland but of the lives of the citizens. Key milestones include the 1264 Statute of Kalisz proclaimed by Duke Boleslaw the Pious, and the support of 15th century King Casimir IV, both of whom were extremely favourable toward Jews.

We ate dinner at the Chabad house In Warsaw. We sat at a very long table and enjoyed a hearty meal. We were able to meet and begin to know our fellow travellers.

Then back on the bus for the long drive to Bialystok. There was a film on the bus but many of us slept until there was a huge bang - flat tyre, followed by a second bang. We assumed that it was a second tyre but in fact it was something to do with the gas feed. As the wheels are paired there was no major panic. The road from Warsaw to Bialystok was like a UK “A” road with loads of road works. So it was not a fast drive!

We were glad to reach the Hotel Dwor Bialystok and climb into our beds for the first night.

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Photos

1000 years of Jews in Poland
S.Y.Agnon: "And this means that we shall rest here until we are all gathered into the Land of Israel" at Polin museum: 'polin' = 'here rest'

our tour leaders set a somber moment at the Warsaw Jewish Cemetery
R to L: Rav Tzvi Koren, guide Sara Pellach, organiser Ira Green