true story

My American friends came to Poland for many reasons, but perhaps the real impetus for the trip was Shmuel's great desire to see the village of Przedecz, where his father grew up until, in 1936, at the age of 21, he emigrated to Palestine (most every one else who stayed behind perished at the hands of the Nazis).

I offered to take Shmuel and Barbara to Przedecz -- a two hour drive west of Warsaw -- but I worried about the trip. Traffic on that route is horrendous. We'd have to rent a car. All this and for what? I know from Google maps that Przedecz looked like any other provincial village in Poland: a place where nearly everyone is poor and living in drab post war housing. Where in this will Shmuel find what he is looking for?

I shared my worries with my Polish friends and at once one of them volunteered to go there with us.

And so on a gray day, with a steady threat of rain, right after my breakfast...






... my Polish friend drove up and we climbed into her car and set out.


At first, I thought that, by some weird twist of fate, we hit the highways twisting around L.A. instead of Warsaw. Since when do we have such terrible congestion here??

Elka, my Polish friend, is unperturbed. Weaving between endless trucks and no fewer cars? No problem! (She did remind me that this is the beginning of a very difficult -- travel wise -- weekend in Poland, as the country is getting ready to observe All Saints' Day next Tuesday and everyone is on the road. In other words, I picked a lousy time to be doing a long distance trip.)


Finally, we pull into Przedecz. Where to now?


Shmuel has an address where his grandparents most likely lived. I was wrong to think it would be gone: an old house, a clearly old old house is still standing there, stuck in this block, right off the square.






We're brave. We knock on doors at the given address.

Nothing.

Undaunted, we go inside.






We follow an entryway to the courtyard. My, but everything looks old here!






It's so odd -- Przedecz hasn't many prewar houses left standing, but this one -- this home that likely was Shmuel's father's home (and now is the home to the granddaughter of the man who moved in just at the end the war) is still here. So is the stable -- now used as a carpenter's workshop. We learn from two workmen that the owners have a coffin making business here.






Emboldened, I ask the older men gossiping outside the grocery store about the people who live there now.

It's the big woman. The granddaughter.
And is the grandfather still alive?
Oh yes. Over in the yellow house. 
Do you know anything about the family who lived there before the war?
No... we're from the village outside here. Lady, that was 60 years ago!

Well, maybe a tad more, but okay. My worst fears realized: no one knows anything. Shmuel will go home home disappointed.

(Village square)






We walk over to the "yellow house."  No one answers the knock.

And then to the old castle grounds. I'm thinking -- maybe it will bring Shmuel some solace to learn of the history of some of the buildings that were here at his family's time.






There is a notice board and I translate a little of the history of the castle: fortified, fighting off invasions, burned, reconstructed, eventually occupied by the Germans...


Just across the street, there is a small building with a buggy outside and a plaque by the door.







We walk there now. It's the Regional Museum of Przedecz. Locked.

Wait, there is a sign that says it's open until the end of October (we're in!) until 4 p.m. (yes!).

Except that it's locked.


I find the old stairs that lead upstairs. Someone is living here. Where am I?? (I later learn that the building is divided into several rooms for rent. The one that now houses the museum, had been used by a fellow who couldn't pay his rent. So they shut off his electricity. There still is no light in the museum.)

On the museum door, there is a posting which includes a phone number. Elka dials it on her phone. Adam, the apprentice curator, picks up, then, learning that there is actually a potential visitor to the museum (a rare event), rushes over with the key.

Inside, there are the artifacts of daily life in Przedecz.






Well now, this is better! An ethnography of the village!

We're just getting it started, says the very young and enthusiastic Adam (I translate). We still have to get the electricity running again!

(Adam and Elka, in discussion.)






Adam is terribly curious what brings us to Przedecz. We learn later that Shmuel and Barbara are the first foreign guests he's had here. When I explain, he asks -- what was Shmuel's father's last name?

When he hears it, he frowns. I'm sure I've seen it somewhere. (Mind you, if Adam is even 30, I'd be surprised.)

He opens an old cupboard and digs out a book that clips together faded sheets of paper. I mean, really faded and crumbling sheets of paper.

This is a compilation of people -- Jews, Christians, anybody -- who applied for a personal i.d. before the war. It's not well organized and many (most?) of the pages are missing.





 


What's a personal i.d.? -- Shmuel asks.

Ha! The same i.d. I had to apply for when I reclaimed my Polish citizenship! Every Pole has one.

There are maybe 100 crumbling sheets of paper with attached photos in the folder. Adam flips through them. He's so sure he remembers the name.

