News from Galicia
THE MASS GRAVE OF HOLOCAUST VICTIMS IN WOLBROM WITH COMMEMORATIVE PLAQUES TRANSLATED.
FILM AT THE MASS GRAVE OF HOLOCAUST VICTIMS IN WOLBROM WITH COMMEMORATIVE PLAQUES TRANSLATED.
At the cemetery there are three rectangular, framed and covered with concrete slabs mass graves, with plaques:
The first plaque on the first grave reads: "GLORY TO THE MEMORY / OF JEWISH POPULATION / WHO FELL FROM THE HANDS / OF HITLERITE MURDERERS.”
The second plaque on the first grave reads: “PLACE OF ETERNAL REST OF 800 VICTIMS / POLISH CITIZENS OF JEWISH NATIONALITY / MURDERED BY THE HITLERITE FORCES ON THE DAYS 4-13 SEPTEMBER 1942 / GLORY TO THEIR MEMORY”
The second mass grave has a plaque with a poem that reads: “THIS IS WHAT NEEDS TO BE CARVED IN POLISH MEMORY LIKE IN STONE OUR COMMON HOUSE WAS DESTROYED THE SPILLED BLOOD MARKS OUR BROTHERHOOD. WE ARE CONNECTED BY THE EXECUTION WALL, BY AUSCHWITZ AND DACHAU , EACH UNKNOWN GRAVE AND EVERY PRISON BAR.
The third mass grave has a plaque that reads: TO OUR CO-CITIZENS AND JEWISH MARTYRS. THE INHABITANTS OF WOLBROM.
In those three mass graves, there are from 600 to 800 Jewish victims buried.
In September 1939, just after the Germans invaded Poland all Jewish residents of Wolbrom were expelled walking in the direction of Zawiercie. The marching column stretched for few kilometers, the walk took up to 3 days and was accompanied by regular German soldiers mockery and brutality. Most of those who survived were made to return to the city. In autumn of 1941, the Germans administered a ghetto, where almost 8,000 Jews were concentrated, including about 3,000 deportees and refugees. The ghetto borders were sealed in the spring of 1942. Liquidation of the ghetto in Wolbrom began in September 1942. The German police and Ukrainians walked all Jews to the railway station, where the selection was carried out. About 600 old and weak people were taken to the forest gorge, where they were shot and buried in mass graves. The Jews remaining at the station were loaded into cattle wagons and transported to the death camp in Bełżec. Several hundred fit and young men were selected and transported to labor camps. After the liquidation of the Jewish community in Wolbrom it was the desolate Jewish cemetery which became the place of executions of people who were denounced or came out of hiding. From mid-September 1942 to the end of 1944, nearly 400 Jews were shot in this way. Only 300 Jews from Wolbrom survived the war, most of them emigrated just after the war finished.
WOLBROM JEWISH COMMUNITY
FILM IN THE FOREST OF WOLBROM - WOLBROM JEWISH COMMUNITY.
The close to 5000 Jewish residents of Wolbrom in 1939 were making close to 60 % of the city population. On September 6th, 1939 the city was taken by the German Wermacht. In the spring of 1942 the fenced-off ghetto was established. In late August 1942 the German Nazis organized the looting of the Wolbrom Jewish community by demanding 20 kg of gold to halt the deportations. In spite of the ransom paid on September 5th just after Shabbat, the first deportation action to the Death Camp of Belzec was initiated. The final liquidation and the murder of the remaining few hundred Wolbrom Jews in the nearby forest came in November 1942.
GUIDING AND TOURISM IN THE TIMES OF PANDEMICS OF CORONAVIRUS AND COVID-19
GUIDING AND TOURISM IN THE TIMES OF PANDEMICS OF CORONAVIRUS AND COVID-19.
One of the things I am addicted to is talking and interpreting the historical sites, specifically Jewish Heritage sites. The coronavirus is not going to stop me. The Coronavirus made me go on-line and start the YouTube channel on history, genealogy and guiding. You are more than welcome to:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyDt1uffx9B9TwUZDuu-R2Q/
The first film connects the Jewish sites in Poland with global pandemics and gives hope for fast recuperation.
