Friday Around Krakow

Today we walked in the footsteps of the Jews of Krakow. After waking up, davening, eating breakfast, and making lunches at our hotel, our two educator groups began walking tours of the Kazimierz neighborhood where our hotel is located. Once upon a time this neighborhood was an island in the Vistula river, set aside as a ghetto for Jews before Venice had even invented the word. Our Shoah associations with the word ‘ghetto’ may make the walls that once encircled this Jewish neighborhood seem like a negative thing, but for the Jews who lived here 500 years ago, the walls were a sign of protection. King Kazimierz (Casmir) The Great welcomed the Jews in after they were exiled from lands to the west, but here they would be safe. Here they became to a certain extent self governing. And here the Jews would prosper. Jewish life in Krakow over the centuries was not without its ups and downs. For the most part, though, the community grew and grew, and our walking tour itinerary enabled us to see what Jewish life here was like, including the many impressive synagogues that the community left behind. As we walked through streets with names like ‘Ester’ and ‘Isaac,’ we were also walking through centuries of Jewish civilization, stopping in to study a page of Shulchan Aruch in the synagogue of its Ashkenazi co-author, Rabbi Moshe Isserles, and telling the story of Yossele, the Holy Miser of Krakow in the adjacent cemetery. Inevitably, our walk through time brought us to 1939 when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. Year by year the Germans deprived Jews here of their rights, established a ghetto (with all of its accurate negative connotations) in the Podgorze neighborhood, and eventually liquidated that ghetto, murdering many of Krakow Jews on the spot, deporting others to death camps, and sending the “lucky” few to the Plaszow Labor Camp on the edge of the city. We visited the site of the ghetto, recognizing not only its victims but also the bravery of its underground Jewish fighters, before making our way to Plaszow. Once there we walked the grounds where the labor camp once stood, sharing testimony from its survivors, including Bernard Offen, who we are set to meet tomorrow. The Nazis disassembled the camp and destroyed any evidence they could before they retreated, but the grounds remain a memorial to all those who were made to be slave laborers here, as well as those who were murdered here outright. We finished our time in Plaszow with a brief Tekes to remember its victims, before returning to the hotel to prepare for Shabbat, which is starting momentarily. Shabbat shalom for now, looking forward to sharing more in the week to come,