Choose Love Over Hate

(Excerpt from “Years Later We Would Remember,” a forthcoming memoir about going to Poland and discovering the horrors of the past)

Warsaw, June 2, 2001 — When I awaken on my first full day in Poland, I look out the window and take in a gloomy, grey, rainy day. Ordinarily, this kind of weather depresses me. But here, now, it seems to fit the moment perfectly. Grey on grey, I can just blend in.

My father, Jack Kent (AKA Olek Glazewski), and I get ourselves ready and head down to a large, elegantly appointed, old world-style dining hall, where I find myself salivating over an expansive and sumptuous breakfast buffet. Like everyone else, we proceed to gorge ourselves on a cornucopia of delicious hams, bolognas, salamis, cheeses, smoked fish, fruit, pickled vegetables, rolls, breads and desserts – all part of the full European breakfast that is included with our room. But unlike everyone else, I consider the story I have come here to uncover, and afterwards feel tremendous guilt over my descent into gluttony. I think of those poor souls over half a century ago, who would have done anything for just one mouthful of what we had here. I walk out feeling pangs of shame and survivor guilt, what many survivors said they felt, knowing their family and friends didn’t make it out of hell alive.

My father and I have one more day here, before catching a flight to the next city on our itinerary. We head out to the only synagogue in Warsaw that survived the war, the century-old, restored Nozyk Synagogue, at number 6 Twarda Street. I’m eager to see it, as is my father.

Ordinarily, I am not a synagogue-goer. When I was 13 years old, after three years of religious studies in Hebrew school, I had my bar mitzvah — which, as an adult, I came to realize meant little more to me than participating in a social convention; I did not experience a religious awakening or feel I was taking part in a true rite of passage — entry into the “tribe,” as a full-fledged Jew. Instead, I absorbed it as a graduation, and I was done. Afterwards, for most of my life, I rarely went inside a synagogue. Until I had sons. Then, I sent them to Hebrew school and gave them bar mitzvahs, hoping they would somehow feel more at home in a synagogue than I did. It wasn’t out of any sense of religiosity; it was because of the Holocaust: six million of my people had been murdered. I wanted to make sure I put two more Jews into the world.

Despite my ambivalence toward synagogues, now, here, I am absolutely eager to enter the Nozyk synagogue. Like my parents, this synagogue is also a survivor. As with the Royal Castle, I see it as another victory over Hitler. I’m beginning to feel like I’m fighting the war all over, and yet, for the first time.

After talking to the office administration and explaining the purpose of my visit, they are happy to oblige us, allowing my father and me entry into the sanctuary. They hand us yarmulkes, the traditional Jewish skullcaps. For a second, I don’t comprehend, because religious services aren’t being conducted. But then it hits me: this a holy place. It doesn’t matter if I’m shooting video or praying — I, as a Jew, certainly have to acknowledge the sanctity of where I am.

Like every Jew and everything Jewish, the Nozyk synagogue suffered withering wave upon wave of humiliation during the war. It endured some damage during an air raid, but it was still standing afterwards. The Nazis didn’t attempt to dynamite what was left. They found it much more useful to utilize it as a stable and barn for their horses. The desecration of this sacred place, and all synagogues, was a valuable tool for the Nazis to not only viscerally demonstrate their hatred of Jews, but to demoralize them.
Inside the sanctuary, as I shoot footage of the ark, where the torah is held, and the colorful, stain-glassed windows, the ornate balcony railings, the exquisitely-carved pews, and the renaissance arches and columns, my father and I do not speak a word. We are simply in awe. This is quite unlike the lack of connection or feeling I had in synagogues in the past. I definitely feel something here. It is a quiet, understated sense of glory. Of peace. And hope. A powerful emotion comes over me: I stop rolling tape, and — almost in a whisper, with my right hand forming a canopy over my closed eyes — I chant the most fundamental Jewish prayer of all: “Shema Yisrael, Adonai Elohaynu, Adonai Echad.” Hear oh Israel! The Lord is God. The Lord is One.

