{"id":32,"date":"2004-09-27T11:00:50","date_gmt":"2004-09-27T15:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/jackstriptoeurope\/2004\/09\/27\/sara-talks-about-poland-and"},"modified":"2004-09-27T11:00:50","modified_gmt":"2004-09-27T15:00:50","slug":"sara-talks-about-poland-and-jewish-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jackstriptoeurope\/2004\/09\/27\/sara-talks-about-poland-and-jewish-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Sara talks about Poland and Jewish History"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Okay,
\nI just wrote all my thoughts about Notte Bianca in Rome and those lame
\nItalians, but meanwhile, my head is swimming with thoughts about
\nJudaism, my Jewish grandparents who were both born in Poland, the
\natrocities of the concentration camps and the Jewish ghettos and mass
\nmurders in small town all over Poland, and the Jews still living here
\ntoday, the American or Israeli Jewish tourists who’s ancestors were
\nfrom Poland just like mine, and the number of small towns in Poland
\nonce filled with Jews and now without a single trace, like my
\ngrandfather’s town: Mogenlica.<\/font><\/p>\n

Krakow
\nis a Jewish tourist destination. It’s weird. We’ve made comparisons to
\nNative Americans in some ways, but that doesn’t always hold up, of
\ncourse. Still, though, here in Krakow, they sell little wooden Jewish
\nfigures. They are about 6 inches tall, black, and they are bearded
\nJewish men wearing the tallis and kippah.  I like to joke about
\ngetting one and bringing it home to put on my mantle. And if I did,
\nthat wouldn’t be so bad, but really it’s just not my style.  But
\nwhen you do think about the native Americans, well, first let me tell
\nyou my favorite line from one of those Addams Family
\nmovies.   Christina Ricci plays Wednesday and she’s at summer
\ncamp and she’s supposed to do a nice little Thanksgiving play and
\ninstead of being the sweet and cute silent little Indian girl, she says
\non stage some line like, “I was once part of a flourishing culturally
\nrich society but my people were slaughtered and now those of us who are
\nleft sell beads on the side of the highway….”  <\/font><\/p>\n

And
\nif you really want to get further into Sara history, and cycles of
\ncultural ignorance, I’ll tell you another sad memory of mine. I was
\ninto beading for awhile and one stitch is called “peyote stitch.” I was
\njust getting into it and was excited about it. Well at the Madison,
\nWisconsin airport, there was a little store with Native American goods.
\nThere was a peyote stitch beaded necklace just like the kind I had been
\nworking on. So, like a beginning photographer to a professional, or a
\nnewbie beader to the master, I asked about it. “What do you call that
\nstitch? Peyote stitch? I’m making something like that”….The woman was
\ndisgusted, it was clear, and really, I don’t blame her. I forgive
\nmyself because I was only 18 or 19, but that’s a little dense. It was
\ninnocent enough. I understood the plight of the native Americans. But
\nstill, I had taken a fragment of that woman’s culture and played with
\nit without even realizing it. I’m sure there are parallels here. 
\nIn a flea market, we saw a menorah, a silver pointer you use to read
\nfrom the Torah, and some silver Havdalah spice boxes. That just fits
\nright into the Jewish tourism here. <\/font><\/p>\n

There
\nare Jewish museums, there are Jewish synagogues, and people go to
\nAuschwitz. I saw a girl at Auschwitz stand in front of the entrance
\nbuilding at Birkenau and her friend snapped a photo. One where the
\ngirl’s face was in the front and the building in the back. To us, that
\nis simply bizarre. Not only the picture, of course. Jack and  I
\ntook tons of those in Krakow yesterday. I’m standing there and cool old
\nbuildings are in the background.  But to do it at Birkenau? <\/font><\/p>\n

Well,
\nlisten.  I’m going to close this up for now, but there is a lot to
\nthink about.  I’ve always thought of the Holocaust and old
\nsynagogues and Jewish history in Poland as this vague, distant, foggy
\narea far away.  It’s clear now. I’ve gotten to the bottom of it.
\nAnd it’s not doting on the past and it’s not victimizing myself and
\nJews, it’s just exploring the history, seeing the history, and seeing
\nthe present. Things are different now. Jews aren’t in Poland (not
\nmany). They’re in Israel, the U.S., and all over. I have some serious
\nproblems with Israel, that’s another long story. But now, I have a much
\nclearer understanding of my grandparents’ life, and their story. 
\nI have clearer pictures of the unspeakable suffering of the Jewish in
\nthe camps, but I’ve learned a lot more about how bad it was in the
\nghettos, like the ghetto in Warsaw.  And I’ve met Jews living here
\nnow. And Jack and I found the old Jewish cemetery in Mogielnica, my
\ngrandfather’s town, and it’s an overgrown forest. A young forest.
\nProbably 60 years old. And then we did find some sort of memorial,
\nprobably put in recently marking where a rabbi was buried. That’s the
\nonly trace of any of those Jewish people in the whole town. Oh wait!
\nExcept that we went to the town’s city hall and a lady there pulled out
\nthe book where all the births were recorded. She had a different book
\nfor the Jews. In that book, in Russian, all the births were recorded
\nfrom 1889-1915. So we’re going to call with a Polish friend (now that
\nwe have our grandfather’s birth year and name correctly) and see if
\nhe’s written there. Anyhow, the point is that things are immensely
\nclearer now. Like in Spanish you say, why’d you go to Poland? To
\n“conocerlo.” To know it.  There are still a million thoughts and
\nconfusions and questions, but I feel like I know it, I know the past
\nand the present. I recommend coming to Poland.
\nAnd really, the people have mostly been so so nice.<\/font><\/p>\n

P.S. My grandfather came to the U.S., to Kansas City, in 1921 at age 17. My grandmother came around then also, at age 11. <\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Okay, I just wrote all my thoughts about Notte Bianca in Rome and those lame Italians, but meanwhile, my head is swimming with thoughts about Judaism, my Jewish grandparents who were both born in Poland, the atrocities of the concentration camps and the Jewish ghettos and mass murders in small town all over Poland, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1157,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1453],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jackstriptoeuropestories"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jackstriptoeurope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jackstriptoeurope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jackstriptoeurope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jackstriptoeurope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1157"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jackstriptoeurope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jackstriptoeurope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jackstriptoeurope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jackstriptoeurope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jackstriptoeurope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}