The Items: A Long Road Home to Poland
By Lynda Kraar
One day in 1947, Auschwitz
survivor Abraham Siedlecki and his bride, Siberian Gulag survivor Chana
Frajlich, were informed by the Jewish Committee of Lodz, Poland, that their
application had been approved: Their new apartment was in move-in condition. It
was on Pietrkowska Street – the charming main drag of Lodz, which, during the
war, had been renamed Adolf Hitler Street, and had been inside the Lodz Ghetto.
This new living space had been the headquarters of a newspaper during the war,
and was now empty and available. Or so my parents thought.
When they arrived at the
apartment, they found a squatter. Stunned to see my father, a former boxer, the
squatter froze in panic. Within moments Dad realized this guy was a Nazi in
hiding – hoping to do what? Escape to the “West?” Go home to Germany? Continue
living in this apartment, unnoticed?
My father was not acquainted
with anger management. This encounter gave Dad the opportunity to unleash all
his rage on this former oppressor who could not now escape Dad’s blows.
“Please, I’ll give you anything
I have – money – please!” the Nazi begged.
“I don’t want your money. I
don’t want your personal things. What's in the bag?” Dad asked, noticing a
small package among the Nazi’s possessions.
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| "Jude" star, front. (Lynda Kraar photo) |
My parents were stunned to see
that the Nazi had meticulously sequestered a few well-chosen Jewish items. He
had a neatly preserved “Jude” – a yellow star worn by Jewish ghetto prisoners.
He was also hiding a ritual prayer shawl that was carefully folded in a black
satin pouch, hand-sewn in the shape of the biblical Tablets of Moses. There was
also a timeworn Jewish prayer book, a mahzor, used only on the Day of
Atonement. One final left hook to the jaw, and the Nazi fled the apartment,
leaving behind the package of Jewish items.
Why the Nazi held on to these
items was the subject of much speculation by my parents. The items followed my
parents’ itinerary – first to stay with them in Lodz for four years, under
postwar Communism, then a six-week layover in Paris while waiting for passage
to Israel, then four years in Israel, and then to Peterborough for a few weeks,
and finally, to Toronto, where the items made a move several times, from
downtown apartments until ultimately settling in the city’s Bathurst Manor
enclave. They first lived on Clanton Park Road, where I recall seeing them for
the first time when I was about five years old. When I turned six we all moved to
a newer section of the Manor, to Sandale Gardens - the items and we three humans.
It was during this period that I recall Mom placing all of the items in a
plastic bakery bag that had contained pita bread. The items would stay in Mom’s
top dresser drawer for 40 years.
From time to time, we would take
them out, spread them out on the bed, and wonder aloud, What was a Nazi doing
with these things? Was he going to save them as mementos? Did he intend to make
money by selling them, after the Jews were extinct? Was he secretly a Jew, or
did he have Jewish blood? Who was the owner? Was the owner elderly or infirm?
Was he robbed by the Nazi?
Speak to us, Oh, Items. Speak to
us. We implore you to speak. Tell us who you are, where you came from, and what
happened to your owner!
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The prayer shawl. It served as the wedding canopy for
my daughter Miriam's wedding.
(Lynda Kraar photo)
|
When Mom passed away and it was
time to sell my parents’ home in Toronto, I relocated the items to my own home
in Teaneck, New Jersey, where they remained in the plastic pita bakery bag, in
the darkened bottom corner of our study. I placed them with some late-19th century
Jewish liturgical volumes, safe from sunlight and humidity. From time to time,
I would take them out, and show them to my daughters, asking the same questions
– now a ritual – who was that guy? Why did he do it? What about the person who
owned these things? What was his fate?
After my husband passed away,
and our home was sold, the items took two more trips with me – first to a very
sunny apartment in Edgewater, New Jersey, on the Hudson River. To protect them,
the items stayed in the mover’s box for two years, and, finally, when I rebuilt
my life with my new partner, the items came into a new curio cabinet, in my
study in Englewood, New Jersey.
The items seemed frightened and
huddled together – awaiting their fate, wondering what was going to happen
next. They had been together since at least 1947 – when they entered the lives of my parents -- never having been away from each
other. I felt their anguish – or perhaps these items, now much less inanimate to me than in the distant past, were absorbing my anguish.
One of the items would come into active
duty as a significant part of a Jewish ritual.
Last summer my daughter got
married at her grandmother’s farm in rural Pennsylvania. She and her husband
designed an authentic, traditional wedding as would have taken place in a Polish
shtetl, complete with a Klezmer band. For the first time in nearly 70 years,
the items would be separated: The prayer shawl was summoned to be the wedding canopy.
I packed it up and brought it to Pennsylvania to be used on what might have
been the rainiest, wettest day of the entire summer.
