Among our stops in my grandfather’s ancestral home town of Zambrow was the Jewish cemetery. I knew I would not find any graves of my ancestors as the cemetery has already been digitized, and no names of my ancestors appeared. I learned from my aunt, the last living connection I have between my generation and …
Remnant of a cemetery: Lomza
Lomza (pronounced in Polish Womsza) was our first stop on the day that we visited Zambrow. Lomza is located about 15 miles north of Zambrow in the northwest section of Poland, about 30 miles west of Bialystok. Lomza was an important Jewish town in Poland before the war. Jews constituted about half of the population of about …
Somewhat and minimally intact cemeteries: Lublin and Kazimierz Dolny
In a previous post, I began to describe the various types of places where Jews are buried in Poland, since, unfortunately, there are millions of Jews in the ground in Poland and very few walking the streets. As a result, much of my trip in Poland centered around the visiting of Jewish burial places of …
Post Poland traumatic syndrome
Last night my wife and I left Poland. We flew from the airport in Warsaw to Israel. We had a final dinner together with our incredible guide. By the end of the trip, the experiences of the trauma of the past had fully embedded themselves in me. You cannot go to death camps and mass …
Psalm 83: A lament
In future posts, I will try to describe other Jewish cemeteries I saw in Poland. These are unlike the Lodz cemetery, and they are painful to recall and describe. Psalm 83, a cry from the heart that captures better than anything I could write about what I bore witness to, seems an appropriate preface: The …
One kind of Jewish cemetery: The Lodz Cemetery
Millions of Jews lived in Poland and millions are buried here. Auschwitz-Berkenau can be considered the largest Jewish cemetery in the world. Over a million Jews were killed there. This number is so large it defies comprehension. After my travels of the last two days, however, I have seen many other places were Jews are …
Random and inadequate thoughts on Auschwitz
I hope these thoughts will help others who plan to visit Auschwitz: 1) There is no one Auschwitz. There is Auschwitz 1 and Auschwitz 2. Make sure you give yourselves enough time to visit each. By the time we finished with Auschwitz 1, we were already worn out. 2) Go with a tour guide. We …
On the way to Auschwitz
Yesterday I went to Auschwitz. I didn’t sleep too well the night before. I knew I’d be overwhelmed. Sleeping pills helped a little. How do you prepare yourself emotionally to visit a place where over a million people were murdered? I’ve read many books about the Holocaust. I know the story. But that’s not the …
Transport to Auschwitz
We have divided our stay in Poland into two parts. The first part my wife and I are traveling on our own, first Warsaw, then Krakow, where we now are, and then Lodz. In the second part, we have hired a guide, who we met briefly in Warsaw, to take us by car to my …
To distinguish between dark and light
I spent today observing the Sabbath in Krakow. I prayed in the morning at the Kupa Synagogue, which was built in 1643, and located in the Kazimierz section of the city, where the Jews of Krakow resided for hundreds of years. There were about 100 men at the service (more upstairs in the women’s section). …