This week, approximately one hour after the suspected mail bomber was captured in Florida, an anonymous man phoned my home, someone who apparently knows I am a professor, spouting, “Hey, how can I donate to your university, you Jew Kike.”
One day later my heart broke as I watched reports of a shooter who entered a synagogue in Pittsburgh killing at least 11 people and wounding several others, including 4 police officers. The shooter was said to have ties to neo-Nazi white supremacist organizations.
People often ask me about how I decided to devote my life to working on projects involving issues of social justice, and I begin by relating my family story.
I now share that story with you.
Dear Great-Grandfather Wolf and Great-Grandmother Bascha,
Though I have never written to you, I have carried your image and felt your comforting presence ever since that first day when your son (my maternal grandfather, Simon) told me about you. One day, when I was very young, I sat upon Simon’s knee. Looking down urgently, but with deep affection, he said to me, “Varn,” (through his distinctive Polish accent, he always pronounced my name Varn), “you are named after my father, Wolf Mahler, who was killed by the Nazis along with most of my 13 brothers and sisters.” When I asked why they were killed, he responded simply, “Because they were Jews.” Those words have reverberated in my mind, haunting me ever since.
As you know, according to Ashkenazi Jewish tradition, a newborn infant is given a name in honor of a deceased relative. The name is formed by taking the initial letter of the name of the ancestor being honored. I had the good fortune to being named after you great-grandfather. As it has turned out over the years, you not only gave me my name, but you and great-grandmother Bascha also gave me a sense of history and a sense of my identity.
Simon and three of his sisters left Krosno in 1912 bound for New York, leaving you and nine of his siblings. (Already in this country was one brother, David Mahler.) As they left, a series of pogroms targeting Jews had spread throughout the area. He often explained to me that he could only travel by night with darkness as his shield to avoid being attacked and beaten by anti-Semites. He arrived in the United States on New Years’ Eve in a city filled with gleaming lights and frenetic activity, and with his own heart filled with hope for a new life.
Simon returned to Krosno with my grandmother, Eva, in 1932 to a joyous homecoming — for this was the first time he had seen you since he left Poland. He took with him an early home movie camera to record you on film. While in Poland he promised that once back in the United States, he would try to earn enough money to send for his remaining family members who wished to leave, but history was to thwart his plans. During that happy reunion, he had no way of knowing that this was to be the last time he would ever see you and those others he left behind alive. Just 7 years later, the Nazis invaded Poland.
Simon heard the news sitting in the kitchen of his home in Brooklyn. He was so infuriated, so frightened, so incensed that he took the large radio from the table, lifted it above his head, and violently hurled it against a wall. He knew what this invasion meant. He knew it signaled the end of the Jewish population in Eastern Europe as he had known it. He knew it meant certain death for people he had grown up with, people he had loved, people who had loved him.
Simon’s fears soon became real. He eventually learned from a brother who had eventually escaped into the woods with his wife and young son that you, his father Wolf, and a number of his siblings were killed by Nazi troops either on the streets of Krosno or up a small hill in the Jewish cemetery. You Bascha, his mother, had died earlier in 1934 of a heart attack. Other friends and relatives were eventually loaded onto cattle cars and transported to Auschwitz and Belzec concentration camps.
Simon never fully recovered from those days in 1939. Though he kept the faces and voices from that distant land within him throughout his life, the Nazis also invaded my grandfather’s heart, killing a part of him forever. My mother told me that Simon became increasingly introspective, less spontaneous, less optimistic of what the future would hold.
In this country, my own father suffered the effects of anti-Jewish prejudice. One of only a handful of Jews in his school in Los Angeles in the 1920s and ‘30s, many afternoons he returned home injured from a fight. To get a decent job, his father, Abraham, was forced to anglicize the family name, changing it unofficially from “Blumenfeld” to “Fields.”