“That’s beautiful, Martin,” murmurs my father, who puts his arm around my shoulder. I cannot speak.

This synagogue is alive. Jews still come here to tap into that — to pray every Friday night, at the start of the Jewish Sabbath. There are perhaps a few hundred Jews in all of Warsaw, a few thousand in all of Poland. No one knows for sure. I think these people are either very brave and strong — or very foolish. I can’t decide.

Our next stop is the Jewish Historical Institute, a 5-minute taxi ride away, where we will look at exhibitions chronicling the lives and contributions of the millions of Jews who once comprised ten percent of Poland’s population. My father and I pack up the gear, return the Yarmulkes, and I make a promise to myself that I will send a donation to the synagogue after I return to Los Angeles. At the institute, we look at displays holding photos, passports, maps, newspapers, historical documents, memorabilia, and artwork and Judaica, such as torahs and prayer shawls – giving us a tantalizing glimpse into a culture that once thrived, and was ultimately destroyed. I find it interesting, illuminating and very sad.

In 1939, there were 3.3 million Jews in Poland, 375,000 in Warsaw alone. The story of the origin of these huge numbers began some 900 years earlier, when there was a mass migration of Jews here; many were escaping persecution in Western Europe. They came from Lithuania in the north, Germany in the West, and Crimea, in the southeast. It had only recently taken on Catholicism as its primary religion. Poland had comparably less influence of religion in its politics and social structure, so Jews found a safe haven here. In 1264, King Boleslaus of Poland granted the Kalisz Statute, a charter of Jewish liberties, with dozens of statutes that guaranteed the safety and personal liberties, including freedom of religion, to all Jews in Poland. Three subsequent Polish Kings ratified this. But Jews had been mistreated since the time of the Roman Empire — why were the Polish royals so nice to them?

Forget what the history books say. I believe I know why this happened: Every Jewish kid comes from a Jewish mother. That mother – because it’s in her DNA! – makes damn sure her sons will grow up to be educated – and eventually will become a doctor, a lawyer, a scientist, an academic or a businessman. (The rebels become artisans, poets and musicians.) So, if you were a king ruling over a relatively young, up-and-coming nation-state emerging from feudalism, which Poland was at the time, you would want an educated, motivated class of citizens who could help your country grow. Hence, the Jews. (In the last 100 years, over 20% of the Nobel Prize winners have been Jewish, and yet Jews comprise a mere 1/24 of a percent of the world’s population. Why? Jewish mothers.)

But while Jewish mothers held up their end of the bargain in all respects, and the Jewish population multiplied greatly in Poland, the welcome wagon didn’t last for long. Anti-Semitism sprang up from the murky waters of superstition. The plague, called the Black Death, was seen by some as a metaphysical, wrath of God-type phenomenon. With the church fanning the flames, the Jews – those wicked killers of Christ — were easy targets, and they were blamed. There were anti-Jewish riots in 1348-49 and again in 1407 and 1494; Jews were expelled from the city of Krakow in 1495. Historians estimate some 10,000 Jews were massacred in the process. When the plague subsided, this raging climate of fear and revenge eventually burned itself out. Though intermittent and virulent waves of anti-Semitism continued through the centuries, the Jewish population nonetheless continued to thrive in Poland; by 1939 it held the largest number of Jews in Europe.

Adolf Hitler perceived this as a problem – “The Jewish Problem,” requiring a solution. With the lethal might of Germany at his disposal, he implemented a comprehensive plan aimed at eradicating the world of all its Jews. He called it “The Final Solution.” The world now calls it the Holocaust. In Poland, Germany, Hungary, Lithuania and other countries with Jewish populations, Hitler commanded his minions to cruelly uproot Jews from their homes and herd them into over-crowded ghettos, where thousands died of typhus, starvation and street executions; in towns out in the countryside, Nazi killing squads, called Einsatzgruppen, perpetrated massacres on thousands at a time; and finally with the industrialization of death, Jews were transported by train in cattle and box cars into concentration camps, where millions were gassed, and then cremated. The ashes, sold as fertilizer, helped pay for the enterprise. In 1945, at war’s end, six million had perished, and all that was left of Poland’s 3.3 million Jews was the point three. Most of the survivors soon departed – to other parts of Europe, to Palestine (now Israel), to North America, to South America. Those who wanted to get as far away as possible from the horrors of the Holocaust went to Australia.

