Retracing Your Roots

Even as a child I was curious about Eastern Europe, land of my Jewish ancestors and, as it came to be, my husband David's, too. My grandparents, reluctantly, told me tales of pine woods, chickens clucking in dirt yards and children being pushed through trap doors when the beating hooves of the Cossacks' horses grew louder and louder. In the past few years, like many Boomers, I've felt a need to make a pilgrimage to connect with this lost world. It wasn't so much that I wanted to see the shtetls in Russia and the Ukraine that my grandparents left as children; these, of course, no longer exist. Rather, I needed to experience the land that once nurtured this thriving community and pay my respects to those turned to ashes.

That's why David and I chose a seven-day Butterfield & Robinson walking tour from Krakow to the killing fields of Auschwitz and Birkenau, to the forests of the Tatras Mountains along the Polish and Slovakian border, and then to the vineyards of Hungary and the streets of Budapest. Each region had plenty of Jewish history and the hiking was diverse.

In Krakow we walked to Kazimierz, the Jewish Quarter, which had been home to Jews for 500 years. Before World War II, Kazimierz bustled with 68,000 Jews. The district's cobblestone streets and courtyard alleys were featured in the movie "Shindler's List." During WW II more than 65,000 inhabitants were murdered. Now, only about 150 elderly Jews remain.

Those numbers and the old man handing out yarmulkes at the restored, 1862 Temple Synagogue, made me think of ghost towns even though Jewish delis and cafes are reappearing. Achingly beautiful, the building, with its gilded gold and green wood, cranberry benches and floral stained glass windows, bears witness to the once flourishing community. The tiny Remuh Synagogue, established in 1553, is still used for prayers. During WW II the Nazis and Poles smashed most of the cemetery's tombstones, dragging them into the street to be trod upon. Now the broken pieces form a commemorative wall, sometimes called the "Wailing Wall of Krakow," a sobering site that made us think of all the loss and violence, of broken things that can't be put back together.

At Chris Schwarz's bookstore/café/gallery, we viewed his photographs "Traces of Memory." Contemporary photographs of the Holocaust, the images are of trees growing in the rubble of synagogues and other similar shots. But why call his facility the "Galicia Jewish Museum?" David's mother's family hailed from Galicia, a region, she had told us, somewhere in Lithuania. Not only did Chris inform us that Galicia included Krakow as well as Lvov, the town where David's maternal great-grandfather was born, but also parts of the Ukraine, the region of my father's ancestors.

Stunned, amazed, and then happy, we talked more with Chris. Without knowing it, we had stumbled into or near the streets of our forefathers. It felt almost biblical, like a wandering that finally brings you home, like finding a treasure that we didn't even know we'd lost.

Part 2: Auschwitz and Birkenau
Part 3: Hungary's Tokaj Region

All photos by Candyce H. Stapen