Generation Bubelah: Visiting Warsaw

When I was younger I thought all Jews in the US came from Eastern Europe. Any Jew I met in Synagogue I pegged as having Russian, Polish, maybe Lithuanian roots. It was a naïve thought, but it seemed that most Jews in America that I knew, and that my parents knew, and that my grandmother knew, were Eastern European.

I always had this image of what that part of the world was like, Jewish. I imagined that there were butcher shops on every corner, that the women wore brown pin skirts and low heels with white blouses and that the men tipped their hats and shined their shoes. I saw bakery store windows filled with fresh baked challah, and outside the kids were playing marbles on the street. Okay, I know, maybe my imagination took me too far, but put simply, I always thought Eastern Europe was home to the Jews. Even after learning about the Holocaust, I still imagined that part of the world to be rooted in Judaism, and well, Jewish.

Recently, I finally had a chance to visit Poland. Excited because this is where part of my family is from, I obviously had certain ideas of what I thought would greet me in Poland. Maybe the men tipping their hats to the women in pin-striped skirts was outdated, but the Jewish part, I didn't think so.

We arrived in Warsaw on an overnight bus from Lithuania. We were so excited that the fact that it was five in the morning didn't affect us in the least. Ready to understand and learn more about my history, we dropped our stuff at the hostel, and went walking towards the Old Town.

The Old Town in Warsaw, like many other towns in Europe, was destroyed during the war. So much so that General Dwight Eisenhower commented, "I have seen many towns destroyed, but nowhere have I been faced with such destruction." The rebuilding of the square took eighteen years; it was finished in 1962, and was added as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1980. What many people aren't aware of is how much money it took to rebuild the square back to the way it was originally, and how the other towns that were untouched by the war had to demolish their own historic buildings to donate an estimated twenty-seven million bricks to the rebuilding program.

We looked at the square, which is a little more than half a century old, and decided to head over to the Warsaw Uprising Museum, which gives the complete story of the uprising, and shows what life was like under Nazi rule. Each hall focuses on a different aspect of the uprising, but with photographs, video footage, miscellaneous display cases, sounds, and extra rooms, it was all very difficult to follow. We spent about two hours total in the museum, and there was so much going on in each space, that we left feeling like there was so much information within the building that we just couldn't absorb. A bit defeated, we left to explore what the tourist companies call "Jewish Warsaw."

Everyone I talked to before I left had said, "Oh, when you go to Warsaw, you have to go to the Warsaw Ghetto." When I came back from Poland, everyone asked me, "Did you go to the Warsaw Ghetto?" To which I responded, 'I think so'.

 Since the whole area of the Jewish ghetto had been leveled, few traces remain; however, one would think there would be a plaque or a memorial sign indicating that here once stood the Ghetto Walls. The tourist pamphlet said, at Sienna 55 you will find the last remaining part of the ghetto wall. So we walked down Sienna, and we looked up at 55, and saw an apartment complex, we both looked at each other, and looked at the page in the book again. We walked past the building, down the street a bit farther.

"Maybe they mismarked it?"

We saw a couple walk out of the apartment complex that was locked to the public, I held the door for them, and then we slipped inside.

"I don't think this is it," my boyfriend said.

We then walked into the courtyard of the apartment building and on our left was the wall, and a plaque indicating what it was. I opened the book and re-read the page. "Once a bustling street full of traders and hardware stores it now lies forlorn and neglected." That statement could not be truer. We stood there for a while. 
 
"I can't believe this, how are people supposed to find it?" I asked, turning to my boyfriend. "You wouldn't even know this was here, there's nothing outside, it's an apartment building. It's weird."

It took us a while to get out of the apartment complex, because we didn't know where the buzzer to unlock the door was. When we finally did the next stop on the "Jewish Warsaw" tour was the Nozyk Synagogue. Built between 1898 and 1902, this was the only Warsaw synagogue to survive the war. We walked to the street listed, Twarda. But could only find numbers 4 and 5; we were looking for 6.

"Is this it?" My boyfriend asked as we stood outside what looked like a run down warehouse.

"No, this can't be it. Synagogues don't look like this." I said.

After we walked into the run down warehouse looking building where there was no one, we gathered that it was a Jewish school by the pamphlets left around, and the washed out sign above the door.

We walked down the street a bit and on the right was a large church.

We found the synagogue tucked away at the back of the block. It was a gorgeous synagogue, but very hard to find.

It was a strange feeling to be in Warsaw, and to feel the way I did. I guess I didn't realize how few Jews there are now in Poland, and to some that might be obvious that after the war there wouldn't be. But to grow up and to constantly hear about Judaism and Poland, it was a shock to see how little of a community there is there today. Although many of the people I saw on the streets reminded me of members from my synagogue, the 'Jewish-ness' that I naively expected was missing.