September 03, 2007

Been a while

It's been quite a while since I have posted. The main reason is that my daughter, Keira, and son-in-law, Richard, welcomed three girls into the world on December 20, 2006. If you are interested in the amazing journey of Lily, Zoe and Avery Sorrells and their parents, please visit Keira's blog at http://3sorrells.blogspot.com/.

Today I have also added a link to Peter Zdarzil's website. Peter's non-Jewish family also hails from Staszow and he is an avid historian of the place and its people.

June 15, 2006

Santa Fe and Lower Colonias

In order to get to Old Pecos Trail from the Santa Fe Plaza you will have to go down streets crowded with people, some with fake cowboy hats on. They come from Tulsa, Manhattan and Berlin. They are here to experience the vast, contemplative region of the Great American Southwest. So, they go shopping. Many loom over the ladies who sit on the ground with their backs up against the old Palace of the Governors. These ladies, and some men, have been sitting on this ground for a long time. Some of the ladies have a twinkle in their eye and talk to you pleasantly about the jewelry that is laid out before them. Others seem bored and look away when you stop to examine what they have on the blanket in front of them. Others chat with the lady next to them, barely recording your presence.

The ladies are Indians, mostly Pueblo Indians, and they must know secret stuff. The symbols on the jewelry or the pottery all must have some hidden meaning. I am too embarrassed to ask them what it all means. Other people ask in loud voices, “What does this arrow mean? Why is there a lightning bolt on this?” The ladies seem to have soft voices and some answer politely. Or, sometimes, they just shrug, “It’s just a nice design. Try it on. See if it fits you.”

A lot of the shops in Santa Fe that sell jewelry and pottery are owned by guys from the Middle East now. The stores used to be owned by tall, dry people whose father might have owned a trading post up near Farmington. They figured they could make a good living if they had a store where more tourists were. Or, the stores were owned by women or gay men. A lot of them had been art history majors, who fell in love with Georgia O’Keefe and Maria Martinez, and were encouraged by their friends and given loans by their parents, with the hope that that damn degree might be able to support them in some way or another.

Far be it from me to stereotype anybody, but I will anyway. The Middle Eastern guys all seemed to be hustlers. Some hustled pure schlock and their sales technique was that of the souk, loud and aggressive. Others were more refined and so were their goods, but the speed with which prices were cut by half reminds you that you are being hustled. Besides these guys, the stores and the galleries seem to be mostly staffed by young women who do not look you in the eye or, even acknowledge your presence in the store. They don’t appear to be art history majors. They look like the same girls who work at The Gap. One salesperson, not so young any more, reminds you that if you come back tomorrow, she’ll be downstairs, so please tell the person that waits on you that you were talking with her today about that kachina. OK? She reminds you of this two or three times before you leave.

You go past these people and these stores and others that sell things like books and knives and artifacts from Tibet and Bolivia. You go past the restaurants that serve crepes and cream of broccoli soup. It used to be that you ate frito pie at the Five-and-Dime or chile rellenos at The Plaza or if you were feeling really flush you went to the Pink Adobe and had something with shrimp. Now they sell anything and everything to adorn your body, put on a shelf or into your mouth. It’s like a lot of other places, but it’s got history and the buildings look real different from home. Oh, and did I tell you that it is the third largest art market in the country?

After you’ve had your fill of this, you get to the other side of the plaza and go a couple of blocks and walk past some government buildings and you find your rental car just off Old Santa Fe Trail and you drive on that street, which somewhere has turned into Old Pecos Trail, and you take it a few more miles until you get to I-25. You go on I-25 North. If you make a mistake and take I-25 South you have to go a few miles until there is an exit and you can turn back again. A lot of people seem to make this mistake. So, you take I-25 North and, about fifteen minutes later, you get off at the Pecos-Glorieta exit and you head towards Pecos. You enter San Miguel County from Santa Fe County. You might as well be crossing from The Hamptons into Yoknapatawpha, Mississippi, only this place is for real.

After a mile or two is a thoroughly homemade memorial to the Battle of Glorieta Pass entitled The Gettysburg of the West. Though the Confederates had been successful on the field during the three days of shooting, a small detachment of Federal soldiers (I think they were some of the miners from Colorado who had volunteered) had captured the men guarding the rebel wagon train, ran off their horses and mules and burned all the wagons. Forlorn, the Confederate commander, knew he couldn’t sustain his attack any longer without provisions, ammunition or water and ordered a retreat. Only about a quarter of the men who left Texas returned, their comrades having been picked off by Union troops and Apaches. It must have been a hard, hard few weeks that retreat.

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There is an official display about Glorieta Pass at the Pecos Historical Park that also features the ruins of a Spanish mission and the pueblo that once stood at this spot, where the Great Plains meet the Rockies. It’s all quite understated and beautiful. Standing near one of the kivas, you can look east and see the plains, look west and see the mountains. It’s like standing high up on the rocks at Big Sur or at Sunset Beach in North Carolina. There is a definitiveness to it all. This is where something ends. This is where something else begins.

