Hi everyone! Thanks so much for tuning in. Welcome back to my blog Saving the Shtetlach where I write about my experiences travelling in Europe and learning about contemporary Jewish life and history. I’m writing to you now from my apartment in Berlin. I can’t believe I have been living in this city for seven months.

This certainly is an interesting year for me. I’m experiencing a lot of new things. For starters, I am building a life for myself in a foreign country, Germany. I am getting used to speaking in a new language, German. I’m making friends in a new city that I’m now calling home. In my nine months of living in Germany as a Fulbright, I really feel like a changed person.
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Before I get into the more personal details with this post, I’d like to tell you a little bit about my host city, Berlin. Mainly, Berlin is a young city – both historically and demographically. I like to call Berlin “The Peter Pan City” because of its youthful atmosphere. I see signs everywhere telling Berliners either to grow up or to never grow up.

Founded in 1237, way later than most major European cities, Berlin served as a key city in the Kingdom of Brandenburg during the period of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1701, Berlin became apart of the Prussian empire. In 1871, Berlin joined the newly formed German empire when Otto von Bismark united the entire country.
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When Germany lost the first World War in 1918, the country then became a republic – a period known as the Weimar period – which lasted until 1933. It was at this time when Hitler came to power. As the leader of the Nazi Party, Hitler lead Germany through the Second World War, until the country was then defeated in 1945. Soon afterwards, the country was divided into two separate countries, a communist country on the east side, the German Democratic Republic (part of the Soviet Block) and a capitalized country in the west, the Federal Republic of Germany (influenced by the USA and other allies). 
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​Berlin itself was originally divided into four parts after the Second World War – a French sector, a British Sector, an American sector, and a Russian sector. Later on, Berlin merged into two parts, an Allied side and a Russian side. At one of the heights of the Cold War, in 1961, the Soviet troops built a wall dividing Berlin in an effort to prevent people living on the east side from escaping to the west. This wall stood for three decades and only came down in 1989 when communism ended and Germany was reunited as a country in 1990. 

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Today – and for the last twenty-seven years – Germany has been lead by a democratically elected Parliamentary government. It is a member of the European Union and NATO and it is considered one of the leading countries in all of Europe. Living in this city for one year has provided me not only a major lesson in history, but a lesson in humanity. I’ve seen firsthand the results of what can happen when not only a city – but a country – is divided for a long period of time. 

Just from observation, I can see that Germany is still picking up the pieces from its complicated past. It is a country that is recovering both emotionally and economically. Germans are still figuring out what it means to have a national identity. Overall, I’ve noticed that “nationalism” is not a big thing here. I rarely see Germany flags raised anywhere, except when they are raised above government buildings. I gather that Germany, perhaps more than any other country in Europe, understands the price that is paid when nationalism gets too far out of hand.  
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​Another thing I find interesting about Berlin is that when you walk around the city you can tell what side of Berlin you’re on simply by looking at the buildings. The architecture dividing east and west Berlin is very distinctive. For instance, when you walk down the street I live on in Kreuzberg, you can tell that it was on the former Eastern communist side. The buildings are tall and they all look alike – they are often painted a single color and have identical square windows. The buildings in west Berlin often have a lot more character. They weren’t built as quickly and often have a sturdier foundation. 

Walking through Berlin is like walking through a trail of history. Every building and neighborhood has its own story. Every part of Berlin is different, whether you’re walking past the wonderfully modern Sony Center, or the Prussian style buildings on the Unter den Linden street. You can see the communist style buildings in my neighborhood of Kreuzberg and the remnants of Hitler’s bunker located near the Reich Chancellery. I can even see the pride of modern Germany today when I cross the Schilling bridge over the Spree River. I can see the beautiful TV tower rising in the distance. This to me is Berlin – a city of many stories, a city of very diverse historical periods.
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​As a Jewish person and an American, I realize that Germany has a really complex past and people who share similar identities to me have played an important role in it. For a while it took great effort on my part to accept modern day Germany because of its role in the Holocaust and the two World Wars. I am a descendent of Holocaust victims and I have World War II veterans who are close to me in my family. There is not a day that I forget the past of the country I’m living in. 

However, my travels have also taught me that it’s not healthy to live in the past, or to use it to judge a country’s present day government or people. Jews have been living in Germany for hundreds of years and their history in the country is still being written today. Each day I’ve come to realize that both good and evil can be found in any country, at any point in history. It’s important not to blame this generation of Germans for the Holocaust that happened seventy years ago because it’s simply not right and it’s not healthy to carry this kind of resentment.
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Rather, I look at Germany today as a welcoming place and a second home for myself. While this year I have missed my family, I feel that I have been able to build a second family for myself in Germany. In moving to a new country, I learned the importance of having a community. I would have simply been too lonely if I didn’t reach out every day and try to meet people. I’ve made some amazing friends in Germany – whether its been through the Fulbright program, Potsdam university, my dorm, or the Jewish community. I’ve had awesome memories with people from all over the world and I’ve certainly learned a lot. 
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I feel lucky to have such an amazing support group in Berlin because there were times when I certainly needed it this year. For instance, I definitely needed support when my grandfather Paul Kaden passed away unexpectedly in November at the very start of my grant. At that point I had only lived in Berlin for about a month and the news hit me like a pile of bricks. After going home to the US for a week to mourn with my family, I returned to Berlin to be surrounded by my new “Berlin family”. I was touched by the group of people who took the time to reach out to me, share in my grief and help me to get through that difficult period.
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Another time I needed support was right after the Presidential election. The election took place just before my grandfather’s death so dealing with them both at the same time was tough for me. While my grandfather’s death hit me harder because I lost a beloved member of my family, the election was hard as well because for the first time in a long time, I felt genuinely concerned for my country.

I began to take more time to think about my own American identity. Why was I proud to be a US citizen? What more could I do in these tough times to help my country and to help the world? As an American living in Germany, I felt that I had a certain responsibility to represent my country in the best possible way. I wanted to be sure that I was educated enough about the issues facing the US so that when anyone asked me about my country’s political system or stance on issues, I knew enough to answer them. 

As a Fulbright, I knew my job in Germany was to serve as a US cultural ambassador. Yet, as many other Fulbrights would agree, this job suddenly felt greater after the presidential race because so many people in the world became more interested and concerned about the United States’ future. I realized that since I was a Fulbright, I had a unique opportunity to educate people in my host country about America. It was my job to speak up and remind people that America is so much more than any single person – America is about the people and the principles of freedom, equality, and a democracy of checks and balances.
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I’ll always remember when I gave a presentation to my German class discussing American art and photography. I showed my class slides like the Portrait of George Washington, the Statue of Liberty, and the painting of Ruby Bridges that have been cemented into my memory. I showed my class iconic photographs from 9/11, the “I have a Dream Speech,” and the Miracle on Ice. I tried to show them that to me, this is America – a land of great ideas, strong democracy, and diversity in people and thought. I think my class really liked the presentation, even though I made more mistakes in German than any person should!

There were so many other inspiring moments during this Fulbright year that I will take with me. These experiences include my travels with friends to other parts of Germany (Frankfurt, Heidelberg, Mainz, Hamburg, Leipzig) and my family’s visit to Germany where we had the chance to explore Berlin and Munich. I loved going on a trip to Amsterdam with my brother and then later travelling to Brussels and Luxembourg with a delegation of American Fulbrights to learn about the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
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Another inspiring week for me was a week that occurred recently in March. At the end of last month, the German American Fulbright Commission hosted a European wide Fulbright conference based in Berlin. For a week, over 500 Fulbright grantees gathered to learn more about each others’ work and share thoughts about our experiences and projects. It was so wonderful to get the chance to reconnect with Fulbright friends from Germany whom I had met in the Marburg Language Program. Even more, it was really exciting to meet so many other American Fulbright grantees who were placed all over Europe.

As Americans, we have all shared semi-similar experiences living as foreigners in Europe. We shared stories and impressions of our various host countries. I learned a lot about life and culture in places like Spain, Greece, Sweden, and other countries simply by listening to Fulbrights speak about their experiences there. I also enjoyed meeting some of the other 200 German students who will be living in the US next year as German Fulbright grantees. 
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While having the opportunity to travel to different places this year has certainly been a gift, I must say the greatest gift of the Fulbright year so far has actually been having the opportunity not to travel, and rather to live in a foreign country and get to know its people. This is the first time I’ve ever been in Europe and not considered myself a tourist. I’ve come to learn this year that building a life in a country is very different than simply “visiting” it. There is so much that comes with moving to a new place.

Even though I am not an immigrant this year – I am returning home to the US in July – the experience of moving to a new country, doing all the paperwork, not knowing anybody and hardly speaking the language – has given me a glimpse of just how much immigrants go through. My neighborhood of Kreuzberg for instance has a very large Turkish and Arab population. Now that I have lived in Berlin for eight months, I can relate better to my neighbors, many of whom are immigrants themselves and are working very hard to make a place here.
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Furthermore, I’ve loved becoming active in Berlin’s Jewish community. Even though I was new here in October, in eight month’s time I feel like I’ve really developed a place in Berlin’s vibrant Jewish life. Every week, I attend different Shabbat dinners. I’ve taken two different classes on modern day Jewish life in Europe and I’m beginning to interview Jewish people more regularly.  I’ve gotten involved in several German Jewish organizations and I’m helping to plan a German Jewish education conference called Limmud that will be taking place in May.
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It’s interesting because now people in the Jewish community are no longer simply research subjects to me – they are neighbors and friends. I’ve learned that it’s one thing to research a community for a year, and it’s another thing to become a part of it. In all of my past research experiences with European Jewry, I have never felt as connected to a single European Jewish community as I feel right now. This has been a gift from the Fulbright – having the ability to get to know a “foreign” Jewish community for a year. It’s funny to use the word “foreign” because perhaps that’s not even the right word. The Jewish community in Berlin used to feel foreign to me – but maybe one of the greatest gift of this experience has been seeing that this community feels foreign no longer. 

Another thing I find interesting about Berlin – and this relates back to its youthful culture – is the fact that for many people living here, Berlin is just a stop for them. I like to think of Berlin as a city in transit because for most of the people I’ve met here, Berlin is not a place they’re going to live forever, but rather a city where they want to grow for a bit and get on the path to becoming the person they want to be.

Most of the people I’ve met who live here are not actually from the city. Either they come from a different part of Germany or they come from another place, whether that be Russia, South America, the Middle East another part of Europe, or the USA. To me, Berlin is a city of continuous change and growth because it attracts so many young people. It is a city of constant motion and vitality.

One of the reasons I like to call Berlin “The Peter Pan City” is because I feel like I’ve bonded with people over the idea that none of us yet know what our future holds, none of us know exactly where we “fit” or who we are meant to be. Like Peter Pan and Wendy, so many of my friends and I are on the verge of adulthood. We are deciding what our next moves are and what career paths will make us happy. 

One of the things I have struggled with this year is the decision of what it is I am going to do the year after the Fulbright. For so long I only wanted to be a writer. It was as though I had tunnel vision and that was all that I would allow myself to be. Yet while I still plan on remaining a writer – I am working on finishing my first book about my own Jewish journey - if anything, this Fulbright year has shown me that I can always write, but in addition, there are so many more things that I can be. 

I am grateful for the Fulbright year because it has given me the opportunity to explore my interests and think deeply about the future. Because of my experiences here, I am considering even more career options than I used to allow myself to before. I’ve become more interested in careers in journalism, film, and politics. I’ve become braver in my planning – I know that no one ever achieved anything without taking some risks. I’m trying to live by this quote now, said by the famous Carrie Fisher: “Stay afraid but do it anyway. What’s important is the action. You don’t have to wait to be confident. Just do it and eventually the confidence will follow.” I know that deep down, I will publish my first book someday. Now is the time to see what else I am capable of doing so I can make my future as great as it can be.

So thus here I am, about to finish my first blog post in a while, writing to you from Berlin, the Peter Pan City. On some days I feel like Wendy – I am simply dropping into Neverland for a while and I will leave it soon to become an “adult.” But at other times I feel like Peter Pan, because in my heart I know that while I’ll be leaving Berlin soon, I’ll always take these memories with me. The Neverland of Berlin will stay with me because honestly – who ever actually grows up? Does anyone ever actually stop growing – or is this “growing up” business something that lasts for our entire life? Personally, no matter how old I get, I never want to stop growing or evolving. I never want to lose my “childish” curiosity or hit my peak – rather I always want the best and most exciting times to be ahead.
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​Thanks so much for reading. Until next time!

- Arielle

“Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can't remember how you got from where you were to where you are. Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story.”
             - Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried

Hi everyone! Thanks so much for tuning back into Saving the Shtetlach, my blog about my travels exploring Europe and learning about modern European Jewry. I’m writing to you now from my cozy dorm room in Berlin where I moved in over a month ago. I can’t believe I’ve been in Berlin for a little over four weeks – it’s gone by so fast. The Fulbright Commission warned us at the start of the grant how fast these ten months would go – now I’m starting to understand just exactly what they meant.
These past four weeks have been pretty adventurous. My life has changed a lot. To start, I moved to a new city, Berlin. I’ve started to make a new group of friends. I’ve begun taking classes at a new university, the University Potsdam and I’ve started to research for my Fulbright project; that is: I’m trying to learn more about the resurgence of Jewish life in Germany, post World War II.

