Jewish Cemetery, Krakow, Poland. August 2008.
As we walked from the train station in Krakow, the old royal capital of Poland, to our rented apartment, a lady handed us a tourist leaflet offering air-conditioned coach tours of various ‘attractions’ around the city. Along with the guided tours of the salt mines, one of the options was a tour of Auschwitz.
I don’t know how I feel about this. I think it’s important that we remember our history and I support the fact that the place of so much suffering has been turned into a museum. But it doesn’t feel right for it to be packaged up as just another commercial product, however sensitively it’s handled.
We didn’t end up going – perhaps another time, but almost certainly under our own steam rather than on a bus tour. However, we did take a walk through the Jewish Cemetery in Krakow. It was free to enter but the boys had to don skull caps, which reminded me of how I wore the hijab for my recent visits to mosques in Syria.
The far side of the cemetery was very overgrown with weeds and vines and many of the gravestones were framed by ferns and moss. On the near side, we saw freshly tended graves with flowers with death dates in the past 10 years – it’s amazing to think of how even a depleted Jewish population of Krakow survived through first the Nazi and then the Soviet occupation. One plaque on the wall had an English inscription, which may have been dedicated by the American descendants of a Polish Jew.
This particular gravestone struck me as interesting. The small coloured lanterns were quite common on many of the graves, but what I found interesting was the fact that the man’s name was given in both Polish and German. He died in 1946. There’s a story there, though I don’t know what it is.
PS There are some interesting clues and possibilities in the comments field.
Wow.
What an amazing privledge for your family to get to see these things.
Thanks for sharing this photo.
Thanks. I am very lucky – travel is a privilege and it’s something I really enjoy. It’s one of the reasons I moved from Australia to Europe. I imagine I’ll slow down a little when I have children, or at least change the focus on where I travel to. The ‘we’ in this context was my fiance and another couple. – Caitlin
We always like wandering around old cemeteries when we travel. It sparks the imagination to try create back stories for the names you see, and it’s always especially interesting when visitors leave small items by a headstone.
A real sense of sadness conveyed in this shot.
Me too! I loved Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris and enjoyed Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn too. – Caitlin
Thank you so much for sharing this beautiful picture and story. The lanterns seem like such a lovely way to keep a loved one’s memory alive, and I love the sense of stillness and quiet this picture captures.
I haven’t been to Auschwitz (in fact I took a “pass” on a trip to Germany with my husband about 2 years ago because I didn’t think I could handle visiting the concentration camps while I was pregnant…)
I’ll share my perspective though. I think it’s important for people to see these sites, and if an air conditioned motor coach is what makes it possible for some people, so be it. I’m sure it sounds snobby to say it, but I think that sometimes the people who most need their tourist attractions to be “easy to visit” are the same people who most need the awakening that a site like Auschwitz would inspire.
Our visit to Tol Sleng (a prison in Cambodia) made a huge impression on me. I had read a lot about Cambodia’s history before we visited, but there is something about standing in the place where the atrocities were committed that made them much easier to imagine and much more concrete. In our case, that was partly because our moto driver’s parents & our tour guide’s parents had been killed at Tol Sleng, and we heard their personal stories. I imagine that a visit to Auschwitz would (similarly) be incredibly powerful no matter how it was packaged (and even with tour groups tromping through and disturbing my quiet reflection).
You are right. I think it’s important that a place like Auschwitz be accessible to all. In particular I know the bus tours cater to a lot of school trips. It’s just not something that appeals to me in that format. – Caitlin
I think you meant hijab rather than hajib?
Unfortunately the lanterns hide the text of the grave, so I can’t give you all the details, but . . .
These are actually two different people, one male, one female. Perhaps they were both named for their father? The one on the left (the “Polish” one) has feminized endings on both first and last name. The text I can read says, “Born … 1880, died 17 April 1946. …” Then I think, “By profession U.J.” where I’m not sure what U.J. is an abbreviation for.
The one on the right (the “German” one) is a man and a (probably academic) doctor. The text I can read there says, “murdered by … 20 February 1940. … at the age of 7?…”
You’ll have to rewrite your mental story with these new details!
I often visit cemeteries when I travel. I wrote a post about a cemetery I visited that raises more questions about the past than it answers here: Grabpflege
Yes, ‘hajib’ was a typo and is actually a word for a high-ranking official, rather than ‘hijab’, which is the head scarf. I have corrected this.
Thanks for your contribution on interpreting the grave stone – the probability that it’s two different people is very interesting. I can read German but not Polish so I did not recognise the feminine form of the name. We actually saw several graves that had both a German and a Polish inscription – this was just the most photogenic. – Caitlin
Okay, I think that last line says, “Krakow” and “Professor U[niwersiteta].J[agiellonski].” — professor of the Jagiellonian University. One more clue for you!
Okay, I think that last line says, “Krakow” and “Professor U[niwersyteta].J[agiellonski].” — professor of the Jagiellonian University. One more clue for you!
Nice story Caitlin- thanks for sharing.