The Jewish cemeteries of Lublin

As I've been working on these posts I've learned a great deal about what was once referred to as the "Jerusalem of Poland," or "Jewish Oxford"--aka Lublin.  This city has a ghostly legacy marked here and there with placards explaining its Jewish past.

One of the online sites I visited (The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe)  noted that by 1939 Lublin's population was made up of 31%, or 38,000, Jews.  This figure has been larger and smaller at different points in its history, but the bottom line is that Jews had a significant presence in Lublin for hundreds of years.  As I mentioned in the post on the Yeshiva/Hotel, the Jewish population of the city today is considerably smaller and harder to estimate.  YIVO says there were just 50 Jews in Lublin in 2000, but a women we met from Jagiellonian University suggested there might be 120 Jews in the community today.  For reasons we can well understand, given what happened during the Holocaust, they are not very public people.

One of the primary objectives of this trip was to tend to a small number of Jewish cemeteries in Poland.  The first of the cemeteries we were asked to work on was the so-called "new" cemetery, just a few city blocks from Hotel Ilan (#1 on the map below).

 The caretaker of the hotel (and by extension the synagogue which is on the third floor of the hotel) is also the caretaker of the two cemeteries we were assigned. I think it is unfair to label these cemeteries as neglected.  This one gentleman has so much to do I think it seems more accurate to suggest that the task of upkeep is overwhelming.  Groups like ours can offer minor assistance.  If enough groups participate this man's burden is lessened, but only somewhat.

The caretaker loaded up his vehicle with tools and we "geared up" with the gardening gloves, work clothes, tools, bug spray and sunscreen we had been asked to bring.  Like a ninny, I forgot gloves, but my colleagues were willing to share.

According to the Virtual Jewish Library, the "new" cemetery on Waleczynch Street, "was established in 1829 and was seriously damaged during the Holocaust. It is still used today by the small Jewish community and has a number of Holocaust memorials."

The Sara and Manfred Frenkel Foundation financed the renovation of the cemetery, which was completed in 1991. According to a site called "Virtual Shtetl", "The area was walled in

and a building holding a memorial room was erected, which is connected with a little synagogue commemorating its founders."

The Nazis desecrated this cemetery during World War II, using some of the tombstones to form the pathways of the Majdanek extermination camp, just outside the city of Lublin.  Surprisingly, one of the headstones remaining was that of famed Rabbi Yehuda Meir Szapiro, the founder of Yeshiva Chachmei Lublin.  Although his remains have been moved to Jerusalem, his ohel (a structure built over the graves of Rebbes, prophets and tzadikim) can be seen at this cemetery.

This wall is a fragment from the original cemetery and sits in front of a mass grave of victims of the Nazis.

This monument marks the mass grave of over 100 children from the Lublin Jewish Orphanage on Leczynska Street and residents from the Jewish Shelter for the Elderly murdered by the Nazis on April 24, 1942.  In 1947 their remains were re-interned here from the place of their execution.

 

Our job was focused on a few gravesites.

The goal was to weed the beds and sweep the sidewalks.  We managed quite well.

The younger members of our crew trimmed branches and wrestled the slimey snails.

There's something terribly disconcerting about the "pop" of stepping on one of these critters (not that we wanted to).

We worked at the "New" cemetery for less than two hours, and were then taken by mini bus to the "Old" cemetery.  This cemetery dates back to the early 16th century and now has the distinction of being the oldest Jewish extant cemetery in Poland and the oldest in situ Jewish gravestone in Poland, the ohel of Talmudic scholar Ya‘akov Kopelman (d. 1541).

One of the most interesting focal points in this cemetery is a small matzeva/gravestone with a unicorn and shot through with a missile.

Between the "old" and the "new", the "old" cemetery looked much the worse for wear.

 

The caretaker assigned the younger members of our crew (young men ranging in age from 17 to 48) the task of cutting branches and brush.  The "elders" among us swept the sidewalk in front of the cemetery.

