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Feb. 16, 2007
Writing my grandma
Trip to Polish village brings a wave of emotion.
ROBIN ESROCK
Dear Bobba, I am in Poland. I thought it would be a grey, bleak,
concrete-block kind of country, but here in Krakow, it is green
and lush, with pretty parkways surrounding a large, charming town
square. The largest medieval town square in Europe, they say.
I never harbored any desire to visit Poland. Although you were born
in this country, it is not like we ever had any affiliation to it.
Partly because you moved with your family to South Africa when you
were still young, building a life in your adopted country. Partly
because Poland is the home of the Holocaust. There were more Jews
in Poland before the war than in any other country in Europe. Millions
of them, including your family and relatives. Today, there are just
a handful, and holes in the ground where villages once stood. I
understand why you have no love or feeling for this country. You
were personally uprooted to a new land, but the branches of your
family tree were cleared away in the old one. Maybe that's why the
fields are so green here. No roots, no family trees. Not for us,
anyway.
Regardless, it was important for me come digging here. I've also
been uprooted, from sunny Johannesburg to rainy Vancouver. Every
time I meet someone, I can see his or her puzzlement at my accent.
Thinking, or asking aloud, it runs a similar course. "England?"
"Australia?" "Irish?" "New Zealand?"
For some reason, South Africa is always last, if it comes up. It
must be something to do with the fact that the country lies literally
on the other side of the planet. I know that in my lifetime, this
conversation will continue to take place and, while I might be a
Canadian citizen, nobody who hears me talk (which everybody knows
I do too much) will call me a Canadian.
Interesting then, that I struck up a conversation with a guy on
the train from Prague to Krakow – he was from Johannesburg,
too, and he asked me where I came from. I thought it was pretty
obvious, considering he grew up in Highlands North, just a few suburbs
away from me. He thought I sounded "American-ish." Funny,
that, because nobody from North America does. So you can see that
roots are suddenly becoming quite important to me. If it is our
family's fate to switch nationalities every second generation, then
sooner or later we won't know where we come from at all. I need
to know where I come from to figure out where I'm going. And one
quarter of me, your quarter, comes from Poland, and that's why I
am here.
The train arrived in Krakow and the first thing I noticed were the
girls. They were everywhere and most of them looked, well, kosher.
Not that they probably were, in your books, but I had arrived at
the genetic source of so many Jews around the world. At the tram
stop, I was surrounded by 10 girls in summer dresses. I know this
because I counted, and I've always loved summer dresses. I found
a hostel on the outskirts of the old town, and everyone there is
American. They look kind of Polish, too.
Walking through the old town was an unexpected surprise. It has
all the charm and beauty of Prague, without the overwhelming hordes
of tourists or the take-you-for-a-ride attitude. There are young
people everywhere (Krakow is also a big student town) and the tourists
seem to blend in less obnoxiously than Prague – no large groups
of drunken English and Irish guys. There was a full moon and the
old Market Square was buzzing with life to the clop-clop of the
horse and carriages circling the cobblestone. I felt, in some small
way, like I belonged.
Huge banners were strung across the main streets into the old town,
advertising a Jewish cultural festival. During the day, I went for
a walk in the Jewish Quarter which, like in Prague, is now more
of a shopping district. While there might not be too many Jews left
in Krakow, it appears there are many who visit it. As in Prague's
Jewish Quarter, tourists were being led in large groups by umbrella-carrying
ladies, stopping to inform them about this, that and the other.
It had a certain theme park feel to it, especially when I came across
the "Authentic Jewish-style Restaurants" and the "Get
Your Jewish Guides Here" stalls. The Krakow ghetto was eliminated,
then occupied, and now it offers Jewish food to Japanese tourists.
Still, I felt some pride in it, as if it is a high-profile backlash
to the highly efficient machine that tried to eliminate it. It reminds
everyone we're not going away.
A couple years back, a professor wrote a controversial book called
Hitler's Willing Executioners, which argued that many Poles and
Germans knew what was going on but went along with it. You told
me something like that yourself, that afternoon when I interviewed
you on camera but forgot to make sure the microphone was working.
Something along the lines of the Poles always having it in for the
Jews. Centuries of pogroms, anti-Semitism and blood libels prove
the point, but that was going on everywhere in Europe. Still, the
Nazi's built six death camps in Poland, and trucked in Jews from
as far away as Norway and Greece.
I was speaking to a Polish girl at the hostel about the many young
guys walking around with shaved heads. "For the summer heat?"
I asked. "If only," she replied. "There are too many
skinheads in this town." I have passed several walls in this
town with anti-Semitic graffiti spray-painted on them. This town
advertising a Jewish cultural festival. This town with hardly any
Jews.
I caught a train to the small village of Tarnow in which you grew
up, now a town of more than 100,000 people. I managed to locate
your address, 66 Glovaskego, which lay just a few blocks from the
train station. I felt a buzz, walking up the street ... 52, 56,
58. What a strange journey to find your grandson walking these steps.
A Polish girl at the hostel helped me translate what I would say
to whoever lived there. "My name is Robin. My grandmother lived
in this house many years ago." 60, 62. A big Alsatian jumps
against a fence, barking loudly. 64. I cross the street. 68? I cross
back. There is no number 66, but number 68 has a garden big enough
for the plot of 66. An old lady is opening the gate and I ask her
for 66. She shakes her head. I mention your family maiden name,
but it gets the same response. The house is cement and looks just
a few decades old. Number 66 is now a garden. There really is nothing
left now, just the ghosts of what used to be.
I walked to the centre of Tarnow and picked up a tourist map of
the old town. The churches stand impressively tall. On the pamphlet,
it reads; "Before the war, Tarnow had a mostly Jewish population."
There was a "Jewish trail" I could follow. It passed the
bimah – all that remains of a "magnificent 17th-century
synagogue, destroyed by the Nazis in 1939." Pictures of Jews
praying sit on the gates. Throughout the town, pictures and billboards
commemorated Polish political prisoners sent to Auschwitz.
It was a shocking reminder of a gloomy history on a beautiful summer
day. There may be no Jews in Tarnow, but throughout the old town,
there were plaques in Hebrew where something once stood. I tried
to get to the old Jewish cemetery, but it was closed for the day.
Choirboys were practising hymns beside a massive cathedral. People
were drinking beer in the open-air gardens. I spoke to a pretty
girl at a falafel stand. She thought I was Polish. I walked past
some more graffiti with the word Jude on it. The past has not settled.
The biggest impact of the last few days hits me now, as I write
you this letter. I don't feel depressed or angry or confused. Just
dulled, with a fridge-buzz in my head. The hostel is quiet and I
am alone in a room with eight bunks. I don't feel like going out
much, but this weekend, the Jewish cultural festival is in the square.
I ask myself: How could it happen? Why did it happen? How could
they let it happen? Will it happen again? Is it happening now? How
did the survivors make it? Why would they want to? Who can I blame?
Who can I talk to? There is no one to talk to, except you, Bobba,
on the other side of the world.
I am in Poland, where this horror took place. Forgive, but never
forget, you would say. I am in Poland, where you were born but have
never returned. I am in Poland because those monsters lost. They
lost because of you. Because you raised an amazing family, and they
went on and raised more amazing families. We survived. So I continue
to fly about like a seed, but I know I will land somewhere and grow,
and my roots will be thick and healthy, and support a tree with
a thick trunk for so many branches.
I am in Poland, Bobba, because I love you.
Robin Esrock is a Vancouver freelance writer.
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