But, you would have had to turn right at the town of Pecos in order to get to the Park. This time you are going to go straight at the four-way stop and cross over the Pecos River bridge. After a while you take a right and then you continue on the dry, dirt and gravel road. After a bit you are in a deep canyon and you take a sharp left that takes you deeper into the canyon and then you are there, the town of Lower Colonias.

To call Lower Colonias a town might be to create an inaccurate image in your mind. There is a small church and a dozen or so small frame or adobe houses. The place is dry. Real dry even though it is deep in the canyon that was gouged out by Cow Creek. The day I went there the water in Cow Creek was just a memory. There’s been a drought in this part of New Mexico for the past five years. You can usually walk through a bit of snow on Memorial Day weekend if you make it up to Spirit Lake or Stewart Lake. This year you could only make out a thin line of snow right on the very top of the ridgeline of Pecos Baldy. From the lower elevations, Santa Fe Baldy looked to be even more dry and barren, a solemn face of granite glaring down at the river.

I felt like I was intruding when I entered Lower Colonias, like I’d stumbled into someone’s backyard. The map made it seem like there was a road that would take me to Upper Colonias, but I was too embarrassed to try to pick through which of the dirt driveways was actually a state-maintained road. A couple of guys were leaning into the engine compartment of a twenty-plus year-old Chevy. One of them looked up to see who was throwing the dust up, saw it was only a tourist who was probably lost and brought his attention back to the car.

This little place has bigger problems than lost tourists. In a recent issue of Water World, a publication geared to water and wastewater professionals, a story recounted the plight of the residents who have not had access to the community well since December. The fifty year-old system’s pipes had been leaking badly and, their proximity to the various septic tanks and outhouses, posed a health danger. One of the residents, a Mr. Quintana, presented his community’s request to state lawmakers who greeted him with great skepticism. Ultimately, a $20,000 grant was made to study the situation, but no dollars for fixing the leaking pipes. So, Mr. Quintana will swap some firewood to a guy with a backhoe and fix the pipes himself. In the meantime, he and his girlfriend have had to move Pecos.

So, maybe forty-five minutes from the people with the fake cowboy hats and the bored Gap girls were these people. People who cut firewood and swap it for help so they can have clean drinking water. I hated the first place and feared the second. I wish I had stopped and talked to the guys working on the car. Maybe, one of them was Mr. Quintana. I think I would have appreciated hearing what he had to say.

May 03, 2006

The Journey Continues

OK. So, I've established sorta kinda what this blog is about. You know, middle-aged Jewish man reclaiming his roots. I don't mean to downplay the importance of last year's journey. Finding and pursuing a life's mission is big stuff; about as big as it gets. The work involved in the mission continues to unfold in many ways, not the least of which led me to a closer relationship to Jack Goldfarb (please see my first post for details about Jack) and my commitment to be actively engaged in the preservation of the Jewish cemetery in Staszow. Jack will be going back during the summer and I expect that there will be another call to arms. There still remains a lot to be done and given the difficulties imposed by cultural and language differences, not to mention the distance involved, things will never move very quickly or smoothly.

Fundamentally, this search is about finding home. As one of only two Jewish kids in my southside Chicago elementary school, I not only felt like I didn't belong, I also experienced some pretty ugly anti-semitism. It began in sixth grade and pinnacled during eighth grade. I was never beaten up. The threats were plenty and the constant baiting was hard to take. I had no one to go for protection since I had decided that if I told my parents, they would just make it worse somehow. High school, at Morgan Park Academy, was better with little or no overt taunting and there were a fair number of Jewish kids. Yet, I still felt like an alien.

By the time I reached college, first at the University of Illinois-Chicago and then at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, things were shaking up in an even bigger way. The Vietnam War was in full swing and the anti-war movement was gathering steam. I just watched The War At Home, a documentary made in 1979 about the anti-war movement as it played out at Madison. It's not the best film ever made, though it gave an accurate portrayal of what was going during that time, at that place. It left me feeling sad, that I had not done enough, and that so many of the themes are being played out again and that leaves me angry.

I had participated in several of the demonstrations and had dutifully gone on strike when called to do so. After the Army Math Research building bombing and the resulting death of a graduate student, the mood on campus shifted substantially and, like so many others, my focus returned to getting an education. Besides, I was really enjoying my major, theatrical lighting design, and my work load was heavy. Along with keeping up with my academic classes, I was involved in a constant stream of main stage and studio productions, not to mention acting in several Broom Street Theater productions, under the tutelage, delight and scorn of Joel Gersmann, who, I just learned, died about a year ago from a heart attack at the age of 62.