I’ve come to learn a lot about myself these past two months in Europe. For so long, I had this singular vision of how my Fulbright experience would be. I imagined myself sitting in café’s most days, writing my first book, and slowly but casually getting involved in the Berlin Jewish Community. I didn’t expect my life here to be so busy – I didn’t expect myself to be so “on the go” most of the time.
Yet this is a good thing however because life is meant to be a journey. It’s supposed to be something that you can’t plan out. I didn’t expect myself to have so many newfound goals for this year and all these things that I want to accomplish. For the past few weeks, I’ve been thinking about this blog post. For the longest time, I just didn’t know what I would write. I had the title in my head: “The Things We Carry” because one of my favorite books of all time is called The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien. I feel like I’ve been carrying so much this year (not just my two large suitcases). I’ve been learning every day and experiencing so much.  I have so many stories to tell and not enough words to describe it all.

About six weeks ago, I visited the Rhine River, one of the most famous rivers in Germany. I went there on a trip with other Fulbright students from my language program in Marburg. Together we got on a boat and toured the river valley. We saw beautiful vineyards and the sky was a gorgeous blue. We drank wine and laughed the day away – the weather was just right. 

As I sat on the boat with my aviator sunglasses on, I looked out at the water and the land which hugged the river’s edge. I thought of one person: my great-uncle, Lester Bornstein.  He was a soldier in World War II. He fought for the United States. A veteran of the Battle of the Bulge and several other large battles, Lester fought here also – on the Rhine River. He lead a group of American men across the river in boats while simultaneously ducking under enemy fire. 

​Many men died that day. Lester must have known several of them. Lester survived, but he remembers that moment to this day. He told me about this battle just a few months before I left for Germany. Lester thinks of his World War II memories every day. He still remembers the fight on the river Rhine. He still remembers that night. He still remembers all the death. He still remembers the fact that he survived.

I sat on the boat that sunny day in September realizing just how lucky I was to be here in Germany - over half a century later – living in a country that now knows peace. I felt lucky to be an American, a descendent of such a brave and powerful generation. I hoped that one day my generation would live up to the heroism and sacrifice performed by the generations of my parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents.

I thought of my great-uncle Lester and the way he smiled at me. I loved him so much and I knew how much my being here in Germany meant to him. Lester never returned to Germany after the Second World War. Very few people in my family have ever been to Germany. But they all supported me in my endeavor to come live here for a year.

As I am here, I will never forget my familys’ lives or their memories, like the one of Lester’s fighting battle here. I have a picture on my phone of Lester with his brother Joe standing in front of a sign in Germany that says Berlin. Although the brothers never made it to the city during the war, I keep this picture with me, knowing that we have finally made it.

As I am here in Germany, I am building my own set of memories while also remembering the stories and lives of those who lived here in the past. Not a day goes by when I don’t remember the Second World War or the Holocaust, when I don’t think about the destruction that took place in Germany. There are reminders of this history everywhere, like on the streets whenever I see these “Stones of Remembrance.”

​But now, that I am here in Berlin, every week I am doing work with members of it’s modern Jewish community. I am going to many Jewish community events and meeting people of all generations who care about building a future for this community. My research revolves around the return of Jewish life in Germany, post World War II. I am given hope by my research and experiences that communities can rebuild, that life can recover. Every day I am reminded of the importance of hope and simply moving forward.

I’ve met some incredible people in my time here in Germany so far. There are too many people to name and not enough space to tell all their stories. One person who particularly inspired me was an 86-year-old man named Amnon who lives in Marburg, Germany. Amnon is Israeli, although he moved to Germany over 35 years ago. Amnon moved to Germany because he met his life’s partner here. His wife wanted to live in Marburg and when Amnon saw that there was no synagogue in the town, he decided to raise the funds himself. “What you don’t have, you make,” he told me. Now the synagogue in Marburg has over 300 members. Most of them are Russian speaking since over 90 percent of Germany’s Jewish population are immigrants from the former Soviet Union.

The synagogue in Marburg was beautiful with its tan walls, stained glass ceiling, and comfortable chairs that Amnon had specifically installed for the people of his congregation. He explained to me how Jewish people pray the longest out of all the religions. “They need comfortable chairs!” he said to me in his witty Israeli accented English. I was so impressed by him and the synagogue, and for me, it was just so nice to feel apart of a Jewish community again. Even if it was only for one night, I loved going to the synagogue in Marburg and feeling embraced by people who didn’t know me, but still felt connected to me in someway.

When I came to Berlin, after six weeks of studying in Marburg, I was very excited but also nervous because I didn’t know exactly what I was taking on. Would I find my way around? I wondered. Would I make friends? Would I take classes? Was this grant even doable? I had so many questions and little to no answers. I’ve had to get used to this feeling though, this feeling of not knowing. Being in the Fulbright program has taught me to constantly think outside of the box; to work hard and to push myself, even when I don’t know what will happen next.

“I’ll make friends if I try to,” I told myself on my train ride to Berlin. On my very first night in the city, I stayed over at my friend Barbara’s, a friend I had made three years ago at the Vilnius Yiddish Institute in Lithuania. Barbara now lives in Berlin and it was so great to see her. On my third night in Berlin, literally the day after I moved into my apartment, I went to a Rosh Hashanah dinner hosted by one of my friends that I had made last summer. I was so tired that day that I thought I would just skip the dinner – I mean, I had just moved in and all I wanted to do was stay in bed. But in the end I forced myself to go to this dinner and I wound up meeting some of my closest friends here in Berlin so far. I am so grateful for that one dinner because I was introduced to so many great people. I was reminded of the importance of putting myself in the situations where I can meet new people and make new friends.
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The Fulbright year has been great so far. It’s been exhilarating, exhausting, and meaningful all at once. I feel like I am pushing myself, constantly, but I am also learning, exploring, growing, and doing all of these good, important things. I am learning how to be independent and I am learning how to make my own schedule. I am trying my best to write my book, I am now taking two classes – a German language class, and a class about German-Jewish history (which is taught completely in German). I commute to my university and research center in Potsdam 2-3 times a week (it takes over an hour to get there). I joined a gym, I am paying my own bills, and I am beginning to plan my research project which will last my entire ten month stay here. 

Most importantly, I am just trying to take care of myself and keep building friendships with the people I meet around me. I’ve been so lucky in my time here so far. I truly feel like I’ve met wonderful people and I’ve been introduced to such a warm and vibrant Jewish community in Berlin. I love working at my research center in Potsdam, the Moses Mendelssohn Zentrum for European Jewish Studies. The staff there has welcomed me with open arms. I am now working closely with my mentor, a sociologist at the MMZ, who is helping me plan out my research questions for interviews with different Jewish people in Germany. I hope to learn more about these people’s experiences and the current issues in the German Jewish community. I’d like to raise awareness for these issues and report on the current state of German Jewry in the form of articles for different German and American media publications.

Every Friday and Saturday I am attending different Shabbat events and I’m quickly meeting more people involved in Berlin’s Jewish community. I’ve already gone to some wonderful Jewish community events and I can’t wait to involve myself more intensively and attend more. I’m excited to continue my research and begin interviewing people. I can already tell how many amazing people with amazing stories are floating around in this city. If I work hard enough and try my best, I hope to hear as many voices as possible and write the best stories that I can. 
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​While this Fulbright year might be challenging sometimes - surely starting over somewhere is never easy – I can truly say that I’ve loved this experience – I believe it is changing me in a positive way. It’s taught me to appreciate not only all the wonderful new people I’m meeting here, but I feel even closer now to the people I love at home. I want to send a brief shout out to all of my family and friends in the USA who have reached out to me throughout this experience. Your messages and Facetime calls mean so much to me. You guys are my support group and it’s your faith in me that keeps me going.

This Fulbright experience has been rewarding, exciting, thrilling, and at so many points, really fun. I truly feel so lucky to be here in this amazing city doing this incredible research project. I’m carrying myself and I can’t wait to carry soon the stories of the people that I meet. I’ve come to realize that in life we carry a lot of things – a lot of memories, a lot of fears, a lot of hopes, and a lot of expectations. But in the end, if we can just carry ourselves, carry each other, and carry the stories that we feel are important, then truly, I think, we’ll be doing alright.  

As always, thank you for reading. Until next time,

Arielle
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Hi everyone! Thanks so much for tuning in. In this post I’m going to tell you about my first three weeks in Germany as a Fulbright scholar. I’m first going to start by telling you a story – or rather I’m going to explain an age old German tradition. This tradition is called the “Das Wanderjahr” which in German means, “The Wander Year.”

In the medieval times, when German apprentices hit a certain level of their career training, they were then encouraged to set out on a year long journey, in order to master their crafts and train in the studio of many professionals. The Wander Year was meant to be a growing year, a year to allow German youth to discover the world. Then when the apprentices returned home, they were no longer considered apprentices. Rather, these young people were now adults and were encouraged to open up their own shops or studios.
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I learned about this tradition when I was in German class last semester. I remember how that lesson in class left an impression on me – I was curious to learn more about it. Now that I am here in Germany on a Fulbright scholarship, exploring the country for myself, I feel I can truly say that now I’m on my own “Wanderjahr” – Wander Year. I am discovering the lands of Germany and am training in the German tradition.  I am discovering both parts of the world and capabilities within myself that I had never seen or used before. 

I first arrived in Germany about three weeks ago. When I landed, I was both excited and nervous to begin my year-long stay here. Initially, the word “year-long” scared me. It felt like such a long time. I remember writing in my diary my first night –wondering if I could truly handle this 11 and a half month stay. I mean, this is what I had applied for right? This is what I had wanted. But could I do it? Was the Fulbright year doable? Parts of me still felt nervous and afraid.

My first night in Germany, I had to remind myself of all the reasons I wanted to be here. I had to remind myself of the point of my project – to learn more about the resurgence of Jewish life in Germany, post World War II and write about it for both American and German audiences. I had worked so hard in applying for the Fulbright. I can still remember myself sitting in the Berlin cafés last summer writing my Fulbright application. This was what I had wanted since I was a sophomore in college. I had wanted this European adventure for so long.

Now that I was here, I could hardly believe it. I was now going to live in a dorm for the next six weeks and learn German with 29 other American Fulbrighters. While there are over 200 American Fulbrighters placed in Germany, only 30 of us were selected for this program which starts a month and half before our grant period begins. For the first three days, we had a Fulbright Orientation, where we met the heads of the German Fulbright commission and we learned what was expected of us as American Fulbrighters. They explained how as Fulbrighters, we were American representatives abroad. The Commission hoped that during the year we’d push ourselves and make many German connections, so we could keep the bonds between Germany and America strong for the years to come. 

As the orientation went by, I found it all very exciting. It was really fun getting to know the other American Fulbrighters in my group. We come from all over the United States and our projects range incredibly. While I am here in Germany on a journalism scholarship and my research here is more humanities based, I’ve met people in my program who are musicians, artists, scientists and researchers whose projects all sound so interesting. We’ve spent many nights just sitting at picnic tables, under the German stars and sky, hanging out and discussing it all.

Not only that, but I have met many new people living on my floor. Most of my neighbors are international students who chose to stay in the dorms over the summer. As I explained to my Mom over Facetime one night, I feel like my dorm is like a little United Nations. We come from all over the place! Many of the students living on my floor come from the Middle East – from Syria, Iran, Palestine, and other places. There are also several students from Germany, Korea, and China. They have all been very kind to me thus far and are curious to learn about life in America. They have been particularly interested in our presidential election, which I have tried explaining to them to best of my ability. 

Once the Fulbright orientation ended, it was time to begin our German language classes. Before the program began, I had to take a language placement test. To my surprise, I was placed in the highest level class – level four German – so now I am in a class of six people and we meet every weekday to study German for 4.5 hours. The class is both challenging and fun. We are only allowed to speak in German. I believe this aspect of the class has helped me improve my German speaking skills, although for me, the best way to learn has been speaking and hearing German outside of the classroom.

When speaking to people who hardly understand English, I feel the pressure to speak German slowly and get it right.  While my German certainly isn’t perfect – I don’t even feel like I’m truly conversational yet – it’s really been fulfilling to communicate with German people in their own language. It’s been challenging for me, but I believe I have grown just from trying to do it. These past three weeks in general have just been really fun. While it was a little hard at the beginning to settle in and adjust to “the German way of life” – not to mention I caught a terrible cold my first week here - the longer I have stayed here the more I realize how similar German culture is to American culture.
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While the language in Germany certainly is different, and certain aspects of life here definitely differ from American life, for the most part, I can see how America and Germany are two very similar places. The people in Germany have been very kind to me. The public transportation is great. Germany as a country is beautiful and I’ve loved exploring it. I’ve had the chance to visit the nearby city of Frankfurt twice and see their amazing museums. I’ve seen work by artists that I learned about in my art history class. I’ve learned about German writers that lead such interesting lives. I’ve gotten to go hiking and see such beautiful places, I wish I could turn all of my pictures into post-cards. 

I truly feel so lucky to be in Germany here on a Fulbright scholarship. Every day I feel like I grow, even just a little bit. This whole journey – I guess one that most post-grads call “real life” – certainly looked daunting for a while. But now that I’m here in Germany, exploring a new country with 29 other Americans with me, things that once looked so intimidating to me don’t seem as frightening as they were before. I’m now learning how to live on a tighter budget - the Fulbright gives us a specific stipend to live on for the entire year. I’ve opened a German bank account, found German housing, gotten a German cellphone number, and I’m in the midst of applying for a residence permit that will allow me to stay for the year long grant period. I’m learning how to look out for myself, although in a way, I think my travels in college and the way my parents raised me, helped prepare me for this long before.

