Saying Good-Bye to Poland

On the final evening of the Lubiner Reunion, participants, our hosts and members of the Lublin and Warsaw communities filled the historic Chachmei Lublin Yeshiva Synagogue for a beautiful Shabbat service and concert performed by KAIROS - Men's Vocal Ensemble.  

Reunion closing ceremony and Shabbat dinner 

The Chachmei Lublin Yeshiva Synagogue, once an important center of Jewish Life in Lublin, reopened in 2007 after the Polish government returned the building to the Jewish community. Confiscated by the Germans during the occupation, the Chachmei Lublin Yeshiva later became a medical school. Along with the synagogue, it now houses the Hotel Ilan with a Kosher restaurant, conference center, Jewish Community offices, Jewish museum and mikveh. 

Following services, we dined al fresco in front of the Ilan Hotel and toasted to this magical week of learning and friendship. Shabbat blessings were led by the rabbi and members of Jewish Community of Warsaw, who maintain the synagogue along with two others in Warsaw. 

Selfie with Jon and Jackie

We said good-bye to fellow Lubliners, including those who shared their family stories: Judith Maier and Neta Żytomirska-Avidar from Israel and Dan Oren and Leora Tec from the U.S. Others recorded their memories in oral histories for Grodzka Gate Theater. Some Lublin survivors and descendants have written books about their experiences. Nechama Tec's poignant memoir tells of her family's survival during the war, Dry Tears; The Story of a Lost Childhood. Anna Sidor wrote the delightful book, The Family with Two Front Doors, about her grandmother's large Jewish family in the 1920s.

I am forever grateful to reunion organizers, Leora Tec, Bridge to Poland, Agata Radkowska-Parka, Rootka Tours, Joseph Dakar and the Kol Lublin organization in Israel, Tomasz Pietrasiewicz and Monika Tarajko at Grodzka Gate Theater NN, especially the Lublin-Antwerp project team, Małgorzata Miłkowska, Tadeusz Przystojecki and Jackie Schwarz for finding me in the first place. With their passion and diligent research more names will be added to the Gates of Memory project and more Lubliners will hear our stories. שלום

“I would like to give my deepest thanks to all those who accepted the invitation of the “Grodzka Gate – NN Theatre” Centre and took part in the Lubliner Reunion. For most of you, participating in the event meant embarking on a long and tiring journey from various locations of the world. 

I am certain that some of you had doubts whether to come to Lublin. After all, it is so very much linked with the memory of the tragic death of your relatives and the anti-Semitism of their Polish neighbours. I am grateful that you have decided to visit us in spite of your many fears. I hope that after the time you have spent in Lublin each and every one of you will be able to say – it was worth it!

I would like you all to know that Lublin remembers the Jewish inhabitants who, in a sense, stayed here forever. Our role in the Grodzka Gate is to be the wardens of their memory.

May the Gate become for you, who have been dispersed all over the world, the light always showing the way back to the place bound with your family history for so many decades. We will always be here, waiting for you.

I hope to see you back in Lublin soon.”

Tomasz Pietrasiewicz

After the War

Marker representing western boundary of Lublin's Ghetto, 1944

I was excited about the first day of the Lubliner Reunion and left the hotel in a hurry. On my way to the Royal Palace, I didn’t notice the tiles on the sidewalk along Lubartowska Street designating the boundary of the Jewish ghetto. When crossing the busy transit station, I didn’t know the area was once the heart of the Jewish quarter crowded with people, buildings, markets and synagogues. In short, I didn’t know how much Jewish history and culture in Lublin had been erased.

By 1944, when the Russian army liberated Lublin and Majdanek extermination camp, most of Lublin’s 42,000 Jewish residents had been murdered and the city’s vibrant Jewish quarter destroyed. Of those who fled to the Soviet Union during the war, some returned only to find they had no family and no home.

Transit station once the heart of Lublin's Jewish quarter

Holocaust survivors attempted to create a new community in Lublin. Chewra Nosim, the only pre-war synagogue remaining after the war, was reorganized. A Yiddish newspaper began, and an elementary school for Jewish children operated for a few years. Several organizations were also created to help resettle Jewish survivors. But violence against Jews continued, including the Kielce pogrom in 1946, where 42 Jewish men, women and children were slaughtered by their neighbors.

poet Jacob Glatstein was born and raised in Lublin

By 1950, the majority of Poland’s Jews emigrated to Israel, the United States, Western Europe, Mexico, South America and Australia. A few hundred continued to live in the Lublin District until 1968, when many left after a series of anti-semitic events. What started as a student protest against the communist government in Warsaw, escalated and led to the expulsion of thousands of Jewish citizens of Poland.

Under Russian occupation from 1944 to 1989, discussion of Jewish genocide was mostly taboo in Poland. Young people were taught that those who died in the camps were Poles or came from “many different countries,” and were not identified as Jews. Extermination camp memorials and museums, established after the war, at Majdanek, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka were to “commemorate Polish and international martyrdom.” Their displays showed atrocities committed by Nazi Germany in Poland, with little mention of the devastation to the Jewish population. Finally, in 2013, the Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Israel prepared a permanent exhibition entitled Shoah, at Auschwitz-Birkenau, to clearly define the Holocaust and the murder of the Jewish people. 

