Poland’s ‘hidden Jews’ connect with lost culture in three days of praying, singing and eating
The Associated Press
KRAKOW, Poland: Jacek Kujawa only learned he was Jewish two years ago. He had known about the German great-grandfather who served in Hitler’s army, but his mother’s revelation that the Wehrmacht soldier’s wife was a Polish Jew set him off on a search for her lost world.
This weekend, with a Star of David around his neck and a yarmulke on his shaved head, Kujawa, 23, gathered with dozens of other Poles who, like him, have learned only recently of their Jewish roots and want to reconnect with a culture that nearly vanished in the Holocaust.
“We know we aren’t alone,” Kujawa said on the sidelines of three days of praying, singing, eating — and even more eating — in Krakow’s historic Jewish district, Kazimierz.
The gathering began with the lighting of candles at sundown Friday to welcome in Shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath. It wrapped up Sunday with the launch of a new Polish-Yiddish dictionary, which organizers say is the first since the Holocaust.
The event was set up by Shavei Israel, an organization that has worked for nearly a decade to bring so-called “lost” or “hidden” Jews from around the world back into the fold.
“We just want to keep the connection (to Judaism) alive,” said Michael Freund, chairman of Shavei Israel. “It’s a connection that has survived persecution and repression, and now that the world is opening up so quickly, it’s a connection that in many instances will become endangered.”
“So we need to seize the moment, and to strengthen these people’s sense of connection to the Jewish people.”
Poland was home to nearly 3.5 million Jews before World War II, the largest community in Europe. But the Nazis nearly wiped them out in the ghettos and death camps set up throughout the country after 1939.
During the Cold War, Jews suffered repression and expulsions provoked by the Soviet-influenced communist regime. Many fled, while those who chose to stay often hid their roots, either marrying Roman Catholics and baptizing their children or simply adopting the atheistic ethos of the communist regime.
But since communism fell in 1989, parents and grandparents with enduring memories of their Jewish ancestors have slowly begun passing on the family secret, emboldened by the new tolerance and freedoms that have taken root.
In many cases, it is young Poles like Kujawa who are seeking their Jewish roots, attracted by the culture that is becoming increasingly trendy in cosmopolitan cities such as Krakow and Warsaw.
“My grandmother asked me rhetorically, ‘So the whole family is Catholic and you’re Jewish?’ She can’t understand why I do this but told me to go ahead — just not to be too obvious about it,” said Kujawa, a student of political science who plans to become an officer in the Polish Army.
Each personal story is unique but with common themes: the fear of being exposed as Jewish in a hostile world, the assimilation into the larger Catholic world.
In Kujawa’s case, it was his mother’s maternal grandmother who was Jewish, meaning that he is Jewish under Jewish law, which traces religious status through the mother.
Many other hidden Jews, however, have their roots on their father’s side, and spend years preparing for conversions in order to become “real” Jews. Others keep up looser ties to Poland’s Jewish community, joining youth groups or taking part in cultural events but without strict religious observance.
Iwona Giermala, a 43-year-old interior decorator, believes her mother has Jewish roots but isn’t sure. She has no papers or witnesses to prove it, so she is studying for conversion to satisfy her growing “attraction” to Jewish life.
“I’m finding myself with something that feels mine — but I don’t even know how to explain it,” Giermala said.
During the event in Krakow, about 120 participants prayed in the Kupa synagogue, a richly decorated 17th-century prayer house with colorful paintings of Biblical cities illuminated by a chandelier; they enjoyed drawn-out Sabbath meals of herring, pickles and gefilte fish in a community center, and held discussions in an exhibition hall filled with black and white photographs of Polish Jews before the war.
Amid the revival of Jewish life in this picturesque city about 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the Auschwitz death camp, there are constant reminders of the fraught relations between Jews and their largely Catholic surroundings.
Late Saturday, a group of young Jews with an elderly Orthodox rabbi, Edgar Gluck, encountered a Pole who appeared to be drunk, staggering toward them.
Fearing the rabbi would be attacked, the group encircled him. But the Pole instead broke down in sobs, telling the group in slurred speech that it was the Germans — not the Poles — who carried out the Holocaust.
“It wasn’t the Poles,” he said. “I am so sorry.”