My parents did what they could to protect my sister and myself from the effects of anti-Jewish prejudice, but still I grew up with a constant and gnawing feeling that I somehow did not belong. The time was the early 1950s, the so-called “McCarthy Era”—a conservative time, a time when difference of any sort was held suspect. On the floor of the U.S. Senate, a brash young Senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy, sternly warned that “Communists [often thought of as Jews in public perceptions] corrupt the minds and homosexuals corrupt the bodies of good upstanding Americans,” and he proceeded to have them officially banned from government service. In terms of gay and lesbian people, during this era, there were frequent police raids on gay and lesbian bars, which were usually Mafia owned; the U.S. Postal Service raided gay organizations and even published the names of their mailing lists in local newspapers, and people lost their jobs. Gays and lesbians were often involuntarily committed to mental institutions and underwent Electro-shock therapy; some were lobotomized.
Not knowing what else to do at this time, my parents sent me, beginning at age four and lasting for the next eight years, to a child psychologist because they feared that I might be gay (or to use the terminology of the day, “homosexual”). And as it turned out, their perceptions were indeed correct.
While Simon was alive, my mother asked me not to discuss my sexual orientation with him — for he often expressed to me that it was now my responsibility to eventually marry and raise children, so I could help perpetuate the Jewish people, a people who had been decimated in Europe. My mother worried that information concerning my sexual orientation would upset Simon, and that he probably wouldn’t understand. Something within me, though, felt he knew anyway and that he most certainly did understand. I know it grieved him that I never married and that I did not give him any great-grandchildren; I saw how it pleased him to be around the children of my cousins. It hurt me not to be able to be fully open with him. I think, now, that if I had, it could have ultimately brought us closer.
Great-grandfather Wolf and great-grandmother Bascha, you would have been proud of Simon. He was a loving and caring father, grandfather, and great-grandfather. He gave me so much: my enjoyment for taking long walks and sitting in quiet solitude, pride in my Jewish heritage, and most of all, my ability to love.
My journey of “coming out” as gay over successive years was often difficult and painful, but looking back, I conclude that it was certainly rewarding, for it has been the prime motivator for my work as a writer and social justice educator. I am committed to this work, on one level, to ensure a better future for the young people growing up today. To be completely honest, though, my major motivation stems from the fact that, essentially, I haven’t felt safe in the world, and, therefore, I have a deep personal stake in the work I am doing. Often, when I leave my little university enclave, I tend to feel like an outsider in my own country. Maybe that feeling will never completely leave me; I don’t really know. I can take solace, at least, that the fear has diminished somewhat over the years.
A few years ago, great-grandparents, I felt your presence and your touch strongly as I co-facilitated a workshop in Eastern Massachusetts for 31 German teachers of English who were taking a summer course on U. S. culture at a local college. During the workshop, I heard you telling me that I was doing something exceptionally important. In my own small way, I was having an impact on these teachers who soon would be traveling back home to Germany, teachers who themselves have an impact on German youth. I was proud to be an integral link in that chain. I knew I could never undo the terrible things that happened to you, but somehow I was doing my part to ensure that it never happened again.
As I am sure you are aware, I too have my biases and prejudices, which I acknowledge and am taking responsibility to heal. I tend automatically to stiffen whenever I hear the German language being spoken. Growing up with Simon, I leaned to be wary of even buying German products. I recall a conversation, or should I say an argument, between him and my sister, Susan, many years ago in which he voiced his immediate and vehement protest when Susan brought up the notion of purchasing a Volkswagen. Until that day, I hadn’t realized how deep were his wounds.
In my own case, on several occasions my wounds surfaced. For example, while attending an opera in Boston with a friend, I lost my ability to concentrate on the production as the German couple seated behind me spoke in their native tongue. Also, years before, while traveling through Germany en route from Holland to Copenhagen on a train, my anxiety seemed almost paralyzing until we finally reached Denmark, clear of the German border.
During the workshop with the German teachers, my apprehension collided with the reality that these teachers were warm, good people whom I could begin to trust. I was overwhelmed with conflicting feelings and felt as though I were blanking out. As my co-facilitator led the group through an exercise, I walked out into the hallway of the building and up a short flight of stairs. As I looked out the window onto a courtyard, I saw a young mother and her toddler son walking slowly below me. Flashes of the film that Simon and Eva took when they visited you back in 1932 screened in my mind. In black and white images were pictured the inquisitive young children in their long night shirts, smiling proud women some with small infants in their arms, horse-drawn carts at an open-air market, relatives of all ages self-consciously walking quickly toward the camera, for some inexplicable reason moving their arms around in tightly closed circles.