This is truly disorienting. I'm blithely writing this entry about ME and I'm hit with the death of one of my mentors, only I'm a year late. I never had any aspirations of being an actor and Joel's inspiration for material and staging concepts had little or nothing to do with what I was doing in the on-campus theater world. Yet, I thoroughly enjoyed working with him. He was a potent antidote to the conservatism that was rampant in the Theater Division at that time. In one of the obit pieces he is quoted as saying, "I haven't read a play in 15 years". He had an equal contempt for his audience. Back in the early 70s he had not worked himself into a lather about that, but he was incensed about the war and the utter absurdity of it all. One show was "Vietnamese Phrasebook", whose script was, you guessed it, a Vietnamese phrasebook given to GIs. Joel's concept of theater was crude and loud and maddening. Yet, he knew the art and technique of theater at a highly sophisticated level. Which, I'm sure, drove the powers-that-were at the university completely nuts.

Joel didn't give a shit about theatrical convention or about his audience. He said that he did what he did for his own amusement, though I don't entirely buy his glibness. He was dealing with big ideas and he presented those ideas in ways that would make you squirm. I care much too much about what others think. Maybe I've made some progress in this regard and I've got a long way to go.

April 26, 2006

Sidra

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Between my visits to Staszow I had arranged to go to journey with the help of Chris Malczewski and Lucy Lisowska. I met them at the modern an at the modern Hotel Criistal lobby. Chris had been referred to me by Stanley Diamond and Mark Halpern to act as my guide and translator in my travels in the Bialystok area. Chris is Jewish Record Index’s man on the ground in Poland, as well being an independent guide and a true entrepreneurial spirit. One of his sidelines is selling bulk curing barns to Polish tobacco farmers. He is garrulous, very funny and completely fearless. Lucy is one of the four or five Jewish people currently living in Bialystok. She is a Polish language teacher for 10- to 12-year olds in public school, but her passion is the preservation of the Bialystok Jewish cemetery. More about that later. She seems frail and sad and is completely committed to honoring the memory of her Jewish ancestors.

Lucy was able to finagle me a room in the Hotel Branicki, a real feat since there were over two thousand doctors in town for a convention this week and every hotel in town was completely booked. I still don’t quite know how she did it, but she did.

My father’s mother, Anna Novick (Chana Nowinksi) and family emigrated to the United States in 1913 from Sidra (pronounced Chidra and known as Shidza in Yiddish), about an hour’s drive north of Bialystok, so off to Sidra we went. Besides being an excellent guide, Chris is an expert driver of Polish roads, which is no mean feat. If you have not been to Poland yet, you need to go if, for nothing else, then to experience the exhilaration and terror of Polish roads. What can compare with an eighteen-wheeler attempting to pass a line of eight or nine cars with your car closing from the opposite direction at ninety kmph?

First, some background on Sidra. In 1931, the Sokolskiego district had a population of almost 85% ethnic Poles, 9% Jews, 6% Bielorussians and .2% Tatars. In Sidra, one of many towns and villages in the district, of the 1,000 souls, 374 were Jewish. The percentage had been much higher, nearly 60% at the turn of the century, but the infamous Bialystok pogroms of 1906 and general economic depression spurred many area Jews to flee Poland and Sidra, like so many communities, was drained. My grandmother recounted how she and her sister had been protected by her well-muscled and determined older brothers when Cossacks attempted to harm them when she was a girl.

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The town square still exists, and it is a shadow of its former self. Instead of a vibrant community hub, it is a quiet park where local high school students hang out during their lunch break. The only sign of commercial activity, past or present was a vacant pub/restaurant. The former Jewish community center was in good shape and is now a private residence. Homes and stores (it seems that these were fairly interchangeable) formerly occupied by Jews still stood. From an American standard, they were quite shabby. But, this is not the place to be applying American standards. The stone foundation of a Calvinist church was easily discernible and had been memorialized. The modest Catholic church stands at the far corner of the square and is in excellent repair. A nearby building owned by the local parish tells a familiar tale. Prior to the war, the large two-story structure had been used by the parish for storage and, perhaps, meetings. The local communist government took it over after the war and turned it into a cultural center with a cinema and coffee house, enlarging it to its current size. When communism collapsed, the parish petitioned to have it returned, which was accomplished. However, the large building is expensive to maintain, the coffers are low, so now it sits vacant and gradually being eaten away by the elements.

When we arrived in Sidra, Chris announced that we should go visit the mayor; it will probably be the highlight of the year for the fellow. Unfortunately, His Honor was not in, so we went into the town library, where we met Margaret, the town librarian, who sat us down at the large table in the middle of the room and began producing a variety of documents. So many things that I take for granted in my work researching tax and title records in the United States, are simply non-existent in this place of shifting boundaries and countless wars. For example, there was no map of the town as it existed before World War II. However, she did have access to a number of interesting bits of information. I found the Sidra section of the 1929 Annuaire De La Pologne, a national listing of businesses, extraordinarily interesting. As was the case in so many Polish communities, the core of business owners were Jews. A good number of familiar Jewish names were listed – Farber, Frydman and Lewicki – among them. Please note that the last name would be pronounced as “Levitski”. H. Lewicki was a carpenter, as was I in an earlier career.

