Sunday, September 9, 2012 - Home in Rochester

I want to make a final post to this blog now that we are home in Rochester. We flew overnight Thursday from Tel Aviv to Newark and then on to Rochester early Friday morning. I've spent the last few days sleeping, doing laundry, catching up on mail, and sleeping some more.

The last day of our trip deserves a post, since it ended up such an emotional roller coaster. We began the day with a visit to Yad Vashem's Valley of the Communities to do an exercise on the communities our own families came from.  If you've never been here, it is a "reverse topographical map" forming a massive 2.5 acre monument dug out of the natural bedrock. The names of over 5,000 Jewish communities that were destroyed or barely survived in the Holocaust are engraved on its 107 walls.  Finding a community means keeping a map of Europe in your head and walking in the right direction from known points.

For instance, we knew Eric's father's family came from Przemysl on the south eastern border of Poland and so we were able to find it immediately by knowing the direction to walk relative to Warsaw and Krakow.

My father's family home of Vilna did not take us too long to find, as it was a major city and had a wall to itself.

We walked and walked, but we could not find my mother's family home of Ostropol.  We found Odessa, we found Kiev, but I could not orient myself correctly to find Ostropol.  I became increasingly desperate to find it as the minutes ticked by and we knew we had to reconnect with the entire group to perform an exercise Haim had planned.  As I frantically searched, could not find it, and was forced to rejoin the larger group, I could not stop crying.  In fact writing this now, I can feel the tears starting again.  I sobbed uncontrollably as I tried to explain to Eric that I felt like I lost my ancestors yet again. He left the exercise and went back to try and find it for me, but it was no use.  Ostropol seemed to have vanished.  It has taken me 60+ years to trace back where my mother's family came from.  Only in recent years, with newer software and better data bases had I been able to translate what I heard my mother say (Estreploly) into an actual town filled with Jews in the late 1800's and early 1900's. And now I couldn't find this tiny town of Ostropol on any of the walls.  I was angry, bereft, and exhausted.  However, the exercise Haim had planned eventually brought me to the correct location and I was able to touch the letters of the town in Hebrew and English and make a connection that had eluded me for so long.

I was truly shocked by the depths of my emotions at this rock wall - it was just a name, but if this seminar has taught me anything, it is the importance of names. Names must not be forgotten! As we traced all of our group's communities, sharing stories that made you laugh and cry, often at the same time, we brought some closure to our Poland journey.  For one last time we said Kaddish together - the final collective prayer for all of our ancestors.

From Yad Vashem,  we headed to Hebrew University (home of our Melton Seminar) to meet with  two professors, one retired and one young and in his prime.

Professor Eleazar Shafrir, retired faculty member, was born in 1924 in Krakow and was 15 when WW II started.  His father had been a very active Zionist in Krakow, collecting money for Palestine.  In 1938 his father traveled to Palestine and wished to stay, but was told he was doing more important work in Krakow.  In 1939, when the Germans occupied Krakow, his father fled, but returned  three weeks later and was arrested. After many detention camps he was sent to Auschwitz. The family received a letter from Rudolf Hess saying his father had died of stroke and for 20 marks they could receive his remains.  A bottle with ashes was sent back which were deposited in the Jewish cemetery next to his father's father. During the occupation, he, his mother and five year old sister were transferred to the Krakow Ghetto to a very small space.  About 10,000 - 15,000 people were squeezed into a place fit for 2000.  When the Ghetto was liquidated, the younger people sent to the Plaszow Camp and the older ones were sent to Belzec.  His mother was taken in 1942 to Belzec where she died.  His sister was supposed to be sent to Plaszow, but was shot in street by the SS, along with the person taking care of her. With a friend, he managed to escape and was hidden by three Polish families.  These families arranged food, Polish papers, and a way to get to Hungary and then on to Turkey. The Jewish Agency in Turkey sent him to Palestine in 1944. He came to university in Israel in 1944 and the university was adjusting to the influx from Europe.  His advantage was he knew Hebrew from the gymnasium in Krakow. The friend who escaped with him was a soldier in Israel and was killed in the War of Independence.

When asked if he thinks there is a future for Jews in Krakow, he responded that Jews should not strive to go back to Krakow and try to revive the Jewish population.  It is not his generation/friends etc. who want to replenish Jewish life in Krakow - it is outside influences, particularly the Rabbis, who want to revive the synagogues that remain.  

After a quick lunch, we had a study session on S.Y. Agnon and Israeli culture after the Holocaust. This was followed by a meeting with Professor Gad Yair, Head of the Sociology Department on his book "The Code of Israeliness" or what he calls the "ten commandments" of being Israeli and how they shape the politics and future of the country. 

Professor Yair could be a huge success as a standup comic and we were all thrilled to have a light note on which to end the seminar.  His topic is not light - because these very characteristics will be create the success or failure of Israel's future, but his timing, delivery, and irreverence helped to end the day on an up note.  I highly recommend his blog: www.coolcite.com/blog/1227/?post=89 which is in English (his book is only available in Hebrew).

A final wrap up, a few bites at the final dinner and then we're off, part way through the dinner, to the airport for our flight home.

How can I sum up this experience?  I can't call it a vacation and it certainly was not a pleasure trip, yet there were, indeed, times of pleasure during "moments of serendipity," such as hearing the Cantors Choir singing in the Warsaw synagogue during the Jewish Music Festival.  It was a very important trip personally, and for Eric and I as a couple.  It opened my eyes to the horrors of war and what the Polish (non-Jewish) people suffered at the hands of the Nazis. It introduced me to Germans and Poles who I want as friends and those with whom I could never agree.  It brought me in touch with humanity's capability for evil, as well as goodness, and the absence of both - indifference. It brought me despair and gave me hope.  And, it will take me months, or perhaps years, to process all I have learned.