PREMIERE
OF THE BILINGUAL
"JEWISH WROCLAW" WEBSITE
IDEA
Jewish Wroclaw is a project aimed at commemorating and emphasizing the achievements of the Jewish inhabitants of the city and their influence on its development. In our daily rush, we may not notice how many places or institutions were raised on their initiative. History, however, was not favourable to them. Much of it has been deliberately erased, and what has not been erased has been blurred or forgotten.
By indicating both existent and non-existent artefacts, institutions and buildings, I am trying to tell about the people who stood behind these undertakings. My goal is to outline the history of Wroclaw Jews and, on this basis, try to define the Jewish identity of the city. I am not deliberately presenting the entire legacy of Wroclaw Jews, but I only focus on the most important – in my opinion – manifestations of their activity in the city.
By creating this website, I would like to outline a relationship with the past and the past world, or – using an expression by Stefan Zweig, an Austrian writer of Jewish origin – with the world of yesterday. How to think about the history of Wroclaw Jews? Since today most of the city’s inhabitants are Polish Catholics, what and to what extent can connect them with German Jews? Is it just topography, architecture or the legacy of material and non-material culture? I ask myself what the cultural continuity between the Jewish Breslauers and the contemporary inhabitants of Wroclaw may look like and how to cultivate this continuity.
Of course we cannot make an attempt to understand the history of Wroclaw Jews in isolation from the history of the city. The fact that German Jews lived here before the war, unfortunately, condemns them to double exclusion from collective memory. After all, they are not the main subject of interest, neither for institutions fostering the memory of Poles nor the communities fostering the memory of Polish Jews. So I would like to point out a new possible direction – we do not have to be related by blood with the German Jews; it is enough that we are associated by the place. We do not have to think of them as ancestors; it is enough that they will be our predecessors. A change of perspective can open up to the past. Since the changed ethnic composition of the city discourages people from looking for information about the past, I would also like to point out that interest in local history is important for our current functioning in the city.
This website also shows the history of Polish Jews and the revival of modern Jewish life in post-war Wroclaw. Bearing in mind the effects of the two totalitarian regimes, we know that it was not an easy process. Therefore I want to find out to what extent the non-Jewish inhabitants of Wroclaw derive from the currently developing Jewish culture and does this culture also draw from the experiences of German Jews? And after many inglorious experiences from the past, including in the recent history, are we able to create a real environment for mutual respect?
Undoubtedly, Jewish culture is currently enjoying great popularity, and there are many organizations and initiatives promoting it in Wroclaw. Opposite, however, there are neo-Nazi organizations, which are also recovering. When describing the story of Wroclaw’s Jews, I also look to the future: I am curious to see what the development of the city and the cultivation of common memory will look like not only by our generation but also by the generation of our children
Fragment of the website dedicated to the Holocaust
It is estimated that most of Wroclaw’s Jews left the city during the several years of Nazi rule, and only those who did not believe in the specter of death or those who could not afford to leave or were not allowed to do so due to their health condition stayed in the city. One of those who did not leave the city was Willy Cohn. He did not believe in the darkest scenario, and his journal No Justice in Germany: The Breslau Diaries, 1933-1941 is today an extraordinary chronicle of those times. In November 1941, recalling the events of Kristallnacht, Willy Cohn noted with great hope: “Today is the eve of the infamous November 9! Three years ago, synagogues were on fire! But the Jewish people will survive these times anyway!”. However, two weeks later he and his family were ordered to show up at the collection point, from which the transport set off to Kaunas, where the Nazis first forced the Jews to dig pits, then told them to undress and shot them all.
The first deportations of Wroclaw Jews took place at the end of 1941. Jews had to wait for deportation at collection points; for instance at the courtyard in front of the White Stork Synagogue and the vicinity of the present Nadodrze Railway Station and Strzelecki Square. The Jewish inhabitants of Wroclaw were deported in several transports: to the camps Tormersdorf, Riebing and Grüssau, to Kaunas, Izbica, Sobibór, Bełżec and Majdanek, as well as to Theresienstadt and Auschwitz. The last transports were organized at the beginning of 1944. Owing to an extremely scrupulous bureaucratic system, the Nazis were sure that Jews had disappeared from Wroclaw. The only survivors were the few who lived in mixed marriages. Thus, the Nazis annihilated one of the largest German Jewish communities.
About the author
Jewish Wroclaw is an original project of Urszula Rybicka implemented as part of the Artistic Scholarship of the President of Wroclaw. The aim of the project is to present the history of Jews and their contribution to the development of the city from the beginning of the 19th century to the present day.
The project was initiated hoping that the growing awareness of the significant contribution of Jews to the development of Wroclaw could contribute to an increase in tolerance in the capital of Lower Silesia.
Urszula Rybicka is a publicist, reviewer, and educator. She graduated from the University of Wroclaw. She is the founder and editor of Żydoteka – the only Polish medium about Jewish literaturę.
The project is funded by the City of Wroclaw.
It is the first bilingual website of this kind, telling the story of Jews in the capital of Lower Silesia and their substantial contribution to the development of the city.
Urszula Rybicka
www.zydowskiwroclaw.pl