Despite Continued Anti-Semitism, Polish Jews Are Coming Home
published in Hamodia Magazine Passover 2010
The Jewish community in Poland is today witnessing an epic story of rebirth, born out of the ashes of this century’s worst tragedy. Throughout the country, countless Poles who were raised as gentiles are coming to the startling recognition that they are actually Jewish. This brings them face-to-face with the challenges of how to live as a Jew in a country that is still riddled with anti-Semitism and is hostile to its Jewish community.
Today, several rabbis and Jewish organizations throughout Poland are helping to guide these Jews back to their roots. Their two biggest struggles are overcoming the fright that Jews have due to Poland’s centuries-long history of rabid anti-Semitism, as well as the returnees’ staggering ignorance of Jewish life.
American-born Rabbi Michael Schudrich has been working with Jews in Poland since 1990 and has been the country’s Chief Rabbi since 2004. He is the “address” for many Poles looking for answers about their religion. Thousands of Poles have come to him over the last 20 years upon discovering that they may have Jewish roots.
“We cannot bring back the korbanot of the war. We have to memorialize and remember them and learn from their sacrifices. But there were also Jews that were lost to the Jewish people, not al kiddush Hashem, but through children being given away or through people afraid to say they were Jewish. Those people can be brought back,” Rabbi Schudrich said. “If you think about the great mitzvah of Hashavas Aveida, for a goat or pen, can you imagine the obligation to bring back a Jewish neshama?”
A Tormented History
Three and half million Jews lived in Poland before World War II, and ninety percent were murdered during the Holocaust. After the war, as Jews staggered out of the concentration camps and returned to their home towns, another two thousand were killed in pogroms perpetrated not by the Nazis, but by their former neighbors. With rampant anti-Semitism and the iron hand of a Communist government that was no friend to the Jews, the few remaining Jews clearly saw that there was no home for them in Poland.
Many Jews left Poland, and those who were unable to do so hid their identities out of fear for the lives. But unlike the Marranos of Spain who lived outwardly as Christians while trying to maintain Jewish rituals at home, the Jews of Poland lived as atheists or Roman Catholics and shed all Jewish observances and rituals. In fact, they hid their religion from everyone, including their own children.
“After the war, after the trauma from the Holocaust, people were terrified,” said Rabbi Symcha Keller, who was born to Holocaust survivors in Lodz after the war and currently leads the community there. “If you see all your family disappear, if you saw with you own eyes Germans kill people like insects, after you survive you don’t want to be Jewish. You want to be Polish, a gentile, but not Jewish.”
The collapse of the Iron Curtain in 1989 led to an awakening of Jewish sentiment in Poland. Slowly people began discovering their roots—often through parents’ deathbed confessions, family research or other means. Other Jews found out that they had been adopted by Christians during the war. Now many of these Jews are finding their way back to their family roots.
Completing His Grandfather’s Work
Once a 26-year-old woman named Lydia came from Lublin to meet with Rabbi Schudrich and discuss documents she had discovered three years earlier that listed the names and Jewish religion of her maternal family. Since that bombshell, she had wrestled with the shock of her new identity. Before contacting Rabbi Schudrich, she had decided that she wanted to live her life as a Jew. She was now looking for the best road back home.
In Warsaw she learned the basics of Judaism and the meaning of her Jewish identity, and then returned to Lublin committed to trying to keep kosher, Shabbos and the Yamim Tovim. Her non-Jewish husband of six years, Mirek, was very supportive.
Several months later, Mirek came to Warsaw to meet with Rabbi Schudrich and told the rabbi that he was so touched by the Jewish traditions that he wanted to convert. He also had another reason to convert. His grandfather had grown up in Lublin. During the Holocaust, his grandfather had saved a Jew who had escaped from the Maidanek concentration camp. Unfortunately, before the end of the war, the Nazis discovered them and killed them both.
Now Mirek felt a need to complete the work that his grandfather had begun in saving a Jewish life. He, himself, would become a Jews. Mirek converted soon after his meeting with Rabbi Schudrich. Eventually, he and Lydia settled in Israel. In doing so, they followed the path of many other Jews in Poland – after becoming frum, many Jews have moved out of the country to Israel, England or America for more spiritual growth and religious opportunities.
A Hidden Jew
In his twenty years in Poland, Rabbi Schudrich has seen tremendous growth. When he arrived, the city’s mikveh was rarely used, and now more than fifteen women use it each month. The city boasts a day school with 200 students, as well as Talmud shiurim and summer camps. Many of the activities of the Jewish community in the city and throughout the country are funded by the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation. Its programs in Poland were initiated and headed for many years by Rabbi Yechezkel Besser, z”l, who recently passed away.
Several years ago, Zbiszek, a 52-year-old man from Bialystock, visited Rabbi Schudrich. Zbiszek’s mother had passed away four months earlier. Following the funeral, his mother’s neighbors approached him and told him astonishing news: the woman who had raised him, whom he had called “mother,” all his life, was not biologically related to him.
Zbiszek had been born Jewish. In 1942, as Jews throughout Poland were being killed, Zbiszek’s parents, fearing that they might face the same fate, gave up their son to this woman. She took care of Zbiszek during the war, and when his parents did not return, she adopted him and raised him as her own son.
Under Nazi rule, any Pole caught hiding a Jew was killed. This woman knew the risks, which did not diminish even after the Nazis fell from power. In fact, after the war, she would have faced extreme unpleasantness, if not danger, if her Polish neighbors knew that her “son” was Jewish, so she hid the truth. Only a few very close, dear neighbors knew his real identity, but she swore them to secrecy and they had dutifully remained silent for five decades. But now that she had passed away, they decided it was time to reveal the secret.
Zbiszek trembled when he first heard the news, totally confused about what to do. He was tormented—should he continue living his comfortable life as a Christian, as he had been raised, or should he embrace his newfound religion, of which he knew nothing? Did he owe it to his adoptive mother to follow her religion, or to his biological parents whom he did not remember?
Finally Zbiszek decided that he wanted to embrace his true religion and live proudly as a Jew. Unfortunately, he did not know how. So he found his way to Rabbi Schudrich, who calmed his fears and taught him the basics of Judaism. Zbiszek spent the next few years studying together with Rabbi Schudrich and attending classes. Today, he goes by the name Zecharya Asher, and is an active member of the Polish Jewish community.
Battling Anti-Semitism
In his twenties years in Poland, Rabbi Schudrich has personally experienced several anti-Semitic incidents.