A painful walk through memory lane

Once the tourist season ends and the crowds disperse, the trip from Kraków's Old Town to the former Jewish district of Kazimierz is a salutary experience.
What needs to be distinguished, however, is that there are two distinct Jewish areas in Kraków - Kazimierz, where the Kraków Jews lived before WWII, and Podgórze, the Jewish ghetto where Kazimierz's Jewish inhabitants were forcefully moved during the war. Although Podgórze is where most of the community's painful history is lodged, it is Kazimierz, its first and real home that is capitalised upon as times goes by.
Following the critical acclaim and the box office success of Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's List" and Roman Polanski's "The Pianist", one would expect that the district would enjoy more popularity. And although it seems to be appreciated by some tourists, city authorities and the Jewish community seem to have forgotten there is more to the area than the obvious religious sites.

Although Poles and Jews have lived side by side in Kraków, there never was much interaction between the two. As a matter of fact, in the mid-1600s there was strong opposition against the construction of the Isaac synagogue, on the grounds that it was too close to a street used by Christian processions.
Crossing the Planty, leaving behind the endless carnival atmosphere of the renovated Kraków Old Town, one is transported to a district where time seems to have frozen. Many of the buildings, which were built before the war by wealthy Jewish businessmen, lawyers and doctors, have now collapsed due to negligence and are in great need of repair as well as ownership.
The Temple, a synagogue renovated with the help of the World Monuments Fund, stands on a corner between a pub and a store, which blasts out the latest MTV hits. Inside one could not ask for a bigger contrast. During the war the synagogue was not destroyed. Instead the Germans turned it into a stable and a workshop. Since its renovation, it has been used for prayers whenever more than 13 adults gather, but the woman who takes care of the building said that rarely more than 20 Polish Jews assemble in the temple, and only group tours from Israel manage to fill it completely.

The Isaac synagogue has been less lucky in the sense of survival. Soon after the beginning of WWII the Germans executed a Jewish gmina official there because he refused to burn the Tora. The synagogue later served as a theatre and sculptors' workshop and suffered from a major fire before the Jewish community regained it in 1989. Today, it sits next to an abandoned lot while graffiti on the temple's walls boasts: "Jezus jest super" (Jesus is cool). The temple also publishes a glossy brochure about its history, a discrete restaurant advertisement attached.
Renovated synagogues - one still used sporadically for prayers and ceremonies, the other turned into a museum and exhibition centre displaying a fascinating collection of Judaica and Holocaust history. But what seems to be missing, apart from several photos, is an attempt to explain the past before the German occupation. Who used these objects, what they were used for and what their everyday relations were with their neighbours - Polish gentiles.

There are no Jews living here anymore, most either died or left during the war. Others left shortly afterwards. There are now about 200 Jews living all over the city. The times of Jewish districts in Polish cities are long gone.
The main square of Kazimierz is surrounded by businesses with Jewish-sounding names: Ariel, Alef, and Ester with a "Transylvania" thrown in for good measure. But the Jewish theme definitely prevails. Who do these businesses cater to? Mostly tourists, both Polish and foreign, and during this autumn low season the vast majority of the clientele are Kraków locals simply pausing for refreshments. One cannot help but notice that rather than keeping the pre-war spirit alive, the restaurants and tourist agencies simply cash in on those who arrive in the summer in search of their roots.
Polish people of non-Jewish origin take care of most of these sites. Recently the Polish media have mentioned several disputes among the Jewish community in Poland. One of the claims that divides the community is the destination and use of money that the Jewish gminas procure from sales of real estate. One wonders if such a small and weathered community can really afford to parcel off and disregard a heritage that survived so many calamities.