This stretch of block was what I would gauge to be about four city blocks in the U.S.  At the far end was a memorial to the Poles who had been murdered by the Nazis.

A sign nearby says "This place hallowed by the blood of Poles Prisoners of Lublin Castle executed by the Nazis on 23 December 1939."

Thinking about the significance of these sites, one has to recall the Jews who lived in this community dating back to the 14th century.  Seven hundred years of Jewish history were all but destroyed.  These artifactual wisps located here and there throughout the area underscore both the fragility and the brutality of human existence.  Why?  Words fail...

Lublin: Yeshiva and the ghost of a Jewish community

Lublin's Hotel Ilan was our home for three days. 

This majestic building was once an internationally regarded yeshiva in Poland, Chachmei Lublin Yeshiva.  This Yeshiva, a Talmudic academy, was a grand project first envisioned in 1923 at a Viennese conference.  It took six years to complete this building and its inauguration was a major event attracting tens of thousands of participants.  All of this background is to say that Lublin had been a major center of Jewish learning, not just in Poland, but all over the world.

The Jewish Virtual Library reports that Jews came to live in Lublin early in the 14th century and established a separate Jewish community within the city by the mid-16th century.  A 17th century pogram, led by Muscovite and Cossack armies burned down the Jewish quarter and murdered more than 2000 people.  The Jewish community rebounded, and by the 18th century Lublin had become a Hasidic center, but the Jews lived in a district apart from the rest of the city.

The Jewish community reached over 24,000 people by the end of the 19th century.  There was an extensive range of business, political and cultural Jewish institutions active in the city of Lublin and then, the Germans occupied the city in September of 1939.  Eventually, the Nazis established two ghettos in Lublin, before deporting them to Belzec or "murder[ing them] on the way in nearby forests".

Wikipedia reports, the Nazis "stripped the interior and burned the vast library in the town square. The cries of the Jews watching their yeshiva and holy books burn to the ground were so loud that the
Germans called for the army band to come and stifle their cries of desperation. The building became the regional headquarters of the German Military Police."

Following the war, the building was used by the Medical University of Lublin.  It wasn't returned to the Jewish community until 2003, and the synagogue in the building was reopened in 2007.  I had asked about the possibility of attending services but we learned that the Jewish community of Lublin is currently quite small and not terribly interested in notoreity.  Regardless, we did get the chance to tour the synagogue on the third floor of the hotel.

The classroom features benches:

but not much more.  The library, which once contained some 13,000 volumes, is considerably smaller.


There are a number of photographs commemorating the re-opening of the synagogue as a religious center.

There are also photos from the the brief time the yeshiva was functioning.

The facility now boasts 44 guest rooms,

health club, sauna, a meeting/conference room, restaurant and bar.  The  four star hotel is a comfortable walk's distance from the old city and, more importantly for our purposes, the old and new Jewish cemeteries.

Warsaw, part II

Two and a half months following the brave and desperate efforts of Jewish fighters on August 1, 1943 the Warsaw Uprising began.  By 1944, the Poles had endured five years of German occupation.

Although Polish "insurgents" (a strange word to describe those who were defending their homeland) numbered 40,000 (including 4,000 women), they were grossly out-weaponed by the Germans with their tanks, planes and artillery.  One of the goals of the uprising was to reestablish Polish control of Warsaw before the Red Army had a chance to assume control.  The Polish Home Army, however, attempted to communicate with them, but Stalin had instructed Soviet troops to halt, thereby allowing the effort to be crushed--an exercise in deadly cynicism.  Stalin's goal was obviously to take control over the area.  All tolled, 85% of the city of Warsaw lay in ruins by January 1945.  The death toll exceeded 200,000.  Warsaw's war story is beyond horrific.

The city rebuilt, both under the Soviets, and in the post-Soviet era as well.  The monument pictured above in the description of the Warsaw Uprising is located near Poland's Supreme Court Building.  These "ladies" were holding up the other side of the building.

We soon discovered that we were on our way to the old town of Warsaw.

