Being in a place of such overwhelming sadness was the hardest part. For as challenging as it was to walk in the footsteps of those who had been slaughtered—to see what had become of once proud Polish Jewish communities and imagine what it was for innocents to be forced to step out of a cattle car and be marched straight into a gas chamber—the most difficult thing was to be hopeful in the face of such heartache.
Traveling under the auspices of Dr. Tsipy Gur’s Classrooms Without Borders, ours was an intergenerational, interfaith group of forty educators and students, who only one week ago returned from Poland, sight of the worst example of human depravity in historical memory. Seventy years ago this September, the German Army marched across this ancient, beautiful land, systematically tearing asunder the fabric of a nation, killing some 6,000,000 Poles, 3,000,000 of whom were Jews.
Our journey began in the capitol city of Warsaw, which for 700 years was home to a once proud, indigenous Jewish community, and is sadly today but a shadow of its former self. From there we journeyed on to Lublin, once a locus Jewish scholarship, but which is now all but empty of Jewish culture and thought. Next we visited the small village of Starchawice, once home to no less than 4,000 Jews (including a survivor who with his family accompanied our journey), yet today is devoid of even a single Jew. Our final days were spent in beautiful, cultured Krakow, where until 1939 fully a quarter of the city was Jewish; poignantly, today Krakow’s Jewish community numbers but some 300 souls.
In the course of our travels, we stood in the streets of the Warsaw and Krakow Ghettos. We walked in the footsteps of those who were marched through the killing factories of Treblinka, Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau. We traversed the rail lines, took shelter in the dank and musty barracks, entered the torture chambers, wept in the ersatz bath houses, and breathed air once filled with toxic gas.
We had come to this place of death to see historical sights up close, to hear with our own ears the stories of survivors, and to experience first hand modern-day Poland and her people. What did we best hope to find?
An answer may be found in the name for the place itself. Amazingly, in Hebrew the intact name for Poland is Polanya yet, broken into pieces, the name contains a pun. Po-lan-ya: Here lives God. In a word, this is what we hoped to find.
In a place of such brokenness, to a person we were looking for nothing less than a hint of reconciliation, a sign of renewal, a morsel of meaning through memory, and, ultimately, if but the faintest glimmer of redemption.
Amidst so much destruction and death, our prayer was for the hopeful re-assurance of divinity. But would it be?
There is a centuries-old Polish Jewish legend, long shared among the residents of Krakow, wherein an impoverished man named Isaak fulfills a dream. Blessed with a vision of treasure buried beneath a bridge in a faraway city, it is told that Isaak set out on an arduous overland journey to find his fortune. Upon arriving at his destination, the poor man begins to search, but his efforts are futile.
Thereupon, our journeyman is approached by a second man. When asked what he is doing, Isaak tells him. Laughing, the man tells Isaak of his own dream, but in this dream the true treasure is found in Krakow. Upon hearing this, Isaak returns home and finds it so.
So it is once more. Beneath the shadows that hang over this ancient land still today, there are yet signs of light and new life. Here a German-Polish couple, one of whose grandfathers was a high-ranking SS officer, the other’s having been consigned to death in the camps. Together the couple exorcises personal demons by sharing painful family stories and, in so doing, unites their families in a reconciling love. In Krakow’s ancient Jewish quarter is today found a Jewish Community Center committed to promoting Jewish culture within this once-vibrant city. And, too, once-decimated Krakow now boasts of a thriving, albeit small, liberal Jewish congregation under the leadership of an effervescent, young rabbi whose sole mission is bringing Jews back one-by-one to oft-forgotten traditions. In a fourth place, there is an annual culture festival celebrating Jewish life; and in still a fifth, a ceremony to honor newly-discovered righteous Gentiles who risked their own lives and those of their families to rescue Jewish neighbors in their country’s darkest hour.
There is still a great deal more to be unearthed and revealed, to be sure, but the prevailing discovery the participants of Classrooms Without Borders made is that if one is unwilling to give in to despair, and will expend the effort, there are indeed divine sparks to be found where once an all-but-consuming darkness reigned.
Where can God be found? Jewish sources ask. Wherever one lets God in, comes the timeless reply. Even in Warsaw, Lublin and Krakow. Even in the presence of the ghettos, gas chambers and crematoria. Even in the face of the memory of the terror that was Treblinka, Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau. Even here.
This was the healing, holy takeaway from an otherwise heart-rending journey.
Po-lan-ya. Even here, our best hope for the next generation lives.
This piece ran in the Sunday, July 3 issue of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Click here to view.