However, I was on the trail of Nowinski, my grandmother’s surname. My grandfather, Abraham Levit, was born in Odessa, so I doubt of any links between him and the carpenter in Sidra. Since he was born in the Ukraine, the English spelling of his last name was more likely to have been Lewicky. In any event, we needed to press on.

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Our next stop was at the home of Maria Kondrat, the mother-in-law of the town social services administrator. Mrs. Kondrat is a spry and vivacious woman well into her eighties. I asked her if she had had any Jewish friends. She guffawed and said, “We were all friends.” When many of the Jews’ homes were burned in the early stages of the Nazi occupation, her parents took in a Jewish family. She said that even though they only had one cow, that cow helped to feed the eight people that lived in that house for one year. At the end of the year, the Jews were rounded up and liquidated, either on the spot or at Treblinka. She could remember a few names, but Nowinski was not one that rang a bell for her. Mrs. Kondrat also maintained that there had been not one, but two shuls; one for men and one for women. As we left her, Lucy muttered to me that there was no way that there could have been this arrangement. Perhaps, the old lady had mistaken the mikvah for a synagogue.

Our next stop was to the local grammar school, where we met with the principal, a burly, energetic fellow, a Mr. Romanovich. He showed us the only pre-war records that he had, a thick sheaf of old of papers. While Chris and I leafed through the files of students enrolled in the academic year 1939-1940, Lucy engaged Mr. Romanovich in conversation, identifying herself as a fellow educator and someone who is actively working in the field of indexing such records. And, because Lucy is Lucy, the principal, without asking, suggested that she take these precious sixty-five year old files back to Bialystok with her for copying. I could not believe that three unannounced strangers could be welcomed with such trust. Lucy gathered them up and held them as though they were a precious infant.

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Mr. Romanovich escorted us out of the school building, being bid “Good day” by the students who were hurrying over from the junior high to his school for lunch. The gymnasium, apparently, does not have its own lunch facilities. He showed us the remains of the town’s castle, though he said it would hardly qualify as a castle, on the highest point in town, directly adjacent to the school. This and the entire region had, at one time, been the property of the Radziwill family, Jackie Kennedy's ancestsors. An area, about twenty by twenty and covered by a tin roof, showed the shambles of a thick wall made of large bricks. We also met one of the junior high teachers, who was also hurrying to lunch, a youngish man whose master’s thesis on early- to mid-twentieth century Sidra Chris had perused earlier in the library and from which the earlier mentioned statistical data had been gathered.

As we left the school grounds heading for our next stop, I asked Chris if this work wasn’t basically that of a detective. He enthusiastically affirmed and added that the key is to gain the comfort of people, who are normally reserved and not terribly trusting. In short, in order to succeed in this work one must be a schmoozer, a diplomat and, above all, keenly interested in what these people have to say about their lives. Your interests can be advanced only at the appropriate time.

We paused on our mission to look at the well-kept three story apartment building that now stands on the site of the synagogue. The wooden building, so typical of this area, had been destroyed by the Nazis in 1941. There was no indication that this spot had once been the religious center of the town's Jewish population.

The family of one Jan Kucsinzki, born 1912, welcomed us into their home. Mr. Kucsinzki hobbled in, his blue eyes sparkling, and sat down with us. In keeping with Chris’ dicta on conducting such interviews, the old man told us how he had fought with the Polish Second Corps under General Anders in Iraq, Iran and Palestine. He and his regiment mates had ended the war in England and a number had stayed behind. He returned to Sidra where he continued to work on the farm that was his sole family inheritance. Recalling his experiences in Poland and abroad in the 1940’s he remarked, “The nature of a man changes during war”.

Though the school records had revealed a Jewish/Gentile ratio of about 40/60, he said that he had had only a few Jewish schoolmates and that he could not recall any names. With a beaming smile, he said he could remember some of the Jewish girls and how beautiful they were. As Mrs. Kondrat had claimed, he remembered two synagogues, too. Later in my journey, I learned that Sidra had had two small prayer houses, in addition to the synagogue. On the north side of town, where Mr. Kucsinzki now resided, Jews and Christians had lived side-by-side in apparent harmony. He recalled that the main trade shop in town was owned by a Kramski and had been quite large. It had been destroyed, no doubt, during the war since all the existing buildings still on the square, with the exception of the former Jewish community center, were all small, certainly none larger than a thousand square feet or so. He also remembered his Jewish neighbors celebrating Sukkoth and how they ate and prayed in their huts for a week.

