1

Returning to My Ancestral Home or Krosno, Poland, August, 2014 By Dr. Warren J. Blumenfeld

PART I

Introduction to the Krosno, Journal, August 2014 My material grandfather, Simon (Szymon) Mahler, was born in Krosno, Poland in 1896, and he immigrated to the United States in 1912. I have had a lifelong desire to travel back to Krosno to learn about my relatives’ lives during the turn of the last century up until their tragic deaths following Germany’s invasion in 1939. I have visited Krosno now five times since first traveling there in 2008. I was in Krosno most recently during late July through early August 2014 where I was invited to give a presentation during a week of workshops and performances organized by a group of local teachers who are working to educate residents of the contributions and histories of former Jewish people who once lived in the town. Since the end of World War II, virtually no Jewish people live in southeastern Poland. What follows is the journal of my recent trip.

Krosno Journal 1 Hello Wonderful Family and Friends, I arrived here in Krosno, Poland yesterday after being awake for 28 hours. My friend Iza Jedkiniac, an English teacher in a Krosno high school, picked me up at the airport, and we had a good time in Rzeszow where we had lunch. We then drove to Krosno about 50 miles south. For dinner at a café in Market Square, I met with some friends and with Alexander Białywłos-White, the man on Schindler's list from Krosno, with whom I have been in contact for the past 5 years. He is here with his wife and son. His son is a professor in Chicago, and Alexander and his wife live in Scottsdale, Arizona. Alexander is 91 and a retired physician whose mind is extremely sharp. He remembers everything. He's wonderful. He looks like an older version of Billy Chrystal, which he told me a lot of people have mentioned as well.

2

He told me he remembers the Mahlers since one of Simon's brother's was in his grade school class. Also, he and his family sometimes shopped at Mahler's butcher shop just a few short blocks from where he lived in the Jewish quarter. He, of course, doesn't remember Simon since he was born after Simon moved to the U.S. Alexander was very fortunate to have been picked by Schindler, and he is the only one of his large extended family to survive. Reading his book on the plane flight coming over here, I had a profound shock and surprise. On page 92 of his war-time memoir, Be a Mensch: A Father's Legacy, he writes: "The story of my own cousin, Malka Fruhman, is perhaps typical of the fearful treachery of those days, when it seemed that qualities like trust ceased to have meaning. A friend promised to hide Malka, but this 'friend' instead turned Malka over to the Gestapo, who shot her without compunction. Many years later, Malka's brother told me that Malka's boyfriend, a man named Trenczer, located the traitorous friend in Krosno after the war, and avenged my cousin's death."

As I read these words, I got chills because I knew that I am most certainly related to this "Trenczer." My great-grandmother's name was Bascha Trenczer who married my great-grandfather, Wolf Mahler. I informed Alexander about this, and he asked me to tell him what I know about the Trenczer's of Krosno. He did not realize that Bascher, whom he knew, was a Trenczer. I am trying to find out who was the Trenczer who "avenged his cousin's death."

3

I asked Alexander to tell me more about this story. Evidently, Malka’s boyfriend, our Trenczer relative, was in the Polish army and fled east following the Nazi invasion. After the war, he investigated Malka’s death, and he found the women who betrayed Malka. He shot a bullet in her head. As someone who is totally opposed to the death penalty, I surprised myself when I felt a sense of righteous relief upon hearing how he “avenged [Alexander’s] cousin’s death.” I said good night to Alexander, and told him I would see him in two days for his guided tour of Jewish Krosno. The next day, after having a 10-hour sleep, I met my friend Kasia Krepulec-Nowak for lunch. She works at the Subcarpathian Museum here in Krosno. We first met in 2008 when I went to the Museum to donate the film my grandparents, Simon Mahler and Eva Schoenwetter (“Nice Weather” in German) Mahler, made during their visit in Krosno in 1932. Kasia invited me to present the film to Krosno residents at the Museum in 2011. Though the museum auditorium held only 125 seats, over 600 people showed up. Unfortunately, we had to turn away about 500 people. Since that time, Kasia and I have become good friends, and I spend as much time as I can with her and her wonderful husband Matt and son Antony, who is now six-years-old.