In the meantime, signs of interest in Jewish life began in the 1980s as the communist government weakened. Some young Poles discovered their Jewish roots and gathered in a small network of synagogues, schools and summer camps. Academic Jewish studies programs were established at Warsaw University and the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. Also, the Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow began in 1988, celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. In addition, the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, the Polin Museum, opened on the site of the Warsaw Ghetto in 2013. 

From the wall at Grodzka Gate Theater NN, Lublin

In the 1990s Grodzka Gate Theater NN in Lublin established The Memory Gate program dedicated to recovering the memory of Polish-Jewish Lublin. As part of that program, researchers have gathered photos, articles, documents and testimonies about the individual lives of Jewish residents and created programs to share with students and visitors. Their outreach to Holocaust survivors and descendants of Jewish Lubliners led to the organization of the first reunion in 2017, which I attended.

I am grateful to the folks at Grodzka Gate for the opportunity to experience this journey into the past. While in Poland, I visited a forest where 30,000 people were shot and buried. I saw the mass graves of 500,000 Jewish victims and the death camps where they were murdered. I visited museums, memorials and cultural centers dedicated to the memory of those who perished. I climbed the stairs to the apartment where my family could not return. And, I observed the city of Lublin that grew without us. 

The Polish people are the keepers of this history. We can only hope to continue to learn from the truth.

In the United States

Sol Baum at barber shop in 1920s (second from right)

In 1922, my grandmother, Pola, and two young children reunited with Sol in Kansas City, Missouri. They settled into an apartment on Independence Avenue where other Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe lived. It was also where my grandfather and his brother Sam opened a barber shop.

By 1924, my mother, Mary, was born and the growing family moved to a small home at 24th and College Avenue. Pola enjoyed weekly card games with a close circle of friends, including my paternal grandparents, Mary and Ben Zenitsky. Cousin Marcia often tagged along and remembered Pola as fun-loving and friendly. She spoke English with a thick accent and told jokes in Yiddish so the kids couldn't understand. 

Eventually, my grandfather moved his shop to the National Garage Building at 11th & McGee in downtown Kansas City. In spite of the Great Depression, the family lived comfortably and adapted to life in America. Sol bought his first car in 1935. They became grandparents. Pola became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1941. Their last name was shortened from Kirszenbaum to Baum.

Pola and Sol with children and spouses in 1939

As the country headed toward war, Sol's health deteriorated. He died in April, 1943 at the age of 44. Pola saw the birth of three more grandchildren before passing away in 1950.

I wish I knew more about their lives and asked more questions about what it was like for them during the war. I hope Pola and Sol lived the lives they hoped for in the United States—owning a business and a home, having a family and making the choice to become citizens. Thankfully, their decision to leave Lublin likely saved their lives, yet, the heartache of leaving family behind and losing them all, must have taken its toll.

Giving Them a Face and a Name

Moise Krymholc

In 1937, Moise Krimholc celebrated his Bar Mitzvah and sent this photo to his aunt, my grandmother, in Kansas City. Moise was the eldest son of Chaim and Rachel, Pola's brother and sister-in-law, who immigrated to Antwerp from Lublin in the 1920s.

Then, in 1941, my grandmother received this letter from Chaim.

Dear Sister, Brother-in-Law and Children; 

It was already a year since I wrote you … For a year and a half I was in Frankfurt (hiding place) and I can’t go back home. My son does housework. I want to tell you what kind of life and what we have lost already. I put on a costume and worked as a waitress. I’m in a very bad situation and you are the only one I can write to. Acquaintances help us! They send out letters.

February 8, 1941, St. Affrique, France

… I hope you can help us in some way. I'm writing you the address. I hope it doesn’t cost much. Thank you very much. My life depends on you. I don’t hear anything from parents. How is everyone? Please send me an answer at this address: Chaim Krymholc, Av. Dr. Blancard, Restaurant St. Victor, St. Affrique Aveyron, France

Dear Pola. My wife and children are sending regards. 


Last year, researchers with the Lublin-Antwerp project at Grodzka Gate Theater found evidence of the capture and deportation of the Krymholc family soon after this letter was written. Moise, his brother, sister and parents were sent to Rivesaltes Transit Camp and to Drancy Transit Camp. In September 1942, they were transported to Auschwitz where they were murdered.




Moise's Bar Mitzvah photo was added to the Krymholz Family Archive at Grodzka Gate Theater NN. In addition, Antwerp-based researcher, Jackie Schwarz, discovered another photo of an older Moise among the immigrant information at the Kazerne Dossin archives in Brussels.

Researchers from Grodzka Gate Theater and memorial centers around the world including Kazerne Dossin, Yad Vashem, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial and Museum, Memorial de la Shoah in Paris continue to identify the names and faces of the murdered so we can remember their lives and deny the Nazis their goal to exterminate all Jews, destroy all records and be erased from memory. Although these images are frozen in time, we remember the people in them who celebrated Bar Mitzvahs and the special moments in their lives.