Great-grandparents, you know that I am gay. Even though you lived at a time and place in which homosexuality was little discussed, your presence offers me support and comfort, for you saw first-hand how parallel forms of oppression run side-by-side and at points intersect. Though you may not have actually witnessed those “accused” of same-sex attractions tortured and put to death, you no doubt heard about how they were treated. Hitler, in his ultimate fashion, showed the world the direct links in the various forms of oppression.
I recently looked up the word “holocaust” in the dictionary. Among the listings was the definition: “genocidal slaughter.” As I read this, the same nagging questions came to me as they did that first day Simon told me about your death—questions concerning the very nature of human aggression, our ability for compassion, and, to those generations following World War II, our capacity to prevent similar tragedies in the future.
I write to you today, great-grandparents, with both bad and good news. The bad news is that I fear we are repeating many of the mistakes of the past. With the rise of nationalistic movements throughout Eastern Europe, anti-Semitism and other forms of racism, long suppressed, are once again resurfacing, where “ethnic cleansing” has become the sanitized term for hatred, forced expulsions, and murder. Hate-motivated vandalism and violence are on the increase in the United States too — for example, the series of incidents in the United States: fire bombings at three synagogues in and around Sacramento, California; the shooting spree in Indiana and Illinois singling out Jews and Koreans; the spraying of bullets into a Los Angeles Jewish Community Center wounding a number of Jewish adults and children, and eventually, the killing of an Asian postal worker. We have witnessed the brutal attacks on Rodney King in Los Angeles, the barbarous slaying of James Byrd, Jr. in Jasper, Texas, and the fierce rape and murder of a seven-year-old girl, Sherrice Iverson, in a Las Vegas casino bathroom.
In addition, the number of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people who are the targets of bashings are escalating. Almost every week we hear of brutal and senseless attacks, so-called “gay bashings.” In our schools and on our streets, groups of males wielding baseball bats and guns target anyone who acts or looks “different.” For example, two men in Alabama bludgeoned to death Billy Jack Gaither, a thirty-nine-year-old gay man, with an ax handle and tossed his limp body onto a pyre of burning tires. Brandon Teena, a female-to-male transgender person, was gang raped in Nebraska. Teena reported the incident to local police officials who basically discounted his story. Soon thereafter, the perpetrators entered Teena’s home and murdered him along with two of his cisgender friends. In 2015, over 20 trans people, mainly trans people of color, were brutally murdered in the United States.
There is a tradition in the western states of the United States of ranchers killing a coyote and tying it to a fence to scare off other coyotes, and to keep them from coming out of their hiding places. On October 6, 1998, two young men lured twenty-one-year-old Matthew Shepard—a gay college student at the University of Wyoming in Laramie—into their truck and drove him to a remote spot on the Wyoming prairie, pistol whipped him, and shattered his skull. They then tied him to a wooden fence as if he were a lifeless coyote, where he was bound for over eighteen hours in near freezing temperature. The message from his attackers seemed quite clear: to all lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, stay locked away in your suffocating closets of denial and fear and don’t ever come out into the light of day.
Great-grandparents, as you know because you were there with me, in the winter of 1991 I had the opportunity to travel with my friend Derek to Amsterdam on vacation. This city is truly magical, especially in winter when its intricate series of canals freeze over offering a veritable ice highway to a country of skaters. Of all the amazing sites I visited, none attracted my interest more than the Homomonument and the Anne Frank House.
The monument consists of three separate triangles of pink granite, which together form one larger triangle. Over one of the triangles hangs the inscription: “HOMOMONUMENT commemorates all women and men oppressed and persecuted because of their homosexuality, supports the International lesbian and gay movement in their struggle against contempt, discrimination, and oppression, demonstrates that we are not alone, calls for permanent vigilance.” The theme of the monument is “Past, Present, and Future,” and the three pink triangles relate to the three aspects of this theme.
Following my visit to the monument, I walked the short distance to the Anne Frank House. On my first visit to the House in 1972, I was too overcome with grief to remain for more than a few minutes. This time, as I mounted the narrow steps leading to her hiding place, I envisioned her faint image and could almost see her writing her secret thoughts in the diary that would one day become a chronicle, a testimony to all the world.