We met at a café for hours today catching up on our lives. After lunch we sat in a park and talked about my Krosno family, her family, politics in the U.S. and Poland, and we laughed and hugged. I told her of my recent move back home to western Massachusetts after teaching at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa as an associate professor in the School of Education for the past nine years. She caught me up on the doings of her family, and expressed her excitement about her upcoming move into a new apartment in Krosno. Tomorrow we are meeting in the town center where Alexander will give us a guided town of Krosno from his perspective growing up here before and during the Nazi invasion. Talk to you soon, Love, Warren

4

Krosno Journal 2 Hello Again Wonderful Family and Friends, Since I contacted you last, much has happened here in Poland. First, I walked around Krosno with Alexander Białywłos-White, the man on Schindler's list from Krosno, for a number of hours. He pointed out the buildings and areas around town where he remembered the people and event in his life before and during World War II.

He showed us where he and his family and other Jews lived. He pointed out the building where the Blumenfeld’s lived (yes, in addition to Mahler relatives, I might also have Blumenfeld relatives from Krosno). “The Blumenfeld’s,” he told me, “were rather odd. The father when he prayed davened (rocked back and forth) in a very strange way by twisting his arms and exhibiting a weird expression on his face as if he were distasteful of what G*d was telling him.” The son, who was Alexander’s age, also waved his hands and arms around as if he were pulling a string from the sky. “I never understood what he was doing,” said Alexander.

“I remember your great-grandfather Wolf at his butcher shop and also, since we were both some of the last of the Krosno Jews not to be shot in the forest by Nazis or deported right away to the concentration camps,” Alexander told me. The Nazi placed the remaining Krosno Jews, about 600, in a small ghetto area, where my great-grandfather died. I investigated and found the death certificate the Nazis wrote

Former Gestapo Office, Krosno, Poland

5

for Wolf where it lists as the cause of death “diabetes,” which I learned is a code word for either “starvation” or a “bullet.” Since his liberation by allied forces, Alexander has come back to Krosno 3 or 4 times with his wife and son, and they have generally been welcomed back enthusiastically by Polish residents. However, he returned immediately following his release to locate possible family members who might also have survived. He walked to the house once owned by his parents where he grew up, but Polish people soon confiscated it once the Nazis evicted Alexander and his relatives. Talking then with the current residents, one angrily quipped to Alexander: “Oh, we thought you would be dead by now and the Nazis had made you into soap.” He knew that Krosno was no longer his home. Following Alexander’s remarkable guided tour of Krosno, Kasia and I walk to a beautiful park where we sat and discussed the morning’s events. While seated, air raid sirens blared loudly, and I immediately thought of taking shelter since a tornado was imminent. (This was one of the many downsides of living in Iowa for nine years.) Evidently, every year on 1 August at 17.00 (5:00 p.m.), sirens sound as a reminder to commemorate the exact day and time of the start of the Warsaw uprising in 1944 where Polish citizens rose against the German occupiers. This occurred one year following the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, which signaled mass Jewish resistance to Nazi tyranny. Everyone in the park that day stood for a moment of silence, some praying, others frozen where they stood. It was quite moving for me to witness.

Krosno Journal 3 The next day, I joined Kasia, her husband Matt, and six-year-old son Antony for a tour of the Krosno Glass Museum located above and beneath the ancient Market Square, which was the Jewish quarter of the town. (Krosno is known for its glass products and is unofficially called “Glass City.”)

