“Here, they burned Jews.” Those words from our JRoots tour guide reverberated through the cold winter air as well as the empty spaces between us, a group of 50 American Jewish women traveling with Project Inspire Long Island.

We could have been in Basel, Switzerland, where in 1349 the Jewish population of the city was burned alive.

Or Cordoba, Spain, the seat of the Spanish Inquisition, where beginning in the late 15th century some of the Jews unwilling to convert to Christianity met flames on the stake.

We might have been standing in the ruins of Kibbutz Be’eri or Kfar Aza, attacked by Hamas on October 7.

Here, they burned Jews. In many places and periods, this statement holds true. As it happens, we were in probably the most famous, if not most efficient, region where Jews were ever burned: Poland. Specifically, we were standing before the crematorium of the Majdanek death camp.

I imagined my grandparents’ reaction had they lived to see me visit Poland: “You’re going where?”

Poland is a complicated place for Jews, where centuries of rich, meaningful life was extinguished by the atrocities of the Shoah. Much of my grandfather’s extended family was murdered there between 1940 and 1944. Today, the size of the Jewish community is around 5,000, with thousands more having some Jewish heritage.

So why did I travel to Poland? The simple answer is that I wanted to connect with Jewish history, to mourn our people, to bear witness.

Along with my giant suitcase, I lugged around preconceived notions of a land where three million Jews were savagely murdered. To me, Poland had always seemed a gloomy place of lives lost and dreams unrealized, a hardened landscape where Jews got stuck in the late Middle Ages and remained until their near extermination.

What I hadn’t realized until my trip was how rich—academically, spiritually and culturally—Jewish life had been in Poland. I was awed when I learned of its infrastructure and traditions, progressive thought, architecture and beauty. From the renowned early 20th century center of learning, Yeshivat Chachmei Lublin, to the indomitable Sarah Schnierer’s groundbreaking implementation of formalized Jewish education for girls, from the spiritual movement of Hasidism to the Jewish Enlightenment, Poland’s Jews—10 percent of its pre-World War II population—were a significant and impactful part of the country’s society.

Despite all this, Poland is, for many Jews, a country of ghosts. We walked beside them in what was once the Warsaw Ghetto. Razed by the Nazis, only fragments of the ghetto remain, and now memorials and monuments stand amid the postwar, socialist-era buildings not far from modern Warsaw’s skyscrapers.

Ghosts followed us to Warsaw’s Jewish cemetery on Okopowa Street, with its hundreds of thousands of graves. That’s where I located my great-great-great-grandfather Zerach Zylberfadem’s headstone. Where, as I searched for his stone, set far from the paved path, I felt at once alone yet very much surrounded by the lingering and protective souls of a vanished community.

The ghosts joined us in Krakow, about 200 miles south of Warsaw, where “Jew-ish” restaurants bear an almost Hollywood-like countenance, perhaps none more so than Ariel, whose many dining rooms—bedecked with paintings of rabbis and other Jewish-themed art—occupy a onetime tenement house in Kazimierz, the old Jewish district.

At times, it felt as though our group were actors in our own history, “authentic” Jews wandering the well-preserved backdrop of our ancestors. We circumnavigated other tour groups in Kazimierz and discovered ersatz Judaica in a flea market, some of it offensive, such as postcards of Hasidic men counting coins.

Of course, ghosts were with us in Majdanek and Auschwitz, and as we welcomed Shabbat beside the women’s barracks in Birkenau. Arm in arm, we sang “Sholem Aleichem” in honor of the souls murdered there and who, against all odds, found ways and reasons to keep Shabbat as prisoners.

In 2023, more than 1.6 million people visited Auschwitz, about 70 miles east of Krakow in the town of Oswiecim. I watched crowds of retirees, students and all manner of tourists walk past the rows of brick buildings, the haunting gas chambers, the one-way train tracks. I had to wonder, “Do any of these visitors acknowledge that the victims about whom they are learning are the same living, breathing Jews who are once again under fire post-October 7, as antisemitism surges around the world?”

This was not an easy trip. Moving, evocative, important, but not easy. The story of Jewish life in Poland is difficult—at times almost impossible—to digest. Yet, I’m profoundly grateful that I made this journey.