It is no coincidence that these two historic sites (one to commemorate the Jews of Holland, the other to a sexual minority) rest a mere few hundred meters apart. Though clearly not identical, there are connections between the pain and suffering endured by Anne, her family, and countless other European Jews, and the gay and lesbian people forced into the camps under the pink and black triangle cloth.
In 2000, I again visited Europe, and this is the good news I alluded to earlier. The November before, when I was visiting my mother and sister at their home in Nevada, I checked my email, and I found a personal invitation to present at an international colloquium to be held in Berlin, Germany the following February on the topic of Die Verfolgung Homosexueller im Dritten Reich (The Persecution of Homosexuals under the Nazis). The colloquium organizers were aware of my work on this topic, and were interested in having me give one of my slide presentations titled “The German Homosexual Emancipation Movement from 1860 to 1933” to lay an historical foundation for the colloquium. Without hesitation, I immediately replied accepting their kind invitation expressing how enormously honored I was, and how much I looked forward to joining what I believed would be a truly remarkable program.
Over the next few weeks before traveling to Berlin, however, the reality set in, filling me with a constant and overwhelming anxiety from which I could not escape. I lay in my bed late into the night unable to sleep, thoughts of you, Simon and Eva flashing into my consciousness. Difficult and seemingly unanswerable questions filled my mind: “Will my going to Germany be tantamount to betraying my kin?” or “Would they approve of this trip?” And “What about my personal safety? How secure is Germany for Jews today?” Also, self-doubt concerning my abilities engulfed me: “What right do you have?” I questioned myself. “You are an American, you don’t speak German, and you are traveling to Germany to present German history to Germans? What sense does that make?” My heart raced many nights as I cried myself to sleep.
On a few occasions, I nearly got out of bed to email colloquium organizers that I, in fact, would not be able to attend. Throughout the days leading up to the colloquium, my apprehension was intense; I withdrew from friends, becoming increasingly melancholy, isolated, depressed. My friend Leah reached out to me saying, “You bring with you a clear and resounding voice, one that your relatives were denied. You can speak in their memory and speak in a way that they never could.” Her words resonated in my mind at Boston’s Logan airport as I boarded the Lufthansa plane that was to transport me to Berlin, though the tears flowed unencumbered throughout that long flight.
I arrived on a cloudy and drizzly morning. On the cab ride to my hotel, except for a small segment of the Berlin Wall that stood as a reminder of the city’s not-so-distant past, the landscape appeared strangely familiar, for this could have been any of a number of European or even U.S. cities: urban factories, small shops, rush-hour traffic, pedestrians toting raised umbrellas walking to work, and children on their way to school. Once in my hotel room, I turned on the TV and viewed a children’s program in which a young girl and boy demonstrated the proper way to assemble a tropical aquarium. This seeming ordinariness was somehow reassuring to me.
I ventured downtown walking through several neighborhoods and riding the subway. People appeared relaxed and friendly.
By the day of the colloquium, I had begun to feel that I made the right decision in coming here. The first panel was composed of preeminent researchers in the persecution of homosexuals under the Third Reich, followed by curators of Holocaust Museums and concentration camps. Next, two gay men, both survivors of the death camps, gave moving testimonials. I then shared the platform with a college student whom I had met in Florida one year prior and whom I invited to join me in the presentation.
As the lights lowered, I pressed the “advance” button on the remote-control switch to display the first slide. Toward the end of my presentation, I concluded on a personal note choking back tears: “This has been a difficult presentation for me,” I acknowledged, “for I come to you today speaking not only as a gay man, but also as a Jew. I feel honored to have been invited to come to Berlin to be able to speak on behalf of my family members whose voice was extinguished.” I dedicated my talk to your memory, and to Simon, and Eva. I continued:
And to their memory, I raise a central tenet of Jewish tradition, which is Tikkun Olam: meaning the transformation, healing, and repairing of the world so that it becomes a more just, peaceful, nurturing, and perfect place. As we look back over the unconscionable horrors of the Nazi era, I have a hope—a hope that we can all join together as allies to counter the hatred, so we can make real the true potential of “Never Again.” I end then by asking us all to join and go out into our lives, and work for Tikkun Olam. Let us transform the world.