Another family member, perhaps the elderly man’s daughter-in-law, came in and sat down. In the course of the conversation she invited Lucy to come back as she had over two hundred old photos of Sidra, many of them featuring Jewish life. As usual, Lucy engaged the woman with her usual charm and the old man’s relation had an astonishing story to tell. In the two reference sources on the cemetery that Chris and I both had, it was stated that the metzuvot (headstones) had been taken from the cemetery and used to pave the road to an adjoining town during the Nazi occupation. The woman stated that when she came to the town in 1952 there were still a good number of headstones in the cemetery and that over the years townspeople had taken them and used them for construction projects. My heart fell to my stomach. This place of apparently good relations had, at the very least, descended into the casual barbarism of cultural ignorance.

We headed off to the cemetery and had some difficulty finding it, though we had been told that it was just beyond the river and that a memorial had been installed. Chris pulled over and, as he is wont to do, asked a young woman pushing a baby in a stroller if she knew where the old Jewish cemetery was. She said that she did and that she would show us; it was just ahead.

We pulled over in the shade and Lucy said, “I’m getting out. I smell metzuvot”, and proceeded to prowl over a grassy field. The young women caught up with us and Chris, charming as usual, took the stroller from her and pushed the baby for 20 or 30 yards. Sure enough, Lucy had found the cemetery on her own. We entered the sacred ground and took a beeline to what appeared to be an absolutely pristine headstone. The extraordinarily helpful woman, whose name unfortunately I forget, told us that road crews had found it when repairing the road and had brought it here and installed it. I asked if they had got any permission from anybody for this job, and she shrugged and said no. Upon a quick inspection, it was clearly not a headstone, but the memorial that we had been told about earlier. She was quite familiar with the spot; her husband is an environmental engineer and her brother a forester and all three have a strong interest in historical and environmental matters. For all that, she said that she lived in a Jewish house built in 1905. I asked if that was special to her in any way. No, not really - a house is a house. She also mentioned that hunks of headstone had been incorporated into the foundation of one of her neighbor’s homes, thus backing up the content of our previous conversation.

She also told us a story she had heard repeated when she was young. Before the war several young men used to brag about going out to the Jewish cemetery and urinating on the graves. To a man, they all came back from the war disabled or disfigured in some way. Other townspeople pointed out that their blasphemous behavior had been repaid.

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While Chris continued his conversation with our historian, I asked Lucy to accompany me to one of the few barely distinguishable headstones. Rounded and moss-covered one could easily walk by them and not have a second thought. Yet, on closer examination the faintest traces of Hebrew lettering was unmistakable. We said Kaddish together under the beautiful blue, autumn Polish sky hard by the pines where one hundred Jews had been shot.

I left Sidra feeling that this work was just beginning in many ways. The indexing project had gotten a nice gift and, perhaps, Lucy’s return visit will yield some photographic treasures, as well. Chris said that there really is no end to this work. Once you peel back one layer, there is another to greet you. More than the materials acquired, I was struck by the emotional load that my psyche had taken on. How do I reconcile the disparate themes that I had encountered? The twinkle in the old man's eye as he recalled the pretty Jewish girls. The pissed-on graves. Mr. Romanovich's trust and generosity. The thievery of headstones to be used for building material. And the biggest one: hundreds of my ancestors and their fellows were murdered or had fled this town and now there were none. None. That loss was fading from memory as our conversation with Maria and Jan had demonstrated. A few were well aware of that absence and the effect that it had on the soul of Sidra. As we walked across the town square with Margaret's husband, he gestured at the emptiness, "After the Jews were gone, this place has become nothing."

April 07, 2006

Return to Staszow

A week after my first journey to Staszow, Kristine and Monika and I arrived at the New Jewish Cemetery at 10:00AM and I got right to work with the contractor, Mr. Dryjak and his son, reviewing the work that needed to be done. Two memorials had been misplaced by another contractor, and we needed to have things put right. The first marker is for two unidentified Jews, whose skeletons were found at the house that had been occupied by the former Gestapo commander in Staszow, the same place where the vast majority of the headstones had been found several years ago. It turns out that the house is now owned by a teacher, who proved to be quite a prick about turning over the headstones. From what I can gather, my cousin Jack ended paying him a considerable amount of money to have them liberated.

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A burial ceremony had been conducted about two years ago for the two and, somehow, the headstone had been put on the wrong spot. The other marker was for a mass grave of over two hundred Jews who had been shot in Staszow or along the road, the day that the inhabitants of the ghetto were forced to march on their way to Belzec and Treblinka on November 8, 1942. It seems likely that my great-grandfather, who was quite elderly at the time, was one of those put to death by the Nazis and may be buried here. This memorial had also been put in the wrong place.