Grateful I could walk Krakow’s beautiful medieval cobblestoned streets past picturesque views of the Vistula River, and that many Jewish historical sites throughout Poland are meticulously maintained and visited.

Inspired by burgeoning Jewish communities in Warsaw and Krakow, where the thriving Jewish community center is nestled within the Kazimierz district, where centuries-old brick buildings mingle with trendy bars, coffeehouses, restaurants and shops. The neighborhood is also where modern graffiti recalls the district’s Jewish past. Galician Jewish Art Nouveau illustrator E.M. Lilien is evoked, for example, in a tribute mural by an Israeli street art crew called Broken Fingaz.

I was honored to have prayed Friday evening in Krakow’s stunning 19th-century Tempel Synagogue and Shabbat morning at the 17th-century Kupa Synagogue, where prayers are inscribed on the walls. We joined students from the United Kingdom to pray for the release of the hostages in Gaza, for Israel and for the Jewish people.

And I was deeply moved by my visit to Majdanek, two hours southeast of Warsaw in Lublin. Visitors to the camp observe the crematorium ovens from behind a protective glass, an experience that creates a jarring juxtaposition of the gazer against the oven: Me, a Jew from the future, mirrored upon the final corporeal resting place of tens of thousands of my people. Our guide suggested that we use this phenomenon to confront ourselves and our discomfort, to consider how we will carry forward our time at Majdanek.

So, why Poland? and why now? Observing Shabbat in this land of ghosts, I felt the songs, the prayers and the communal spirit in my bones. That we could recite our ancient entreaties to God in the crisp Polish air 80 years after the Shoah is nothing short of a miracle. I like to imagine that our prayers escaped the vaulted synagogue ceilings, caught a distant wind and drifted through time and place to those who most need to hear them.

We remember you. We honor you.

Reclamation, renewal and resilience forever shape our collective identity. While as Jews, we often confront the darkness in our experience, we’re continuously compelled to find ways to sustain ourselves and contribute to the world through advocacy, community, tzedakah, prayer—and, when possible, joyful and meaningful travel. 

WHAT TO SEE

Warsaw

Walk through the area of the razed Warsaw Ghetto to discover sites of moving commemoration. At the Umschlagplatz, a memorial of towering granite walls evokes the loading area at the former rail station from which more than 300,000 Jews were deported to death camps. Sculpted by Polish Jew Nathan Rapoport in 1948, the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes commemorates the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 and is constructed partially from German materials originally intended for Nazi monuments. Its imposing 36-foot-high wall symbolizes both the Kotel in Jerusalem and the ghetto walls. One side features uprising leader Mordechai Anielewicz, in bronze, while the other memorializes the ghetto’s victims. An unassuming mound of earth with stairs leading to a squat stone marker, the Mila 18 Memorial is the burial place of some of the courageous young men and women who organized and led the uprising. The mound rises above what was once the central command of the group, located at the former 18 Mila Street.

Just across from the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes, the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews showcases 1,000 years of Polish Jewish life and culture as well as rotating temporary exhibits.

Opened in 1902, the light and airy neo-Romanesque Nozyk Synagogue is the only Jewish house of worship in Warsaw to survive World War II. Today, it functions as a cultural center and active synagogue. During services, a focal point is the dark stone-columned and domed structure that houses the Ark.

Founded in 1806, the Okopowa Street Cemetery contains over 200,000 marked graves as well as one of the largest mass graves in Europe—the thousands of individuals murdered in the Warsaw Ghetto. Jews interred there include L.L. Zamenhof (1859-1917), creator of the Esperanto language, and renowned writer and playwright I.L. Peretz (1852-1915).

Lublin

The Majdanek concentration camp is located on a main road only a few miles from Lublin’s city center. Approximately 60,000 Jews were murdered there, and today they are honored through various memorials, including The Monument to Struggle and Martyrdom, an enormous mausoleum in the shape of a Slavic urn that houses the ashes of Majdanek victims.