According to Warsaw Tourist sites, almost 90% of the Old Town Square had been destroyed during the Warsaw Uprising.  The rebuilding effort was so "painstakingly faithful" that it became the only reconstructed site on UNESCO's World Heritage sites.

We had some free time to wander at this point, so a few of us headed to the Vistula River.

My friend is an art historian, so she was drawn to the public art we encountered along the way.

Unfortunately, we also encountered ugly graffiti.

Once our free time had come to an end, we were back on the bus, headed to Lublin, 106 miles southeast of Warsaw.

The city of Warsaw contains so many sites of note and interest for students of the Holocaust, World War II and European history. It's a culturally rich city, one I feel compelled to re-visit.

Finishing our whirlwind tour of Warsaw, part I

On our second day in Poland we were told to eat our breakfast, pack and check out by 8:45.  Being the good Girl Scout I am,  I complied.  I had a really hard time sleeping after traveling for 20 hours, staying up to walk around Warsaw and then having a group dinner.  Before going to bed the previous evening, I finished up the grading which had been submitted, but  I was falling asleep at the keyboard.  I made it through and headed for bed by midnight (after about 35 hours without sleep).  I fell asleep for a short time, and woke up to a pitch black sky.  I looked out the window and saw patrons leaving the bars, so it must have been around 2.  I  slept for another two hours or so, and then I was awake.  Fortunately, I had plenty to keep me busy.  I'm amazed how productive I was in the face of this fatigue.

After breakfast, we loaded up in our Mercedes mini bus. The driver seemed to run out of room after only packing about five bags, yet there were 14 in our group (15 including Henryk, the driver).  We were all standing around tsk, tsking, when we saw him do something pretty miraculous.  Lo and behold he had a detachable luggage compartment which connected to the rear of the mini bus.  He secured this thing with bolts and pins.

It's a fairly straightforward idea, but I'd never seen it.


Our tour on this particular morning concentrated on the Warsaw ghetto.  While our intrepid group of seven had explored some aspects of the ghetto the previous day, our wonderful guide, Agnieska, was able to give us some new perspectives.  We started our morning bus tour with a stop at a lovely park which had been inside the ghetto.

All Saints Church on one side of the square is said to have "served the Christian Jews who lived within the Ghetto wall."  I'm assuming this refers to Jews who had converted to Christianity, but who were still deemed Jewish by the Nazis.  Additionally, the parish priest from All Saints is credited with housing Jews in the parish rectory and assisting some Jews to escape.

Across the street from the park is the only surviving tenement building from the Ghetto times.

The images on the facade are photos of Jewish people from Warsaw before the war.  The building itself is a fragile fragment; it is literally falling apart. It is a haunting display of ghosts from a bygone time.  The Warsaw Tour site from Judaica says:  "It is one of the few fragments of  ‘Jewish Warsaw’ in which the climate of the old Jewish quarter is revived during the Festival of Jewish Culture – [Issac Bashevis Singer’s Warsaw]."

From there we headed over to the last remaining pre-war synagogue in Warsaw, the Nożyk Synagogue.

Although services were still held in 1941, toward the end of that year the Nazis used the building as stables and a depot.  The building was returned to religious use after the war, but it was not until 1977 that serious renovations began, ending in 1983.

According to the Jewish Virtual Library, "Warsaw’s pre-war Jewish population in 1939 was 393,950 Jews, approximately one-third [30%] of the city's total population" and over 300 synagogues.  That represented about one tenth of Poland's Jewish population, estimated to be 3,474,000. Only 300,000 Polish Jews survived the war.  Unfortunately, we were not able to enter the synagogue.

We walked behind the synagogue to find other remnants of the Warsaw ghetto. This is a piece of the ghetto wall which has been preserved.

An 93 year old gentleman living about three housing units from the wall, has made a point of greeting visitors to tell his story about the ghetto wall.

Part of his work has involved maintaining a narrow ledge depicting where the wall extended within this neighborhood. People from all over the world come by to see this wall and when he's available, he makes a point of talking to them (apparently to his neighbors' chagrin).