Following our tour, we traveled to the nearby town of Rymanov where we visited the natural subterranean mineral springs where people go to improve their health. While there, we had a choice of drinking three different versions of the mineral water. I chose a glass from one of the options, and Kasia chose another. Each glass costs 40 groszy (or about 13 cents). Mine was so salty and rancid tasking, I felt nauseous, but Kasia’s

6

was even more nauseating. Knowing it was supposed to be healthy, we drank it down, and for a half hour, Matt continually laughed at us. He was wise enough not to purchase a glass for himself. What’s even worse, Kasia has been coming here all of her life, and has consumed a glass of this stuff each time she visits the springs. Yucko!

The next day, Sunday, Kasia and family took me to visit Kasia’s native town of Sanok, a beautiful village about one hour northeast of Krosno rather high in the Carpathian Mountains. We spent about four hours at the Sanok Galician Village Museum, a recreation (either original structures were moved there or new structures were built) to simulate a turn-of-the-century typical Polish village, which included a postal office, a bakery, a number of churches (Catholic and Eastern Orthodox), family residences, and a portrait gallery. Included also was an Inn owned by a Jewish family, replete with the original furniture, two kitchens to maintain kashrut, challah coverings, a mezuzah on the right side of the front door, and other treasures.

One of the tour guide, an elderly man with a long grey beard, dressed the part of a Jewish resident of the town, and when we got to the Jewish Inn, he guided us through the house. (He later told us that he is not Jewish, but rather was told when he was hired to look like a Jew and to study Polish Jewish history and customs.)

7

During his talk, Kasia’s face became very stern as she looked at me. Because I do not understand Polish, throughout our tour, Kasia had been translating for me. I asked her why she seemed to have turned so visibly troubled all of a sudden. She said, “Maybe I should not tell you because what the guide said is so mean and stereotypical.” “You know that after that introduction, you have to tell me,” I responded. Well, evidently the guide said as we stood before a closed door in the Inn that this little room is set aside for people who are drunk to “sleep it off.” He said that the Jewish owner probably walked around the town and dragged in drunks who had passed out, and he placed them in this room so he could charge them for a night at the Inn when they awoke the next morning so he could make more money. This was an obvious reference to the conniving Jew who is always looking for ways to make money. Realizing his distasteful remarks as he looked at Kasia and then at me, he said to her that he didn’t mean to be offensive. He took us next door to a house that was still undergoing renovation where the public was not yet permitted to enter.

This was a former Jewish house that was taken apart from a local town and reconstructed here at the museum site. He gave us a private detailed tour of the house in his attempt to make amends. This incident, unfortunately, represents the apparent tensions being played out in Poland, the same tensions I first witnessed in January 2011 when I traveled for the second time to Poland with my wonderful, magnificent, brilliant, and of course, very cute cousins Gary Tishkoff and Bert Cohen.

8

When we first arrived in Poland, after checking into our hotel in Krakow, Gary, Bert, and I explored the area around the hotel. Within one block, we found disturbing graffiti spray painted on an apartment building, which was obviously anti-Jewish in tone, especially the words spelled out in English “Hitler Rules,” and the words “Jebac Żydów” (which we later learned means “Fuck the Jews”), and a Star of David enclosed within a circle, written in red and later spray painted over in black.

During our bus ride to Krosno, we engaged in some very intense discussions including what we were feeling as Jews in Poland. A young Polish man seated in front of us named Pawel asked if he could join in our conversation. He provided us with a very interesting and informative snapshot of contemporary Polish/Jewish relations.

