Seeking Illumination

Hello!! I'm in Krakow now, and I just wanted to post quickly about my day today. I'll write more later about my time in this city, but it's been terrific.

This morning I went with my program director, Jarka, and a driver recommended by the Auschwitz Jewish Center, Simon, to my paternal grandmother's hometown. It's called Zarnowiec, and it's an hour north of Krakow. Pretty much all I knew about it was from my dad who visited in the 70s, Google Maps, which showed a very small town, and Wikipedia, which said that it was the seat of some governmental body and had a population of 830. My grandmother grew up there, and she is a Holocaust survivor.

The town was larger than I was expecting, it had a square in the center and several streets. As soon as we did, Simon started rolling down his window and asking people if they knew where the Jewish cemetery or synagogue might be or might have been. I was a little nervous about how people would react, but the first two people just politely said they didn't know anything. Then, we found an older man in the town square, who started talking and talking and talking. He was born before the war, and he said that his father was the leader of Zarnowiec before WWII, so he knew the town well. He led us around for about half an hour. He pointed to three building on the square and said that they were Jewish-owned businesses before the war, and he told us that one of the streets off the square was the Jewish street. He took us down it and said that one house used to be the new synagogue, and the old synagogue was across the street but the building is no longer there.

I asked him if he knew the name Weingarten, which is my grandma's maiden name, and he said he did not, but he took us to a house on the Jewish street where a woman lived who he thought might know the name. We ended up talking to her middle-aged sons (and by "we," I mean Simon and Jarka) who then asked their mother, but she didn't know the name either. We walked back to the square, and just as the man was about to leave us, he saw a very old man driving by, walked up to his car and just started knocking on the window. So they guy rolled it town, and he asked about Weingarten, and the man said he remembered the name. I know that memories change over time, so I wasn't sure how much of our guide's story to believe, or whether or not to believe that this man knew my grandmother's family, but it was still exciting.

There was also a plaque in the Zarnowiec Cultural Building on the square that honored about 250 Poles and over 1,000 Jews from the town killed during the war. Right below it was a larger stone dedicated to a small resistance movement based there. Our guide told us that the "new" Jewish cemetery (1800s on) is today the site of a soccer field.

Overall it was much larger, friendlier, and more informational than I had expected. I've heard from many Jewish kids who go to Poland that it's cold (true) and anti-Semitic, and they can't wait to leave. Well, this is not at all the feeling I've had so far. I'll have to wait for the rest of the trip to really say, but so far so good.

I ended my day just now by watching Everything Is Illuminated, the movie where Elijah Wood plays an American Jew who goes to Ukraine to find his grandfather's town. I realized how lucky I was to find Zarnowiec and to meet such helpful people, and now just this morning seems so surreal. Also, my friend downloaded a version with Dutch subtitles, and since about half of the movie is in Ukranian, we could only understand when the son would translate into English for Elijah Wood. And that's exactly what today was like with Simon and Jarka talking to the locals and me anxiously awaiting translation.

Tomorrow we go to Auschwitz-Birkenau, and then we tour Jewish Oswiecim (Auschwitz) on Monday, which is where my paternal grandfather was from.