(Author: Veronica Belling, Vol. 80, #2, Summer 2025)
At the beginning of 2025, a tour to Poland was advertised by the Cape Town Holocaust and Genocide Centre. It would be led by its new Director, Jakub Nowakowski.
Despite the fact that the tour did not include Lithuania, where my own family originates, I realised that this was a unique opportunity, not to be missed! Thus, when Bonny Feldman, editor of the Cape Jewish Chronicle, and herself a participant in the tour, requested that we submit our reasons for participating in the tour, I wrote:
My interest is historical and literary rather than genealogical. As a Jewish Studies librarian, researcher and teacher, I have studied Jewish history and am passionate about Jewish languages – both Hebrew and Yiddish. My own family, like most South African Jews, came from Lithuania, just after the Boer War, in 1903. I have visited Lithuania twice. On the other hand, with over 3 million Jews – versus 220 000 in Lithuania – Poland was the heartland of Jewry – and Vilna, the capital of Lithuania, was once part of Poland! Moreover, this tour is organised by the Cape Town Holocaust and Genocide Centre whose Director, Jakub Nowakowski, is himself a Pole, the former Director of the Galician Jewish Museum in Krakow. This is a first and I want to be part of it!
Both Jakub Nowakowski and his wife Gossia have master’s degrees in Jewish studies from the Jagellonian University in Krakow, Poland, one of the oldest universities in Europe. Gossia is a professional guide, educator and founder of Walkative, expert-led walking tours in cities across Poland and Europe.
With the exception of two Americans and two Canadians, participants in the group were either from South Africa or had a South African background and are living abroad. From Cape Town came Myra Osrin, founding Trustee and first Director of the Holocaust and Genocide Centre, Bonnie Feldman, editor of the Cape Jewish Chronicle, myself, an Honorary Research Associate at the Kaplan Centre, University of Cape Town, Jos Horwitz, a former Jewish kindergarten headmistress, and her brother, Saul Gorin. Both are first generation South Africans who hold Polish passports. The group also included a former member of staff at the Holocaust Centre, Ursula Gaffley (recently retired) and a new staff member, Avante Jafta. Former South Africans living overseas were Mandy Spiegel, who lives in the UK and Jackie Greis who lives in Chicago. From Boston, US, came a couple of retired medical doctors, Ruth Kandall and Kevan Hartshorn, with their son Max and his partner Jaime, from Canada. Ruth’s parents met in the Krakow Ghetto and her grandfather is buried in the cemetery in Krakow.
In Warsaw, we stayed at the Sofitel Hotel. It is adjacent to Pilsudski square, named for Jozef Pilsudski (1867-1935), the first Chief of the State of Poland when it regained its independence in 1918 and who was known to have been good to the Jews.
At the outset, it was emphasized that for the Poles the history of Poland during the Holocaust is extremely problematic. During the war years, although only one out of ten Poles were killed versus 9 out of 10 Jews, nonetheless the Poles still feel their suffering very deeply. German policy aimed to destroy the Polish nation and culture and ruthlessly exploit the forced labour of Polish peasants and workers. The Germans killed thousands of civilian leaders and many more were sent to concentration camps, such as the newly built Auschwitz, where until 1942, Poles constituted the majority of the prisoners. Large numbers of ethnic Germans were moved into Polish territory that had been emptied by forced mass deportations of ethnic Poles.
A Polish government-in-exile was established in France and when France fell it moved to London. Its purpose was to co-ordinate the activities of the Polish home army. In August 1944, the Polish resistance staged a violent mass uprising against the Germans in Warsaw. The rebellion lasted for two months before it was eventually crushed. More than 200 000 Poles were killed in the uprising.[1] 1 August, the day the uprising began, is a day of remembrance for the Polish people and a siren is sounded to mark it.