He informed us that while Polish anti-Jewish attitudes most certainly endure in the larger Polish society, many Poles see that their homeland culture has been diminished, and that it is not as rich and vibrant with so few Jews remaining in Poland, from

9

approximately three million before the Nazi invasion to about only ten thousand today. Pawel explained to us that while this graffiti has a very complicated explanation (coming somewhat from a sports team rivalry), it can be seen as a visible example of the tensions currently underway in Polish society in coming to terms with its past and how it moves forward. Many young people of the current generation like himself are working to ensure a brighter future for Jews in Poland. Pawel, who stated that he is not Jewish himself, worked for a few years at the Jewish Museum in Krakow because he is motivated to learn as much as he can about Polish Jewish history and culture. No Jews have resided in Krosno or in the surrounding Subcarpathian region of southeastern Poland since the 1940s. Since then, a dynamic tension has developed between those, especially many of the older generations, who bask in the monoculturalism evidenced by the longstanding Polish Catholic cultural heritage. Others, though, composed of many in the younger generations born during the past few decades, yearn for an earlier time in Polish history, one where many cultural traditions mingled and enriched the overall national culture. That day in Sanok with Kasia and her family, as we were exiting the Village, we came upon a souvenir stand, where Kasia bought Antony a little gift. I scanned the displays, and I saw something that most enrages me each time I visit Poland. I bought one to have when I teach about the continued negative representation of Polish Jews, which I hope is merely a remnant of the past. I asked the attendant why they carries this object, and she said, “Because people still continue to buy them.”

On my last day in Krosno when there in 2011, I walked casually around the town. On one of the main streets, I recognized a small jewelry shop where I had purchased an amber pendent for my mother in 2008. This time I went into the shop to look for an amber ring for myself. (Poland is renowned for its silver and amber jewelry.) As I perused the glass cabinet at the back of the store, I looked upward and saw a picture hanging on the wall of what appeared to be a Hassidic Jew. Taking me by complete surprise, I asked the owner, “Is that a Jew?” He responded, “Yes, it is.” The young women employee standing beside him, with a broad smile suddenly appearing on her face, looking my way said, “Yes, money, money,” rubbing

10

together the thumb and index finger of her right hand. I then noticed in the picture that the Jewish man held a large coin in his right hand. I bought the ring, but I left the shop with a tense uneasiness in my stomach. That evening at dinner, I asked my friend Kasia, a Polish native, what this image in the shop meant. She expressed to me what I had anticipated, that the image represented and exemplified the stereotypical notion of the “rich Jew.” I later learned that one can find similar pictures in non-Jewish Polish homes, banks, businesses large and small, work offices, and studios as supposed “good luck” symbols to bring wealth to those who own and enter the space. Some of the pictures contain the caption: “Żyd w sieni pieniadze w kieszeni” (“A Jew in the room, a coin in the pocket”). Either one day per week (usually on the Jewish sabbath between Friday at sunset and Saturday at sunset), or on January 1 of each year, the pictures’ owners hang the Jew upside down for a while to symbolically empty the pouch of gold coins to assure them greater wealth during the week or in the new year. Ever since that day I first noticed the Jew hanging on the wall of the jewelry shop, a gnawing sensation has overtaken my consciousness because I failed to speak up to the shop owner. While back in Krosno this past October 2013, I walked into the shop and expressed to the owner, while I donned a rather friendly though assertive tone, that I considered the picture to be offensive to myself as a Jew. “Oh no,” he replied, “Not offensive. My Jew is my talisman bringing me money.” At this point he removed the picture from its hanging spot, and turning it upside down, placed his hand beneath to symbolically catch the coins pouring from the Jews leather pouch. I repeated my initial statement, though he simply smiled and actually laughed at me. Though I knew he would probably never understand, at least in the short term, I walked from the shop with my head held erect, with my dignity and integrity fully intact, an ease coming over my soul once again. Controversy is swirling in the United States around a long-overdue public debate whether to change the name of the Washington Redskins football franchise. On one side, some news outlets, like the San Francisco Chronicle, have announced they will no longer use the word “Redskins” when referring to the team. Recently, the D.C. City Council voted overwhelmingly to change what the original form of the resolution termed as the team’s “racist and derogatory” moniker.