I became worried during my first night in Germany that I’d feel really alone during my Fulbright year. I was afraid that I wouldn’t make many friends and that I’d miss my family and friends at home every day. But in fact, I was wrong. Even when I'm back in my dorm room at night, having finished my German classes, hanging with my Fulbright friends, and catching up with friends and family via Facetime, and I’m ready to go to bed and I have my little room all to myself, I don’t feel alone because I know that there are good people here in Germany and in America who are looking out for me. And I know I can handle it – this whole “independence” thing.

Every day I feel like I’m learning – “wandering” – in a way. I’m looking forward to training more as a journalist and pursuing my Fulbright project. Being here has been fun and in many ways, its been rewarding and eye opening. I truly feel very lucky to be here and I can’t wait to see where this Wanderjahr in Germany takes me next.

Until next time,

​Arielle

Dear readers,
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Thanks so much for tuning in. I can’t believe it has been a year since I have last written. The last time I wrote to you, I was in the midst of my studies at the Humboldt University in Berlin. That was last summer, when I participated in the Leo Baeck Summer University for Jewish Studies. It was there where I learned about the dynamic history of Jewish life in Germany and how Jews have rebuilt their community in Germany since the end of the Second World War.
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I left the program feeling excited because I learned an incredible amount. I had fabulous teachers and amazing classmates, all who showed me how complex and rich the German-Jewish relationship is. I loved meeting modern day German people and becoming acquainted with their communities. Whether I was meeting German Jews whose family had lived in the country for generations, or Russian-German-Jewish people who had lived in Germany since the fall of communism; whether I was meeting young Israelis who had moved to Berlin in recent years or American expats who had served in Germany as journalists or US army officers during the Cold War years – I felt as though I met a plethora of different kinds of Jewish people. Each one of them had their own interesting story and unique Jewish identity. It reminded me of how diverse Jewish life is not only in Germany, but truly around the world.

Diversity was a key word during my summer in Europe last year. I had the opportunity to travel to Warsaw, Krakow, Berlin, and Paris to study each of their diverse Jewish communities. What I learned is every community has its own story, its own history, and its own array of voices. I was lucky to hear many of those voices in my travels through my interviews and observations.

Last summer, when I was in Paris, I had the opportunity to interview many Jewish people. All of them stated how proud they were to be French, but each of them had different destinies that I would learn about in the interviews. About half of the French people I spoke to told me that they were planning on making Aliyah to Israel. They loved France but felt like the country could no longer be there home. They felt that there was too much anti-Semitism in Paris and they very scared. They wanted to provide safe lives to their children. They didn’t want to live in France where they felt like they were living in fear. 

The other half of the French people I spoke to told me that they wanted to stay in France. They said France was their home and it was there that they would stay.  They recognized the danger of rising political far-right and far-left. Many felt that non-Jewish French people hardly paid attention to the rise in anti-Semitism, showing a blind eye to the issues although it was right there in front of everyone’s faces.
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These Jews I spoke to, however, did not want to give up on France. Nobody did, even the ones who were planning on making Aliyah. They believed in France – in its values of liberty, equality, and fraternity. They believed in its history and its future as a democratic nation. They felt as though Jews were an important part in the fabric of French of society. As one of my interviewees quoted Prime Minister Manuel Valls – “France without Jews is not France.” They believed that and I believed it. When I left Paris last summer, I was both troubled and moved by what I had heard. 

​The thought came to me: Did the Jews have a future in Europe? Was Jewish life sustainable in places like Paris? Deep down, I still believed so. I will remain forever an optimist. But I remember going to Notre Dame and saying a small prayer for the Jewish people there. Although I wasn’t Christian, and I didn’t know if anyone in there was truly “listening” to me, for some reason I still felt it was the right place to make my prayer. My hope was that in time people would stand together and not give up on diversity – not give up on the right that all people have to live in the place that they consider home. I prayed that we’d fight for the right that all people have to live with dignity, safety, freedom, and respect.

I came home to the United States as a changed person after my summer in Europe. I had lived through and experienced so much and I had heard so many different stories. It took me a while to process what I had learned, and I’m still processing it all today. I never expected that those stories would bring me to where I am now.
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Tomorrow, I will take off on my greatest adventure yet – a year long stay in Germany as a grantee of the United States Fulbright Scholarship. I’m going to continue the research I began last summer – studying the resurgence of Jewish life in Europe, post-World War II. This upcoming year, my research will focus solely on Jewish life in Berlin and Germany, although my experiences from past travels will surely shape the discoveries to come.

​When I think about last summer, I think about all the experiences that changed me. I loved hearing the tales of the resurgence of Jewish life in Poland, post-World War II. I learned about how particularly after the fall of communism, generations of people across Poland were suddenly discovering their Jewish roots. These “discoverers” were now rebuilding Poland’s Jewish community out of the ashes showing that life can continue, even after what was considered history’s greatest blow – World War II and the Holocaust. Seeing the resurgence of Jewish life in Poland myself gave me hope for the future. It showed me how there can be a brighter day when people work together. I made many friends during my time in Poland – people who were strangers at first – but now today I keep in touch with many of them.

​My time in Berlin showed me how a country devastated by four decades of war and four decades of communism could rebuild and have a strong foundation that now celebrates tolerance and equality. As a descendent of World War II veterans and Holocaust victims, I felt particularly touched when I visited Germany last summer and saw how much the country did to commemorate the Holocaust and completely change its ways since the Second World War.  Now Germany is a leader in Europe – a leader in moral, economic, and social justice. I feel proud to go back to Germany next year and represent my country as a cultural and academic ambassador. I realize how much America has to learn from Germany. While I truly believe that I am a citizen of the greatest country in the world, I cannot wait to live in Germany and learn about their culture. I will live in a city that was once divided by a wall, but today is united and stronger than ever before. 

​Lastly, my time in Paris taught me how important it is to simply be aware. It taught me to be aware of the issues of people around the world – not the just the issues going on with myself and taking place in my own community. My travels have taught me how the world is truly one great big neighborhood and we have to be there for each other.  When we become more aware, that is the first step towards taking responsibility. 

Through my travels, I’ve come to realize that we are one world and one community. It is our diversity in nationalities, religions, sexual orientations, genders, races that make us stronger. From my interviews and experiences, I’ve found that it is both our differences and similarities that can make us more united as people.  In one day, I leave for Germany and I hope these lessons I’ve learned will propel me into the next steps forward.

I will be arriving in Germany on August 7 in Marburg to begin a six week intensive German language program. After that, on September 22, I will land in Berlin and begin my ten month stay there. I received what is called a Fulbright “Young American Journalism Award” which will enable me to spend the year researching the Berlin Jewish population, writing my memoir, and working for different German and American media outlets. I will write about what I’ve learned from my Fulbright experience in the hope that what I say can influence people. I hope to raise awareness for Berlin’s Jewish population and help support change that will affect us for generations to come.

In Berlin, I plan to immerse myself in the city’s diverse community. I hope to become involved in both its Jewish and secular activities. I look forward to meeting people from all parts of the world – people of different religions, origins, and ethnicities. I want to learn about the multidimensionality of German culture and meet all different kinds of Berlin residents. For instance, I hope to meet refugees from the Middle East and German people who have lived there since the Second World War. The real point of the Fulbright is to help bring countries together and to promote positive cultural exchange. I feel so extraordinarily lucky to have this opportunity to represent my country abroad. This dialogue between the US and Germany is extremely important to me and vital to our future as allied nations.

I dreamed of becoming a Fulbright scholar ever since I was a sophomore in college. It was then when I decided that I wanted to start learning German in order to go Germany, meet its people, and learn about history from another angle. For most of my life, I felt as though I looked at the world and at history in one particular way. Now, after my travels, I’ve come to understand that life is meant to be seen from as many angles as possible. Deep down, I feel that I am a story teller, so as many voices as I can hear – I will listen.

I want to thank you, the reader, for reading this and for hopefully reading more of these posts as I write them. I lastly want to thank my parents, grandparents, siblings, teachers and friends who have supported me on this journey thus far. When I started writing this blog “Saving the Shtetlach” three years ago, I had no idea the adventure would continue beyond one summer – let alone beyond four years of college. But now as a post-grad, I’m looking forward to the next chapter of my life.  I feel so grateful just to be here – with you – and taking the next step.
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            All the best,
            Arielle

Hi everyone!

Thanks so much for tuning in again to Saving the Shtetlach, my blog that details my travels through Europe learning about modern Jewish life and history. In my last post, I told you all about my time spent in Krakow, Poland researching its modern Jewish community.  In this post, I will update you about my time spent living in Berlin. I have lived in Germany for four weeks now, participating in the Leo Baeck Summer University in Jewish Studies at Humbolt Universität and let me tell you, it’s been quite the ride.

 My time in Berlin has been a very interesting experience, both challenging and fun. The program I am participating in is as superb as it is intense, and every day I leave class with my brain flooded with thoughts, ideas, and an overload of information. We are studying a very interesting topic: Jewish history in Germany and modern German-Jewish relations. My program is divided into two modules, the first one focused on Jewish life in Germany before and during World War II and the second one focused on German-Jewish life post-World War II. 


The first three-week module ended last week and overall it was a very interesting class. We studied Jewish history in Germany from 1800 through 1945 and I learned a great deal. I had never realized how long Jews had lived in Germany. I had never before learned in detail what their life was like. The narrative I had always been told was that all Jews living in Germany before World War II were well-off and assimilated. I had always believed that German Jews hardly connected with their Jewish identity. Rather, I had always been told that Jews living in Germany considered themselves to be Germans first. As usual, my preconceptions proved to be misconceptions and I found that Jewish history in Germany before World War II was much more complex than I had expected.

First you must know that not all Jews in Germany were rich and living in fancy houses. This is what I thought and oh boy was I wrong. Most Jews belonged to the middle class, in fact, many lived even quite close to poverty. Jewish religiosity was complex in its definition and rather could be better thought of as a spectrum of observance. One could not simply place all German Jews into the category of being secular. By the midpoint of the 19th century, the Reform Jewish movement had begun in Germany and assimilation was common amongst Jews living in industrialized cities. Still there were many Jews who still lived in rural towns and made their livings in small scale professions like cattle trading.  In 1871, 66% of all German Jews lived in small villages in the country side. By 1933, 66% of German Jews lived in urban areas.

We learned about relations between German Jews and Gentiles before World War II and how these relations were quite complicated in nature. It is important to note that Jews and Gentiles needed each other in Germany, particularly in business. Yet issues of trust and antisemitism often came into play and sometimes fractured their dealings. Jews in Germany certainly had more freedoms than Jewish people living in other parts of the world, particularly compared to the Pale of Settlement which was in also place during the 19th century. The Jewish Emancipation that took place in Germany in 1871 made Jews citizens of Germany with rights, and this made their situation special and often better than the situation of Russian-Jewish or Polish-Jewish people of that time. By the start of the 20th century, Jewish people had the ability to rise through the societal ranks and often become more educated. Many Jews took this opportunity and made nice lives for themselves and their families, finding jobs in medicine, law, and business. When World War I began, 85,000 of Jewish men fought for Germany and defended the “father land,” in fact, many became decorated war heroes. But despite having near equal rights, Jews faced severe discrimination in many spheres of their life in Germany. For instance, it was very tough for a Jew to be admitted to a German University. Even in the 1900s, it was still very hard for a Jew to rise up in court houses or in military. Rumors and stereotypes about the Jewish people would spread like wildfire throughout the country and Jews faced persecution and humiliation often in the public sphere. When Germany lost the First World War and its economy completely crashed, the young Nazi party used anti-Semitic rhetoric as its way to slither up through the ranks.

Interestingly, we learned that it was not so easy for the Nazis to turn everyone in their country against the Jews. While antisemitism certainly existed in Germany before the Nazis rose to power and being Jewish in Germany certainly wasn’t easy, in order to truly manifest their ideology in the heart of the German nation, the Nazis had to push a several year-long campaign promoting antisemitism before the German people eventually conceded to this way of thinking. It was hard for many German citizens to be turned against their Jewish friends and neighbors. Economically, the Jews were very important as merchants and traders and many people, particularly German farmers, initially did not want to give up these relationships in spite of the Nazi propaganda. The Nazi regime was as terrible as they were genius in their way indoctrinating a country in a disgusting ideology. The Nazis declared that the German Aryan race was the supreme race and all Jews were considered sub-human. The Nuremburg Laws of 1935 declared that Jewish people now enemies of the German state. In the years following, Jews were ostracized and persecuted. The Nazis highly promoted, but also made it very hard, for Jewish people to emigrate. In 1933, over 500,000 Jewish people lived in Germany. By 1938, only 250,000 Jewish people remained. Refuge abroad was much sought after and the Jews left in Germany often remained because they simply could not afford to leave. Jewish people in Germany had little to no rights and the government no longer protected them. Forced to wear yellow Stars of David as identifiers, the Jews could be attacked in public at any time since the Nazis promoted antisemitic violence, like the November Pogrom (Kristallnacht/Night of Broken Glass) in 1938 that lead to 30,000 Jewish men being sent to concentration camps and thousands of Jewish homes, businesses, synagogues and schools being destroyed. Over 90 Jewish people were killed during the Pogrom.