On the other hand, the Poles have a grim history of antisemitism, particularly in the aftermath of the Holocaust. According to The Holocaust Encyclopedia, after the war, of approximately 275 000 to 380 000 Polish Jews left in Poland and the Ukraine, by 1950, mass migration had seen this figure being reduced to around 45 000 in Poland alone.[2] Numbers continued to dwindle until finally the antisemitic campaign initiated by the Soviets, that re-ignited Polish antisemitism in the years 1967-1968, left an estimated Jewish population of between 5 and 10 000. March 1968 brought organised Jewish life in Poland to an end. [3]
After the fall of the Communist regime in 1989 the situation of Polish Jews normalized. Jewish life experienced a revival and growth to foster a thriving cultural and religious scene with young Poles increasingly engaging in Jewish history and heritage. This transformation was marked by the opening of Jewish community centres, cultural programs and festivals. The community saw an increase in people identifying as Jewish including many who had rediscovered their roots.[4] According to the 2021 Polish census there were 17 156 Jews living in Poland, but how many are Jews according to Jewish law is unknown. It is a sad reflection on the pre-Holocaust figure of 3.5 million.
The tour was advertised as “Echoes of (Post) Memory: a Journey Through Jewish Poland.” Each day we were handed an envelope with texts that contained the traumatic memories of Holocaust survivors. However, what I was searching for were, “Echoes of (Past) Memory.” In my mind the tour did not start in 1939 with the German invasion of Poland, but with the first evidence of Jews in Poland. Founded in the 10th Century, geographically Poland expanded from a nucleus between the Odra (Oder) and Vistula rivers, extending as far as the Baltic, the Dnieper, the Black Sea and the Carpathian Mountains. The earliest documentary references to Jews are made in a responsum of a rabbinical court in Krakow in the first half of the eleventh century. Sources in the high and late Middle Ages indicate the Germanic origin of the Jews in their acceptance of Ashkenazic rabbinic authority, the Yiddish language, and Polish coins inscribed with Hebrew letters, minted by Jewish minters. Jews were attracted to Poland by its increasing political stability and economic opportunities, and at the same time discriminatory legislation and increasing persecution forced them out of Europe.
I don’t think there is any other European country whose borders have changed as many times as has been the case with Poland. In 1569, Crown Poland – as it was known – formed a political union with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Known as the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth, this became the largest country in Europe, encompassing all of post 1991-Poland, Lithuania, Belarus and Latvia as well as most of Ukraine and Estonia.[5] However, in 1795 Poland as such ceased to exist when it was divided between Russia, Prussia and Austria. Russia acquired the most territory, including significant parts of Lithuania, Courland and Volhynia; Prussia acquired central Poland including Warsaw and Bialystok until 1807 and 1815 when it was returned to the Russian partition; and Austria acquired areas in the south including Lublin and Krakow. The area of Poland that became a part of Austria, was known as Galicia, hence the name of the Galician Jewish Museum in Krakow. It was not until the end of the First World War in 1918, that Poland regained its independence.
The earliest concrete evidence of the Jewish presence in Poland that I was able to explore, was the Warsaw Jewish cemetery, founded in 1806, that by number of graves, over 200,000 – although not by area (33 hectares) – is the largest Jewish cemetery in Europe. The cemetery also includes mass graves of victims of the Warsaw Ghetto. As the cemetery was not included in the official tour, Jakub arranged a private tour for me in the early afternoon of the 20th.
The cemetery is situated on Okopowa Street, in a dense forest. There seems to be some debate whether its grounds were once partially located within the Warsaw Ghetto.[6] However, a sign on a wall outside the cemetery states: “The Jewish cemetery was excluded from the ghetto in May 1941, yet burials still took place there.”
Highlights are undoubtedly the Mausoleum of the three writers: Yitskhak Leib Peretz (1852-1915), the most famous Yiddish and Hebrew author, Shin Anski (1863-1920), author of the famous play, Der dibek (The Dybbuk) and the, lesser known, Yiddish writer and editor Yankev Dinezon (1851-1919). The designer was Abraham Ostrzega, a Jewish sculptor of tombstones who was murdered in Treblinka in 1942.[7] In 2016 the Cultural Heritage Foundation conducted the restoration of 24 of his tombstones in the Jewish cemetery.[8] Alongside is the grave of the famous mother of the Yiddish theatre in Poland, Ester Rochel Kaminska (1870-1975), and to the left is the grave of Ludwik Zamenhof (1859-1917), who created the international language, Esperanto.
Other memorials that particularly caught my eye were that of Me’ir Balaban (1877-1942), considered to be the founder of Polish Jewish historiography, and Adam Czerniakov (1880-1942), head of the Jewish council in the Warsaw Ghetto, who on being instructed to organize the mass deportation of the ghetto inhabitants to their death, committed suicide instead. The survival of the Jewish cemetery raises the question as to why the Nazis did not destroy it and use the memorials as paving stones, as had happened in smaller towns. The answer is possibly because the stones were too large and it would have been too time consuming.
