Englewood Resident to Participate in the Fifth Annual Ride For The Living
55-Mile Fundraising Bicycle Ride from Auschwitz to Krakow on June 29, 2018
Lynda Kraar of Englewood, NJ, will be traveling to Krakow, Poland, to participate in the Jewish Community Centre of Krakow’s fifth annual Ride for the Living during the JCC’s tenth birthday year. Kraar will be joining approximately 200 local JCC Krakow members, staff and friends from around the world to cycle the 55 miles from Auschwitz-Birkenau to the JCC to raise awareness and funds ensuring the future of Krakow’s Jewish community and supporting the 60 Holocaust survivors, as well as their children and grandchildren, at the JCC. Ride For The Living inspires participants to not only remember Poland’s Jewish past, but also to celebrate the miraculous rebirth of Jewish life taking place in Poland today despite all odds.
“What a thrill to be part of the 2018 Ride For The Living, said Kraar, a first-time participant although she is well acquainted with Poland. Kraar serves as North American consultant for the world-renowned Warsaw-based POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, which opened four years ago and has already had 2.5 million visits.
"The Jewish community that is thriving in Krakow, just a bike ride away from Auschwitz, is quite unfathomable, although its doable," said Kraar.
"The Ride will be especially meaningful for me because my father, who was tattooed in Auschwitz as 111855, walked out of the death camp at the very end of the war, and headed to Krakow to see what was left. After that my father reclaimed his name, Abram Siedlecki. In his memory I am riding with the moniker 111855.
"Today Poland is a welcoming place that is experiencing a Jewish renaissance. I am proud to be a part of the movement, as is my family," Kraar says.
About JCC Krakow
JCC Krakow was opened in April 2008 by His Royal Highness, The Prince of Wales, and now serves as the focal point for the resurgence of Jewish life in Krakow with nearly 700 Jewish members. The center provides social and educational services to the local Jewish community, coordinates programming open to the entire Krakow community to foster Polish-Jewish relations and acts as Krakow's Jewish visitor center with over 125,000 visitors in 2017.