Now to come back to my personal reaction, I’ll tell you that we spent one week of the program focusing on the Holocaust and by far that was the hardest week of the summer for me. Before this summer, I had never thought that one day I would ever become “Holocausted Out.” I never thought the subject would be too painful that I’d have to put my book down and not want to pick it back up. I never thought I’d become so saddened that I could feel it in my bones whenever I flipped a page. Over that week, our group visited the Holocaust Memorial and Information Center in Berlin and later we visited the Wannsee House where the Nazis planned the “Final Solution” to murder all of Europe’s Jews. We looked at pictures, watched films, visited memorials and read books all about the terrible genocide and I could feel it in my heart that it was becoming too much. The emotional wall that I can usually keep up within me when studying hard subjects like the Holocaust was crumbling. On Friday, we visited Sachsenhausen concentration camp and I thought my heart was finally going to be broken for good.

By the start of the weekend, several people in my program complained that they were having Holocaust nightmares. All of us were so emotionally exhausted that we did not know what to do.

At one point I asked myself a question that might sounds silly at first, but when I asked it I was completely serious. I asked myself: Why do I study the Holocaust?

I started to wonder what my life would have been like if I never knew about it. What would my world be like if I had never learned about the Nazis or the murder of six million Jewish people. What if Hitler was a person who never came up in conversation? What if I had never seen or a read a book or watched a movie made about the Shoah? What would that life be like if I never knew about the Holocaust? What if I could have simply lived in ignorance of this topic?

I thought about this for a while and to be honest, I think this question is one that will return to me throughout the rest of my life. Sometimes this history can be so sad that I ask myself why I put this burden of history on my shoulders? Why do I need to take on this task of remembering?

But then I thought, if I didn’t study the Holocaust – who else would?  If I do not take on this responsibility, how can I expect others to do the same? You see, Holocaust education and studying Jewish history has become such a large part of my life, in the end: I don’t know where I’d be if I didn’t study it.

I can still remember when I learned about the Holocaust for the first time, looking at the Torah in my synagogue reading the words “Never Forget” and wondering what could be so bad that we all had to remember it. I still recall reading the book Night in 8th grade and then being given a writing assignment to write a story from a victim’s perspective. I still remember talking to my grandma every night, writing this story, and discovering the power of storytelling and the power that resided within my own voice. I still remember meeting Dr. Buchanan, my Holocaust-Genocide teacher in High school who showed me that with passion, dedication, and the strength necessary to take the journey, I could pave a path for myself in Holocaust studies and be the writer I wanted to be. I still remember meeting Dr. Caplan, my Yiddish teacher and how I began taking Yiddish classes and learning about Jewish life pre-World War II. My studies of Yiddish lead to my travels to Poland, Belarus, and Lithuania, and through these travels I learned much about Jewish culture pre-World War II and the stories of my ancestors. As a particpant of the Helix Project and as a student at the Vilnius Yiddish Institute, I was introduced to a community of people all interested in the same thing as me. Afterwards, these experiences lead me to travel to Austria, Poland again, and the Czech Republic, in a quest to learn about modern day Jewish life. Now I am in Germany studying Jewish history and contemporary German-Jewish culture. Soon I will be in Paris doing the same thing.

So you see, I chose this path but in many ways, I also think this path chose me. Without learning about the Holocaust, I would not be here doing what I’m doing today. I would not be writing this now. I don’t even know if I’d have wanted to be a writer. I don’t know what Arielle I would be – but certainly it would not be me. 

So not only is the Holocaust important because it put me on my life path. In fact, that is probably LEAST important reason why I study it. Rather, I have come to the conclusion that I study the Holocaust because every time I read about it, I feel like I am honoring the dead by keeping their lives in my memory. When I learn about the Holocaust and share its lessons with others, I feel like my life has purpose. By telling the story of the Holocaust and learning about the details of the genocide, I know I can pass lessons of tolerance and resistance down to future generations. I have found that while ignorance may be blissful, it certainly is not helpful. If I had the choice to have either learned about the Holocaust or to have never been told about it – I one thousand times over would have chosen to learn about it.

I learn about the Holocaust because as people of the world, we NEED to realize the great the evil we can do to one another if we do not stand up for justice. I do this to preserve the memory of those who fell victim in this awful period of history. I learn about the Holocaust so that no act of intolerance or racial prejudice ever grows to be so large or so destructive again. 

So there you have it. I will be sure to blog again soon regarding more details on my time spent in Germany. I hope you enjoyed this post. I truly get great pleasure and comfort out of writing this blog. Living in Germany, I find myself often completely surrounded by history. It can leave me with a lot of thoughts in my head and this blog is a great outlet for me to express my feelings and views on what I am experiencing. For me, while living here, the learning is taking place both inside and outside the classroom. In fact, I find myself learning even as I write to you. I hope that in reading, you get something out of this story too. I hope that I can spread some of the lessons that I have been so fortunate enough to learn. Feel free to leave comments in the box below – I love to hear thoughts from readers. Sending many warm wishes from the city of Berlin and as always, thanks so much for reading.

Until next time,

Arielle

Hi everyone! Thanks so much for tuning in again to Saving the Shtetlach, my blog that details my travels through Europe learning about Jewish history and modern Jewish life. Sorry for the wait – I realize it has been way too long since my last post, but I am back again and ready to fill you in on the story of my summer that every day grows deeper and more meaningful to me.

The last time I wrote, I had just summed up my time spent in Warsaw, the first city of my journey this summer. Since then, I have explored Krakow, Berlin, and Prague – three cities that are as diverse in narrative as they are rich in the stories they have to tell.

To start with my time in Krakow, it’s hard to find a place to begin. If I were to pick a word to describe Krakow for me, it would be a Yiddish word: heymish – “like home.” I came to Krakow this summer knowing one person. Within the expanse of five days, I grew to know an entire community. The story of Krakow, particularly the story of its Jewish community, is one of the greatest stories ever to be told. The city and its people stand as a testament to time saying that while history must be remembered, and certainly not repeated, one cannot live in it – one can and must find a way to move forward.

The Jewish Community of Krakow is so amazing because after being nearly decimated in the Holocaust, the community has risen from the ashes and become one again. Within 25 years since the fall of Communism, Jewish people in Poland have decided to go back to their roots and embrace their Jewish identities once again. During my time in Krakow, I had the chance to interview many people who for most of their lives, did not know they were Jewish. Whether they found out from family members or ancestral research of their own – the people I met were faced with a choice. After discovering the truth behind their ancestries, they had to decide whether they would embrace their family’s past and the opportunity to have a Jewish identity or if they would they ignore it. Judaism wasn’t something they could take for granted – being Jewish was an act of choice. Taking on a religion is a big decision to make, and at such a young age, it could change the course of your life. Today, it seems that hundreds of people in Poland, young and old, are making this choice to claim the heritage that was always in them. 

The stories I heard while I was in Krakow were extremely deep and very complex. Questions of what makes a person Jewish and am I “Jewish” enough were always mentioned in interviews. Similarly, for Polish-Jewish teenagers, they feel like they have to constantly answer the question: why do I live in Poland? Interestingly, they are not asking themselves this question. They are sure of themselves and know why they live in Poland – it is their home. But it seems that others, particularly Jews from the United States and Israel, cannot see why a Jew would want to live in their country. Many people look at Poland and only see the Holocaust. They only see Auschwitz and the gas chambers. But this is such a narrow point of view because if one truly studies Jewish history in Poland – they would see so much more than that. The fact that Polish Jews have to constantly defend why they live in Poland greatly disturbs me. To me, this is an example of the post-Holocaust trauma that is felt by Jewish people around the world, but particularly in the United States and Israel. After doing the travel and research I’ve done, I am here to adamantly defend the fact that Jews can and must be able to live anywhere in the world that they want to. Jewish life needs to exist in Poland because if Jews are not there, who will be there to make sure that the rich history and tradition of Jewish life in Poland continues? If it doesn't continue than the Holocaust won. My theory is that the only way the Jewish people can move forward after such a travesty is to make an effort to support and rebuild what was lost. The Jewish people's past in Poland spans over 1,000 years. It is as rich with life as it is with tragedy. Today, it is the home to several hundred – potentially thousands of Jews and we need to support them in their quest to rebuild their community. This is what will create hope – this is what will create a brighter future.

As Jewish people, I feel that no matter we come from, no matter what biases we might hold, we need to help each other and support one another in our endeavors. We are one people, one international community, and if we don’t step up and support each other in our efforts to make a home– who will?  It is time to start changing the dialogue and it is time to start reaching out. I am convinced it will make the world – and not just the Jewish world – a much better place.

Now before I move on, I have to thank all the people I met in Krakow for an incredibly beautiful extremely eye opening week. Whether it was interviewing Krakow residents, attending events at the Jewish cultural festival, or just simply exploring the city - it was one of the best weeks of my life and I am so indebted to the people I met who took me in. Kris, Olga, Sara, Serhii, Marcjanna, and the students of the Krakow Jewish Students Club – thanks so much for your friendship and kindness. I was a stranger and you all made me feel like I was home. I felt like Charlie in Perks of Being a Wallflower – when Sam says, “You see things, you understand. You’re a wallflower.” Not that my goal here is to be a silent observer, but for me to go to Krakow and listen to all of your stories – it was an incredible experience for me. You all befriended me, no questions asked, and made me feel like I was a “Krakower” (this is a term I just made up – it’s like Berliner – but for Krakow, and I think I like it). You all are incredible people and I cannot wait to see you all again one day.

To Agnieszka, thank you so much for you sweetness and willingness to help with whatever I needed. It was so wonderful to interview you. Thank you for helping my parents when they came to Krakow a week after me, they love you as well! To Marek Tuszewicki, Ruth Ellen Gruber, Monika Elliot, thank you all so much for your time and your willingness to answer my questions. I learned so much and it was so great to speak with you all. Lastly, to Jonathan Ornstein, thank you so much for your time. Your work as director of the Jewish Community Center in Krakow is incredible – you are a true leader of the Jewish people and the international Jewish community is indebted to your passion and efforts in building Jewish life in Krakow. You are truly one of a kind.

My dream is to return to Krakow one day. I hope that it is in the near future. I cannot wait to watch and see where the Jewish community goes from here. As I see it, the only way the Jewish people can recover from the horrors of the past is in helping each other to build a better future. I hope that the work I do in my life will help in this. As Spock says, I wish that we will all live long, and prosper.

Now as I write to you, I am sitting in a busy, happening café in Berlin sipping an Earl Grey tea (it’s actually quite cold in Germany). I have lived in Berlin for nearly one month now and it’s been quite an interesting experience that I look forward to writing about. There is so much to say about each of the places I’ve been to on my summer journey. Surely, this blog is just the start. Thanks so much for tuning in again and I promise to write again soon!

Sending much love from Rosenthaler Straße & the vibrant capital of Germany.

Until next time,

Arielle

Hi everyone!
Thanks so much for tuning into the latest post about my journey. I’ve spent the past 8 days in Berlin, beginning my studies at the Leo Baeck Institute for Jewish Studies at Humboldt Universität.  This week has brought both highlights and challenges, but it’s also given me plenty of time to reflect over the eight days spent before I came to Berlin – the first leg of my journey – which was spent in Warsaw and Krakow, Poland.

My eight days in Poland truly changed my life. I’ve reflected on those days with both warmth and reminiscence as it was such a positive week for me. I’ve relived moments in my head that I know I will remember forever as some of the most inspiring moments in my life.

Before coming on this trip, I had never travelled alone before. This sensation of planning out my own journey was completely new to me and I did not know if I would like it. As I wrote about in my last post, I thought I would be lonely during my time spent in Poland. I didn’t think I would make friends or get close to the people I met. Luckily, I was completely wrong.

My experience in Poland was first made positive truly by the kindness of strangers. I met a lot of random people on this trip, travelers like myself who were on their own journeys, whether it be for work, school, or vacation. Over this trip, I’ve come to realize that every person I meet has a story, and if I take the time to listen to it, it can impact the story of my own. After conversing with new people, they no longer are strangers, but now they are friends and I made quite a few during my week in Poland.

For instance, after a lonely first night in Warsaw, I went to the hotel breakfast the next morning expecting to talk to nobody. As I finished my meal, I looked over at an old man sitting a few feet away from me, drinking coffee and reading the New York Times. American? I thought to myself. The man caught me looking at him and smiled. “You read the Times also?” I said.

“Well, how’d we do here,” he said. “An American!”

There was a certain sense of immediate solidarity I felt with this old man, both of us sitting along in a breakfast café in Warsaw. We were both American and that was enough to unite us. “Come sit over here!” he said, waving me to come over. I picked up my half finished tea and carried my large back pack over.

“Where you from?” he asked.

“New Jersey,” I said. “A small town called Randolph.”

“New Jersey!” he said. “I think I’ve heard of it! I’m from Montana.” He stuck out his hand to me, and I grabbed it. “I’m George,” he said. “It’s mighty nice to meet you, Miss…”

“Arielle,” I said. “My names Arielle.”