The official tour began in the late afternoon of 20 July in the Old City of Warsaw. In actual fact, as a result of the Polish uprising against the German occupiers in August-September 1944, Warsaw was completely destroyed. After the war it took the Poles five years to rebuild and reconstruct the city as it was before, and today it has been declared a Unesco Heritage site. We passed a church that was flanked by the statue of the Polish national poet, Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855) as well as the Presidential Palace with the statue of Polish General, Minister of War, Prince Jozef Poniatowski (1763-1813). We crossed Castle Square, with the historic statue of King Sigismund III, erected in 1644 at its centre and walked through Market Square, with the Mermaid Statue, that was erected in 1904.
The following day was essentially dedicated to the Warsaw Ghetto in all its iterations. With 380 000 Jews the ghetto, established by the German authorities in November 1940, was the largest of the Jewish ghettos. With the suppression of the uprising (April 14 1943-16 May 1943), the surviving residents were deported to concentration camps and killing centres.[9] In the morning, our first visit was to view the physical remains of the ghetto, consisting of only a few walls, at 62 Zlota Streer. Our guide Katarzyna Jankowska, an expert on Warsaw’s Jewish heritage, recounted the history, while Avante Jafta, an employee of the Cape Town Holocaust and Genocide Centre, read a moving poem. The site was a small courtyard, situated between closely built large multistoried rectangular buildings, typical of the former Jewish quarter in Warsaw. [10]
From there, we were transported to the Polin Museum, situated on the site of the Warsaw Ghetto. We alighted adjacent to the square to view the Ghetto fighters’ memorial that fronts the Museum, as we would be returning to visit the Museum itself in the afternoon. From the Museum square we walked to a nearby killing site, and then to a memorial at an Umschlagplatz, a holding area adjacent to a railway line for Jews from the ghetto who were being deported. From there we traveled to the Nozyk synagogue the only surviving synagogue in Warsaw.
Built in 1898, and named for its builder, Zalman Nozyk, at the time the Nozyk was one of around 400 synagogues in Warsaw. It is located at 6 Twarda Street in the Srodmiescie District. During the war it was devastated by the Nazis who used it as a stable and a depot. Today the restored synagogue is not only a place of religious practice but houses exhibitions, concerts and other cultural meetings. It is the only significant synagogue surviving in Warsaw.[11]
This synagogue has special significance to us South Africans as its last cantor, Chazan Jakub Lichterman and his wife Miriam, who survived the ghetto, came to live and work in Cape Town after the war. There are plaques on the wall of the synagogue dedicated to Cantor Lichterman. In the synagogue itself we were addressed by the present rabbi, an American.
From the synagogue we were taken to the Jewish Historical Institute, also known as the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute. A public cultural and research institution chiefly dealing with the history of the Jews in Poland, it was founded in 1947 in Tlomackie Street 3/5, as a continuation of the Jewish Cultural Commission founded in 1944. It was no coincidence that the institute was established in Tlomackie Street, in pre-war Warsaw the site of the Great Synagogue. The centre of Jewish life and the symbol of Jewish culture in the city, the synagogue was destroyed by the Nazis in May 1943. Before the war the Jewish Historical Institute building was the home of a large Judaic library adjacent to the Great Synagogue. During the war years it was also the home of the ‘Aleynhilf’ – Self Help, the Relief Committee in the Ghetto. [12]
Dr Emanuel Ringelblum, 1900-1944. Murdered by the German killers”
The most valuable part of the collection is the Warsaw Ghetto Archive. Known as the Ringelblum Archive, it was collected by the Oyneg Shabbes group led by Emanuel Ringelblum (1900-1944), a Polish Jewish historian and relief worker who was killed by the Nazis, together with his wife and son, in March 1944. Only two members of the group of just over twenty writers and journalists who contributed to the archive survived the war.[13] The documents were concealed in boxes and in milk cans and buried, and most – but not all – were recovered after the war. The surviving archive contains some 60 000 documents on some 30 000 pages. Other important collections concerning World War II include testimonies, memoirs and diaries, documentation of welfare organisations active during the occupation, and documentation of the Jewish Councils. The collection also includes some 40 000 photographs of Jewish life in Poland. he Institute has published the full edition of the Ringelblum Archive, and an English translation of the Archive is underway.[14] In 1999 the collection was entered into the Unesco Memory of the World List. It is one of only three Polish submissions along with those relating to the famous Polish musician, Frederick Chopin, and the astronomer, Nicolas Copernicus.
