Memory and Memorialization – Confronting the Past in Small Villages Outside of Krakow with Jonathon Webber

Submitted by Wayde Grinstead
 

During this trip, a shorthand emerged amongst the staff to describe much of our learning about Poland, and Jewish history there. That shorthand, 'complicated narrative', may feel simplistic, but it is apt in many of our sessions and explorations. This was no less true in our daylong trip with Jonathan Webber to visit the Polish countryside. 

What do these towns know of their Jewish past? It's a question we confronted at a few different junctures, and is especially important considering many of these towns and villages, who were once upwards of 70% Jewish, now lack any Jewish population whatsoever, in the wake of World War II and the Holocaust. 

While our day had many facets, they all revolved around Webber's efforts to both research and promote the connection to a Jewish past in the town of Brzostek, where Webber traces his family roots. 

The first leg of the trip served as a good metaphor for the relationship between smaller Polish villages and their awareness of the layers of their past. Near Brzostek, next to his roadside restaurant, a local man created a miniature version of what life in a Polish village in the not-so-distant past would have been like. Farmers, straw thatched roofs, a church, and a Roma caravan had all been part of this display. When Jonathan Webber first saw this, he pointed out to the man that the model, while informative and endearing, lacked a centerpiece for most small Polish villages: a synagogue, as part of the shtetl. The restaurant owner/model-maker replied that it would be done within the year. And he was true to this word, as a year later, the model village indeed included a synagogue, which we saw, on our visit. As an oversimplified metaphor, it might suggest that, for many Poles, the exclusion of their knowledge of some of their history may just be a simple lack of awareness, not a deliberate omission. 

As with much else during our trip, the history we explored during the rest of our day touched on both apex and nadir of human behavior. 

Nadir:

The darkness contemplated while visiting Treblinka and Auschwitz are difficult to put in to words. To think about how the human mind created such industrialized, dehumanized spaces, and to consider the thoughts of the families arriving and being separated in a moment's notice....

And yet, while we confronted those ideas in visits to those respective places, I was not prepared when confronting a different kind of horror: the families, and groups in the hundreds, marched out of towns like Brzostek, into the woods, miles outside of town, up hillsides, into solitary spaces, devoid of sounds except for birds, and the wind in the trees. Recreating the last parts of these walks, including that of Jan Janton, a Righteous Gentile who was marched out to the woods and shot along with the Fisch family, whom he had tried to protect, until he, and they, were betrayed. Those wooded spaces, with memorials due to the efforts of those like Webber, were daunting to contemplate in ways that were similar to, and quite different from, the spaces at the camps. 

Apex:

The Jewish cemetery in Brzostek, devoid of headstones since the war, was largely unrecognized by those in the town. But Webber pointed out that farmers would avoid plowing in the location, knowing, at least loosely, of it's past. Webber, with others, civically advocated not only for signs acknowledging the past Jewish presence in the town, but also to reconsecrate the cemetery. This included building a fence around the cemetery, with considerations about making sure the fence looked similar to that of the adjoining property a business. (This was done both to respect the neighbor, and to acknowledge that the cemetery continued under that businesses' property.) 

When townspeople saw the fence erected, and recognized that the space was being reconsecrated, they began to bring in headstones, which had been in their homes, basements, barns, and other areas (and in stark contrast to the narrative we saw in the film "Aftermath".) To know that the headstones in the cemetery were the originals, albeit perhaps not in their original locations returned by locals, and that the space would be clearly marked for the town to visit and remember, is reassuring. 

Near the conclusion of the day, we met with the mayor of Brzostek, who reminded us of the importance, ultimately, not just of respect of each other regardless of religion or culture or nationality, but because of our shared humanity. That, along with the "Choosing to Participate"-like persistent advocacy on the part of Jonathan Webber, not only to reconsecrate forgotten cemeteries, but also to get street signs and local maps to acknowledge these spaces, were a great way to close the layered stories of our week together.

The creator of the miniature village next to the recently added Jewish cemetery.

 

 

 

 

Jonathan Webber sharing insights and leading a ceremony at the recently reconsecrated Brzostek Jewish cemetery.

The group with Jonathan Webber at a new memorial at a secluded spot in the woods where hundreds of Jews from Brzostek were shot by the Nazis.