George and I chatted for a while, exchanging travel stories. I explained how this was my first day in Warsaw, but that I had been to Poland twice before. He was so impressed that I was travelling alone and when I told him about the research I was doing he leaned back in his chair and cooed, “What a smart and fine young lady we got here! You know you’re doing something real good, kid. Believe me, I know. I travelled Europe for many years of my life, doing jobs in 30 different countries, and when I hear a story like yours I know it’s important. You’re on a journey, and that’s great.”

I told him how I hoped this journey would be good. I wasn’t sure how much research I’d be able to do or how many people I’d be able to meet. I was lacking confidence, and I think it showed. George smiled told me to keep positive; he said that I had luck on my side. “You’re on an adventure.” he said to me. “Keep on it. You’ll see, it’ll be good.”

George and I talked for about forty five minutes, he told me about his wife and his family. George had come to Poland with his wife and his nephew. They were not at breakfast because they were on a walking tour of Jewish Warsaw. “I’m Catholic and my wife is Jewish,” he explained. “We never had any kids of our own, but whenever a niece or nephew of ours turns fourteen, we take  them on a trip to both Warsaw and Rome, to explore their religious ancestry. We also let them pick one more place to visit, so my nephew picked England and we just came from London to Warsaw.”

I was taken aback by George’s reason for coming to Warsaw. I thought it was such a beautiful idea, to take his nephew on a religious pilgrimage, exploring both his Jewish and Catholic roots. It sounded like an incredible trip and it was so kind of George and his wife to do this for every niece and nephew.

George and I talked some more. He talked to me about his love for the Jewish people, about how even though he was Catholic; when he was young, he only enjoyed dating Jewish girls. I laughed as he told me some stories from his younger days. He felt that through his wife, he had a Jewish identity as well – he felt that the story of the Catholics and the Jews were so intertwined – it was impossible not to feel love for both religions. I completely agreed. I find Catholicism fascinating and would love to travel to Rome one day myself. I’ve always felt that all religions were in some way connected, and that I couldn’t be a good Jew if I didn’t explore and embrace other religions as well.

After a while, I said goodbye to George as I had planned to spend the morning exploring the new Museum of the History of Polish Jews. “It’s excellent!” he said. He said how it was one of the best museums he’d ever seen.  I gave him one last glance and waved goodbye and he wished me luck on my journey. I never learned George’s last name, and I never asked for his email, so I didn’t know if I’d ever see him again, but I wished he could have known how much his kind words meant to me that morning. He had no idea how lonely I was coming into breakfast, or how much I had dreaded travelling on my own. He had no idea how that one conversation could mean so much. Or perhaps, come to think of it – maybe he did. Maybe that’s why he invited me over – he was an experienced traveler too.  He might’ve known that travel is always better with a bit of social interaction. I’ve always been told that when travelling it’s not the places you go, but it’s the people you meet that make the experience I really believe that that is true. I wanted to give George a huge hug and thank him for his kindness – his words gave me confidence and meant much more than I could say.

Over the span of the rest of my trip in Poland, I met many more people who had started out as strangers and soon enough became friends.  I met a Pastor and his family from Arizona in the elevator of my hotel. When I told the Pastor I was travelling alone doing research, he was at first shocked and said, “Wow, you’re really brave.” A few days later, he came up to me, just before I left my hotel and said, “Hi, I just wanted to tell you that my wife and I have talked about you a lot since we met, and we are both so proud of you and amazed by what you are doing.” I thanked the Pastor and was touched by his words. I was glad he didn’t think I was too crazy for doing this trip, rather – he was proud.

The person who by far proved to me that sometimes complete strangers can become the kindest of friends was a young man named Kamil, who is a graduate student at the University of Warsaw, who offered to take me around Warsaw for a day and show me the city through his eyes.

I had never met Kamil Ch before coming on the trip. I did not even know who he was. But on the first day of my trip, I received an email from him saying that his Professor, who is friends with my Professor, recommended that he meet me. Before I left for my trip, my research mentor Professor Sundquist contacted his friend, Professor Ewa Luczak and asked if she had any students who would be willing to meet me. Kamil kindly offered himself and soon enough I received an email from then a stranger, asking if I would want to meet up the following day.

I gladly agreed to meet Kamil, and on the third day of my trip, after my meeting with the staff at the Jewish Historical Institute, I met Kamil outside the building and we walked around Warsaw. Spending time with Kamil was very fun and proved to be a highlight of the trip for me. He showed me the campus of the University of Warsaw. We explored its library and he laughed as I tried to practice my Polish with strangers (my pronunciation of please and thank you could still use some work). We took a walking tour of Warsaw’s former Jewish quarter and Kamil showed me the way to the Jewish Community Center in Warsaw where I had an interview lined up. I had no plans for the evening, so Kamil offered to take me to Warsaw’s Old Town and eat dinner there. In the Old Town we saw a beautiful light show and the dinner afterwards was delicious. To me, the evening was cultural exchange at its best.  Afterwards, I told Kamil he was an honorary American since he knew just as much about American pop culture as I did. He has watched every episode of Jon Stewart and has seen more US TV than me! I also learned a lot about Polish culture from Kamil. It was so interesting to hear about Poland from someone who is from there. It turns out that I had visited Kamil's hometown, Bialystock, two years ago and we certainly had a lot to talk about! Currently, Kamil studies at the University of Warsaw where he's writing his dissertation on African-American literature. We talked about our shared interest in Ralph Ellison (I had just taken an entire course about him and Invisible Man is now one of my favorite books!).

My evening with Kamil was very fun and since I was leaving for Krakow the very next day, he offered to wake up early and drive me to the train station, which I graciously accepted since I get lost in train stations very easily. Kamil met me the next morning and took me to the train, he even walked onto the train, helped me with my suitcase, and helped me find my cart and seat. I gave Kamil a hug and thanked him for everything. I nearly choked up because I was so thankful to have met such  a kind person.  As my train pulled out of the Warsaw station and started chugging its way towards Krakow, I leaned back and hoped to myself that I would meet the same kind of people in Krakow as I met in Warsaw. As my sister likes to say, I was feeling the “good vibes” and I was so happy that my first few days of solo travel were much more fun than I had anticipated.

I was also really proud of the research I had done in Warsaw. I had three incredible interviews – the first with the Chief Rabbi of Warsaw, Rabbi Michael Schudrich. The second interview was with Agata Rakowiecka, the director of the new Jewish Community Center in Warsaw. My final interview was with Marta Saracyn, the programming coordinator at the JCC Warsaw. All of the interviews were great and I learned a lot. Each interviewee told me a bit about their life story. I learned about their relationship with Judaism and their thoughts on what its like to live in Europe today and be Jewish. As each interview happened, I was reminded more and more about why I came on this trip. The worries that I had once felt the month leading up to this trip had been overturned. I was so happy I came and felt that the interviews I conducted can and will be very educational for those who hear the story. I’m still figuring out how exactly I will communicate what I learned from the interviews to the wider public. There are so many stories and ideas to share. However, I believe that what I have learned is important, and most probably I will share what I have learned in the form of a book – whether it be a memoir or some other form – I want to write down what I have heard.

The next blog post will be about my time in Krakow. I lived in Krakow for five days and my time there was incredible and just as moving as my time spent in Warsaw. I have so many people to thank for this – particularly the staff at the JCC Krakow and the people I met there – but that will be for the next post.

Thanks so much again for reading. Every day of this journey, I write down my thoughts and remember how lucky I am to be able to go on a trip like this. I feel like my life keeps changing and no matter what destination it leads to, the journey has been incredibly fun. Sending you all much love from Berlin.

Until next time,

Arielle

Hi everyone! Thanks so much for tuning into the latest post of my travel blog, Saving the Shtetlach which details my travels through Europe researching Jewish life and history. I’m so happy to be writing again – it’s been nearly one year since my last post. A lot has happened since then – I completed my Junior year of college, I moved into an apartment, and I decided that was going to spend the summer before my senior year travelling Europe, researching the topic I care about the most.

The decision to do this though was not an easy one. Junior year was tough for many reasons. I like to tell people that turning 21 hit me like a pile of bricks. This year more than any other year I felt I had to grow in order to fulfill all of things I wanted to do. I had to become more independent and more brave.

I think that if there was one emotion I felt the most predominantly this year it was fear.  There were so many big decisions I had to make this past year, it was impossible to predict where my life was going. I remember I was talking to my grandmother on the phone one night, frustrated over a tough day and she said to me, “Arielle, you’re letting fear dictate your life. You cannot live like that.”

Those words – like turning 21 – hit me like another pile of bricks. She was right.  My grandmother, along with my parents, my professors, my mentors, and my friends – they saw something in me that I couldn’t see. They had faith in me, but at that point, I had started to lose faith in myself.

After coming back from Poland last June and spending the rest of the summer working in Baltimore, I knew in my heart that the summer before my senior year I wanted to go to Europe and learn more about its Jewish life. When the war broke out in Israel last summer and talk of anti-Semitism began to rise, more and more did I feel it to be my own duty to go back to Europe and judge the situation for myself. I was so inspired by what I had seen in Poland last summer, I could not accept the headlines that dictated why the Jews should leave Europe. In my mind, I was on a mission. This mission was big, so I had to plan it. And that’s what I did in my spare time throughout my junior year.

Planning out this journey was as tough as it was fun. It was as challenging as it was rewarding for me. I knew that if I wanted to go to Europe to study Jewish life, I needed to apply for funding. I needed to be on top of my game and be able to pitch an idea to the grant committees of Johns Hopkins University that would be both feasible and original. I have been privileged and honored to be a Woodrow Wilson Undergraduate Research fellow these past two years at Hopkins, but I knew that if I wanted to go everywhere I was interested in going this upcoming summer, I would need to apply for more grant funding – thus I’d have to apply for many more research scholarships.

During my winter vacation, I went on a trip to Israel that was so healthy for me, its hard to put it into words. I’m so grateful that I was able to go on a Birthright-Taglit trip with students from the Johns Hopkins and Towson University Hillel. It was a remarkable ten day trip, filled with laughter, good food, great conversation, and lots of snow (we even built a snow man in Jerusalem). I made many great friends on that  trip that I still keep in touch with and the trip helped me reconnect with Zionism and the Jewish state. I had not visited Israel in four years and it was so wonderful to revisit the land that took my heart the first time I came. The trip helped me to forget pressures that were building on me at home and the whole experience put me in a better, more relaxed state.

When my spring semester began, I got right back down to business and started applying for research grants to fund a summer spent researching in Europe. I was accepted to study Jewish-German life and history at the Leo Baeck Summer University for Jewish Studies at Humboldt Universität in Berlin. I had never been to Germany and I haad just started taking German language this year, so I was very excited for this opportunity.

Then, I needed to figure out where else I was going to go. I knew I had interest in Paris because of the Charlie Hebdo attacks and Paris’s prominent space in the media as the city with the highest growing rate of anti-Semitism. I wanted to better understand this phenomenon and also see its Jewish community for myself. I wanted to know why Jews lived in France and why it was that some were choosing to move out. I wanted to see if the media was portraying French Jewry and society fairly or if some facts were being over or under exaggerated.

Lastly, I decided that I wanted to go back to Poland because after last summer, I felt a very deep connection with the country and its Jewish people. I was so amazed by the Jewish life I saw there, being a witness to its growing and thriving post-Holocaust Jewish community. I had questioned whether I wanted to use research funding to explore a new city instead, perhaps, Prague or Budapest, but rightly so, my research advisor Professor Sundquist suggested that I go back to Poland to research its Jewish community more. Poland as a country has defied the odds. Its Jewish community is back, and in a world that seems to be providing only negative news for Jewish people, the story of Jews in post-Holocaust, post-Communist Poland is a shining light.

With that, I applied to many different research scholarships and was lucky to receive three of them. Using the funding received from the John Koren Scholarship for Holocaust Research and Education of the Johns Hopkins University Jewish Studies Department, the Max Kade Scholarship for Summer Travel of the Johns Hopkins University German Studies Department, the Johns Hopkins Dean’s Undergraduate Research Award, and my remaining funds from the Woodrow Wilson program, I now had enough funding to take the trip of a lifetime and research what mattered the most to me. I was so excited. In my heart, I felt that my research had the possibility to do something – to change people’s perspectives. I still have that feeling, that’s why I’m still here and writing.

Soon enough, it came time to really plan my research project. Junior year came to a close, and after a dramatic end of the year with the Baltimore Riots and pending graduation decisions, I came back to New Jersey as exhausted as I was excited to be back home with my family. As soon as I got home though, I went back to work again as now I had an entire summer of research to plan. I had to buy plane tickets, book hotels, plan itineraries, and write about 1,000 emails to Jewish leaders all over Europe asking them to meet with me and help me recruit research participants. Although about 1 percent of those emails received responses from European Jewish leaders, I received enough feedback to apply and receive support from my university’s Internal Review Board (IRB), whose application process to be a certified “Johns Hopkins researcher” was as strenuous and tedious as applications can be. (Although, the IRB office itself at JHU was very kind to me and answered all of my questions – thanks John Black!)

In end, I received IRB certification and was set to go on that front, but I had another problem – I had no interviews set up. And that was where I was just four days before flying to Warsaw, the first leg of my trip, before the Chief Rabbi of Warsaw Michael Schudrich emailed me back saying he’d be willing to meet with me. So I had one interview set up before I left for Europe. It was better than zero, but my hopes weren’t high.