After our work at the cemetery we went to the Staszow town museum, a tiny couple of rooms on the first floor of a concrete apartment building. The part-time director of the museum gave us a tour. Most impressive was the collection of Jewish artifacts, many of them donated by Cousin Jack. The most amazing story was behind the Torah stored in a plain glass and wood display cabinet. When the synagogue had been set ablaze by the Nazis, a seven-year old gentile boy ran in and retrieved the scrolls. The boy grew to be a man, an important musical composer and conductor. I believe his name is Robert Pana. Among his professional accomplishments were the organization of the military orchestras for Cuba and Nicaragua. He has been recognized by Yad Vashem as a hero and this certificate stands next to the Torah, which he donated some ten years ago. How is it that a a little boy, a non-Jew, would know the importance of this object and risk his own life to rescue them from the flames? There must be an interesting story here.

After a quick cup of tea and a bowl of soup in the restaurant in the old town hall, we went to the high school. We were escorted in by one of the three teachers I had met last week, Dorota. The school was fairly new and absolutely shined. We entered the classroom of Tomek, the senior of the three. The students sprang to their feet and began applauding. Two groups of three approached Kristine and Monika with elaborate bouquets. Then, in succession, the national anthems of America, Israel and Poland were played while everyone stood in respectful silence. Tomek’s intense gaze was focused on a distant place while the music played. These Poles really know how to do ceremony.

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We were bid to take our seats and Tomek read a lengthy passage from the Talmud. His delivery was dramatic, nearly breathtaking. The students sat in rapt silence. He talked about how the souls of those who have passed must be remembered and how what troubled them in life will trouble them in death if things are not made right. I asked for a minute or two to say the following, through Monika, while Kristine joined me at the head of the class:

I am going to speak English to you, because I know that all of you speak perfect English. (laughter from the crowd) Thank you for welcoming us to your home, Staszow. This was the home of my grandparents and their parents for many hundreds of years, probably back to the 16th century.

Some of my ancestors left this place of their own choice and moved to America, where I now live. Others, including my great-grandfather, Shulem Schachna Weksler, were dragged out of their homes by the Nazis and murdered in November 1942.

I honor the wonderful work that you and your teachers, Tomek, Dorota and Katya, are doing in commemorating not only the death, but also the lives, of the vibrant Jewish community that existed in Staszow. From the distance of many years, it may appear that the world of the Jews and non-Jews were quite separate. But, as your esteemed teachers have taught you, there was a great inter-connectedness between these people. They all called Staszow home.

So, when you honor the memory of my grandfathers and my grandmothers, you are also honoring the memory of your ancestors. In the words of the great rabbi, Baal Shem Tov, “Forgetting is exile; Remembering is redemption”.

Thank you very much. Dziekuje bardzo.

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We were then invited to view a draft of the presentation that the students had been working on for over a year. Utilizing presentation software that incorporated a fairly sophisticated virtual reality component they have recreated the town of Staszow as it appeared in 1942 down to the barbed-wire topped ghetto wall. Narrated by a deeply sonorous voice, the story was told of how the Jews were rounded up at the town square with only three hours’ notice and began the march to their deaths. With Barber’s Adagio for Strings in the background, it was hard to hold back the tears.

They reviewed the other sections of the presentation which, among other things, included links to details about Treblinka and a list of Staszow’s Holocaust victims. Darak, the young man who was running the program, scrolled down the list of names until he arrived at the name of my great-grandfather and his family. I tried to hold back my tears, but could not. My sobs filled the classroom. My cup runneth over.

They still had a fair bit to do, but above all they wanted to know if they were on the right track. Kristine and I both assured them emphatically that they were. As I went back to my seat, Tomek seized my hand, looked hard into my eyes and said, “I am very happy. Very happy that you are here.”

Even though the bell rang, the kids now crowded around the single computer screen to see bits and pieces of the presentation. We all applauded each other and then they were gone. We found their respectful deportment quite amazing. I may be wrong, but if this class was in America, I would expect a considerably more raucous atmosphere.

Now that the school day was over, the six of us piled into two cars and went to Szydlow. This was the first place where Jews settled in this district, in 1470. The synagogue had been built in the following century. It is a bit smaller than that in Tykocin. The lobby has a nice collection of Jewish artifacts, though it was not clear where they came from. The interior is stripped of any ornamentation, though our guides told us that there were partial frescoes beneath the white walls, most likely prayers such as I had seen in Tykocin. An immense sculpture of Moses stands where the bimah had once been the central architectural detail of the building. There was an exhibition of art from local artists with the synagogue being a common theme. And, because Poland is a complex and, often, contradictory place, there were also a few crucifixion scenes.

We went a short distance back towards Staszow and had coffee and pastry on the grounds of the palace that Monika and I had toured a week earlier. The teachers reviewed all the planned activities for the November 8 commemoration, which will include the multi-media show, a walk to and speeches at the cemetery and traditional Jewish cuisine. Dorota and Katya had attended a workshop a while ago in Krakow during the annual klezmer festival and have the intention of sharing this important part of Jewish culture with the attendees. They laughed heartily when I informed them that the basic gist of most Jewish holidays was – “We are the Jews. They hated us. They tried to kill us. We survived. Let’s eat!” They implored us to come back for the occasion and to provide them with contact information for everybody we could think of. As it turned out, the commemoration went quite well and was attended by local dignitaries, church officials and a representative from the Israeli Embassy in Warsaw.

