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Bernard Berger – Impressions of Poland Israeli & Jewish Perspective

Part I:

I first arrived in Poland in October 2003, 6 months before Poland was accepted into the European Union. The primary purpose of my visit was for business, to appraise the willingness of Kraków Airport, Poland´s second largest airport to offer the sort of commercially-attractive proposal that would attract Ryanair to operate there once from May 2014 Poland joined the European Union, with its ensuing open sky traffic rights for all airlines registered in the European Union.

However I decided on this, my first visit to the country, a place I had studied so much about to take 3 days´ leave and explore. As a Jew, the very name Poland had to me such huge significance that I could hardly allow myself not to get to know the place a bit, as opposed to heading back home the day after the meeting.

I travelled to Poland with a mixture of emotions on me. A huge degree of curiosity, a huge degree of pain for the terrible past, a bit of paranoia as to whether I could encounter anti-Semitism there. I boarded the LOT Polish Airlines jet at London Gatwick for the 2 and a bit hour flight to Kraków

Normally when I visited foreign cities, I tended to stay in business hotels in or near the city centre, but on this trip in the former Jewish neighbourhood of Kaziemierz, named after the Polish King Kaziemierz III. Jews had played an important role in the Kraków economy since the end of the 13th century, since they were granted the freedom of worship, trade and travel by Bolesław the Pious in his General Charter of Jewish Liberties issued in 1264. The Jewish community in Kraków had lived undisturbed alongside their Christian neighbours under the protective King Kazimierz III, the last king of the Piast dynasty. It was not always peaceful, in 1407 there was a blood libel for example but generally under the protection of the successive Polish kings, life there for the Jews was better than in many other major European cities.

The Jewish community built a wall to enclose them, and the wall had to be moved on successive occasions to accommodate the growth in the community. However under Austrian Habsburg rule, the final wall was torn down in 1822.

Following the Nazi invasion and conquest of Poland, the Nazis ordered all the Jews to leave Kaziemierz and cross the river Vistula (Visla) to the district of Podgórze, primarily to its neighbourhood of Płaszów, where the Nazis created a Ghetto, which as they did elsewhere they surrounded by a wall. Early on in the following year the ghetto became extremely crowded as the Nazis moved Jews there from all the surrounding small towns and villages and by late the same year the Nazis began moving the Ghetto residents to labour or death camps.

Following a cordial first meeting with the airport senior management, who were at that time not that familiar with the low cost airline concept, I took a taxi into my hotel in Kraków, the Ariel Guest House on the main street of Kaziemierz, Ulica Szeroka. Naturally, I wanted to see all of this beautiful mediaeval city and took a 15 minute walk into the Town in the city centre, to take in the extraordinary Rynek Główny, the 13^th century main square, and the magnificent architecture all around it including the market hall, the cathedral and the Jagellonian University close by, Poland´s oldest. Towering above the Old Town was clearly-visible the former royal Wawel Castle, which notoriously was the headquarters of the General Government, one of the two divisions of Poland by the Nazis, under the control of the notorious Governor-General, Hans Frank.

The entire former Jewish district of Kazimierz has become over the last few years very trendy as a tourism destination; some of its development has become a bit tasteless. This is because its newly-developed tourism appears to me to be like kind of “Holocaust Disneyland.” There are many Kosher-style but not Kosher restaurants with authentic Jewish menus, kneidlach soup, borsht, tscholent, tzimmes, kishkes, etc. and some of the restaurant staff, whilst dressed in Haredi attire are not even Jewish, there is only in Kraków a small remaining Jewish population well below 1,000. Many of the bars and restaurants feature klezmer music, again performed by non-Jews dressed as Haredim. They even have an annual Klezmer festival in this main street, an event that I attended on a subsequent visit.

The next day, I woke up early, my accommodation was an old building with no lift, and I was on the 4^th floor with a sweeping view down this main street of Ul. Szeroka. I pulled back the curtains and looked down the street, it was still empty of any people or traffic and I imagined that back in 1941 from the same bedroom another Jewish person would have looked down the same street and seen the German Stormtroopers marching down upon them to take them out of their home and forcibly move them across the river to their newly-created ghetto.

I walked across the river into what had been the Jewish ghetto of Płaszów, passing on the way the former Schindler factory. No trace of the ghetto wall remains, and the area was a bit run down although I understand since my visit it has become gentrified. I saw one of the most important sights in the district, the former pharmacist’s shop that belonged to the Polish pharmacist, Tadeusz Pankiewicz. Pankiewicz elected to stay on with the Jews in this ghetto, providing them with whatever limited assistance he could. He survived the war and was recognised as one of the “Righteous of the Nations,” and a plaque bearing his name stands in Yad Vashem. I entered the pharmacy unbeknown that I was about to hear one of the most profound talks I had heard in my life.

There was in the former pharmacy, now preserved as a museum with all the old bottles of medicines on display, an Israeli teenage school group with their teacher. Like most teenagers in museums and similar places, most of them appeared to be a bit bored. I listened as the teacher began to discuss what had happened in Płaszów with the class. Her talk was in Hebrew. She started to talk about the two most famous people in the film “Schindler´s List,” Oskar Schindler himself and the Płaszów labour camp commander, Amon Göth, who was executed by hanging following the end of WWII by the Polish authorities.