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| The Mahzor, a prayer book used on the first day of Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement). (Lynda Kraar photo) |
It then travelled back to
Toronto with my daughter – in a bag, but without the black satin cover, which
had been safely albeit inadvertently left behind in a bag in the trunk of my
car.
A few months later, in a
snowstorm that lasted nine hours, I drove it back from Toronto to New Jersey,
and returned it to its rightful place alongside the book and the star, tucked
safely into the pita bag, and placed in my curio cabinet, under lock and key.
They were getting tired. I was
getting tired. How long could I continue to shlep
around these precious, historical artifacts – these witnesses – without risking
damage, or worse? I considered where to donate them. Israel? The United States?
Canada?
Poland?
Not a bad idea. Both of my
parents had always told me stories about Polish people whom they knew -
friends, neighbors, business partners. What ultimately landed my father on his path
to Auschwitz was arrest by a Jewish police officer in the Lodz Ghetto in 1942
after he was caught smuggling with his non-Jewish Polish partners on the German
side of the ghetto. My mother's brother - as well as my mother - were turned in
by Jews in Siberia. Mom's brother died of tuberculosis in a gulag at 18.
Everything got transferred to me.
Earlier this year the University of Haifa announced its superstar lineup of honorary PhD
conferees in what would truly be a banner year for academia. Amongst the
honorees was Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, a luminary in the world of
Jewish-Polish studies. Curator of the core exhibit of POLIN Museum of the
History of Polish Jews. A landsman from
Toronto who, like me, grew up in Bathurst Manor - the Holocaust survivor
enclave a few miles north of downtown Toronto. Known to her army of adherents
simply as "BKG."
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| Miriam Borden, left, and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (BKG) examine the prayer shawl. (Lynda Kraar photo) |
I reached out to offer BKG my
congratulations. From the minute we heard each other's shared Canadian accent,
a friendship formed. Soon we were talking about Poland, and I felt it coming
over me: Was it possible that the items would be going back to Poland, land of
their origin? Would I be skipping over handing them to a Holocaust institution
in Israel in favor of a Polish history museum?
Yes. Yes, I would.
It was not a hard decision to
make. My daughters and I collectively reached the conclusion that it was the
right home for these items, which for at least half a century (judging by the
wear and tear on the little mahzor) had
enjoyed and celebrated ritual life in Poland - the land that had been the
cradle of at least 70 percent of Jewish civilization for 1,000 years. In Poland
the items would be displayed and counted as part of a community of witnesses -
a kehilla of artifacts whose
narrative arc is drenched in the history of the country’s Jewish life.
The items would take one more
journey before returning to Poland. They would stop in Israel, where I’d be
spending a few days at the University of Haifa board of governors meetings. On
the flight they were safely tucked away in my big leather backpack, which
remained on my lap for the entire 12-hour flight. And, God, they felt so heavy.
I brought them to the University of Haifa, to visit Dr. Marcos Silber, senior
lecturer at the university's internationally renowned Department of Jewish
History. He was overcome with emotion. I let him touch the items. I sprawled them out over a table in his office as we spoke. It was good. It was giving me closure. It was making me comfortable with my decision.
My next stop was Poland. The morning of my departure I packed up the items, and they flew, once again on my lap, the short trip from Israel to Warsaw. The items felt even heavier than before. I was feeling a profound sense of loss at the thought of not having the items with me for the first time in my entire life.
The next day, June 27, my daughter and I engaged in a humble and informal act of charity at the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. In the presence of BKG I handed off the little plastic bag of items to the archivist. I filled out a few forms. Together we all beheld the magnitude of the items. It was not until I saw the reaction of other people to the items that I realized how important this moment was. I suddenly felt lighter. I was certain that this was the right decision.
I was informed by BKG that these items were especially meaningful, because the collection did not contain many artifacts from the Nazi era. BKG informed us that the Jude star would be come part of the core exhibit. I only requested that we could borrow the ritual prayer shawl for my younger daughter's wedding, thus completing the circle.
Some people leave and never say goodbye. Some people say goodbye and never leave. Maybe there's a third kind of people - the kind who are both.
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| The Mahzor, a prayer book used on the first day of Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement). The word "Mahzor" is written in the biblical semi-cursive Rashi script. (Lynda Kraar photo) |
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| Detail from the spine of the Mahzor, a prayer book used on the first day of Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement). (Lynda Kraar photo) |
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| The satin pouch that contained the Mahzor, a prayer book used on the first day of Yom Kippur -(the Day of Atonement). Note the shape - the tablets of the Covenant. (Lynda Kraar photo) |
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| The prayer shawl. It served as the wedding canopy for my daughter Miriam's wedding. (Lynda Kraar photo) |