As we parted company, Tomek embraced me warmly and said, “That you are here is a miracle for us. I am very happy. Thank you.” Again, the tears flowed for all of us as we exchanged warm hugs and many kisses, much to the amazement of the occupants of a tour bus that had just pulled into the parking lot.

From the palace we raced to Ana and Leokadia's home where we had promised to be by 3:00PM. Fifteen minutes later we pulled into their driveway. This was the return visit that Ana had commanded and I was concerned that we were late. My worry was banished by Ana’s broad smile and effusive kissing. She beckoned us into the house where we were led to see the saver-of-Jews, Leokadia Kewalec. When Kristine bent over to kiss her, Leokadia held Kristine’s face in her hands and began crying, saying how beautiful Kristine was.

As before, we were ushered into their living/dining room and ordered to sit at the table, where we were immediately served from a tureen, enormous bowls of the second best mushroom soup of my life, the first being that of Grandma Levit. Then came bowls of a combination beet-mushroom consommé with a crepe-like pancake folded around sliced ham and melted cheese. Owing to her vegetarianism, Kristine had to deconstruct the crepe a bit. Two types of cake followed with copious glasses of hot tea. Various members would come and go and eat parts of the meal with us, all the while four-year old Kuba was running around making us all laugh.

I told Ana that I had fulfilled her two commands: 1) That I bring Kristine and 2) that I tell Jack about the three teachers and my confidence in them. She said that’s fine, and now she had a third, which is for me to help arrange for her a visit to the Jewish community while she is in Chicago. Amazingly, her son, Norbert, who lives in Chicago called while we were there and Ana told him that he needed to respond to my earlier email that set the stage for our collaboration in assuring the success of his mother’s visit.

Finally, Leokadia, as during my solo visit, pulled out photos and certificates and medals and showed them to Kristine. All of this centering around the eight Jews she had helped to save and their descendants, whose very lives were a result of the courage of her family.

It was getting late in the day and I was concerned about Monika driving in the dark all the way back to Krakow, so we excused ourselves. As usual our exit was accompanied by much hugging and kissing, but we were finally able to make it out the door and into Monika’s Skoda. Exhausted by so much emotion we went to sleep quickly back at the hotel.

So, here I sit with half a year and a half a world away from this intense experience, which was one part of a longer trip through Eastern Europe that I took. I stood on the ground where my ancestors lived and died. I did not know what I would be doing when I embarked on my journey, but I knew I would do something. I am grateful that through my continuing work and contribution of my resources, I will be able to further the restoration and preservation of the cemetery in Staszow. I am holding the intention to instigate a similar process in Sidra, Poland where my father’s mother’s family lived. The work on my book continues. But, perhaps, most importantly I have formed connections and relationships with people who care about the lives of my forefathers and, through their commitment, are raising the awareness of the next generation that the life of the Jews in Poland must not be forgotten.

March 30, 2006

Journey to Staszow, Part I

I won't go into the detail of all the reasons that I had decided to go to Staszow, Poland. Suffice it to say that by the spring of 2005, I was feeling a strong need to go there. At the very least, I felt that my book would benefit from me putting my feet on the same ground on which my ancestors had worked, prayed and died. It was then that I contacted by distant step-cousin, Jack Goldfarb. With Jack’s help, I made travel arrangements and on my 56th birthday found myself flying to Europe.

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With the able guidance of Monika Skowron, a 22 year-old law student from Krakow, I arrived in Staszow and was introduced to Ana, Jack’s friend, and three local history teachers, Tomek, Dorota and Katya. They were all eager to meet me and seemed impressed that I had traveled so far to pay my respects. I was given a short tour of the cemetery. Tomek, the senior of the three teachers, showed me photos of Jewish life from a book that he and several others had written about the region's history. When he was done leafing through its pages, he told me in halting English, that he would like for me to have this book as a remembrance. I gasped out loud and with shaking hands took the book from him and, then, I cried. He held me while I sobbed, the others looking on with great compassion. He told me that they were planning a program that would commemorate the liquidation of the ghetto in Staszow, which had occurred on November 8, 1942. With the greatest earnestness, he invited me to come to the program. I said that I couldn’t, but that I would be back next week with my wife and I would love for her to meet them. He beamed and said that he would like us to visit the high school and see the parts of the program that had been put together. He was quite concerned that what they were envisioning was proper and respectful. I told him I was looking forward to seeing them all again. As we parted company, he turned to me and said, “Hello.” Hello, Goodbye. Shalom, Shalom.