After our visit to the Jewish Historical Institute, we finally made our way back to the Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews, where we had lunch in their kosher style restaurant. The Polin Museum, which opened in 2013, is spectacular. It was designed by a Finnish architect whose design was chosen from 100 submissions.
At the heart of the museum is the Core Exhibition – a journey through a thousand-year history of Jewish life in Polish lands from the Middle Ages until today. Here one will find answers as to how Jews came to Poland, how they became the largest diasporic community, how this came to an end and what is being done to revive Jewish life today. The exhibition is made up of eight galleries and is spread over 4000m2. It shows the social, religious and political diversity, highlighting dramatic events from the past, the Holocaust and until contemporary times. The exhibit is made up of a fascinating combination of artifacts, paintings and interactive installations, reconstructions and models, video projections, sounds and words.[15] It features a stunning reconstructed 17th Century synagogue, as well as a street in pre-war Warsaw with its unique architecture.
The following day we travelled from Warsaw to Lublin via Kazimierz-Dolny, a small historic town in eastern Poland 50 kilometres from Lublin, where we had a guided tour and a lunch break. Now a tourist destination, the town enjoyed its greatest prosperity in the 16th and 17th centuries due to the trade in grain that was conducted along the banks of the Vistula. Since the 19th Century it has become a popular holiday destination attracting artists and today it has a gallery on almost every street.[16] From a Jewish perspective its claim to fame is that the famous movie, Yidl mitn Fidl with Molly Picon, as well as Ansky’s Der dibek (The Dybbuk) were filmed there. Kazimierz-Dolny also has a small synagogue that houses a museum that is used for art and photographic exhibitions. On leaving the town, we stopped briefly at the former Czerniawy cemetery that was used as a killing site. A memorial wall was constructed from the fragments of the tombstones.
Our next stop, the city of Lublin, once contained one of the largest and most significant Jewish communities in pre-partition Poland. Its significance stemmed partly from the city’s location on trade routes from Krakow to both Vilna and Lwow. The 16th Century was the heyday of the Lublin community, when education and culture flourished. Many eminent scholars of the day served as rabbis including Shelomoh ben Yehiel Luria, known as the Maharshal (1510?-1573). A famous yeshiva was founded around 1530 and a Hebrew press in 1547. The Council of the Four Lands, the chief Jewish authority in the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth was located there, from the late 16th Century until its dissolution in 1764. At the end of the 18th Century, Lublin became an important centre of Hasidism: the tsadik Ya’akov Yitskhak Horowitz (1745-1815), known as the seer of Lublin, was active there.
After the third partition of Poland (1795), when Lublin came under Austrian rule,[17] its Jewish population numbered 4500. After the Congress of Vienna (1814-1815) Lublin was incorporated into the Kingdom of Poland. In 1877 the opening of a railway to Warsaw resulted in an economic boom. By 1897 a total of 23 586 Jews, constituting 50.9% of the population, lived in Lublin. In 1916, a Jewish Public library was opened and in the same year the first Polish Jewish newspaper was published. In 1918 the first issue of the Yiddish newspaper, Lubliner Togblat was published that continued almost uninterruptedly until 1939. By 1921 the number of Jews in Lublin had risen to 37 337, forming 34.7% of the population. In the interwar years seven synagogues functioned, along with several dozen prayer houses. Yiddish newspapers flourished. In 1930 a yeshiva, Yeshivas Chachmei Lublin was founded by Rabbi Me’ir Shapira.
With the Nazi occupation in 1939, Lublin was home to approximately 38 000 Jews (31% of the population); this number rose to 45 000 (including 6000 refugees) by 1941, and a ghetto accommodating 34 000 people was established in March 1942; its inhabitants were deported mainly to Belzec and Majdanek concentration and death camps. [18]
In 2004 the building of the Yeshivas Chachmei Lublin, was finally returned to the Jewish community. In 2007 its synagogue was restored together with community offices and a mikvah. In 2013, the Hotel Ilan, where our group stayed, was opened in the building.[19] From there we explored the Old City of Lublin.