100 sheets of paper.... So few? How many had actually filed papers here in those decades? Thousands?  2000 people lived in Przedecz just before the war. 800 Jews. What are the chances that we can find anything at all?

As we approach the end of the stack, I just want this to be over! We had never expected a specific reference to Shmuel's family. But, Adam had raised our hopes. And now we're going to be disappointed.

And then ... there it is!






What are the chances? Of the many many members of Shmuel's family, only his father's papers remain.






It just stopped us cold. It's as if this man, this young man had stepped into the room and shared his story with us:

[This is from my own summary of all that I learned today and from Shmuel's account of his conversations with his father, which he has given me permission to share]: I applied for an ID in the year 1934. All was okay. I experienced discrimination, but yes, all was okay. I loved my childhood in Poland. When I do the dishes, I still sing the Polish songs that I remember  from those years. But I had to leave.

We walk out into the damp, chilly day. Adam wants to show us the castle and he wants us to hear the corrected history of its last few centuries.

With his special key, he leads us up to the tower -- this is the part that remains intact. 600 years and it survived everything! Out of one window, you can see the gray house where Shmuel's family lived.





In this high old tower, we linger. And we talk.

Adam has a deep fascination with history, even as he has decided to pursue a certification in fire control. (In other words, he wants to be a fire fighter.) I ask him how long his family has lived in his town.
I traced our roots here to the 17th century!
Shmuel asks (via my interpretation) -- Did they teach you in school about the history of what happened here? [After all, Przedecz was one third Jewish before the war and zero percent Jewish thereafter.]

Oh yes, we spent many days on it!
Pause...
Of course, not all of it...
I ask -- what part do you think was missing?

He tells us that not everyone is happy to talk about the past.

We know this story too well, of course. At a time of war, of fear -- some perform heroic acts, others do the opposite. It's no different here, in Przedecz. The Jews were forced by the Germans to live in a village ghetto and eventually they were gathered and held hostage under horrific conditions. After -- labor camps, death camps... Some Poles took great personal risks to help the Jews who managed to escape, others assisted the Gestapo, ostensibly to protect their own skin. I imagine those are the people who do not want to remember what happened then.

We say good bye. Adam is an extraordinary young man and it is really thanks to him that this story continues to be written, discussed, remembered.







Elka leads the way to the place where there was once a Jewish cemetery. Early on, the Germans who occupied Przedecz, ripped out the tombstones from the ground and threw them into the lake. Adam told us that a half dozen had been hidden and preserved, but at the moment, there is nothing here but a commemorative plaque, put there by a family member of a Jewish person who wanted to honor all those who were buried here.



It's raining now. My American friends live in New Mexico and they have 310 of sunshine there each year, but in Poland, they've had mostly rain. I tell them -- this isn't a visit that asks for sunshine. Those who lived here endured rain in October. We are mourning them now...

In our stroll through this village, talk inevitably turns to what it was like to live here (in Przedecz, in Warsaw) under communism. Elka and I share memories and they are not dissimilar -- I've known her since my high school years. In trying to put things into context, she comes forth with an old saying we had -- In the camp of Eastern Europe, ours -- Poland -- was the happiest barrack.

So true. We were happy kids, turning into adults. I feared my boyfriend didn't love me and that I was too much of a tomboy, but I loved my childhood. Just as Shmuel's father loved his.



In Warsaw, Elka goes off to attend to a car problem and my friends and I search out supper. I take them to Zorza. We eat cabbage stuffed with buckwheat and mushrooms.





Day is done
Gone the sun
But the spirit stays strong.

from Poland, continued

A person can be one way in one place and very different elsewhere. I often think that I am quite different here, in Poland than I am at home. It comes from having been a chameleon all my life. I take on the colors of my environment. It's not that I'm the lizard who doesn't want to be seen, but people do tend to want to be at peace with their surroundings and I'm no different in this.

It's obvious that Poland offers me the longstanding friendship of those with whom I grew up. Back home, my family is a huge part of my social life. In Poland, apart from my sister, my focus is on the world of friends. And this trip shows it!


Today, my American co-conspirators and fellow travelers, Barbara and Shmuel, are still in Krakow and so I use the time to catch up.

I have my usual breakfast, made pretty for sure by the surroundings...








... and then I hurry to the nearby cafe -- Wrzenie Swiata -- the one with all those nonfiction books...








... to meet Agnieszka, my university friend who decades ago had talked me through many a youthful crisis (of the heart, of the mind, though never of the spirit!). You know how it is: you're an adult but just barely, decisions must be made, you feel torn, you just need to talk!

It's amazing how peaceful and calm our conversation is today. Perhaps I have finally grown up? One can hope.








