Nothing marks the presence of Jews as much as a mezuzah. A mezuzah is a scroll that contains verses from the Torah encased in a rectangular box and affixed to the entryway of a home. Here is what a typical one looks like:

The mezuzah is one of the most common Jewish symbols. Religious Jews, and even most secular Jews, have a mezuzah on their doorway of their home. Some also place a mezuzah on the entryway of any room in their home used for habitation.

The mezuzah is mentioned twice in the Torah, in Deuteronomy 6:9 and 11:1, both of which command Jews to “write the words of God on your gates and doorposts of your house.” The mezuzah scroll contains carefully scribed passages of these and surrounding verses written on parchment. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mezuzah)

Before World War II, there were 3.3 million Jews living in Poland. This means there were probably about a million mezuzahs inside and outside the homes of Polish Jews. Now the Jewish population of Poland is estimated to be about 10,000 to 20,000. Not only were the Jews killed, but, to a large extent, the evidence of their existence was erased. The homes on which the mezuzahs were attached are either no more, or, if they exist, the mezuzahs have fallen off or been removed or destroyed. Rare is the sight of a mezuzah in Poland today.

Perhaps the most famous mezuzah in Poland today is the one affixed to the entrance of the Polin Museum in Warsaw. The museum stands in the area where once the Jewish district of Warsaw was located, and just a few blocks from the Umschlagplatz, where over 300,000 Jews trapped in the Warsaw Ghetto were transported to die in Treblinka. This amazing museum explores the history of the Jews of Poland, from their earliest migration into Poland in the 1300s, to the difficult interwar wars, its destruction during the Holocaust, and the remnant of Jewish life in Poland today. No Jew, I believe, who traces his or her ancestry from Poland or its environs can understand their roots without visiting this museum. (See my previous post about the museum at https://rootsjourney.blog/2015/07/the-polin-museum/)

Jewish law does not require a mezuzah to be placed on the entrance of a building not used for habitation. However, it has become customary to place a mezuzah on the doorposts of buildings that house Jewish institutions.

Before the museum opened in 2013, on the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, it announced a contest to design a mezuzah for the institution. A panel of historians and local community leaders acted as the judges. The winning entry, selected unanimously by the judges, was designed by two Polish (nonJewish) artists, a father and son team.

Here is the photograph I took of the mezuzah at the entrance of the Polin museum:

It is a unique mezuzah. To my knowledge, it is the only mezuzah in the world made of brick. The brick from which it was fashioned was excavated from the foundation of an apartment building that sat atop the ruins of the old Jewish quarter of Warsaw. (See (https://chidusz.com/barbara-kirshenblatt-gimblett-how-jewish-is-the-jewish-museum-of-the-history-of-polish-jews-polin/) Other bricks found while digging the museum’s foundation have also been fashioned into mezuzahs and placed at the entrances of the museum’s exhibition halls. According to the artists, the design is based on the writings of Hillel Seidman, who wrote that when the Messiah comes, he will stand on the corner of Gesia and Nalewki streets in Warsaw. (https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/.premium-warsaw-museum-selects-mezuzah-1.5224170) Seidman was a rabbi and chief archivist of the Warsaw Kehillah whose diaries of his time in the ghetto were published after the war. (See http://www.toviapreschel.com/dr-hillel-seidman-passes-away/)

There are not many other mezuzahs in Poland today–they, along with their owners are gone–but like much of prewar Jewish life in Poland, vague traces await to be discovered. An organization named “MI Polin,” which means “from Poland,” aims to do just that. (Their web site is at https://www.mipolin.pl/) It was founded by two young Polish artists, Helena Czernek and Alexander Prugar. Like many other Poles engaged in exploring the Polish Jewish past, neither is Jewish, at least as defined by Jewish law (having a Jewish mother), though Helena’s grandfather was Jewish and they are both in the process of converting to Judaism.

Their mission is to discover the traces of prewar mezuzahs and to turn these traces into actual mezuzahs. Here is what one of these traces looks like, one they found in Krakow, that spurred their mission:

Czernek and Prugar travel around the country in search of these traces. In the town of Ostroleka, for instance, they found a home with the traces of 10 mezuzahs.  (https://jewishweek.timesofisrael.com/tracing-polands-past-and-its-future/) Their promotional video shows them hunting  mezuzah traces and how they transform these traces into mezuzahs.

Here are two examples of the mezuzahs they have cast from traces:

“For each cast they make, Czernek and Prugar send information about it to a local museum or municipal office to educate local residents about the Jewish legacy in their particular town and to increase the likelihood that more mezuzah traces can be found. They also organize training workshops to teach tour guides how to locate former Jewish sites around Poland.” (https://www.jta.org/2015/10/15/news-opinion/world/judaica-studio-mi-polin-casts-polish-jewish-history-in-bronze)

The way that the work of the artists who created the Polin Museum mezuzah and of Czernek and Prugar forge tangible links between past and present is, in equal measure, both inspiring and profoundly depressing. Traces are all that is left of the lives of my Polish ancestors’ generation. I’m not even certain whether even a mezuzah trace can be found in my grandfather’s home town of Zambrow, a town once home to 5,000 Jews. All we can do, 75 years after the Holocaust, is to make what meaning we can, for ourselves and the future, from the meager remnants of the past.