On top of one of the buildings, stands a statue of the “Magician of Lublin,” dedicated to the novel by Nobel prize winning author, Isaac Bashevis Singer. On one of the streets is a building that served as a Jewish orphanage whose inmates were all sent to their death. There is a plaque in their memory on the wall adjacent to the front door.
We visited the Grodzka Gate, also called the Jewish Gate, that was on the border between the Jewish and Christian sections of the city. It currently houses the Grodzka Gate Centre – NN Theatre that commemorates among others the presence of Jews in Lublin. It also houses a multimedia exhibition showing the Jewish district before 1939.[20] Today they are collecting oral histories and memories of Jews from Lublin. It is run by a young Polish researcher, Piotr Nazaruk, a Polish Catholic who speaks, reads and writes Yiddish.
We then explored the square in front of the neo-Gothic castle that served as a prison where Jews and Poles were held during the partitions, in the interwar period, during the Nazi occupation and after the war.[21] We examined the obelisk that stands at the bottom of the steps leading up to the castle, that contains a diagram of the layout of the old Jewish district, established as early as the 16th Century.
On leaving Lublin we visited the concentration and extermination camp of Majdanek on the southeastern outskirts of Lublin, that is only15 minutes away by bus. Our guide was a Ukrainian, Volodomyr Dyshlevuk. Established in 1941, the idea of Heinrich Himmler, it first took in mainly Soviet prisoners of war. However, within a year it was converted into a death camp for Jews from Bohemia and Moravia (now the Czech Republic), and then from Poland, the Netherlands and Greece. With seven gas chambers, two wooden gallows, and altogether 227 wooden structures, it was one of the largest camps. In September 1943, the Nazis added a crematorium with five ovens. Initially the Nazis used carbon monoxide for the killing but then they changed to Zyklon B which produced quick killing hydrogen cyanide fumes on the Auschwitz model.[22] According to our guide on entering the camp all the prisoners had to shower. and small quantities of Zyklon B was used to clean, sterilise and delouse their clothes. It was only later that Germans realised that much larger quantities of Zyklon B could be used to murder people.
Camp survivors perceived Majdanek as one of the most primitive of the Nazi concentration camps. The barracks were wooden, providing little protection against the weather.[23] One sees the plank beds as well as huge containers with the shoes of the victims. One of the barracks contains a museum with artifacts, photographs and video recordings.
On our way to Krakow from Majdanek, we stopped at the Lancut synagogue. It was built in 1761 on the site of a synagogue that had burnt down in 1733. It is a rare example of a vaulted synagogue with a bimah-tower that was built throughout Poland from the 16th through the 19th centuries. In September 1939 it was set on fire by the German army. Fortunately, it was saved from total destruction and converted into a granary. In 1980 it was converted into a Jewish Museum. The pillars and the walls are covered with decorative plasterwork that feature reproductions of the pre-war paintings created in the 18th Century. They include traditional Jewish subjects such as Noah and the Ark, signs of the Zodiac and musical instruments mentioned in the Book of Psalms. [24]
Shortly before we reached our destination, we stopped at a clearing in the forest to visit the unnamed graves at the Zbylitowska Gora Mass Shooting Memorial. There, 6000 Jews from the ghetto in Tarnow, including 800 children from the ghetto orphanage, were murdered.[25]. It would seem that a group of Israelis had visited there recently as the graves were decorated with Israeli flags.