I’ve always been the kind of girl that likes to have everything planned. I’ve grown up adhering to an order and I always like knowing exactly what was going to come next. This trip to Europe was going to be the craziest thing I ever did because I had NO IDEA what was coming next. I didn’t even know if I was going to have research participants. Here I was, 21 years old about to leave for another continent for two months, and I felt like I had no idea what I was doing.

The weekend before I left for Europe was the same weekend as my younger sister Chelsea’s Bat Mitzvah. The celebration came at just the right time for everyone in my family. It was a beautiful service and my family will have the most wonderful memories from that weekend. Chelsea did the most beautiful job at her service and I couldn't have been a prouder sister. 

The night before I left, I was sitting in the lobby of my grandparent’s hotel with my Nana, my Aunt Judy and my cousin Suzy. I was so overwhelmed that night that I simply couldn’t talk. Before I knew it, I had begun to cry. “Perhaps,” she my cousin Suzy said trying to cheer me up. “Perhaps you are about to have your own adult Bat-Mitzvah. You’re growing up now, Arielle. To take this trip, it’s honestly like you’re becoming a Jewish adult all over again.”

And that’s when it hit me: she was totally right! I was becoming an adult. My Nana liked to remind me of this fact whenever we spoke on the phone, but it took Suzy to say it that made it sink in. Growing up, I’ll tell you, is not for the weak of heart. It takes a lot of guts; a lot of strength. But we all must go through it. And as I sat there at the hotel the night before I left for my first solo-trekking-European-adventure, I knew that the next day would be the start of my two month adult Bat-Mitzvah – and it would be just the start of a lifelong personal journey.

With that, I kissed my family goodnight and prepared to get on the plane for Europe the very next morning. Before I left for my gate at Newark International Airport, my Mom, who had driven me to the airport, pulled me into her arms and told me that I was like Cheryl Strayed, the writer of the book Wild. She said that this adventure I was about to take would be an amazing one. I nearly started crying again as I gave her one last hug but I pushed away the tears as I made my way toward security and waited there for two hours to board the plane.

The plane took off more than a half an hour late. To say I began to panic is an understatement. I thought that with less than a one hour layover in Germany, I would surely miss my connecting flight to Warsaw. I thought I’d be stuck in Germany. I thought I’d miss the one interview I had managed to plan out. I thought this whole trip was going down the drain. And I hadn’t even made it to Europe yet.

Luckily, with a speedy pilot and a fast-paced airport jog, I made my connecting flight. I got to my hotel, took a nap and prepared for my interview with the Rabbi which luckily went well. I found my way to the Warsaw Nożyk Synagogue and interviewed Rabbi Michael Schudrich who was very kind to give his time. It was an interesting interview that I will write about in a later post, and as the interview ended he looked at me and smiled, saying, “Now go get some sleep!”

I got back to my hotel and cradled myself in my bed unsure of what to do next. I needed dinner. I didn’t know Warsaw at all. There were no places to eat in my immediate neighborhood besides a bakery that sold Greek Salads. I eventually found a restaurant and actually had a nice meal, although the taste of the Polish food was diluted by my sadness of not having anyone to speak to about this journey. Before, I had always had at least one companion when traveling abroad. I had always travelled with a group and things had always been planned out by someone else. I never had to look up directions. I never got to pick anything. This feeling of autonomous travel was completely new to me.

The first night spent in Europe on this trip was by far the hardest. I called my parents on Facetime at 2 am Polish time (in America it was 8 pm) telling them how lonely I was and about I couldn’t fall asleep. I cried and expressed my looming fear about what if this trip didn’t go well. What if all the work I had done prepping before hand was for nothing. My parents calmed me down a bit and suggested I watch some TV, trying to get my mind off of the trip. I took their advice and it worked for a little, but every time I turned out the light and tried falling asleep, I started crying again.

It was at that moment when I decided that I needed to write. I took out my writer’s diary and penned my thoughts. I wrote about my fears and my concerns, my doubts and my lack of hope. I wanted this summer to go well, but I had hit such a low and I didn’t know how to get back up. I wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote and I probably listed about 1,000 forms of fear that I had felt throughout the entire day. One of my favorite singers Sia released an album this year called “1,000 Forms of Fear” and sadly, I felt like I was living it.

For me, whenever I hit lows, one thing I do to make it better is listen to the Lion King soundtrack. One of the most famous quotations from the Lion King is when Mufasa says to Simba, “Remember Who You Are.” I thought about that line as laid in my Warsaw hotel room listening to my iPod at 4 in the morning. Arielle, I thought, you must remember who you are.

With that, I took out my diary again and wrote down all the reasons why I came on this trip. I wrote down all of my hopes. I wrote down my dreams for what I would find. I wrote down why I was qualified to take this trip and why I had the experience necessary to be able to handle the journey. I wrote and I felt better. It was time. I could finally relax.

NOW - after seven days spent travelling alone in Poland, I can honestly say that many emotions have taken over my mind.  This has been one of the most emotional and greatest trips of my life. But of all the emotions that have taken over me, I am proud to say that fear – ever since that first night – has not been one of them. I promised myself that I would not let fear dictate this trip.

Now obviously I recognize that anxiety and insecurity are natural human instincts when it comes to solo travel. It’s good to be self-aware, but as Mia Thermopolis’s father says in the Princess Diaries, “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear. The brave may not live forever, but the cautious do not live at all. From now on you'll be traveling the road between who you think you are and who you can be. The key is to allow yourself to make the journey." 

So if there’s one thing I avoid now, more than anything else, its fear itself. I can't let it interfere with my journey. Just like Franklin Roosevelt once said: the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. 

This trip has been quite the remarkable one thus far. I can't believe how fast one week has gone by. I am leaving tomorrow for Berlin feeling inspired and enlightened by my eight days spent in Poland. In the following posts I’ll describe to you how that all came to be - there are so many great stories. I’ve met many incredible people on this trip and I’ve conducted many great interviews that have opened my eyes to the power of identity and the beauty of a growing Jewish community. Just like my Dad told me before I left, this trip has truly become the trip of a lifetime. I'm so grateful to have this opportunity and am indebted to everyone who has shown me kindness along the way.

So now let’s just say that fear is a word of the past. No matter how many forms fear shows itself, I’m choosing to remember who I am and what I want to do. This will give me the strength to pull through the next 7 weeks of this journey. In fact, I'm really looking forward to it. As always, thanks so much for reading.

Until next time,

Arielle

Hi everyone! Thanks so much for tuning into the latest chapter of my journey studying Jewish life and culture in Eastern Europe.  Saving the Shtetlach is back and I’m so glad you can join me.  This post is going to be the final part of my three part Poland blog series.  Coming up afterwards I have some surprises that I can’t wait to share with you.

Although my Poland trip occurred this past June, I can remember it as though it happened yesterday.  It was such a meaningful trip for me.  I’m not lying when I say it changed my life.  It re-taught me how to think. I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to truly see Poland.  When I say see, I mean, see it for anything besides its history of the Holocaust.  I knew the country had a long history and the Jews lived there for a long time, but when I thought of Poland, the first thing that always came to my mind were the concentration camps. I could only see Auschwitz. I only saw death. 

When I decided that I would spend some of my Woodrow Wilson scholarship funding to go on a trip to Poland, I knew I was making an important choice.  I knew the choice would be life changing – I just hoped the choice was the right one.

Looking back on it now, let me assure you – going to Poland was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. And I’m quite indecisive.

Before my trip to Poland, whenever I told people where I was going, the most common response was “Oh, well, I’d say have fun, but um, I don’t know.”  One could say that that response was understandable. Most of the people I had spoken to, like myself, had never been to Poland. Most people hadn’t learned anything about Poland besides the history of the Shoah. Everyone assumed I’d have a sad trip because they thought that the Holocaust would be all that I would learn about. Truth was, I had no idea what I was going to learn.  

When I hopped on the plane to Poland for a ten day journey there, I had no idea what to expect.  I came in thinking I knew the history of Poland’s Jews, when in fact I had it written in my head completely wrong.  I thought I understood the history of my ancestry, but how much can one truly understand when there is so much to be learned, so many stories to hear, so much to see. By the end of the trip, this history that I thought I knew had re-written me. I came in thinking I would only find death, when in fact, right in front of me, was 1000 years of life.  It was right there waiting for me. I had just never looked to see it.

There were two experiences I had in Poland that really shaped my trip overall.  These two experiences I think back on often and wonder how lucky I must have been to witness these happenings, how small a chance there was that all of this could have just happened and fallen into place.  I’ve always believed in the Yiddish word bashert which means fate.  Looking back I think I was really bashert-ed up on this trip. I couldn’t believe what I saw. 

While in Poland, I met someone that I had been searching for but never really knew I had. I met my great-great-grandmother Celia Bornstein and my life was changed permanently so for the better. Now you’re probably wondering, how on earth could I meet a great-great-grandmother? So okay, you’re right, I didn’t actually meet Celia when she was alive. She had passed away long before I was born. However, I did meet my great-great grandmother.  How? Well it’s all thanks to the Jewish Historical Institute.

(Quick note: no people were actually brought back from the dead to write this blog post – you just have to pick up on my metaphors.) 

When I arrived at the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, Poland, I never expected to find anything substantial about my family.  As a fourth generation American, I knew very little about my ancestors that once lived on these Eastern European distant lands.  All I knew at the time of my trip was that I had a great-great-grandmother named Celia.  She was the leading matriarch of my mother’s family – the woman who started the line of Bornsteins, to become Hurwitzes, to become Kadens – she started it all way back.  Before my trip began, I asked my great-Aunt Marilyn to tell me everything that she knew about my great-great Grandmother.  In her kind way, Marilyn told me that sadly she had very little information about Celia.  She provided me the names of her immediate family, the name of their hometown Stryj, and Celia’s birth date on March 25, 1888.  I wrote this information down in my brown journal and took it with me to the staff at the Jewish Historical Institute.  What they did with that little bit of information – it blew me away.

I was actually in touch with the JHI before I came to Poland because I had been interested in working there as a summer intern.  The JHI had accepted my application to be an intern but sadly, I had to pull out of that job due to another job I had received at home.  I was very disappointed that I couldn’t spend the summer working with the staff at the Jewish Historical Institute. Looking back now, I am so happy that I had the chance to stop in for a day when I was in Warsaw.  When I arrived at the JHI, I was welcomed like a member of the family.  As soon as I walked in, all of the staff hugged me and welcome me to Poland.  They were so happy that I had made it to their country and they sat me down right away to help me research my ancestry.  I sat down with a kind staff member named Anna and I told her everything I knew about my great-great-grandmother Celia.  Together we looked her name up on their computer which was connected to various historical archives. From birth records to censuses, wedding documents to street maps, everything that has been found about Polish-Jewish Jewry can be researched at the Jewish Historical Institute.  It is truly an amazing place and I never thought I’d find what I found there.

Within fifteen minutes of research, Anna’s work had completely reshaped everything I understood about my family’s ancestry.  She found information so quickly that I couldn’t believe my eyes.  I didn’t even know there were files that still existed regarding my family.  A common misconception that most Jewish people have about their ancestry is that when the Holocaust happened and most of the Jews disappeared, so did all of the records.  But it is not true.  It is true that many records were destroyed – but not all of them. In fact, many records made it through the war and today they are organized and put in archives for people to go back to and use for research.

 It turned out that the JHI could not only find information about Celia, but they also found out information about all of her siblings.  They found birth records for everyone.  They found files on Celia’s parents, her father’s job, her mother’s parents, etc.  It was unbelievable.  They even found Celia’s street address.  I learned a lot of new things about Celia when I was at the Jewish Historical Institute – and here are a few of them.

1. Celia’s name originally wasn’t Celia – it was Syma – her name later became Celia when she arrived in the United States.
2.  Her last name was Reiter, not Ritter.
3. She lived in Rozdół, Poland (a town very close to Stryj) – now part of Ukraine.
4. She was born on April 1, 1886 in house number 230. She had her baby naming on April 5, 1886.
5. Her father’s name was Hersz Reiter and he was a cattle trader.
   
6. Her mother’s name was Chaja (Chaya) Edelstein.
   
7. Her mother’s parents names were Basia and Herzl Edelstein.  Herzl worked in Kawsko, Stryj county.
   
8. Syma had many siblings, all in similar age to her. 
   

As I sat there in the Jewish Historical Institute, looking at all the information they had pulled up about Syma, I could hardly control myself.  I was beyond the point of amazed.  I was touched.  Something broke down inside of me that I couldn’t seem to put back together.  It was like a wall deep in my heart had suddenly crumbled down.  In the field of Holocaust and Eastern European Jewish studies, one often has to put up walls in their mind to prevent an overflow of emotion.  In my life, I’ve needed to put up walls for myself because I’m such a sap.  If I let myself, I’d be crying during every scene of a sentimental movie.  I constantly have to tell myself to suppress my thoughts because the feeling is too much.  It’s easier to harness my emotions than to let them go.

When I got back from the Jewish Historical Institute, I sat in my hotel room and cried.  I couldn’t help it.  The emotion was too much.  I rarely let such emotion override me. But I didn’t know how to contain it.  I always wondered why I didn’t cry when I was in Auschwitz.  I was ashamed of myself. Yet here I was crying in my hotel room.  I was crying, by myself, because I had seen some files on a computer.