While most survivors were trying to forget the past and rebuild their lives, a Polish history professor named Dr. Philip Friedman, a survivor himself, was determined that nothing would be forgotten. Even before the war was officially over, in cities where the Nazis had already abandoned, he sprang into action, gathering documentation of how the Jews had suffered and perished during the Holocaust. He was the first cousin of my mother’s mother, and I recall meeting him on several occasions as a child. Out of respect, we always called him Dr. Friedman. I remember him as a very serious man, someone who seemed to hold the weight of the world on his shoulders. But since no one was talking about the Holocaust to me, I had no idea at the time about the important work in which he was engaged.

Historians devoted to chronicling the Holocaust widely acknowledge Philip Friedman as the father of Holocaust history. Before the war, based in Lvov, (which was then part of Poland, but today is part of the Ukraine) he had already become well established as a historian of Polish Jewry. After the war, Friedman was the first to organize the collecting of records about Jewish life and death under German wartime occupation. He wrote the first book about Auschwitz, the infamous death camp. Friedman founded the first Jewish historical committee in Lublin, which eventually became the Jewish Historical Institute in Poland, relocated to Warsaw, (the second stop on our itinerary today.) Its primary mission was to create a record of the horrific events of the Holocaust through research, documentation, collection of evidence, and publications. Friedman was tireless in his efforts: he urged survivors in Poland to write memoirs and to gather letters, photographs, relics and any other documentary evidence that would serve future historians. He traveled to displaced persons camps in Germany, where he encouraged survivors to form historical societies, and provided instructions for the assembling and publishing of the details of the terrible events they had endured. He went to France, where he helped establish a French archive for the study of the Holocaust.

In 1948 he immigrated to New York City, where he continued to aid historical societies. My mother told me that it was Dr. Friedman who urged her to go to Manhattan one day in 1953, and visit the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, where she told the story of her family’s Holocaust experiences, while the memories were still fresh. The subsequent transcript of her interview, conducted in and written in Yiddish, is the document that I waited to unlock for my entire life. A year before this journey began, my mother finally had the transcript translated and gave it to me. I marvel now at the vision of Dr. Friedman and others engaged in the same work; they knew how vital it was to record these testimonies – chronicles of the truth about this dark chapter of history.

He lived on the upper west side of Manhattan and taught history at Columbia University. During his time in New York, he wrote and published two seminal works. Martyrs and Fighters, about the Warsaw Uprising, and Their Brother’s Keepers, about non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews. But he drove himself too hard and neglected his health; his life’s work was unfortunately cut short. Dr. Philip Friedman died in 1960 at the much too young age of 59, leaving behind a considerable quantity of material still in progress. In 1980, his widow, Ada Junia Friedman, completed her editing of his essays, and published Roads to Extinction, considered indispensable by scholars of the Holocaust. I own a copy of all three volumes, gifted to me and inscribed by Junia, who has since died. I cherish these books.

And now I feel compelled to proceed as best as can, in Dr. Friedman’s giant footsteps, documenting the history of my family, following that phone call I received years ago from my mother, when she appointed me “family historian.” How am I doing, Mom? I wish you were here. I started off my first full day in Poland as a glutton, eating 57 varieties of pig meat. But I ended up in a synagogue, paying my respects with my camera, saying a prayer. This journey is supposed to lead me to my true self. So who am I? Right now, all I know is that I’m a man who will fly out tomorrow, together with my father, to the Ukraine, to the city of Lviv. We will look for the village where you grew up, and the little town where destiny forced you down a hall, to decide if you would open and walk through an extraordinary door.

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