From Kielce to Krakow
Along the way to Krakow, Poland's most treasured and beautiful city, we stop at two small towns, Kielce and Checiny. About 100 Jews who survived the death camps returned to Kielce in 1946. On July 4 that year, 42 of the 100 survivors were murdered, according to a plaque on a building.
A young child from Kielce had disappeared. A rumor circulated that the Jews must have killed the child so they could drink his blood in a religious ceremony. A mob armed with clubs and knives formed.
Tour participant Lawrence Shuman of Fairfax reads -- and reacts to -- displays at Auschwitz-Birkenau camp.
(Czarek Sokolowski/AP/special For The Washington Post)
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The murdered citizens of Kielce were among an estimated 1,000 Jewish survivors of Hitler who were killed in Europe by their neighbors once they returned home.
In the small town of Checiny, once majority-Jewish, we visit a fine old synagogue that is now a recreation center. Above the entrance to the sanctuary is a stone engraved with the Hebrew words: "How wonderful is this place. This is the house of God, and this is the gate to heaven."
The door leads to a sanctuary with a bema (pulpit) and pool tables. The marble fixture on the wall that traditionally holds a box for donations to the poor is empty. There are no Jews left in Checiny to either give or receive charity.
We travel on to the beautiful medieval city of Krakow, which the Poles loved so much that they declared it an open city and ceded it to the Germans without a fight. Both the Germans and Russians respected it so much that they brokered a deal to allow the Germany Army a safe retreat once the city was surrounded.
The 70,000 Jews in Krakow made up a fourth of the population in 1939. Today, there are about 100. Even so, the city each summer celebrates Jewish contributions to the culture here with an international festival that includes plays, concerts and exhibitions.
Our primary destination after a quick city tour is a short bus ride away, to a tri-part compound of death: Auschwitz, Birkenau and Monowice-Dwory.
Auschwitz today is a series of well-maintained brick buildings linked by wide, clean pathways. You must go inside the buildings for a hint of what happened here. Floor-to-ceiling glass cases in one building hold thousands of wooden limbs, crutches and wheelchairs taken from prisoners. Another is stacked high with old suitcases, each marked with the owner's name, like tombstones.
Simmons stands crying next to a case filled with hand-knitted infant sweaters, booties, bottles and pacifiers. Every time she comes she wonders if any of the items once belonged to her stepsisters or brother. Simmons's father, from an old and wealthy Czech family, lost in this camp his first wife, infant twins and a 6-year-old daughter.
Outside, something that looks like broken eggshells covers patches of earth. It is human bones ground and spread as fertilizer 60 years ago. Groups from time to time have discussed scraping a layer of soil from the earth at Auschwitz and sending it to Israel for burial. So far, nothing has come of the idea.
Judaism as Cottage Industry
Prague was once aptly described in a poem as "a fairy tale in stone." The city's medieval center includes a 1,100-year-old castle and majestic buildings in Roman, baroque, gothic and art-nouveau styles. One of the finest cities in Europe, it has become one of the continent's most popular tourist attractions.
Half a dozen synagogues, including one completed in 1270, are among the many buildings and cemeteries in an area called the State Jewish Museum. Jewish treasures displayed here were brought from all over Europe by the Nazis, who wrote of their plans for a "museum of an extinguished race" in Prague.
The museum area, once the old Jewish quarter, is alive with visitors, and services are still held in some of the synagogues. But most of the congregants are tourists. During the winter, the small Jewish community of Prague has trouble attracting the 10 people needed to make a minyan, or required quorum. A young man from Prague I spoke with explained it succinctly: "Winter," he said, "is not the season of the Jews."