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Monika and I followed Ana to her home where we were fed an enormous lunch and spent the afternoon with Ana’s mother, 84-year-old Leokadia Kewalec, who as a young woman had safely harbored eight Jews in the family barn for three years during the Nazi occupation. Perhaps, the most affecting story that she told was how she had persuaded the Jews to remain in hiding, even after they had witnessed the murder of neighbors and the Jewish family they had been caring for. Her friends wanted to leave so as not to endanger Leokadia's family any more. They paid attention to her arguments and were liberated by the Red Army, not two weeks later. She pointedly mentioned that the soldiers were led by a Jewish officer. She wept openly when she talked about how she had lost touch with one of the Jews, a Mr. Wolbromski, and feared him dead. In all, there are now over one hundred descendants of the eight.

The next day, Monika dropped me off at the cemetery and I spent an hour or so by myself there. I burned sage, sweetgrass, cedar and tobacco. I said Kaddish. I sat in silent meditation. I prayed that my ancestors and all those buried at this place might know that their well-being was being sought by me and others who loved them. Perhaps, if there was some pain that tied them to this place, they might now see that all was well here. Perhaps, this might be a time for them to realize and to recognize their true nature and finally surrender to it.

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I wandered through the high brush and examined the headstones, the metzavot. Cousin Jack had repatriated these memorials over the past few years. Some had been in storage. Others, had been used as paving material. A few were in pristine condition. Others had great hunks broken from them, as though some ravenous beast had taken a huge bite and moved on. One has an eight-inch diameter ragged hole in it. Had it been used as target practice? Three large memorials had been financed by Jack and had been constructed of broken bits and pieces of all that remained of some of the hundreds of metzavot that had once stood witness to the Jews who lived and died in Staszow in the 19th and early 20th centuries. When I had left for Poland I had the notion that I owed my ancestors something. I knew that getting the book completed was just part of that debt. I had paid my respects and made my prayers, yet I had the distinct feeling that something remained for me. I was not finished.

February 23, 2006

What Me Wander?

After pushing back on the whole idea of blogs for several years, I got religion when I found Danny Miller's Jew Eat? (www.dannymiller.typepad.com). How I got there in the first place is where the story really begins, or is it the middle? For sure, it's not the end.

Miriam_gladstein_2 I had been researching family history in the context of a book I have been working on for the past two years or so. No matter how many times I googled "Stashev", the Polish shtetl from whence my maternal grandparents had emigrated, I never got anything meaningful. While working my way through the Ellis Island website (www.ellisisland.org) I found my maternal grandmother, Taube "Tillie" Gladstein, her sister, brother and my great-grandmother, Miriam Rivka Gladstein listed on the passenger manifest. Their place of origin was listed as "Staszow". My lack of understanding the nuances of the Polish alphabet had been the stumbing block.

From there I found a few listings about Staszow in Polish. Though unable to read Polish, I was able to ferret out a few bits of data. The official government website extolled the endless economic Img_0285_1development possibilities in this town of 15,000, located a couple of hours northeast of Krakow. Ever since the sulfur market had gone bust, Staszow has continued to struggle beyond its place as an agricultural market town.

Then, I hit paydirt. I found an article in The Jewish Week about a man named Jack Goldfarb, who had been instrumental in restoring the Jewish cemetery in Staszow. I will have much more to say about Jack and his work in the future. In the meantime, you can find the article that details his work at www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=7925 .

Here was a living and breathing link to the home of my ancestors. Further, it demonstrated that, despite what my grandmother had told me while growing up, the town had not been destroyed during the war, after all. I might be able to find some evidence of the Gladsteins, Wexlers and Schwagers. I wrote a note to the editor of The Jewish Week and asked if he could connect me with Mr. Goldfarb. I received a rapid response saying that my email would be sent to the reporter and that he would forward my request. Less than a week later, I received a phone call from, none other than, Jack Goldfarb.

I told him that I was interested in tracing my family roots and even had a notion of going to Poland. Jack could not have been more welcoming and by the end of the conversation I was feeling that I had reconnected with a part of myself that I barely knew had existed.

Later in the day, I received an email from Jack, telling me that he believed we were related, however distantly. Indeed, he was named after Yakov Schwager, my great-grandmother's stepfather. As an added bonus, I got a call the next day from Emanuel Schwager, whose grandfather was my great-grandmother's brother. Man, who has recently passed away, had assembled a family genealogy book and even knew of my daughters' existence. He just had no way of knowing where we were or how to contact us. Long-lost links were being reforged.

Since that time, I spent nearly a month in Eastern Europe, much of it spent trekking through Staszow and Sidra, the home of my paternal grandmother. Future posts will cover these trips.

Upon my return from Poland, Jack told me that he had discovered a fellow Stashever, Danny Miller, through his blog, Jew Eat? Danny's wry observations are well-written, insightful and, often, hilarious. Many thanks to Danny for encouraging me to put this out and to Jack for being the fearless guide and inspiration that he is.

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