11

The few Jews who currently reside in Poland comprise a virtually invisible minority to most Poles, and while literally millions of First Nations people inhabit the United States today, they as a group remain largely invisible to most other U.S.-Americans. The image of the rich Jew in Poland and the brave savage “Redskins” in football and “Braves” in baseball, and countless others sports teams, were constructed through a historically revisionist and romanticized lens, back to some fairy-tale time and place where the Pole treated the Jew as an equal and respected member of Polish society, and where the European “settler” (a.k.a. “invader”) broke bread in some mythological first Thanksgiving, which set up conditions for peaceful coexistence and trade up to this very day. I believe this so-called “honoring,” taking “pride” in, and “respecting” Native Americans by the cultural descendants of those who engaged in forced evacuations, deculturalization, and genocide of native peoples, and those hanging pictures of Jews in places where Jews had been shunned, scapegoated, and slaughtered previously strikes me as hypocrisy at best, and more like justification for further colonization and misappropriation of cultural symbols, in addition to racist stereotyping. As a genuine step in the direction of truly honoring and respecting other people, the cultural imperialism must end.

Krosno Journal 4 Tonight, Monday, I introduced and screened Simon and Eva’s film of Krosno’s Jewish community, which they took with an early home movie camera on their visit here in 1932. What follows is the text of my introductory remarks, which my friend Iza Jedkiniac simultaneously translated for the audience:

Krosno, Poland Monday, 4 August 2014

I would first like to thank the good people who organized this week’s events, and for their kindness, their friendship, and their generosity.

12

I remember the first day when my maternal grandfather, Szymon Mahler told me about his family in Krosno. One day, when I was very young, I sat upon Szymon’s knee. Looking down urgently, but with deep affection, he said to me, “Warren, you are named after my father, Wolf Mahler who ran a butcher shop on [name of street] in Krosno, Poland. I lived in Krosno with my father, Wolf, and my mother, Bascha, and 13 brothers and sisters, and aunts, uncles, and cousins.” Szymon talked about his family with pride, but as he hold me this, he seemed rather sad. I asked him if our relatives still lived in Poland, and he responded that his father, mother, and most of the remainder of his family were no longer alive. When I asked him how they had died, he told me that many of them had been killed by people called Nazis. I questioned him why the Nazis killed our family, and he responded, “Because they were Jews.” Those words have reverberated in my mind, haunting me ever since. Szymon left Krosno in 1912 bound for New York City, leaving most of his family behind. Already in the United States country was one brother named David Mahler. Szymon 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. Szymon returned to Krosno with my grandmother, Eva, in 1932 to a joyous homecoming. This was the first time he had seen his family since he left Poland. He took with him an early home movie camera to record the good people of Krosno 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 come to the United States, 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 most and those others he left behind alive. Just 7 years later, on 1 September 1939, the Nazis invaded Poland. Szymon heard the news sitting in the kitchen of his home in Brooklyn, New York. He was so infuriated, so frightened, and 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. Szymon’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 his father, 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. Wolf later died in the Krosno Ghetto. Other friends and relatives were eventually loaded onto cattle cars and transported to Auschwitz and Balzec concentration camps. His mother, Bascha, had died in 1934 before the Nazi invasion.

13

Szymon never fully recovered from those days in 1939. My grandfather, Szymon, 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. I want to tell you too that though tragedy befell the Jewish community in his 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 was liberated by the Allies. Henia and her daughter did not survive. After the war, Jews no longer resided in Krosno. Subsequently, the Jewish cemetery fell into disarray. 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. 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 will close by invoking a notion 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. I hope you will all join with me to make the world a more peaceful, nurturing, and perfect place. And there is much we can do in this effort. As I travel around Poland, I see good people learning and caring about their Polish Jewish history, which, as we know is all of our history, not only Jews. A number of issues, and one in particular, is still very troubling to me. It is the tradition in Poland of the image of Jews holding a coin hung on the walls of businesses or homes as symbols to bring wealth to those who won and enter the space. Some of the pictures contain the caption: “Żyd w sieni pieniadze w kieszeni” (“A Jew in the room, a coin in the pocket”). Either one day per week (usually on the Jewish sabbath between Friday at sunset and Saturday at sunset), or on January 1 of each year, the pictures’ owners

