I was back in Poland a few weeks ago. It’s my second there, and it looks like it won’t be the last. I seem to have “business” in Poland, finding out more of my family’s past and connecting with those on similar journeys.

Three years ago I took my first trip to Poland, a roots journey that took me to Warsaw and Krakow, to Zambrow and environs, to Auschwitz, Treblinka, and killing fields. This time I returned for a more limited purpose, to attend the 2018 meeting of International Association of Jewish Genealogy Organizations in Warsaw. (See https://www.iajgs2018.org/) This was the first conference of Jewish Genealogical Organizations ever held in Poland as well as the first genealogical conference I’d ever attended.

During the conference I went to pray at the Nozyk Synagogue. I’ve been to many synagogues in my life and davened Shacharit (prayed the morning prayer service) countless times. It’s a routine, and, usually, unmemorable act. But that’s not the case in Poland. No prayer service in Poland feels like an ordinary experience of prayer. Because Poland is not a regular place for a Jew, at least for this Jew, in 2018, less than 75 years after the extermination of the Jewish population of Warsaw and Poland.

Before the Second World War, there were many houses of prayer in Warsaw, a city that counted more than 300,000 Jews among its residents. The Nozyk Synagogue was one of these synagogues. Named after Zalman Nozyk, a wealthy merchant who funded its construction, it opened its doors in 1902. 

In late 1940, the Nazis established the Warsaw Ghetto. They walled in over 400,000 Jews. Most of these people died of hunger or disease or were gassed at the Treblinka death camp. The Nazis wanted to exclude Chlodna Street, a main thoroughfare, from the ghetto, resulting in one part of the ghetto being disconnected from the other. The Nozyk Synagogue, on Twarda Street, was located at the southern end of the ghetto, in the area known as the “small ghetto.”

To connect the large ghetto with the small ghetto, the Nazis constructed a foot bridge over the thoroughfare. From this bridge, the Jewish residents entrapped in the ghetto could get a glimpse of “normal” Warsaw life on the other side of the wall. 

The footbridge, along with most other traces of the ghetto, is no more. However, a marker now stands at the site of the bridge, two steel towers on either side of Chodna Street, connected by a wire at the height of the bridge:

The Nazis destroyed all the synagogues of Warsaw except for one: the Nozyk Synagogue. Instead of destroying it, they found a use for it: as a stable for horses and feed storehouse. Though damaged, the building somehow survived the 1944 Warsaw Uprising during which the Nazis virtually razed the entire city. If that were not enough, the Polish Communist government shut the synagogue down in 1968 and it remained abandoned until it was renovated and reopened in the early 1980s. 

I walked to the synagogue from my hotel along Gomborska Street. On the way, a marker on the sidewalk reminded me of where the ghetto wall once stood. 

Event the simple act of walking to shul contained reminders of sadness and loss. 

There was no sign for the synagogue on Gomborska Street, but, following my map, I found a path leading from the street toward the synagogue. 

The rear of the shul then came into view:

I approached the side entrance.

Opening the door, I encountered a Polish man sitting inside a sealed booth. He was in charge of pressing a button that opened another door into the synagogue. He let me in, and I walked up a stairway that led to an entrance at the front part of the sanctuary. 

The interior of the synagogue has been repaired and is now a quite attractive space for prayer. 

I put on my tallit (prayer shawl) and tephilin (phylacteries) and began my prayers.

Despite the synagogue’s interior beauty, it was impossible for my mind to disassociate with the significance of my surroundings. A prominent plaque on the wall reminded me of the synagogue’s history as well as the miraculous nature of its very existence:

A case in the back of the synagogue contained some objects from the synagogue’s prewar glory days: the remnant of a Sefer Torah, a Torah cover, a spice box and a candelabra:

Yet another plaque indicated that the Torah scrolls in use at the synagogue were written in 1949 by Rabbi Yitzhak Noichovitz, in memory of his entire family who were killed during the Holocaust.

The echoes of the past completely infused the space. 

The shul’s website aptly captures the atmosphere of praying there, while containing an appeal for outsiders not to disregard the current efforts in maintaining and continuing the legacy of its past:

As the sole surviving synagogue of Warsaw, the Nozyk Syangogue stands as a reminder of how Jewish Warsaw used to be before the Shoah. Whilst praying within its walls, it is difficult not to sense the immense scale of the crimes committed in this city. Many visitors to the Nozyk Synagogue consider, above all else, that past: the times of glory, the praying crowds, the great rabbis and the brilliant cantors, as well as the desolation that followed their disappearance. Visits of this character are generally brief and offer little opportunity for taking note of the present, which is not as abundant and lively as eighty years ago, yet Jewish life continues here.

There were about 20 men–no women–at the prayer service the days I attended. One of the attendees was Michael Schudrich, the Chief Rabbi of Poland. Rabbi Schudrich is from New York and he moved to Poland about 20 years ago to take on the leadership role for Polish Jews. Eventually he was named the first Chief Rabbi in Poland since the Holocaust. I can’t recall ever sharing a prayer service with the chief rabbi of a country, but such is Poland these days.

Owing to the warm weather, a large, and very noisy, fan stood at the back of the sanctuary circulating air. (Air conditioning in Poland is rare.) Its sound severely muffled the words of the shaliach tzibur (prayer leader). It was as if the possibility of communication with the Almighty was even more remote than usual. 

At the end of the services, Rabbi Schudrich gave a short d’var torah in Polish. He has learned the Polish language well. I wasn’t sure, however, how many people in attendance actually understood it since a good number were there, as I was, for the genealogy conference. In prewar Poland, the talk would have been in Yiddish, and everyone would have understood it. Now, however, non Poles make up a significant portion of the congregants, and probably Hebrew or English would be the language most could understand. But I understood his position of a rabbi of a community, however small, to speak to his congregants in the vernacular.

One of the most significant portions of the morning prayer service is the recitation of the “Shma Israel” (“Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.”) It is the moment, said at every morning and evening service, that a Jew proclaims a basic tenet of faith in the existence and unity of God. But the Shma has another association. These are the words traditionally spoken at the moment of martyrdom, an ultimate testament of faith. They were the last words spoken by many of those, probably including my own relatives, before they succumbed to the gas in the chambers of Auschwitz and Treblinka. Right before we recited the Shma, a member of the shul walked back to the fan and turned it off. The words of the Shma rang out loud and clear.