In Krakow we stayed at the Kazimierz Hotel. In the morning, we had a guided tour of the Old City of Krakow, the most popular city for tourists. Due to its former role as a Polish capital city and the seat of Polish kings, it has an accumulation of historical monuments and exhibits. It contains four Unesco Heritage sites, and three National Parks. We walked along the road of the kings from the Church of St Florian through the Florian Gate, along Florian Street to Wawel Hill with the Wawel Royal Castle with its beautiful courtyard and Cathedral. Described as the centre of Polish identity, it is called the Polish Acropolis and Necropolis as so many great Polish people – kings, country leaders, poets and generals – are buried there. The buildings are encircled by a border of green plants, that was meant to take the place of city walls. From there we walked past the St Francis of Assisi Church, consecrated in 1296, with the famous Pope’s window, to Krakow’s Main Market Square, that is the heart of the Old Town, together with St Mary’s Basilica.[26]
Next was a guided tour of the Jewish District of Kazimierz. In 1304, even before Krakow was declared the capital of the reunited Kingdom of Poland, a Judengasse is mentioned, in 1311 one hears of a Jewish cemetery, and in 1356, a synagogue. In 1494, a fire destroyed most of the Jewish quarter and the Jews were expelled to Kazimierz, on the other side of the Vistula river. Here the community continued to prosper. In 1578, Tax rolls reveal 2000 Jewish residents and in 1796 4138. During the 16th Century, Krakow developed into a Jewish centre of learning. The first yeshiva was founded towards the end of the 15th Century by Yakov Pollak (d.1532). It was later taken over by Rabbi Moses Isserles, (1525-1572), best known for his commentary, known as the Mapah (Tablecloth, 1571) on the definitive code of Jewish law, the Shulchan Aruch, (Set Table, 1565), by Rabbi Joseph Caro. [27]
We visited the synagogue named for Rabbi Moses Isserles, known as the ‘Rema,’ where he is buried. Designed in Renaissance style in the middle of the 16th Century, the Rema Synagogue is the smallest of seven synagogues in Krakow, and the only one that is still in use. After 1795, when Krakow was taken over by Austria, the city’s Jewish elite increasingly identified as enlightened progressive, with the Tempel synagogue (established in 1862) as their centre – that we visited. The orthodox community still remained strong, and the influence of Hasidism grew. Members of Krakow’s Jewish Polish speaking elite served on the City Council from the 1840s to 1939. [28] We also saw the remains of the walls of the Krakow ghetto which has a plaque inscribed in Yiddish that reads: “Here lived, suffered and were killed by the hand of the Hitlerist murderers…”
Since 2008, Krakow has had a secular Jewish Community Centre, opened on the initiative of the then Prince of Wales, now King Charles III. It is located in the Kazimierz section of Krakow and situated in a garden in the rear of the Tempel synagogue. The Centre fosters Polish-Jewish relations and acts as Krakow’s Jewish visitor centre, and serves over 1100 Jewish members. About 20 children attend the FRAJDA Jewish early childhood centre, opened in 2017. It also has a student club under the auspices of Hillel International. Many of JCC’s young members discovered their Jewish identities only recently as their families were forced to conceal their religious identities under communism. JCC is also the primary agency caring for nearly 60 Holocaust survivors. At the time we passed by, the centre was advertising Hebrew lessons and the pictures of the remaining Israeli hostages of the Gaza war were displayed on the wall.[29]
In the afternoon we visited the Galician Jewish Museum, which serves to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust and to celebrate the Jewish culture of Polish Galicia, presenting Jewish history from a new perspective. The Museum was founded in 2004, the brainchild of the British photographer, Chris Schwarz (1948-2007), together with social anthropologist, Prof. Jonathan Webber. [30] The group met with Prof. Webber and his wife Connie, who since 2012 have made a permanent home in Krakow. The main exhibition in the museum, “Traces of Memory” is divided into five sections: Jewish life in ruins; Jewish life as it once was; The Holocaust Sites of Massacre and Destruction; How the Past is being remembered; People making memory today. It welcomes over 30,000 visitors from around the world annually.
The tour climaxed with a tour to Auschwitz-Birkenau on the Friday. As the concentration camp is a huge tourist attraction we left early (7.30 in the morning) so that the queues would not be too long. Auschwitz is the German name for the Polish city of Oswiecim, located approximately 65 kilometres from Krakow. The Auschwitz concentration camp is located on the outskirts of the town and consists of three camps including a killing centre. While the original entrance with its iconic sign, “Arbeit macht frei,” is still there, a new entrance had to be built to cater for the large numbers of visitors. Throughout the camp, all the signs are in Polish, English and Hebrew.
The first camp was referred to as “Auschwitz 1” or as “Main Camp.” The second, the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing centre, also known as “Auschwitz II,” is located near the village of Brzezinka (German Birkenau). This is just over three and a half kilometres from the Main Camp. The Germans started construction of Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1941.[31] Auschwitz III or Monowitz was located near the Polish village of Monowice, about 6 and a half kilometres from the main camp.