Throughout the colloquium and my time in Berlin, I felt your presence, great-grandparents, and the power of Tikkun Olam, for I continued my own healing journey as someone from the third generation, someone who has been touched very deeply by the German Holocaust.
As you know, I am by no means a very religious person, though I strive to become more spiritual and connected to you. I believed that before the end of my days, for me to be able to say that I have truly accomplished all I needed to accomplish in this world, I must travel back to Krosno. I wanted and walk upon the soil that you once walked upon, to witness the hallowed ground on which you prayed, and to feel the Polish sun nurturing me as it had once nurtured and illuminated you—that same sun which they eclipsed from you all too soon.
So, in the summer of 2008, I traveled back to Krosno. I took with me a DVD version of the film Simon and Eva took of you back in 1932. Upon approaching the town of Krosno from the bus I took from Krakow, I felt as though I was returned back home to a place I have never previously been. I checked into my hotel room, and then walked around the town, this beautiful place with its narrow streets and charming buildings, rolling hills, small factories, and bustling train station – that same station I recognized from the film I had grown up watching.
Then I saw it, and as I did, tears came to my eyes. I was at the entrance of Market Square, the same square Simon filmed in 1932 as happy family members and other residents of Krosno shopped open air surrounded by horse-drawn carriages and vendors’ kiosks selling fresh produce and Kosher meats of all kinds. Though this time no outdoor vendors could be seen, I sat down upon a small bench and took in the sweet smells of fragrant flowers and vibrant pines wafting around me. The beautiful ancient buildings transported me back to a happy time when you walked peacefully and unencumbered on these same plaza grounds. I reached down beside me and pick up a small stone of remembrance of you to take with me now where ever I go.
Walking a very short distance off Market Square, I chanced upon a local museum, Muzeum Podkarpackie w Krosnie (which I later learned is translated as Subcarpathian Museum of Krosno). I entered and asked the first person I met whether anyone spoke English. The person departed momentarily, and returned with Lucas Klopot, a young man who worked at the Museum.
I introduced myself and informed him that I had a film of the Jewish community taken by my grandparents, Simon and Eva Mahler, back in 1932, and inquired whether he would like to view the film. With a look of surprise, he assured me that he would be delighted. Upon viewing the film downstairs on his office computer, he continued to alternate looking at the film to looking at me. He suddenly paused the film and collected his colleagues who watched in shocked astonishment. One colleague shared with the others that “This is the greatest documentation I have ever seen of Krosno’s Jewish community.”
The following day, Lucas introduced me to Katarzyna (Kasia) Krepulec-Nowak, local historian and assistant director of the museum who kindly gave me an English-language tour of this beautiful museum.
Before I had to depart Krosno for my trip home, Muzeum Podkarpackie w Krosnie director, Dr. Jan Gancarski, presented me with a certificate, which Lucas translated for me from the Polish:
“The Sub-Carpathian Museum in Krosno sends heartfelt appreciation to Mr. Warren J. Blumenfeld for providing an unusually valuable material in the form of an historical film depicting Krosno in the year 1932. The Sub-Carpathian Museum in Krosno is happy to acknowledge this fruitful cooperation and hopes to continue it in the future.
With Respect,
Director of the Sub-Carpathian Museum in Krosno,
Dr. Jan Gancarski
Krosno 7.07.2008”
I knew instantly that Kasia and I would be good friends for many years. This was confirmed when Kasia and Lucas organized a Jewish exhibit at the Museum in September 2010 profiling the Mahler family, with the film as its cornerstone. And in their continuing effort to recover and preserve Jewish history and to reconcile and heal from a tragic past, Kasia organized, aided by Lucas and Dr. Jan Gancarski, their “Jewish Day” Exhibit, January 16, 2011. Kasia extended a gracious invitation to me to travel to Krosno to present at this historic event. Joining me on our trip was my cousins, Bernard Cohen from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and Rabbi Gary Tishkoff, who resides in Israel.
Though the Museum auditorium holds approximately 125 people, an estimated 650 people tried to attend the “Jewish Day” event. Sadly, over 500 people had to be turned away.