Yeshivat Chachmei Lublin was founded in 1930 by Rabbi Meir Shapiro, who initiated the idea of learning Daf Yomi, a page of Talmud a day. The building that housed the yeshiva is now a hotel, located in the former Jewish quarter, but the school’s synagogue was returned to the Jewish community in 2003 and, after restoration, reopened for worship in 2007. The spacious synagogue features soft yellow walls, warm wood floors and a central bimah, with a women’s section above.

Oswiecim

The Auschwitz-Birkenau complex, with its infamous entrance sign that reads “Arbeit Macht Frei” (Work Sets You Free), may be the most recognizable symbol of Nazi atrocities. Auschwitz I was established in 1940 as a concentration and labor camp. In 1942, Auschwitz II, or Birkenau, was built as a designated killing camp and became the main site for the extermination of the Jewish people. Approximately 1.1 million people were murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau, all but around 100,000 of whom were Jews. The ominous railroad tracks leading into the camps, looming guard towers, barracks with seemingly endless rows of thin wooden bunks and the stark, terrifying emptiness of abandoned gas chambers bear witness to the site’s unconscionable purpose and history.

Krakow

For centuries beginning in the 1300s, Krakow was the center of Jewish life in Poland as well as the capital city, a diverse place of learning and culture. By the late 15th century, however, as antisemitism increased, Jews moved into neighboring Kazimierz, where they found religious freedom.

Located in Kazimierz, the Galicia Jewish Museum presents exhibitions that celebrate and commemorate the Jewish history and culture of Polish Galicia, a region that spans southeastern Poland and Western Ukraine. The museum boasts one of the largest Jewish bookshops in Poland.

There are seven main synagogues in Kazimierz. The Baroque-style Izaak Synagogue, one of the largest, features a mysterious legend about its 17th century namesake and founder, Izaak Jakubowicz. It is currently an exhibition space.

Built in 1862, the Tempel Synagogue is a stunning blend of Moorish and neo-Romanesque styles and was initially home to a Reform congregation. The synagogue hosts celebrations and festivals throughout the year and occasional religious services.

Kupa Synagogue, completed in 1643, owes much of its gilded beauty to the craftmanship of local goldsmiths. Colorful paintings on the walls and ceiling surround a central bimah and pews as well as a women’s balcony. The sanctuary is rarely open to the public but does host concerts, exhibits and conferences as well as religious services for the community.

The tiny Remuh Synagogue was built in the mid-16th century and subsequently renovated and restored many times. Charming in its simplicity, with its central bimah surrounded by an openwork, wrought-iron grate, Remuh is the only synagogue in Kazimierz that offers regular services. It is named for Rabbi Moses Isserles, a renowned scholar and codifier of Ashkenazi law known by the acronym “Rema” and who is buried in the adjacent cemetery. His halachic commentary, Sefer HaMappah (The Tablecloth), is still in use.

Established in 1941 in the Podgorze district, the Krakow Ghetto features three important sights. Eagle Pharmacy, today a museum, was owned and operated by Tadeusz Pankiewicz, who was honored by Yad Vashem in Jerusalem as a Righteous Among the Nations for providing medicine to ghetto residents, often free of charge, and helping some of them escape. In Ghetto Heroes Square, a memorial of 70 larger-than-life iron and bronze chairs placed around paving stones commemorate the city’s Jews who were deported from this plaza. And Oskar Schindler’s Enamel Factory is housed in the former factory of Schindler, who saved his Jewish laborers from deportation to the Plaszow concentration camp.

Tarnow

On the eve of World War II, the Jewish population of Tarnow was approximately 25,000, which represented about half the residents of the city, located about 45 miles east of Krakow. Almost the entire community was murdered during the Holocaust.

While the city’s 17th-century synagogue was destroyed by the Nazis, its towering stone bimah survived and still stands, topped by a green-roofed canopy, and has become an open-air memorial in the center of town.

Only a short drive from Tarnow, in the Buczyna forest village of Zbylitowska Gora, is arguably one of the most devastating sites in Poland. In an otherwise picturesque and tranquil park lie the remains of approximately 800 Tarnow children murdered by the Nazis and now memorialized with stone slabs encircled by blue fencing.

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Jennifer Wolf Kam writes books for children and young adults and freelances for various publications. She lives in New York with her family.