But, you see, I wasn’t crying tears of sadness.  I was not sad at all.  I was crying tears of joy – tears of gratitude.  I could not believe that Syma existed.  I mean – I knew she had existed.  I know she lived her life because if she didn’t, I wouldn’t be here.  But for some reason, seeing those files, seeing her birth certificate, her immigration records, and learning about her family confirmed her life in a way I never thought possible. 

When I learned about Syma, for one of the first moments in my life, I knew exactly where I was.  I knew exactly who I was and I knew exactly where I wanted to be.  It’s hard to describe this feeling of happiness in words, but I’ll tell you that it was there. The feeling was so raw, so potent – it took over my whole being.  It was the thought of seeing Syma’s life and the way she lived it that suddenly made my life all the more worthwhile. At that moment, I was so happy to be in Poland.  I was so grateful. There was no other place I would have rather been.


The following day, Anna from the JHI sent me an email with even more information about Syma.  She sent me some documents and to my greater surprise, she sent me a picture.  The image was not one of Syma, but rather it was a photograph of her older sister Scheindel sitting with her husband.  Scheindel, who later went by Jennie was photographed here with her husband Jonas Nadler.  Although they are much older in this picture, Scheindel and Jonas came together to the United States in 1907.  At the time Scheindel was 22, and with her on the boat was her younger sister, Syma, who was 18.  Their ship, called the S.S. Republic, sailed from Liverpool, England to Boston, Massachusetts.  It was in Boston where both Scheindel and Syma began their lives as citizens of the United States.  

Both sisters settled in the neighborhood of Chelsea where they would each raise their families. Syma’s daughter would become my great-grandmother Bessie.  Bessie, who also lived her life in Chelsea, would have a son who would become my grandfather Harvey. The family never left Chelsea until Harvey went to medical school and became a doctor in New York.  There my grandpa Harvey and my grandmother Sara raised my Mom, Monica.  And well, you know the rest – many years later my Mom met my Dad, and a few years after that came me.  

I find learning about my ancestry absolutely thrilling.  It’s become a passion of mine and I love exploring and learning new facts.  Visiting the Jewish Historical Institute was like discovering a treasure trove that I never knew existed.   It was completely mind blowing to see how much information one could find about their genealogy, even when beginning with very few facts.  I am forever grateful to the JHI for their help and support.  I walked away from the experience touched and genuinely inspired.

The second experience I had in Poland that played a large part in shaping my trip was the night I spent having Shabbat dinner at the Jewish Community Center in Krakow.  I had mentioned this dinner in Part I of my Poland series, but it touched me so much I thought I’d bring it up again.  It’s funny how I can still remember that night so well. 

When we first arrived at the Jewish Community Center in Krakow, we sat down with Jonathan Ornstein, the director of the JCC.  He, along with the rest of the staff at the JCC was very kind to us.  He explained to us why he chose to help run this organization in Krakow.  He explained to us why the work they were doing was so important.

Before World War II, Krakow was a major center for Jewish life in Eastern Europe.  The neighborhood of Kazimierz, which historically was known as the Jewish Quarter, was once the home to thousands of Jews.  Jewish life thrived in Krakow before the war.  From artists to business men, writers to doctors, Jews of all makes made their lives in Krakow.  When the Second World War came around, everything changed.  A Jewish ghetto was set, walls were put up, and most occupants in the run-down ghetto were later sent to Concentration Camps.  Like many other European cities, out of the thousands of Jews that were shipped out of Krakow, after the war, hardly any Jews returned.

After the war, Krakow was not the same city.  Without its vibrant Jewish population, the city lost the diversity that it had thrived on for nearly 1,000 years.  As the Nazi banners were taken down, the city could not return back to normalcy. Krakow and Poland as a country were hit with back to back traumas.  Just after the inexplicable trauma of the Second World War, in came communism – a regime which was by few means easier to live under. Surely, the Nazis were gone – but freedom – that was not present. When communism arose in Poland after the war, life could not be free.  Individuality in all of its ways was suppressed, particularly, the ability to express religious belief. Thus for many Jews that remained in Krakow after the war, expressing their Jewish identity was viewed as a radical and dangerous idea. Some Jews lost their faith after the war.  Some were okay with putting away their religious past and focusing on a secular future.  But for some survivors, this inability to express their religion was not okay Some prayed that a time would come when they could once again express their religious identity.  They prayed for an age where they could finally be proud to be who they were. 

Twenty five years ago that day came when the Solidarity movement in Poland arose and pushed communism out.  Polish society has changed drastically since that moment and this change can be seen particularly well when looking at the country’s relationship with Jewish life. In twenty five years, Jewish life in Poland has risen out of the ashes.  It has been able to show its true colors.

Today, the common misconception is that there are no Jews left in Poland.  People cannot see why a Jew would want to live in a country that many years ago turned its back on its own people. Issues of forgiveness, trust, grudges, and fear all shape the international Jewish perspective of Poland.  After the tragedy of the Second World War, many Jews feel instinctively that Poland would be the worst place to grow a Jewish population.  But the thing is - despite all of these negative feels – Jews still live in Poland.  To many Jews, Poland is still home.  To my surprise, I learned that there is a whole Jewish population still living in Poland.  This population is now – despite the odds – growing and thriving.

The fall of communism changed everything. When communism ended, Jewish grandparents could now tell their children and grandchildren that they were Jewish. Religion could now be expressed.  This opened a whole world of opportunities for the re-growth of Poland’s Jewish community. Synagogues could open up.  Jewish schools could be run. Within the past 25 years, there has been a whole new generation of teenagers who have been just discovering the truth regarding their Jewish identities. It has been a recent phenomenon but it is very prevalent in Polish society. It is now very common in Poland for young people to research their roots.  Youths want to know the history of their family’s past.  I’ve heard from many that when one finds out that he or she has Jewish roots, it is particularly exciting.  It is estimated that there are over 25,000 Polish young people out there who have Jewish roots and may not know it yet.

The stories of these young people who are finding out they are amazing.  Each story is so different yet so emotional.  When I was sitting at the JCC in Krakow that Shabbat evening, I sat next to a young man. I won’t disclose his name so for the sake of this post, I’ll refer to him as K.

I first met K at the JCC in Krakow when we both attended Shabbat services.  The service was beautiful.  My group’s leader, Rabbi Josh, lead our Friday night service with his guitar.  We were all sitting in a circle on the top floor of the JCC in a room which normally houses their preschool. 

In the seat to my left sat an elderly woman.  She eagerly sang the prayers and you could see the spirit in her eyes.  She had dark brown hair and a face that looked wise as it did strong. I later learned that this woman’s name was Zosia and she was a Holocaust survivor.  She had grown up in Krakow and after the war had decided to stay there. 

The young man sitting to her left was also singing.  He stared down at his book and sang the prayers, although I could tell by the way he sang that he had the songs memorized.  I didn’t know what his name was at the time but I thought I recognized his t-shirt.  It was the same color t-shirt that my tour guide at Auschwitz was wearing – royal blue.  

When services ended and we all sat down for dinner, I happened to sit across the table from the young man.  He was quiet at first and spoke to his Polish friends sitting nearby.  But as dinner went on and me and my American friends were acting quite silly (we had just spent the day in Auschwitz, we needed to lighten the mood), he decided to speak to us.

He introduced himself to us and we began to chat.  Over the course of the conversation I learned a lot about K – he had a really interesting life, some of which, I’ll share with you.

The first thing you ought to know about K is that he was not always Jewish.  Or better wording: for most his life he did not know that he was Jewish.  When he was 18 years old, K found out from someone in his family that he had Jewish roots.  He researched it more and found out that indeed, he was Jewish.  This discovery totally changed his life. 

His parents had grown up having to adhere to communist ideologies. K, growing up in Poland, had never had the opportunity to have any real exposure to Judaism, let alone religion. After he found out he had Jewish roots, K decided that he would totally change his life.  For one, he got a circumcision. He started going to synagogue and decided to go to Jagiellonian University in Krakow and study Judaic and Near Eastern studies.  He joined a Zionist youth movement and travelled to Israel.  Today, he still lives in Krakow and is a tour guide at Auschwitz.  I asked him how he does this job and he said it was hard, but someone had to do it.  He takes breaks – he does a few days of tour guiding, and then he’ll take a week off.  I think I’d probably do that if I were in his shoes.

K goes to the JCC in Krakow a lot.  He understands how important and valuable the Jewish community in Krakow is.  He was wearing a ring on his finger and I asked him what it said.  He looked at it and smiled.  He said it says the Shema.

 And that’s when it hit me.  K was just like me. Yes, he was older, a guy, living in Krakow, and had a totally different life than me. But yet we were the same. He was Jewish. I was Jewish.  He had an interest in his identity.  I… well, I was still finding mine. But yet with him I felt this instant connection. We talked the whole dinner and shared our stories.   

He introduced me to his Polish friends sitting nearby.  Many of them also found out as young adults that they were Jewish.  One girl at the table said that her entire life she wished she was Jewish.  She felt something instinctively in her heart telling her that she had Jewish roots, although for most of her life she had no information to back it up.  It was only when she and her grandfather were sitting in a room together and some piano piece came on the radio that she learned the truth of her identity.  When the piece began playing on the radio, her grandfather started to cry.  She didn’t understand why this piece so special to her grandfather.  It was then that he told her.  The piece must have brought back some memory for him that reminded him of his Jewish identity and the secret he was holding within him.

This girl I met was so happy to learn that she had Jewish roots.  She immediately went to the Rabbi and she became a member of the Polish Jewish community.  Since then, she has, like K, made herself a constant presence at the JCC Krakow.  They both decided that the life they wanted to live was a Jewish one.


It’s amazing how many stories there are like this one.  It is a phenomenon sweeping across a generation.  I cannot describe the excitement I felt when listening to these stories.  They were so powerful.  They reminded me of my own pride in being a Jewish person.  They reminded of how lucky I was that my parents and my grandparents were always free to express themselves and their religious identity. I felt lucky that I could.  I learned that there is no direct path to becoming a religious person– every one finds it in their own way if they want it. For some people, faith is there all along.  For others, like myself, sometimes we have to go looking for it.  And sometimes, if we are lucky;  when we are least expecting it; when we think everything has gone astray – sometimes faith finds us.

It was a beautiful night spent eating and singing at the JCC Krakow.  They made me feel like I was at home. Poland made me feel this too.  Whether I was on the streets of Warsaw or Krakow, driving through the countryside or walking through the small shtetlach in between, I could feel history’s breath blowing in the wind.  Whether I was standing in the JCCs of Krakow or Warsaw, walking through Poland’s several active synagogues, visiting Poland’s Jewish museums, or meeting the children of Warsaw’s Jewish day school, I began to feel the heart beat of not just the Jewish history in Poland, but also the Jewish life there that still exists.  Mr. Ornstein said something interesting to us on this matter.  In regards to Jewish life in Poland he said, “We are not here because of Auschwitz.  We are here despite it.”

And that was when it all became clear to me.  Throughout history, the resilience of the Jewish people has been shown in many different ways.  From the rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem, to the Jews continuing their way to the Promised Land even without Moses – the truth is that the Jews have shown their strength and resilience at many different points in time.  The spirit of the Jewish people relies in our constant faith.  It relies in our ability to get back up. After the Holocaust, what may be considered history’s biggest blow to the Jewish people – or really to anyone in general – nobody thought that the Jewish people could come back in the way that they did.  Yet look at the present day. Now there is a state of Israel.  Now Jews are living almost everywhere in the world.  Now we are free.  We are free to be ourselves and we are free to prosper.  I am so grateful for this freedom and it fills my heart to see the Jewish people of Poland embracing it as well.  Their ability to get back up after the Second World War; their ability to overcome communism and rebuild a Jewish community that was so severely damaged after all this time is awe inspiring. I am forever grateful that I got to be in Poland to witness it – even if it was for just ten days.

On my trip, I was told about an old folktale that was passed down by Jews from generation to generation.  It says that when the Jewish people first arrived in Poland – more than 1,000 years ago – as they walked through the tall pine forests surrounding them they heard a divine voice speaking from the trees.  Its voice blew into their hearts like the feeling of wind. They could feel God’s presence pounding in their hearts. The voice said, “Po-lin… Po-lin,” which means in Hebrew, “Here you shall dwell.” It is said that Poland was once a haven for the Jews; it was a place they could call home.  While many feel that the Holocaust and the creation of the State of Israel would negate this idea, for some reason, it still rings true to me.  Despite the Holocaust, the Jewish people made their lives here in Poland for more than 1,000 years.  They knew the land and they knew the people; they knew the fields, and they knew the waters.  From the forests, they built homes and synagogues.  Out of themselves, they built shtetls – communities.

This folktale makes me proud to see that the Jewish community is still alive and thriving in Poland.  I am a believer that Jewish people should be able to make their home anywhere in the world.  To me, home is where the heart is.  

Looking back, travelling to Poland this summer was one of the greatest experiences of my life.  In hearing the voices and stories of so many others – I felt like I could finally hear my own voice.  In finding the traces of my great-great-grandmother’s life, I felt that I could take one step further in watering the roots of my own.   

I know that one day the roots I'm growing now within myself will create branches. This trip showed me that it is okay if not everything in my life is well-planned.  Sometimes, life just happens. Sometimes, when you lease expect it, the answers are just there waiting for you. Sometimes, you need to find out who you are first, before you can discover who you are supposed to be. 