As for now - stay at home.
Yes, epidemics and pandemics happen, they happen recurrently. And then they go away. Try to think more about the post-pandemic reality and how to make it better and more secure.
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The first film is very up to date as it is at the Jewish cholera cemetery in Skała. FILM AT THE JEWISH CHOLERA CEMETERY IN SKAŁA
Plagues and pandemics do happen. We just forget that they do. In our XX-XXI centuries lives we put all our trust in modern research-based medicine following the best possible practices to keep us secure and healthy. At times, the system has to say that it has no more answers or possible treatments but such situations we know only to be individual and personal dramas, never collective pandemics.
The Coronavirus we have now, which causes COVID 2019 is just the next recurrence of a viral illness.
The last known massive flu pandemic was Spanish influenza in 1918-1920. The estimates are 500 million people around the world infected that made 27 % of the global population, even in the Arctic and remote Pacific islands. The mortality was anything between 17 and 100 million in total. The spread was largely hastened globally with the WW I army troops' movements.
Cholera reappeared 7 times in the last 200 years taking a massive death toll. The last one in 1961 originated in Indonesia. More recently due to wars and humanitarian crises we had an outbreak in South America in 1991-1994 and Yemen 2017-2020.
The fifth epidemic of cholera originated from India, most likely Calcutta and had a European outbreak in the harbor city of Hamburg in Germany in 1892. Killing over 8600 residents. It lasted in Europe till 1896 and took 267,890 lives in Russia (1892 till 1896); 120,000 in Spain; 90,000 in Japan and over 60,000 in Persia. In Egypt, cholera claimed more than 58,000 lives.
This was the last European cholera pandemic.
It was an inspiration for scientific explorations and breakthroughs of Robert Koch who first explained the theory of germs causing diseases. This epidemic was immortalized in the writings of Gabriel Garcia Marquez – “Love in the Time of Cholera” and Mark Twain who visited Hamburg in 1892. He notices that the general lack of awareness and media coverage contributes to the death toll. He writes “snatched from their homes to the pest houses", where "a good many of them ... die unknown and are buried so".
Twain concludes alarmingly about almost complete global ignorance of this outbreak and the lack of awareness in America.
This is the film of two cemeteries hidden in the forest next to the city of Skala, some 10 miles north of Cracow in Poland. One of those Christian the other Jewish. Both of them were established in 1896 at a distance of two miles from the city to bury the local cholera victims. Yes, epidemics and pandemics happen, they happen recurrently. And then they go away. Try to think more about the post-pandemic reality and how to make it better and more secure.
Jan Karski monument in Kraków at the Remuh synagogue
A new visitor on a bench at the entrance to Remuh Synagogue in Cracow. Monument unveiled on January 26th , 2016.
Beit Midrash Hevra Tehilim in Kraków
Three years ago Cracow as shaken with news about the MEZCAL Music Club opened in the Beit Midrash Hevra Tehilim in Kraków. The building dates to 1896 and was housing a large synagogue in the ground flor. The walls are still covered with frescoes, floral ornaments, Jerusalem panorama and mythical creatures as well as Hebrew inscriptions. Three years ago against the religious frescoes and quotations glass shelves were installed proudly showing colorful alcohols and liqueurs. The past religious greatness of Cracow Jewish community was then distorted with opaque alcohol bottles. The only way to see that beauty on the walls was ironically to drink, a rather risky historical exploration method. The building stands proudly at the intersection of Corpus Cristi (Corpses of Christ) and Rabbi Meisels streets, my favorite Cracow address for its schizophrenia.
For the last few months MEZCAL became history. I hope the gravity of the address did away with this loud establishment.
Now major restoration works are underway. As for now restoration to the building as such not to its historical significance and frescoes. The question remains what next?
Rumor has it that one of the Kazimierz cafeteria / clubs will move it and adapt the space.
I am all for making this magnificent space broadly available if only done with respect, care and adding new meaning and understanding to this important historical space.
A good research of what was Beit Midrash Hevra Tehilim for close to 40 years before WW II is lacking.
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