The gentleman has compiled six volumes of messages from visitors expressing thanks for his work in preserving this piece of the wall.  I extended my hand to thank him for telling us his story, but he wanted kisses.  Soon, he was getting kisses from all the women in our group, and at least one of the men.  Our guide tells us he doesn't always remember her, but we were glad to have spent the time with him.

Our next stop was at the site of the bridge which joined the small ghetto to the large ghetto.

This was the bridge that was featured in The Pianist.  There's a panel on this square which reports that the ghetto was closed off from the rest of the city on November 16, 1940.  It was originally 307 hectares and was populated by 300,000 Jews from Warsaw, along with 90,000 from elsewhere. Our guide talked about how  the ghetto became increasingly compressed, squeezing more and more Jews in to less and less space--starting with the closing of the small ghetto and relocation of those people into the large ghetto.  Nearly 100,000 died of hunger, and 300,000 were sent to their deaths in the gas chambers of Treblinka.

The Warsaw Ghetto uprising included 750 fighters led by 24 year old Mordechai Anielewicz.  It began 19 April 1943 with only 9 rifles, 59 pistols and a couple of grenades. Fighting continued until mid-May when Mila 18, the headquarters of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB), fell.  The Jewish Virtual Library reports that there was intermittent fighting until early June, even though the ghetto had been liquidated by May 16.

I've recently read a few books on the subject:  I recommend a children's book called Run, Boy Run; an adult memoir I recommend is Country of Ash by Edward Reicher.   To be continued..

Izbica

I’m writing this post three days after returning from a two week Holocaust Education Foundation-sponsored trip.  I think I have finally come back to a “normal” sleep pattern (after two days of going to sleep at 8 p.m. and then taking six hour naps), but that’s not a complaint.  The daily schedule of our trip through central Europe was full-to-brimming with powerful encounters with memorials, cemeteries, museums and significant sites.   I valued each and every moment spent learning and experiencing and wouldn’t have traded a single second of activity for sleep.

Of the four cemeteries we visited and cleaned, the one which moved me most was Izbica.   This site was tucked away in a forest clearing, swarming with mosquitoes and overrun with stinging nettles.  

The site seemed to be repelling all visitors, much less grave tenders.  Understanding the sorry history of this place, however, made this task fundamentally important.  

From the reading I’ve done, SS-Hauptscharfuhrer Kurt Engels’ reign of terror seemed to have manifest multiple times, and was exacerbated by the Ukrainian Trawnikis.  Their drunken massacres and mass grave disposals of thousands of innocent lives tell a story of depravity.  

This plaque recounts Izbica's history:  "Izbica was established in 1750 as a settlement for Jewish people removed from the neighboring Tarnogora. For almost two hundred years Jews were the majority of Izbica's citizens, contributing to its economical and cultural development.  In 1921, 93% of the town's citizens were Jewish.  In September 1939 there were 4000 Jews living in Izbica.  In December 1939 occupiers brought to the town 2500 Jews from Lodz and Kolo, and in April 1942 1000 from Czechoslovakia.  By the end of 1942 all the Izbica Jews were murdered by the German Nazis. 4000 people were shot at the Izbica Jewish cemetery, and all the others were killed at the Belzec or Sorbibor death camps."

The story of Izbica is yet one more illustration of the terrors inflicted by the Nazis and their willing minions on the Jews of Europe.  Before this trip, I had no knowledge of this chapter of the Holocaust.  

After finishing our grave cleaning task, our little group took the opportunity to hold a personal service to mark the yahrzeit of our colleague’s son.  Those of us who are Jewish explained to our comrades the meaning of the Kaddish and then recited it.  

We told the story of Hannah Szenes who, after joining with British forces, parachuted behind enemy lines in an effort to  be of service to fellow Hungarian Jews.