Auschwitz 1 was built as an army barracks and hence its buildings are made of bricks. For the first year and a half Poles were sent there but after that the majority were Jews from all over Nazi occupied Europe. One of the barracks contains a museum that includes historical photos of the arrival of the deported Jews, and glass cases displaying items – shoes, clothes, personal items, taleysim – that they left behind when they were taken to the gas chambers. We were shown punishment cells and there is a memorial wall in a courtyard where people were shot. We were taken to see the gas chambers and the crematorium, a couple of which have been left standing. Our guide, who is employed by Auschwitz, was extremely impressive. He was very knowledgeable, and his manner was sympathetic and respectful.
After Auschwitz, we were bussed to Auschwitz-Birkenau. This was specifically built as a death camp with gas chambers and crematoria to expedite the killing and cremation of the victims. As the gas chambers and crematoria were destroyed by the Nazis once they realised that the Russians were approaching, little remains on site other than the iconic entrance building. The camp is dedicated to memorial sculptures with plaques commemorating the victims in Polish, Yiddish, Hebrew and English.
After our visit to the camps, we made our way to the town of Oswiecim. There we stopped briefly for a meal and to visit the synagogue where there is a small exhibition. In Hebrew Auschwitz is referred to as “Oshpitzin,” that is similar to the Aramaic word, ‘Ushpizim’ referring to the guests to the Sukkah on Sukkoth, the Feast of Tabernacles. It was understood that the Jews had traditionally considered themselves to be guests in the town.
In the evening for the first time, we met with members of Krakow’s Jewish community, who hosted the group for a Shabbat dinner. We met at the apartment of a young Polish Jewish couple, Magda and Michael Rubenfeld, artists and activists. Besides our tour group. guests included two young women, a young Israeli and a young Polish woman, a student of drama at the university, who had just staged a Yiddish play in Polish translation. She was convinced that she had Jewish ancestors and was in the process of converting to Judaism.
The following morning, the tour concluded with a meeting at the Galician Jewish Museum, where we shared impressions and reflections. Although the tour was somewhat of a marathon, it was very cleverly constructed to acquaint us with the three main cities – Warsaw, Lublin and Krakow – (and everything in between) relevant to the history of the Jews in Poland. While the German death camps are iconic – and shocking – and it was instructive to see how and where they were built, they interested me less.
For me the pre-Holocaust history is by far the most significant and I was definitely inspired to read and to rekindle my knowledge of the significant personalities and events in Polish Jewish history. And in particular to examine the 175 volume series in Yiddish, Dos poylishe yidntum, published in Buenos Aires, in the direct aftermath of the Holocaust, 1946-1966, that became one of the most remarkable literary memorials to the destroyed Polish Jewish community.[32]
Whereas my former Holocaust knowledge was confined to the murder in the pits and the ghettos of Lithuania, now the social dynamics of the Warsaw ghetto, have captured my imagination. In this regard, I highly recommend Samuel D. Kassow’s Who Will Write Our History: Emanuel Ringelblum and the Oyneg Shabes Archive. (Indiana University Press, 2007). In terms of Polish Holocaust commemoration, it is reassuring to note the initiatives made both by Polish public institutions – in the case of the Polin Museum for the History of the Jews – as well as by private individuals in smaller but no less impressive memorials, such as the memorial wall at the former Czerniawy cemetery outside Kazimierz-Dolny, and the small exhibition in the synagogue in the town of Oswiecim.[33]
In conclusion I can mention that another tour is being planned for next year by the Cape Town Holocaust and Genocide Centre. This time it will be a combined tour of Poland and Lithuania, particularly to visit the brand-new Jewish museum that was recently opened in the town of Shadova, or Seduva, in Lithuania.
.
- Dr Veronica Belling is the author of Bibliography of South African Jewry (1997), Yiddish Theatre in South Africa (2008), and the translator of Leibl Feldman’s The Jews of Johannesburg (2007) and Yakov Azriel Davidson: His Writings in the Yiddish Newspaper, Der Afrikaner, 1911-1913 (2009). She is a regular contributor to Jewish Affairs.
