Amid Europe's Soaring Antisemitism, Two Polish Communities Work to Recover Pre-Holocaust Jewish History

BIALYSTOK, Poland – As antisemitism soars in Europe, some countries directly involved in the Holocaust are trying to maintain the memory of Jewish communities devastated by that event. 

Half of the six million murdered Jews lived in Poland, which ironically had invited Jews to live and flourish there. Two of those cities are working to restore that history.

Northeastern Poland's largest city is Bialystok, with a population of 300,000 Jewish people first came here in the early 1600s.

Anna Krasnicka, a history teacher and tour guide in Bialystok, told CBN News, "(In) those days there was no trade, no small business without the Jewish community. So, the owners of the little towns, they were inviting this kind of community because they needed them. And they also paid taxes. So, when they came here, they started to buy and sell things and, they also ran breweries and shops."

According to Krasnicka, about 50,000 Jewish people lived here leading up to World War II. "So, when the Nazis came here, they knew that this (was a) very important Jewish city at the very, very beginning. I mean, (from the) 27th of June, 1941."

A memorial to the Great Synagogue stands in the city center. In 1941, the Nazis marched in and burned it to the ground with 800 people inside. The same day, they killed 1,200 more Jews on the street.

"And it was just the beginning," Krasnicka explained. "Then they gathered the whole Jewish community in the ghetto, and they were using them as slaves. They were working – hard working. It was the time that those people were starving there, but still, they had hope to survive."

Despite an uprising two years later, the Nazis took almost the entire community to the Treblinka death camp and murdered them there. 

After the war, about 300 Jews returned to Bialystok and tried to live there.

"What happened in Poland in 1968, Communists said that all the Jewish people should go to Israel," Krasnicka told us. "So, the, last 120 people, something like this, just left Bialystok."

Today about 20 Jews live in the city, with none having Jewish family roots. There is a redemptive story here, however. Krasnicka says people in her town want to make sure the Jewish history is not forgotten.

"We have a special trail. We are not like anti-Semites. We really want to show that we remember and, the Jewish, part of the history of Bialystok,(too), is as important as other parts," she stated.

Nearly 200 miles away in Lublin, the Jewish community started about the same time as Bialystok in the 16th century.

Historian and tour guide Ziemowit Karłowicz is an expert on the city's history.

"And when Jewish people came here, mostly as refugees from Western and Eastern Europe, they settled surrounding the castle – King's castle of Lublin. Well, they lived there peacefully for hundreds of years," he told CBN News.

Karłowicz explained that many prominent rabbis came from this vibrantly rich group.

"The Jewish community of Lublin just before (World War II) was like 43,000 – one-third of the population of our town. And this again was (a) very – let's say diverse – community. There were many political parties, there were many views on life and on religion and on politics," he said.

When the Germans arrived, though, they turned the Jewish district into a ghetto.

Karłowicz described the scene. "They (the Nazis) surrounded it by barbed wire and, well Jewish people that were trapped inside the, they were thinking that they can survive the war. Nothing bad can happen to them. Well after the war, it'll all (be) finished." Karłowicz said that for the Jews of Lublin, the end of the war never came.

During the war, in a building that still stands today housed a Jewish orphanage and a home for the elderly. When The Nazis exterminated the Lublin Ghetto in 1942, they murdered the 200 hundred orphans, the elderly, and the child caregivers who refused to abandon the children.

"The Germans came – SS forces – and they started to throw away people from their houses, driving them to the square near the synagogue. And Jewish people were not resisting because, well, that never happened before. This was the very first ghetto in the world that was destroyed during Aktion Reinhardt or the Holocaust, the German code name for them for that. 

Almost all of Lublin's Jews died in the Belzic death camp,

"We know about 1,000 survived of them, but right now, (in) the Jewish community of Lublin (there are) like 50, 70 people," Karłowicz noted, "And none of them is speaking Yiddish."

Now, the Polish people are telling many of those stories to the international community through the Grodzka Gate - NN Theatre cultural institution.

Karłowicz told us, "My grandfather once said that if you will let the memory of these people die, it'll be like the Nazis have won. No, we cannot do this. I'm a historian. My job is to remember things and remember people, and you see this is the history of our town, Lublin doesn't really exist without the memory of the Jewish people who are here. This is part of our history. We cannot forget it.

Growing up under Communist rule, Karłowicz says he didn't learn about the Jewish history until high school. Now, he and others hope to change that, by including the Jewish story as part of Lublin's history being taught in elementary school.

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