 “I list names of the murdered, because maybe it is the only gravestone they will get, because there is no one left of their families who would mourn their premature deaths.”

~Ida Glickstein, a Holocaust survivor, "Lublin. 43 thousand" project, Grodzka Gate Theater NN 

How They Lived

Following WWI, Polish independence came with heavy war-damage and a dysfunctional economy. Conflicts continued along the newly established eastern border. It was during this time my grandfather, Szol, left Lublin for Antwerp and soon joined his older brother, Sam, in the United States. It was said he immigrated to avoid serving in the military. Pola and her two young children followed my grandfather to Antwerp and then to the United States in 1922.

Szol Kirzenbaum, bottom left, coming to America

Pola, David and Ita's passport photo

Hairdressers shop, Kozia 4, in 1937

In Lublin, my great grandparents Sura Matele and Abram, and their nine other children, Sonya, Mania, Lola, Jacob, Motel, Srulek, Hershal, Moshe and Chaim, lived in Old Town, Rynek 14, on the edge of the Jewish District. My great grandfather was a tailor. Jacob owned a hairdressers shop at Kozia 4 in Lublin.

With their fashionable attire and my mother's recollections, I presume the Krymholc family lived as a modern Jewish family. They likely attended one of twelve synagogues in Lublin and were observant of the sabbath and religious holidays.

The Jewish cultural scene was vibrant in Poland before WWII. Fifteen Jewish schools were open in Lublin. The first Jewish newspaper in Lublin was published in 1916. The first Jewish library opened in 1918. Amateur theatre developed. Yiddish theater flourished.


Jews were active in Lublin's political scene and had their own representation in the town council. The most prominent groups were Zionists, the national movement for the re-establishment of Israel as the Jewish homeland. A Jewish trade union and socialist party, the Bund, was established in Lublin in 1916. In the late 1930s, Bund worked to improve the difficult economic situation, rising unemployment and the poorer Jewish society. Bund activists built the I.L. Peretz’s Centre of Jewish Culture in the late 1930s including a school, library, theatre and cinema. The opening ceremony was supposed to take place on the 1st of September 1939, the day Germany invaded Poland.

Although there was a thriving social and cultural Jewish community in Lublin before WWII, economic conditions continued to deteriorate. Jews were not allowed to work for the government and their shops and businesses were targets of anti-Jewish boycotts. With continued exclusion from Polish society and an increase of violent attacks, perilous conditions existed for Lublin's Jews before the Second World War.

Sonya

Lola

Monya

Moshe, Jacob, Motel, Chaim, Hershal, Srulek, with their father, Abram

Abram and Sura Matele

The Memory Trail

Zamkowy Square transformed in 1954 as 'People's Square' 

Reunion participants were invited to follow the Memory Trail, the path leading Jews to a railway platform for deportation to Belzec death camp in 1942. We met at Zamkowy Square, a large parking lot at the base of Royal Castle hill, once the heart of the Jewish district in Lublin.

For centuries, shops and houses lined Szeroka Street, the main road crossing Zamkowy Square. At 28 Szeroka Street, stood the house of Yaakov Yitzhak Ha-Levi Horowitz, the "Seer of Lublin," the famous spiritual leader and the co-founder of Chasidism in Poland. Maharshal synagogue, the largest of Lublin's eleven synagogues stood on Jateczna Street.

Mural depicting Jewish life in Lublin

On the trail, we saw a mural alongside the Czechówka River. The 100 meter mural is a collage of photographs from the 1930s showing people strolling along the street and shops with Polish and Yiddish signs on the walls.

Szeroka Street

In March 1941, Nazis created a ghetto in the Jewish district to gather Jews into one part of town. Operation Reinhard, the planned extermination of Jews, began with the liquidation of the ghetto. From March 17 to April 14, 1942, 28,000 Lublin Jews were deported to Belzec. After the liquidation of the ghetto, the buildings were demolished. Few remnants of the Jewish district exist today. A small monument with a map of the former Jewish district sits near the steps of the Royal Castle.

Wiesława Majczak with Tomasz Pietrasiewicz of GG Theatre

We stopped along the trail to hear the account of Wiesława Majczak, a Polish woman who witnessed the march from her apartment window as a child.

“I saw the route of the Jewish people, walking to the platform at the slaughterhouse. The crowd kind of streamed by. It wasn't that they just walked past – they walked, walked and walked. There was this clatter – that's how I remember the sound. The clatter of shoes on the cobblestone. And talking, and then also the shooting.

Umschlagplatz Memorial Site

“I watched it all from the second floor, so it seemed to me I could see heads and bundles only. It was as if the cobbled stones went by, the heads round and the bundles round. It was as if the street walked by, the cobblestone itself.”
Wiesława Majczak – the Account of a Historical Witness

Along the 4.5 km Memory Trail are 21 concrete slabs inscribed with a description of the death march including the quote from Wiesława Majczak's oral history. The route culminates at the railway platform and the Umschlagplatz Memorial Site.


The Memory Trail and Umschlagplatz Memorial are projects initiated by Grodzka Gate – NN Theatre Centre, with support from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage and the Lublin City Council.