STEVEN MARK DOBBS
Stepping off the plane from America at Krakow Airport and driving to nearby Auschwitz-Birkenau is a transit in extremes, from the most desirable place to the most dreadful spot on the planet. Among the horrors witnessed at the death camp: rooms filled with human hair, eyeglasses and baby shoes; dank cells in which people were packed in and left to die; and the ovens, turning the skies ashen, jammed with human beings who pulsed with life only hours before. Auschwitz was truly hell on earth, and the men who planned and operated it a monstrous sub-species.
Yet I was not traveling to Poland to learn about the Holocaust, but to learn about the rich Jewish civilization that flourished for 1,000 years in Central and Eastern Europe. Most of us know little about the Jewish life, culture and traditions that took root in places like Krakow, where a Jewish intelligentsia flourished alongside the now 600-year old Jagiellonian University, the alma mater of Copernicus. Many of us have a "Jewish background gap" regarding Poland's locus as the dynamic center of the diaspora for centuries, containing more Jewish communities than any other place.
Jewish education typically focuses upon the 19th and 20th century stirrings of Zionism, the American Jewish experience, the Holocaust and the establishment of the state of Israel. But many Jews are unfamiliar with the "middle chapters" of the Jewish story, running from antiquity to the modern era.
Poland's response to the Holocaust has changed in recent decades. Throughout the Cold War, the Iron Curtain prevented light from being shed on Poland's past. The Communist government was unsympathetic to remembering the Jews. But the Solidarity Movement in Gdansk in 1980 began the long recovery from the dark years following World War II. Pope John Paul II has spoken of the imperative for Poland to acknowledge what happened there and recover what is possible to save and honor. Nevertheless, the woman who toured me through Auschwitz told me, "I am not doing this for the Jews, but for the Polish nation. Terrible things occurred here and we must tell the true story."
Poland is now a burgeoning republic, with promising prospects for a high-tech economy and democratic culture. The government has also invested modestly in repatriation (some would call it a penance) of Jewish culture that would be otherwise lost. Institutions like the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw and the Judaica Foundation in Krakow have received some public funding.
American philanthropy is in the process of discovering Poland, following the Ford Foundation and a handful of Jewish organizations, most prominently the Ronald Lauder Foundation. George Soros and European philanthropies have also funded programs. Poland's most ambitious project is to build in Warsaw a Museum of the History of Polish Jews. I traveled in Poland with Tad Taube, who was born in Krakow and escaped the Holocaust by days in 1939, and with Abraham Sofaer of the Hoover Institution. We were there to explore opportunities to link American Jewry with the Jewish cultural renewal in Poland.
Since there are less than 30,000 Jews remaining among Poland's 40 million people, there is little illusion about rebuilding a large Jewish community. But to honor the memory of the millions who perished, and in recognition of the great culture that previously existed there, the Taube Foundation is developing relationships and dialogue with organizations working to create awareness, knowledge and understanding, especially in the United States, of Poland's Jewish past.
One highlight was visiting Kazimierz, the Jewish Quarter of Krakow, which emerged unscathed from World War II (unlike Warsaw). We visited a beautifully restored synagogue, but, as the old Jewish caretaker told us, "The only problem is that there are no Jews to pray here." Somehow this house of worship survived the malevolence that reduced thousands of others to rubble.
When the Germans destroyed this culture, they also deprived Poland of many of its most productive and talented people. As one Pole put it: "When the Nazis killed all the Jews they also killed the majority of our doctors, our journalists, our professors, our artists and musicians. It was as if our culture was amputated."
A Taube Institute for Jewish Culture is being established in Krakow to develop projects that link the American Jewish heritage to its European roots in Poland. While there are few Jews in Poland to do the praying, Jews in America must do the remembering.
From the offices of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw one can see the site of the Warsaw Ghetto where Jewish fighters put up brave resistance. I thought of the film I saw recently, "The Pianist," and of the importance of honoring the Jewish culture that existed for a millennium in Central and Eastern Europe, a legacy we need to teach our young and honor in living Jewish history.
The writer is executive director of the S.F.-based Taube Foundation for Jewish Life & Culture.