NOTES
[1] Holocaust Encyclopedia, Polish victims, https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/polish-victims
[2] United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia, https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/remaining-jewish-population-of-europe-in-1945
[3] POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, March 1968 Historical facts, https://polin.pl/en/march-68
[4] Jews in Poland after 1989, AI overview, https://www.google.com/search?q=Jews+in+POland+after+1989&oq=Jews+in+POland+after+1989&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOdIBCjMwMTk4ajBqMTWoAgiwAgHxBbzTnV4dQdBI8QW8051eHUHQSA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
[5] Yivo Encyclopedia of Jews of Eastern Europe, Poland before 1795 by Moshe Rosman, https://encyclopedia.yivo.org/article/17
[6] Culture, Pl #heritage, https://culture.pl/en/article/a-gateway-to-a-lost-world-the-old-jewish-cemetery-in-warsaw
[7] https://jewish-heritage-europe.eu/2025/06/12/poland-okopowa-ostrzega/
[8] Inscribed on a plaque in the Warsaw Jewish cemetery.
[9] Holocaust Encyclopedia, https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/warsaw-ghetto-uprising
[10] Samuel D. Kassow, Who will write our history? Emanuel Ringelblum, the Warsaw Ghetto and the Oyneg Shabes Archive. (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press), 2007, pp. 119-120.
[11] Jewish Historical Institute, https://www.jhi.pl/en/articles/three-synagogues,13
[12] Samuel D. Kassow, Who will write our history?, p. 116.
[13] Samuel D. Kassow, Who will write our history?, pp. 184-208, 333-388..
[14] Association of European Jewish Museums. The Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute. https://www.aejm.org/members/the-emanuel-ringelblum-jewish-historical-institute/
[15] Association of European Jewish Museums, POLIN Museum of the History of the Polish Jews, https://www.aejm.org/members/museum-of-the-history-of-the-polish-jews/
[16] Wikipedia, Kazimierz Dolny, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazimierz_Dolny
[17] Lublin: pre-1795, https://encyclopedia.yivo.org/article/474
[18] Yivo Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe. Lublin. Lublin after 1795, by Konrad Zielinski, https://encyclopedia.yivo.org/article/474
[19] Hotel opening in former Lublin yeshiva, https://jewish-heritage-europe.eu/2013/08/26/hotel-opening-in-former-lublin-yeshiva/
[20] Lublin: city of Inspiration, Heritage trail of the Lublin Jews, https://lublin.eu/en/what-to-see-do/attractions-sights/tourist-trails/heritage-trail-of-the-lublin-jews/
[21] Lublin: city of Inspiration, Heritage trail of the Lublin Jews, https://lublin.eu/en/what-to-see-do/attractions-sights/tourist-trails/heritage-trail-of-the-lublin-jews/
[22] Majdanek concentration camp, Poland, Encyclopedia Brittanica, https://www.britannica.com/place/Majdanek
[23] Panstwowa Museum na Majdanku, https://www.majdanek.eu/en/history
[24] Lancut synagogue, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%81a%C5%84cut_Synagogue
[25] Zapomniania, https://zapomniane.org/en/miejsce/gora-zbylitowska/
[26] Krakow Old Town – Main attractions, https://its-poland.com/travel-tips/krakow-old-town-main-attractions
[27] Krakow before 1795 by Heidemarie Peterson, Yivo Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, https://encyclopedia.yivo.org/article/1397
[28] Krakow after 1795 by Sean Martin, Yivo Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastenr Europe, https://encyclopedia.yivo.org/article/1918
[29] Jewish Community Center of Krakow, Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Community_Centre_of_Krak%C3%B3w
[30] Jonathan Webber, Rediscovering Traces of Memory: the Jewish Heritage of Polish Galicia. Photographs by Chris Schwarz. From the permanent Exhibition of the Galician Jewish Museum, Krakow. Galicia Jewish Museum. Oxford: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization; Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2009.
[31] Auschwitz, United States Holocaust Encyclopedia, https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/auschwitz
[32] Jan Schwarz, A Library of Hope and Destruction: the Yiddish Book Series Dos poylishe yidntum (Polish Jewry) 1946-1966, in Polin: Studies in Contemporary Jewry, Vol. 20, https://academic.oup.com/liverpool-scholarship-online/book/37850/chapter-abstract/332331906?redirectedFrom=fulltext
[33] Bonny Feldman, “VIEWS: Bonny’s beat,” Cape Jewish Chronicle, Vol. 48, no. 1, September 2025,p. 3.