Our service concluded with singing her poem “Eli, eli”.  It seemed only fitting to do so, as June 7 (the day we were at Izbica) marked the day she crossed the border into Hungary where she was caught and tortured before being executed by firing squad five months later, November 7, 1944.

Our day of work ended with bites and stings and indelible memories.

A truly magical "Magic Flute"

Many years ago I remember hearing actor Tony Randall (of TV's "Odd Couple") talk about Mozart.

He said something to the effect of "Most people either love Mozart or hate him."  Well...I love him.  I have always loved Mozart. I love Mozart's elegance; I love the symmetry of his work. I loved playing his easiest pieces when I was taking piano lessons as a girl and I yearned to play his more sophisticated works, but they were "Not in my wheelhouse" as folks say these days (it might have helped if I had practiced more).  I was never a very good pianist, and more's the pity.  As for singing his operas, that just was never going to happen for me, I'm indeed quite limited.  Regardless, I have loved those operas and loved going to see them in production. When I was working on my dissertation on Texaco's support of the Metropolitan Opera Broadcasts, I happened to be doing part of my research at the Metropolitan Opera House when they were mounting the famous Chagall production.

One afternoon, I had occasion to walk across the stage in front of those magnificent sets and I have to admit, I thought that was pretty darned special.  Up until recently, I didn't think anything could come close to the sublime quality of the marriage between Mozart and Chagall.


My clever daughter Nina arranged for us to go to a dress rehearsal of the Minnesota Opera's wild and wonderful production of "The Magic Flute".  We got there early to hear the MO's amazing Head of Music, Rob Ainsley, offer insights on The Magic Flute and his "favorite dude of all time", Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Ainsley, who hails from the northeast of England, gave an inspired talk. 

He shared facts from Mozart's life--his virtuosity by age three, his lifelong career as a composer, and the struggles of his last five years.  Deep in dept and sick, Mozart sunk into a terrible depression in the last years of his life, yet he never stopped composing.  And then things changed. He composed a number of amazing pieces, including the final piano concerto in B flat, the clarinet concerto, his last quintet, the Requiem and the Magic Flute.  Ironically, his productivity paid off and he started to climb out of debt, but it didn't save his life.

Ainsley demonstrated some of the motifs of the Magic Flute on the piano--Mozart's use of three note chords, his implementation of the rhythm of the Masonic knock, and his incorporation of the lighthearted tunes of "the people".  As Ainsley played those examples on the piano his facial expressions were priceless, matching them to the mood of the sample he was sharing.  He ended his presentation by featuring singers performing the Papageno/Papagena duet. It's hard to imagine anything more charming and delightful.

Photo of Rob Ainsley and yours truly by Nina R. Graham.

This Magic Flute is a co-production between the L.A. Opera and the Minnesota Opera.  The British Theater company "1927" staged the performance along with the Komische Oper Berlin.  I have never seen anything like it. 

The "set" was a two-dimensional white surface with cut-out doors that reminded me of an advent calendar. This surface became the canvas for 1920s Art Deco influenced animation.  The characters appeared on perches at different levels (as well as on the surface of the stage itself) in Kabuki-esque white face.  Pamina sported a '20s bob and wore a flapper dress.

The Magic Flute 2014 (c) Robert Millard For LA Opera

Sarastro looked like Charlie Chaplin wearing a stove-pipe hat.  Monostatos looked for all the world just like Nosferatu. The real killer, though, was the Queen of the Night as an enamel white  "black widow spider" (also a bit Nosferatu-like).

The Magic Flute 2014 (c) Robert Millard For LA Opera

In addition to the English translation of the lyrics provided in the bar at the top of the "screen" (as is common), the normally spoken dialogue of the "singspiel" appeared as part of the projected animation, along with other animated images.

The Magic Flute 2014 (c) Robert Millard For LA Opera

The characters "moved" in a number of different stylized mannerisms.  Monostatos "walked" an animated dog on a leash across the screen.

The Magic Flute 2014 (c) Robert Millard For LA Opera

Papageno and Pamina "ran", vigorously pumping their arms, while standing behind a "Dutch" door with running legs projected on the front.  Other "movements" took place while the lights went black and the actors scurried behind the white surface and onto their perches.