Thank you all so much for tuning in again to Saving the Shtetlach.  In my next post I will take you somewhere you probably didn't expect. Why won’t you expect it – well, because frankly I didn't expect it myself. As a preview, I’ll tell you that I’m starting to think that perhaps the whole world is a Shtetlach – perhaps we are all one big community. So if that is the case, why not explore it a bit? It’s been a pleasure writing and thanks again for reading.

Until next time,

Arielle

Hi everyone! Thanks so much for tuning into the latest post of Saving the Shtetlach, my online blog detailing my travels through Central and Eastern Europe discussing Jewish life and culture. It has been three weeks since I last wrote and I am sorry for the delay in my writing.  I really appreciate your taking the time to read this now.

There are several reasons for my not posting over these past few weeks.  I’m now working full time at the Jewish Museum of Maryland and while the job has been wonderful, when I come home I am exhausted and it’s been hard to write anything good.  In addition, my growing concern with what’s been going on between Israel and Gaza has caused me a fair amount of writer’s block.

I am going to talk about two people that I learned about on this past trip I took to Poland.  Their heroic stories set an example for all of us because they show that heroism does not rely on one’s race, ethnicity, nationality or religion.  When it comes to it, heroism requires courage, morals, and a willingness to take risks for what you believe in.  I’m going to tell you about two people who had all of these things and used them to save lives. 

The first person I will discuss is a man I learned about by visiting a museum dedicated to him in Krakow. He is a very famous man and you have probably heard of him.  He was a factory owner in Poland who saved over 1,200 Jewish lives during the Second World War.  A very famous movie was made about him by director Steven Spielberg.  Some of you may have seen the movie Schindler’s List, and in this post I am going to tell you about the man, the hero, Oskar Schindler.

In the latter part of this post, I’m going to tell you about a woman whose story I learned by hearing her tell it herself during my time spent at the Galicia Museum in Krakow.  While she saved the life of one Jew, rather than a 1,200, her story is just as poignant and it is just as important to be told and remembered. This woman’s name is Mirosława Gruszczyńska and with her sister and mother, she hid a Jewish girl from the Nazis during the Second World War.  With her family, she saved a young life, enabling this victim to survive the war and make a new life for herself and her future family.

Both of these people have been named Righteous Among the Nations, a special award presented by the state of Israel to non-Jewish people who saved Jews during the Holocaust.  Each person who has been named a Righteous Gentile has an unbelievable story.  I am very excited to share the stories of two of them with you.

Oskar Schindler, who was born in 1908 to an ethnic German-Sudeten family in Austria-Hungary, did not intend that his life would be remembered as one of a hero – a man who saved more than 1,200 Jews.  He was a man who tried his hand at many different business ventures and often failed. 

When the Second World War began, Schindler began a factory in Krakow, Poland.  The factory was called the Deutsche Emaillewaren-Fabrik (German Enamelware Factory), nicknamed “Emalia.”

During the factory’s beginnings, Schindler hired only a few Jewish people who would help him manage the factory while he hired many non-Jewish poles to supply the labor.  However, with the factory’s growth, particularly at its peak in 1944, the factory employed around 1,750 workers – 1,000 of whom were Jewish.  As the years went by, Schindler saw with his own eyes the terrible crimes of the Nazis against the Jews.  After having a change of heart with regard to the genocide, he began to use his factory as means of protecting his Jewish workers.

Schindler saved his workers by making undercover bargains, offering large bribes, and using connections in the Black Market to convince the Nazis to let him keep his Jewish staff.  Schindler had initially hired Jewish people because they were cheaper by the Nazi wage than Polish laborers. Yet when the Jews were threatened with deportation and sentenced to death in Concentration Camps, Schindler began to shield his workers by paying the Nazis even higher sums.

Although he lost nearly all of his money by protecting his workers, he did his best to relocate them to safer areas and see that their lives were spared. He did undercover work for the Jewish Agency of Israel during the Second World War, reported the Nazi mistreatment of the Jews to people around the world, and used all of his connections to protect the Jews who worked for him.

The Jewish people he saved, who numbered about 1,200, are today nicknamed Schindlerjuden (German for “Schindler’s Jews”).  After the war, these Jewish people honored their beloved hero by funding him monetarily and seeing that his life was honored by the State of Israel and Jewish people around the world.  Schindler never saw much business success in the days following the war, but his life was celebrated by thousands worldwide.

In case you'd like to learn more about Oskar Schindler, please see the article about him in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Holocaust Encyclopedia.  The link is: http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005787

One of his workers would later tell the story of Oskar Schindler to Australian writer Thomas Keneally who wrote the novel about Schindler called Schindler’s Ark.   The book was transformed into a screen play and the film Schindler’s List was filmed on location in Krakow, Poland, the production lead by director Steven Spielberg. The movie was nominated for many Academy Awards, winning seven of them including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Original Score.  It has been critically acclaimed is widely viewed as one of the best films ever made.

Between the success of the movie and the story of Schindler, Krakow is now visited by many Jewish people from around the world who want to learn about this incredible man and story of the 1,200 Jews he saved.  The movie increased Krakow’s tourism rate immensely, producing a rise in its economy. There are signs describing the rich Jewish history of Krakow everywhere. When I was in Krakow, I had the opportunity to visit Schindler’s “Emalia” factory which is now a museum about Schindler and the history of the Nazi occupation in Krakow.  It is a very packed museum, rich in history, artifacts, and writing. Unfortunately, I can’t say I learned a ton about Schindler by visiting the factory (there was no room dedicated solely to him) but I appreciated that the building still stands and is being used as a means to educate about the Holocaust and the destruction caused by the Nazis.  Schindler is no longer alive today, but his memory remains a blessing.

Furthermore, we can thank Steven Spielberg, a courageous Jewish person himself, for documenting the life of Oskar Schindler and making a movie about him.  Later, Spielberg created a foundation called the University of Southern California Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education which has to this day recorded over 53,000 Holocaust survivor and witness testimonies.  Both he and Schindler are incredible heroes. 

Now that you know about Oskar Schindler, let me tell you about the next woman whose story affected me just as deeply.  I heard the story with my own ears at the Galicia Museum in Krakow.  This woman’s story is incredible and I feel blessed that I could look into her eyes as she told it.

The woman that I met, Mirosława Gruszczyńska (née Przebindowska) was 10 years old when the Nazis took over her city of Krakow.  By 1943, when she was 14 years old, she had been forced to watch as all of her Jewish classmates were removed from her school and neighborhood, shipped off to someplace where they would never come back.  Mirosława lived in a small home with her mother Helena Przebindowska and her sixteen year old sister Urszula, struggling from a life of fear and discomfort under the Nazi rule.  

In 1943, Mirosława and her family were offered the chance to do something that would change their world and young Mirosława’s life forever. In 1943, Mirosława’s aunt approached her mother Helena with the question of whether the family would be able to temporarily shelter a Jewish girl.

The girl’s name was Anna Allerhand but when she stayed with the Przebindowskas she went by ‘Marysia.’  Mirosława, her mother, and her sister all agreed that they would temporarily hide this girl.  They did not know what to expect.  They initially thought the hiding would last for just a few days.  Little did they know there were other issues in store for them.

When Marysia arrived, she expressed her gratitude immediately that the Przebindowskas had agreed to help her.  Mirosława recalls that the Marysia immediately ran up to her and embraced her, kissing her on both cheeks.  Marysia exclaimed that they were going to become great friends.  Mirosława didn’t see this coming – she had just planned on helping Marysia, but she had never thought that they would become friends.

In the first few days that she was at the Przebindowska home, Marysia came down with severe illness.  She couldn’t even get out of bed, let alone leave the home.  Unable to take Marysia to the doctor, the Przebindowskas did not know what to do.  Eventually, Mirosława and her mother were able to get Marysia some medicine by faking that Mirosława was sick.  Helena took Mirosława to the doctor’s office claiming that her daughter urgently needed medicine.  Luckily the doctor prescribed Mirosława with the medicine that Marysia needed.  With the medicine, Marysia was saved.

And that was just the first challenge the Przebindowskas faced.

After Marysia had returned to her normal health, the Przebindowska family had fallen in love with the Jewish girl.  They couldn’t imagine her leaving, let alone sending her back out into the dangerous world where surely she’d be caught by the Nazis and sent to the camps. When asked if she ever thought twice about insisting for Marysia to stay, Mirosława said she never for a moment regretted her decision.  She said that she had to do it because it was the right thing to do.  Marysia was now a part of their family and they had to protect her.  Much was at risk for the Przebindowska family.  By hiding a Jew, if the family was caught, they would all be killed.  The Nazis had no patience for people who hid Jews – if you hid them and you were caught, you would have the same dark fate.

The Przebindowskas bravely took this risk to save Marysia.  Another obstacle they faced was when another Polish family was forced to share their home with them.  Wartime conditions often made this situation happen, where two families were forced to live together.  The family that now shared the Przebindowka’s home was not accepting of Jewish people and would have certainly reported the Przebindowskas if they found out about Marysia’s being Jewish. The husband in the new family was an alcoholic and very abusive, often beating his wife and putting all who lived in the household in danger.

Life got a little easier for the Przebindowskas when they were able to entrust a local Priest, Father Faustyn, with Marysia’s identity.  The Priest was a friend of the family agreed to keep the secret.  He was able to forge Baptism papers for Marysia which in a way freed her.  With a new proclaimed “Aryan” identity, Marysia could now safely walk around the home.  In fact, now she could walk safely around Krakow without great fear of being arrested, although she had to be cognizant that some people might recognize her from her real identity. 

From then on the family introduced their Jewish resident as Marysia Malinowska, a Catholic girl from Eastern Poland.  There were a few events where her real identity was almost revealed, however, luckily, Marysia and the Przebindowskas could keep the secret and remain safe until the end of the war.

When the war ended in 1945 and the German troops had left, the question arose as to where Marysia would go.  At that point Marysia was fifteen years old, way behind in school, and there were hardly any Jews left alive in Krakow.  The Przebindowskas invited Marysia to stay with them – they would adopt her as a third daughter.  Helena homeschooled Marysia so she could catch up in school – thanks to her, Marysia later ended up passing her exams perfectly.

In May 1945, Marysia’s father Leopold came back.  Her father had served as a soldier in the Polish army and for a while was held at a German POW camp.  Marysia’s brother Aleksander also came back.  He was shipped from camp to camp and was eventually one of the 1,200 Jews fortunate enough to be put on Schindler’s list. He was held at Schindler’s Brunnlitz camp, where he was liberated.  Lastly, after Marysia, her father, and her brother were reunited, they found her twin sister Róża who was saved by a nearby family of farmers. The only member of her immediate family who died was her mother – she was a lucky girl compared to many survivors who lost their entire family in the war.

Soon afterwards, Marysia and Róża left for Israel, where they were later joined by their father and their brother after he graduated from university in Poland. Many Jewish people who survived the war ended up moving to Palestine to help found the Jewish State. 

After several years of staying in touch, in 1968, Marysia and Mirosława lost contact because the communist powers who had taken over Poland didn’t allow mail from outside countries. It wasn’t until 1989 that the two could be in touch again, when the powers of communism fell.  The two friends hadn’t spoken in more than twenty years.

Marysia took her family back to Krakow to visit Mirosława and her family.  Mirosława described it as a very special and emotional visit – one that was very important to both of them.  Later, in 1990, Mirosława went with her family to visit Marysia in Israel. On March 7, 1990, Mirosława, her mother Helena and her sister Urszula were recognized as the Righteous Among the Nations.  Mirosława passed her medal and certificate around the room for everyone to touch and see.  It was a very special moment to be able to hold this certificate, feeling the weight of all that it meant. 

I couldn’t believe I was sitting in front of somebody who had done something so heroic.  Several of the girls in my group just sat there stunned, so amazed and not even sure what to say.  Do you say thank you? Is that even enough? Several of the girls had tears in their eyes.

We thanked Mirosława for her time and for sharing her story with us.  She gladly smiled and said in her native Polish that she was happy to do it.  It’s amazing to me how heroes can be so modest.  To Mirosława she wasn’t doing something so outrageous or heroic – she was simply doing what she had to do.  She couldn’t just watch the evil around her continue so she acted on her beliefs and ended up saving a life.  She also made a dear friend whose descendents would later know that without Mirosława, none of them would be living.

I am awed by people like Mirosława and Oskar Schindler.  They give me faith in people and faith in humanity.  They and righteous people like them are the reason I continue to believe in the good that can be found in the world. You see, with so much destruction and wrong doing on this earth now, we need models in order to remain hopeful.  The key to choosing life, for them, was not to give up; rather, it was to be brave and to do what their heart told them was right.  Remember, as it says in the Talmud, he who saves even one life, saves the entire world. 

So that’s it for part two of my three part blog post.  I hope you enjoyed it.  In my next post, I’m going to tell you the story of the last part of my trip in Poland.  I’m going to tell you about my discovery of incredible family history, the story of my last few days in Krakow and Warsaw, and lastly, just what it means to be a “Galitzyaner.” For that, you’ll have to wait and be surprised. As always thank you for reading.

Until next time,

Arielle

Works Cited:
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Oskar Schindler.” Holocaust Encyclopedia. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=100057873. Accessed on September 3, 2014.