Director Dr. Jan Gancarski opened the evening stated that “Jewish Day” was established in 1997 and is celebrated annually usually on 17 January, and it falls on the eve of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. He quoted Fr. Archbishop Jozef Michalik, who said: “The Community of prayer, a better understanding of their faith, honoring the memory of Jews who were part of Polish history and the Poles who have brought their faithfulness in difficult times, is the most important fruit, which brings Jewish Day. It is reminded that Christians and Jews believe in one creator of heaven and earth, giver of the commandments, whose observance is a way of life….It’s time for another of our culture — an older, original — [and for us] to let go of prejudices and stereotypes, a genuine chance of understanding and reconciliation. It is an opportunity for dialogue, and what we really need is a moment of mutual understanding and respect, a fraternal conversation….In Krosno, we cannot on this day talk about the descendants of our older brothers who once lived here. None of the Krosno Jews who survived the Holocaust settled here after the war, so we only remember our neighbors. We can only look at them in the faded photos… which have been left here, memorabilia preserved in the museum.”
Fr. Waldemar Janiga then led the assembled in a prayer of religious understanding and unity.
To introduce the Mahler film, Kasia led the audience through a guided visualization developed from her extensive genealogical and historical research. Here is an English translation of Kasia’s address:
“Our exhibition is called ‘Brothers,’ [neighbors] and it is not an exhibition about the death of people. It is about their lives. Along with our neighbors , we created the world, far from perfect. This exhibition is an invitation to walk through pre-war Krosno.
“Have you liked the “Old Movies” series that used to be on the national television channel every Sunday? I loved it and I didn’t miss even one. Let’s imagine a world from this kind of black and white movie. Let’s imagine black and white Krosno.
“It is September of 1932. Our town really blossoms this time of year. Someone left a copy of the New Journal on a small bench down by the river bank. Mr. Dym’s shop has its advertisement on the second page. One can see the new, popular gloves for ladies. On Pilsudski Street you can smell the rolls from the second baking in the bakery of Izrael Breitowicz. The people from Linas Chojlim are already giving out the soup for orphans from Korczyńska Street.
“And here it is again, a large line to Mahler’s butcher shop. Little Mannis Mahler is helping his grandfather. He is a beautiful, sweet little boy.
“Doctor Still had a sudden call from the shelter in the synagogue. He looks very worried. Chairman Akselrad is taking his daughter to the piano lesson. I heard she’s great.
“Our Market Square is filled with sunlight, teeming with life. Mr. Englander from the Aguda Party is having an argument with Mr. Wiesenfeld over Zionism. After they finish, they will both go to Chanie Plater’s restaurant to put on the nosebag [eat], and perhaps later, they will go to the taproom on Franciscan Street. And we? Shall we go to Ider’s Inn on Staszic Street? Their meals are marvelous!
“This kind of dream-walk is about to materialize here tonight thanks to the very special movie that we received from a very special man. But I would like him to tell his story in his own words. Ladies and gentlemen — Dr. Warren Blumenfeld.”
Wearing my grandfather Simon’s antique Tallit (Jewish prayer shawl) and a beautifully embroidered Kippah (Jewish skull cap), a gift Gary brought me from Israel, I presented my remarks, translated by a woman coincidently also called Kasia Nowak. I read a personal statement I called my “Letter to My Great-Grandparents of Krosno, Poland” in which I expressed portions of the letter I wrote to you. In addition, I continued:
“I want to tell you also Great-Grandfather Wolf and Great-Grandmother Bascha that though tragedy befell the Jewish community in your homeland, some people undertook and are continuing to express acts of courage, kindness, and compassion. In the midst of danger, righteous rescuers came to the aid of those who were oppressed.
“For example, Krosno farmers, Jakub and Zofia Gargasz who practiced the Seventh Day Adventist faith, risked their own lives to shelter from Nazi troops and to nurse back to health a Jewish woman, Henia Katz, and her daughter. A neighbor, though, betrayed them, and Jakub, Zofia, Henia, and her daughter were arrested and sentenced to death on 26 April 1944. At the trial, Zofia affirmed that she and her husband took this courageous action motivated by their religious faith.