Immediately after, I rush home (how funny to write that again about a place in Warsaw) to meet my sister (without whom all this would not be possible).








... and Pani Karolina and the talented contractor who worked through the remodeling job. This indeed is the awesome threesome!







I thought the radiators needed tweaking. Turns out only one of them did. The other -- my stupidity. I turned in off rather than on. Ed would have been amused.

A touch up here and there and his work on the apartment is done.

But in Poland, if you like the people you work with, you linger. There are stories to share. Moments to mull over. Life's experiences to bring to the table.

And speaking of table, I have now done the final count for my party -- the one I am hosting in my apartment this Saturday. Twelve people. Gulp! With the help my crew here, we add two leaves to the table, stretching it to the max. The apartment looks now like it's all table! All I need is two more chairs. Pani Karolina and my sister quickly make plans to select and add on two folding ones to have just for such an occasion.


The afternoon.

I'd been shocked to learn that of my close friends, one couple lives just down the next block from me! But why should I have been surprised? This is so Warsaw! You somehow never leave each other's orbit. These "neighbors" volunteer to take me on a tour of our common turf, pointing out the best veggie stand...







(Oh! I must remember to pick up some of those pickles! Are you jealous yet, Ed?)








... pointing out, too, the covered year round market just a few blocks away...







... and the best bread store, the best cake store, the best eateries -- the list is very long. I take notes!


I remember, too, why this is actually a good time to visit Poland. Like in Wisconsin, the autumn colors are peaking.






We walk toward the river, toward the mermaid that is the symbol of this once tortured now quite thriving city (why tortured? I'm thinking of the war... in Poland, I often think about the war -- THE war, THAT war).







Along the river now and then up to the gardens that grow on top (yes, that's right -- on top) of the Warsaw University's library building. Good views, green spaces, quiet...








(What's a Warsaw skylines? A snippet of the old town? Or, is it where you can pick out the Palace of Culture? Opinions vary.)








My friend makes a call...







We meet up with his wife not far from here, at a tiny and wonderful restaurant called...







Ha! I left it for you to guess: it's Dziurka Klucza in Polish.

What? You still haven't a clue as to what it means? Okay okay -- "Key hole!"


The food leans toward Italy and it's very good. Do not try to go there without a reservation!

I had just been mentioning that squash and pumpkins are increasingly trendy in American cuisine and boom! Here we are, eating pumpkin bruschetta in Warsaw!







Over the years, my male friends married and in all cases now, I adore the wives! It's as if my pool of friends grew since the days when we were all single.







I go over to their home and we finish supper there. How incredible that we should be neighbors now! Life is so weirdly kind sometimes.






I walk slowly up Tamka street. It's so odd and so natural really. As if I never left! But I did leave. And now I am hurrying, so that I can get news from home. That permanent, stable and yes, beloved home that's now on the other side of the ocean.

from Poland

The sun comes up, visible from my bedroom window. (In winter, you'll see the usual city apartment buildings, but right now, you see trees, including the ever beautiful poplar.)






Oh! Clever mirrors in the bedroom!  Selfie time!






The shower is strong, the bed -- far better than ours at the farmhouse.

Breakfast. Oats from the mountains in southern Poland. Raspberries -- the old fashioned kind: they aren't industrial strength -- they turn into mush quickly and I have to get rid of a few from the pack. But they are intensely flavorful.

I pour honey from the raspberry flower. I make my coffee, I settle in for my morning meal.







In the few days that my American friends and I are in Poland, we will have two trips that will take us outside Warsaw. The first is set for today -- to Krakow. Barbara and Shmuel will stay there through tomorrow, but I'll catch the late train back tonight -- I have too many details to take care of here. Too, I think they'll manage the main sights just fine without me. Krakow is compact and obvious. Here's a list of things to look over, here's where you can eat, here's the castle. Have fun!

But a visit to Krakow has to include a visit to Kazimierz -- the old Jewish section that was once quite apart from Krakow, but now has been pulled into the city in the way that villages often are in modern times.

And this is where I think I can be helpful: traipsing around Kazimierz with my friends.



I leave my Warsaw apartment... Oh, this view of the street where I live is becoming so familiar!








I meet up with Barbara and Shmuel at 9.  We have our train tickets (purchased online back in the US). We walk to the Central train station.

Now, I have many feelings about this walk. We first move along the familiar Nowy Swiat -- they are staying a block or two away from this artery. They know it well.







