A Day in Krakow

I woke up full of excitement to finally explore Krakow, the capital of Poland, also known to be the most populated Jewish town before WWII. During the Shoah, six million Jews where murdered. Besides the facts, about WWII, there was also a lot of division between religious groups, especially the Jews and Christians.

“After the war, 4,282 Jews resurfaced in Krakow. By early 1946, Polish Jews returning from the Soviet Union swelled the Jewish population of the city to approximately 10,000. Pogroms in August 1945 and throughout 1946 as well as number of murders of individual Jews led to the emigration of many of the surviving Krakow Jews. By the early 1990s, only a few hundred Jews remained in Krakow”.

Today, the city is slowly growing and increasing their Jewish population. We visited the Jewish Community Center in Krakow, where we were given the opportunity to meet and listen to a lecture by the director of the Center, Jonathan Ornstein. The purpose of the Center is to allow all Jews to become members of the center, allowing them to get a chance to understand and expand their knowledge on their culture and beliefs. Through our lecture he gave us an example of one individual experience from a young girl that had recently visited the Center. He explained her great grandmother was a Jew but during the Shoah she made it clear to her daughter the young girls’ grandmother, to deny her Jewish beliefs forever. Now, her grandmother is elderly, and she confessed to her that they came from a Jewish background. This was the opportunity for her to visit the Center and expand her knowledge and start a new life as a Jew.  

                                              

            Soon after we arrived in Krakow, we also visited a synagogue, and a cemetery in Krakow.  We came across a wall in the cemetery that was very special. It had many different pieces of stones, from a cemetery during the World War II, where majority of the Jewish cemeteries where targeted and destroyed. All of the stones on these particular wall where found individually, and they had no place to put it back since they wouldn’t be able to know where they belonged.

We also, attended a lecture in the University of Krakow, and listen to a lecture by Dr. Anna-Maria Orla-Bukowska. During her lecture she showed many pictures that justified the unity between many Jewish Students’ today with Atheist, and Christian students. She describes Krakow as a town filled with unity, even after all the division they faced during and after WWII.

                                                                (Cite Source)

"Krakow (Cracow)." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d. Web. 05 May 2017.