The animated images were phenomenal "silent" movies filled with creatures--sometimes in black and white, and sometimes in burnished colors.

The Magic Flute 2014 (c) Robert Millard For LA Opera 

The use of animation as set allowed the production designers to realize the most incredible visions of their imaginations.  The coherence of that vision was transporting--it felt as though we were in the roaring twenties watching this fantasy come to life.  One of the great things about the Magic Flute is that it really isn't constrained by time.

The program included an essay by one of the "Three Ladies" who described the tightness of the choreography required to "get it right".  She emphasized the necessity of endless rehearsals attending to the musical cues in order to accomplish this goal.  From what I could tell, the company succeeded.  As we were watching the rehearsal, I perceived one terrifying glitch--Pamina stopped projecting in the second act.  I thought to myself, "This is a disaster" and then I recalled the host for the evening telling us that since this was a dress rehearsal the singers might indeed stop singing in order to preserve their voices for the opening night.  Whew! I was so relieved.

It's such a revelation to experience something like this in live theater.  It gives me faith in humanity somehow to recognize the limitlessness of creativity.

 

Happy Birthday Mr. Bunny! (aka Jacob Petersen-Perlman)

Thirty years ago at this moment I was typing away in the main office of the Communication department at Illinois State University.  It was the first day of spring semester and I wanted to complete the mimeograph stencils of the syllabi for the courses I was assigned to teach.  I had awakened earlier that morning with rather dramatic cramps.  Oh, I thought, I'm experiencing Braxton Hicks contractions--not to worry.

I had a lot to do that day.  I wanted to be ready for the term and needed to get my materials in order.  The problem was, as I sat there typing I started to feel more pains.  After a particularly strong pain, I turned to the secretary and said--just for fun, would you mind timing my pains?  According to my obstetrician, this baby wasn't due for another three weeks or so. 

My husband was living in Iowa City, and there I was in Normal, Illinois.  We had married the previous spring after a 10 year courtship, but our occupations kept us in separate cities and states.  We managed to see each other most weekends, and we had been together for most of the holiday break in the previous few weeks.  Still, it was strange not to share these prenatal months.

I kept typing, cursing when I made mistakes, but we had a handy correction process which I used extensively.  As I typed on the IBM Selectric, I called out pains with greater frequency, so much so that the secretary finally called one of my colleagues who whisked me off to Brokaw Hospital.  My colleague, Dr. Larry Long, stayed with me long enough to ensure I was in the capable hands of the nursing staff and then proceeded to call my husband.  The baby was coming.

The pain wasn't too bad for the first few hours.  It didn't seem real in a way.  It was almost as if I was sitting beside myself watching things unfold.  Within an hour, I was in a room hooked up to some monitors and starting to worry whether or not my husband would be there in time to see this baby come in to the world.

Every now and then, the nurse would peek at the baby's heart monitor and proclaim how rapid the heartbeat was--must be a girl, she said.  That fit with my expectations.  A few weeks earlier I had a dream about my baby.  She was blond, blue-eyed, and most assuredly female.  I remember feeling this sense of recognition.  I knew this child.  She was, after all, a part of me.

The pains starting coming more frequently and my discomfort increased dramatically.  Finally, my husband arrived.  I was so glad he was there.

I was experiencing back labor which, I remember, produced the most incredible pressure.  The doctor soon arrived and started telling me to push.  Honestly, it didn't take that long and then the baby was born. 

We were so surprised to meet our little dark-haired boy.  He was beautiful and perfect.  We cried, we laughed, we rejoiced.  I had never been happier in my life.

Jacob Daniel Petersen-Perlman is a wonderful son.  He has been a source of pride and joy and of course, continued love and happiness.  He has accomplished so much, but there is so much more in store for him.  We are excited to see what will happen next.

All the best to you my darling boy.  I wish you health, happiness and success for this and all the years to come.