Sunday, September 2, 2012 Warsaw

The day began by taking the train from Krakow back to Warsaw. It was very comfortable, shorter, and much more enjoyable than bus ride down. From the train station we walked to a Kosher restaurant for lunch (no rest for the weary) followed by a few hours walking in the main Warsaw Jewish Cemetery. This cemetery was outside the Ghetto walls and although it suffered some bombing, it was not destroyed. Some graves are in disrepair, others have been restored, but you can "read" Polish Jewish history through the gravestones. I have become particularly fascinated with Polish Jewish decoration - both in the restored synagogues and on the headstones. I hope to do something with all of these patterns when I return to Rochester - maybe an interpretation of them in a quilt.









I was so engaged in photographing the headstones and listening to the stories of Polish Hassids, Jewish Bund members, Ghetto freedom fighters, and 20th century scholars, that my fatigue faded away. Basha and Haim were a fountain of knowledge of Polish Jewish history. My weary body awoke and complained loudly as we left the cemetery to walk to a Jewish Day School to meet with the principal. Hearing about the K-9 Jewish Day School was interesting, but I kept nodding off. I did hear that 40% of the students are not Jewish and there is a long waiting list to get in. The principal, a Rabbi, was born in Warsaw, educated through college in Poland, then went to Israel to study, followed by Yeshiva University where he received his s'micha (ordination). A young man, married with children, he could not predict if he would remain in Warsaw as his children grew up. He had not personally experienced overt anti-semitism, despite wearing a yarmulka all the time, but he did not deny that it was present. The larger problem for him was the small size of the current Jewish population, approximately 8000 in all of Poland.

A quick trip back to the hotel for a shower (hurry, hurry, hurry) and then off to a different Kosher restaurant for dinner where we had the pleasure of hearing Konstanty Gebert, a noted Polish Jewish journalist who is the child of Polish Jews who survived the War and returned to Warsaw afterward. Of course before going to dinner we had to walk to two more memorials (oy, my aching legs). The first at Mila 18 (one of the entrances to the Warsaw Ghetto through the sewers) and then on to the monument built in 1948 by the Polish government to commemorate the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Although I was exhausted, I'm glad Haim cajoled us into doing this before dinner.

At dinner, Mr. Gebert had a different perspective from Jonathan Ornstein in Krakow. Jonathan had been so upbeat, youthful, energetic, and charismatic that it was hard not to believe that Judaism was having a resurgence in Poland. Hearing Mr. Gebert brought us back to the reality of Poland as a complex country, with strong anti-Semitic roots. He was articulate, brilliant in his analysis, and very much grounded in reality. Where Jonathan Ornstein had been born in New York City and came to Krakow with a Polish woman he met in Israel, Mr. Gilbert was born and raised in Warsaw. His Polish roots were generations deep and his eyes were constantly vigilant. I look forward to reading his work "Living in the Land of Ashes" when I return to Rochester.

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