“Hans Frank, the governor of the occupied Central Polish government decided to commute the death sentences to incarceration in a concentration camp. Jakub and Zofia survived the concentration camp, which the Allies liberated. Henia and her daughter did not survive.
“After the war, Jews no longer resided in Krosno. Subsequently, the Jewish cemetery fell into disarray.
“Great-grandmother and father, I want to tell you about other righteous rescuers. In 2002, local students from the “Olszówka” association, working under the energetic and compassionate leadership of Grzegorz Bożek — a local teacher and activist with the ecology organization “Workshop for All Beings” — restored the Jewish cemetery in Krosno. They removed decades of overgrown weeds, cleared bushes, restored the cemetery gate, hung new information plaques, and preserved about 200 gravestones.
“The Krosno Jewish Cemetery is now considered one of the best kept Jewish cemeteries in all of Poland because people care and because people want to ensure a brighter future.
“I also place in the category of ‘rescuers’ the good people of the Muzeum Podkarpackie w Krosnie. In particular, I would like to acknowledge and thank some of the people I met here in the summer of 2008, especially Katarzyna Krepulec-Nowak, Lucas Klopot, and Dr. Jan Gancarski. They and all of their colleagues work tirelessly to rescue a vital part of history in keeping memories alive and in educating new generations. They are my heroes, and I will forever hold them in my thoughts and in my heart.
“What happens here in Poland circulates around and through my consciousness and my soul like blood circulates around and through my body, and what is happening here today and in other museum exhibitions in the recent past is as cleansing, healing, and invigorating to my soul as is blood filtering through a dialysis machine.”
Following my talk, Gary recited and Kasia translated Kaddish, the traditional Jewish prayer for the dead. Before the prayer, Gary eloquently explained this tradition and added personal reflections about what this prayer means to him.
Simon and Eva Mahler’s 1932 film portrayed the town of Krosno, and in particular, the Mahler family. This rare film is the oldest film of the town known to exist.
Jews arrived in Krosno in the fifteenth century CE, and by 1938 numbered 2700, or 18.5 percent of the town’s population. Prior to the Nazi invasion, the Jewish population in Poland numbered around 3 million. Today, only about 10 thousand Jews reside in Poland.
Lucas ran the film, and members of the audience sat transfixed as they witnessed the sights of their town during a time long passed. Some pointed to familiar landmarks. Others spotted possible relatives in the old Market Square. Some were visibly moved, tears streaming down their cheeks.
The program came to a stirring conclusion with the brilliant clear sounds of the Rzeszow Klezmer Band as Lucas ran the Mahler family film one final time. I was particularly touched when two students asked to take a picture with me. Kasia Krepulec-Nowak translated that they are currently writing their thesis paper focusing on the Mahler family of Krosno.
At the conclusion of an emotional and memorable day, I, Bert, and Gary relaxed, unwound, and processed at a fabulous restaurant in a former wine cellar beneath Krosno’s Market Square. Though we were exhausted from an exciting and emotional week, we also felt the energy of knowing that though we would be soon returning to our homes, in some ways, we had been transformed, and knowing that we will never be the same.
Great-Grandparents, this night I fulfilled a life-long dream of bringing you, your children, and your grandchildren home to a happy reunion.
I don’t know if there really is a purpose to life, or if we are placed here for a reason. If, however, we all truly have a unique mission or calling in this world, I believe mine is to continue doing the work I am doing, with you, great-grandparents as my guides. You are that still and quiet voice within me, that voice that keeps me on course and prevents me from sinking under the waters of doubt and fear. The mistakes I have made along my path most assuredly occurred when I refused to heed your counsel.
Being both Jewish and gay, I truly believe I am “twice blessed.” I ask that you now, great-grandparents, stay with me and continue to be my teacher, my light, my guide. With you by my side, I can never be alone.
With love forever and ever,
Warren
You can find the film my grandparents Simon and Eva Mahler took of the Jewish community of Krosno, Poland when they traveled there in 1932. This is the oldest film of Krosno, and the only film we know of projecting the Jewish Community.
The United States National Holocaust Museum uploaded the film onto their website:
Also, for background information, you can see my PowerPoint presentation about the Jews of Krosno, Poland at:
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Talk to you soon.
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