{"id":33,"date":"2004-09-27T19:17:05","date_gmt":"2004-09-27T23:17:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/jackstriptoeurope\/2004\/09\/27\/ghosts-and-despair\/"},"modified":"2004-09-27T19:17:05","modified_gmt":"2004-09-27T23:17:05","slug":"ghosts-and-despair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jackstriptoeurope\/2004\/09\/27\/ghosts-and-despair\/","title":{"rendered":"Ghosts and Despair"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

I just got back from
\nthe “New” Cemetery in the Kazimierz district of Krakow.  (New
\nmeaning newer than the “old” cemetery.)  It was huge, and
\ncompletely filled with Jewish tombstones.  Some were old, a few
\nwere new.  Some were in good shape, others were weathered or
\nknocked over.  Some were glued together.  Some had been moved
\nduring the war and now are part of a mosaic-like “memory wall.”  <\/span><\/p>\n

It’s sad many times over:  these
\nstones represent loved ones lost; they represent a community that was
\nerased; and perhaps worst of all is my feeling that for many of the
\nstones, no one will ever know who this person was or anything about
\nthem, because the families of those people – the ones who would have
\nremembered who they were – are lost too.  <\/span><\/p>\n

Of all the places dealing with the
\nJewish people and\/or our attempted eradication that I’ve seen so far,
\nthis one made me the saddest.  I don’t know if it’s an
\naccumulation of all the things I’ve seen, or the uniqueness of this
\nplace.  <\/span><\/p>\n

It hurts to say this, because I believe in focusing on Jewish life <\/span>and culture<\/span>,
\nas opposed to the Holocaust, pogroms, or a sense of victimization – but
\nbeing here is starting to feel like walking through one big graveyard, full of ghosts and
\ndespair. <\/p>\n

UPDATE:  I realize, of course, that to say that is misguided,
\nmyopic and generally unfair to the Jews and Poles living here today as
\nwell as Jewish and Polish history here.  It’s just how I felt at
\nthat moment.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just got back from the “New” Cemetery in the Kazimierz district of Krakow.  (New meaning newer than the “old” cemetery.)  It was huge, and completely filled with Jewish tombstones.  Some were old, a few were new.  Some were in good shape, others were weathered or knocked over.  Some were glued together.  Some had been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1155,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1453],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33","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\/33","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\/1155"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jackstriptoeurope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jackstriptoeurope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jackstriptoeurope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jackstriptoeurope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jackstriptoeurope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}