The teacher went on to rhetorically enquire about why the two men did what they did there. She said “let us look at the two key man in this story,” one a cultured well-educated man from an upper class family and the other a relative low-life, a heavy drinker and a womaniser. Then she went on to use the two words for a man that exist in the Hebrew Language, “Ish,” meaning simply “man,” and “Ben Adam,” meaning literally “son of Adam,” i.e. the first man but in reality a good man. Every man is an “Ish,” but only a select few of really good, moral, just and honourable men can be a “Ben Adam.”

She stated “knowing the backgrounds of these two key figures, who do you think would have been the “Ish” and who the “Ben Adam?” However the opposite was true. The teenagers continued to look on and listen with a varying view of interest between bored and partially but not fully-engaged, however I found this rhetorical question about what is the difference between a regular man and a good man in such a place to be terribly profound. Knowing what Schindler did, and that those he saved went on to produce entire families who might have never been born, and standing there in the middle of what had been the Jewish ghetto, I found myself totally-overcome with raw emotion, and to be overwhelmed with the question as to why I was living, breathing and free to come and go there when so many had perished. What did this mean? Why was I still there yet, why was I even born, why did those who put me on this Earth not perish there too when so many others of my brethren did? I thought of the profound words of the prayer we say once on Rosh Hashanah and again on Yom Kippur; “On Rosh Hashanah will be inscribed and on Yom Kippur will be sealed – how many will pass from the earth and how many will be created; who will live and who will die; who will die at his predestined time and who before his time; who by water and who by fire, who by sword and who by beast, who by famine and who by thirst, who by upheaval and who by plague, who by strangling and who by stoning. Who will rest and who will wander, who will live in harmony and who will be harried, who will enjoy tranquillity and who will suffer, who will be impoverished and who will be enriched, who will be degraded and who will be exalted. But Repentance, Prayer, and Charity annul the severe Decree.”

To escape the intensity of the morning, I returned to the Old Town and climbed up the steep hill to Wawel Castle, enjoying the beautiful autumn leaves on the trees that lined up the steep hill that linked the Old Town to the castle. In the castle, a beautiful mediaeval building is the official residence of the President of Poland, it is full of amazing treasures but one cannot fail to be haunted by the evil decrees which were decided on within its walls during WWII.

The next day I undertook a trip to Auschwitz. I booked a tour from my hotel that within just over an hour took me to the complex, the camp was actually split into 3, Auschwitz 1, the former Polish Army barracks made of red brick where the infamous “Arbeit Macht Frei” metal hoarding is, Auschwitz 2, AKA Birkenau, around 1.5km away, where the well photographed railway tracks are, leading under a wooden archway and the platform on which Mengele performed his notorious “Selekztia,” and where the wooden barrack blocks are, and no longer existent Auschwitz 3 (Monowitz), which was a labour camp servicing the German chemical company, IG Farben.

Auschwitz 1 already existed when the Nazis overran Poland and was turned from an army barracks into a concentration and extermination camp very quickly. Auschwitz 2 and 3 were built later as more and more territory fell into Nazi hands and the Nazis needed more capacity than Auschwitz I physically had.

The tour took around Auschwitz 1 first, including into a gas chamber full of small stones and memorial candles. How can I begin to describe how it was being in such a place? The only consolation was that there was a Dati Israeli high school group from Kiryat Arba present brandishing Israeli flags to remind me that notwithstanding all that had happened there, just as is repeated and promised in the Veheshamda prayer at Pesach, despite all that have risen up against us to destroy us through the generations, we are still here. For me, seeing the Israeli flag, all that it represents, the revival after almost 2,000 years of exile of vibrant Jewish state, something unprecedented in the annals of mankind, and the revival of a dead language is always a very proud moment, something that is part of my DNA; but to see it in such a place is beyond amazing, and the realisation that Hitler did not win, as the per the words of the Jewish partisan song which were:-

“Never say this is the final road for you,
Though leaden skies may cover over days of blue.
As the hour that we longed for is so near,
Our step beats out the message: we are here!

From lands so green with palms to lands all white with snow.
We shall be coming with our anguish and our woe,
And where a spurt of our blood fell on the earth,
There our courage and our spirit have rebirth!

The early morning sun will brighten our day,
And yesterday with our foe will fade away,
But if the sun delays and in the east remains –
This song as motto generations must remain.

This song was written with our blood and not with lead,
It’s not a little tune that birds sing overhead,
This song a people sang amid collapsing walls,
With pistols in hand they heeded to the call.

Therefore never say the road now ends for you,
Though leaden skies may cover over days of blue.
As the hour that we longed for is so near,
Our step beats out the message: we are here!

 

• He currently works in Ireland as an Aviation Specialist.
• Languages – English (native), Hebrew (good) French (basic to intermediate), Italian (basic to intermediate)
• Interests – All developments worldwide in the airline industry, including new route development, alliance formation and growth, fleet acquisition and disposal, tourism development and role of aviation in same, business development and role of aviation in same.
• World politics, history and economics.
• Travel, Gastronomy, and Culture
• Music; Celtic, Israeli, Country & Western.
• Films
• Walking
• Have spoken at many airline conferences about the Ryanair low fare concept and business model in several countries.
• Have given guest lectures at the UK´s premier graduate aviation school, Cranfield University.
• Have made cases to other airlines to invest in TACV based on Cape Verde on the back of the World Bank pressing Cape Verde to privatize its state enterprises in order to obtain more development finance.

Bernard Berger – Impressions of Poland Israeli & Jewish Perspective