Pilgrimage to Poland - Part 10

On our return to Warsaw we took some time to rest from our day’s touring, to prepare for Kabbalat (Evening) Shabbat services at a local synagogue and Shabbat dinner at our hotel.

We were advised at the last minute that we would not be attending the local synagogue; rather Kabbalat Shabbat services would be in the hotel led by one of the guides from a companion group which had combined with our tour group for Shabbat services and dinner.

I was a looking forward to Kabbalat Shabbat services at an actual “working” local synagogue since all the synagogues we had visited during our week-long tour were former synagogues reduced to museums. Apparently, the local synagogue in Warsaw could not accommodate us.

The Kabbalat Service was beautifully conducted by one of the tour guides, but it was quite disappointing that Warsaw did not have a synagogue large enough to accommodate our combined tour groups which totaled substantially less than 100 attendees.

What was even more depressing is to have gone a whole week traveling to Krakow, Lublin and Warsaw, three major cities of Poland without seeing any evidence of viable Jewish life almost 80 years after the Holocaust.

Shabbat’s (Saturday’s) itinerary included a tour of the remains of the Warsaw Ghetto, the Route of Heroes and a stop at the Rapoport Memorial.

Not much remains of the Warsaw Ghetto except for fragments of the wall that separated the Jews from the rest of the city.

Similar to what we discovered in all the cities and towns we visited, the historical Jewish presence in Warsaw is marked by plaques, memorials and museums.

Most prominent, is the 36-foot tall Rapoport Memorial located at the beginning of the Path of Heroes. The monument depicts one of the leaders of the revolt along with several compatriots, despite their wounds, continuing the fight to the bitter end.

As our trip wrapped up, we made plans for dinner and said our final good byes to our traveling companions, some of whom would be going on to Israel and to observe Israeli Memorial Day followed by Israel’s 75th Independence Day Anniversary.

In the short week we were together, we felt the bonds of friendship and connection which the week of common experience had created; and all agreed that are lives were forever changed by what we had observed and felt.

For me, the trip revealed a basic truth that had escaped me; after 80 years, Poland, and I suspect most of Eastern Europe, is quite comfortable with being basically, “Judenrein”, free of a significant Jewish presence. During our entire trip in Poland we did not see any evidence of vibrant or significant Jewish life, nothing compared to pre-World War II communities.

We did see monuments and synagogues converted to museums dedicated to what use to be Jewish life, but no Jewish life to speak of. We visited destroyed and reconstructed cemeteries and graves of past generations of celebrated and ordinary Jews.

We visited the concentration and death camps of Poland, sacred sites where resting Jewish souls of men, women and children, whose lives ended there, still cry out for justice to be meted out for the despicable crimes committed against them, all now converted to secular museums.

The dream of the Third Reich was to annihilate the Jewish people to extinction in Europe. Bringing this dream to realization was aided by the significant help of local populations many of whom collaborated with the Nazis.

Hitler intended to create a museum in Europe to proudly exhibit the extinction of the Jewish people and Judaism as a great accomplishment of the Third Reich which was intended “to last 1,000 years”.

Unfortunately for the Jews and the rest of the world, the monuments, memorials and plaques exhibited across Poland and the rest of Europe have replaced the vibrant Jewish communities that once added so much to the progress, culture and overall benefit to humanity.

Eighty years after the Holocaust and Hitler’s defeat, his dream lives on.

The End

If you wish to comment or respond you can reach me at melpearlman322@gmail.com. Please do so in a rational, thoughtful, respectful and civil manner.

Mel Pearlman holds B.S. & M.S. degrees in physics as well as a J.D. degree and initially came to Florida in 1966 to work on the Gemini and Apollo space programs. He has practiced law in Central Florida since 1972. He has served as president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Orlando; was a charter board member, first vice president and pro-bono legal counsel of the Holocaust Memorial Resource and Education Center of Central Florida, as well as holding many other community leadership positions.