But then we turn into Jerusalem Avenue. This becomes interesting. One huge reason why my friends have traveled to Poland at this ungodly time of the year is because this is when I am here and they would love for me to take them to the village where Shmuel's family lived until world events caused at least one or two to immigrate to Israel. And then all hell broke loose in Poland and nearly everyone else on one side of his family perished in the concentration camps.

Back now to Jerusalem Avenue: I've known it all my life and yet it was just a word. Jerusalem. It never struck me to ask -- why Jerusalem?

And I write this because I am such a child of Warsaw! I took it in, I loved it, I didn't really think about the details. I worried more if my boyfriend loved me and if my parents would ever lay down their arms against each other.

In many ways, this trip, with my visiting friends takes us, takes me in a new direction. True, Ed's family was Jewish and he, like Shmuel, is intensely interested in history, but the few times I came to Poland with Ed, I was so hell bent on showing him my city and my country, that I did not pay attention to much that I am noticing now.



We pass the Stalinist Palace of Culture and Science and for the first time my friends have a full view of this curious piece of architecture (in a morning fog).








(A man is selling the Polish doughnuts -- paczki -- at perhaps the busiest pedestrian intersection in the city.)







And then we are at the Central Station and I am so pleased to see it transformed! As little as three years ago it was a cold and bleak and an uncomfortable place to wait for trains that themselves were old and shabby.

Not anymore. This photo is remarkable because it is shot from the mezzanine, where there is a lovely waiting area.







The train itself is modern and comfortable and even in 2nd class you get a free beverage! (Smile)


Just a quick two photos of the approach to Krakow. From the flat terrain of Warsaw, we move into a different landscape.







(Cabbage fields and a church. So Polish!)








I chat idly with my friends on the train... I tell Barbara about the people I know and love here. She says -- they'll be so interested in catching up in the details of your life -- and I smile at that, because it's not really how it works. If I meet for coffee with one at a time, we catch up. But when all of us get together, it's all about story telling! The social dynamic is very different -- everyone vies for the floor to say something that will amuse or entertain or inform the rest. In group gatherings, the well being of the entirety matters more than satisfying any individual's need to share. (Though I suppose if someone insisted, everyone would listen with an open heart.)



And now we are in Krakow!






The most beautiful square...







(The horse and buggy rides are just one example of the highland influence on Krakow. The decorated horses tell us as much...)







And now our walk to Kazimierz. As always, I don't want to turn this into a tourist journal, so I'll just post a handful of photos with captions. (Too, it is late, I am going on several nights of too little sleep and things will NOT slow down in the next few days.)

(I first veer us toward the New Market Square: there are always stalls with food here. I ask one vendor of Polish sausage - may I take a photo? He laughs. Sure, but don't you think that Wawel -- the castle -- is more interesting than this?








Too, there are stalls with antiques and old world stuff. Shmuel asks me to ask the vendor -- where do you get the pieces you sell? The guy shrugs his shoulders. People bring it in... )







We visit several synagogues and I take a string of photos, but I'll just post one, of my favorite:








The old Jewish Cemetery is right behind it, but in all my visits here, it's been closed to the public. Not anymore. We wander inside.








Is the lackadaisical attitude toward nettle weeds intentional? The cemetery is more than 400 years old. Is it to remind us of the passage of time?


We spend a good number of minutes here...







And now I am hungry. There are a number of restaurants in the Jewish quarter offering Jewish cuisine, but I have two that I am fond of and we go to one of them  -- Klezmer. (In Poland restaurants open and they stay open until they close. None of this "eat your lunch between 12 and 2 or else go hungry." That's France. You want to eat at 4:15? Who are we to turn you away! I know, I know... it means that you do not need the vigilant chef to be there round the clock. Meaning, you do not need a vigilant chef. Meaning, the dishes are made in advance and the cook on call just has to follow simple instructions and get them to the table.)



I take a picture of my friends. Look like you like each other!  -- I tell them. We do like each other -- they retort.






(BTW, my beet root soup and the baked cabbage roll are excellent!)






And now it's time for me to leave my friends and slowly head back to the train station. I do pause: in an artsy shop that sells, among other things, hand sewn dolls. Don't you think Snowdrop would like this little red riding hood?






And then again, I pause in a wine store that sells... (hold on to your hat, hannah!) world class (so they tell me) Polish wine! I am so dubious. The clerk lets me sample three prize bottles of whites (I so prefer whites). Two pass my test with flying colors! I have an apartment, I can take them there. I can keep them until the day I need them.


I'm at the station now.  The train pull in. Why is one of the headlights off? I ask Ed later -- would this have mattered to the train engineer? Most likely no...







I'm home now. The apartment is so quiet! A lovely quiet with just a gentle sound of light traffic outside.