14

hang the Jew upside down for a while to assure them greater wealth during the week or in the new year. I hope you can understand how very offensive is this stereotype of the rich Jew and the Jew whose main concern is money and wealth. So, in conclusion, as we look back over the unconscionable horrors of the Nazi era and what they did here, and also as we reflect back on the numerous acts of courage and rescue, I hope we will all go out into our lives and work for Tikkun Olam. Let us transform the world. Thank you. And now, here is our film.

Krosno Journal 5

Monday night, 4 August, was a glorious night for me in Krosno. At 21.00 (9:00 p.m.) we screened Simon and Eva’s 1932 film of our mischpucha (family) and other residents of Krosno. The organizers of the event had the great idea of projecting the film upon a building facing Krosno’s Market Square, the same Square shown throughout the film:

15

the same Square Simon and his 13 sisters and brothers, parents Wolf and Bascha, aunts, uncles, and cousins walked and worked literally thousands of times; the same Square they passed many happy times; but also the same square Nazi soldiers later marched in unison for display for their leader, Adolph Hitler, looking on reviewing the troops; where Hitler and Mussolini met to plan strategy to invade the Soviets on their eastern front;

the same Square where Jews were ordered to meet for separation into two groups, one to work and live in the Krosno Ghetto, the other to be taken into surrounding woods for murder and a mass grave. This was the site for our film. To my surprise and pleasure, I would estimate at least 250 people sat on wooden benches or stood around the Square to participate in the screening. Throughout the film I heard audience members laughing with surprise of recognition when they saw familiar sights projected in times past, sights which were all around us.

16

I opened the evening by giving my prepared introduction translated by my friend Iza Jedkiniac. I opened the evening by giving my prepared introduction translated by my friend Iza Jedkiniac. Our film was followed by a film made by Justyna Luczaj, a Polish documentary filmmaker, focusing on the Nazi obsession with “racial” classifications. The filmmaker was given access to newly released documents showing how Nazi “doctors” determined “Aryan blood” from among the local Polish population, and how they “determined” Jewish inferior “racial” strands within human communities. The filmmaker interviewed a number of the remaining residents who were classified as “Aryan” and the procedures the Nazis undertook in separating them out from others within their local communities. These residents also remembered the horrors wrought on their Jewish neighbors and recounted the torturous treatment they suffered. Though I had read about the “scientific” experiments the Nazi undertook, it was quite moving to witness the experiences of people right here in southeast Poland. They could have been some of the same people sitting here watching the film with us. Unfortunately, during the middle of the screening, a man who was apparently drunk, walked to the front of the audience near where the film screened on the building wall, and loudly cursed obscenities. In addition, Kasia translated for me that he screamed: “Six million Poles were killed by the Nazis but only three million Polish Jews. Don’t let the Jews rule you!” He finally departed as some of the audience members tried to lead him away. Following the film, a young man approached me to thank me for helping to educate the local population on their own history. He told me that he is from Krosno, but he works in Warsaw giving “walking tours” of the city, in which he includes a discussion of Jewish sites and places of historical interest. We both agreed that Polish Jewish history IS Polish history. We are now Facebook friends, and we will continue discussions of our work. I might go to Warsaw in the not-too-distant future to learn from his wealth of background on the topic and to contribute what I can. The next day, Tuesday, Iza drove me the 34 kilometers (I don’t know how far that is in miles) to a site I had not been familiar with (sorry for my dangling preposition). Apparently, Hitler had constructed an enormous bunker large enough for a 10+ car train to enter at the outskirts of Krosno for use during his preparations and invasion of the Soviet Union. The bunker is hundreds of meters long, constructed with two-meter thick concrete walls, and in addition to rising approximate two stories, also goes underground two additional stories.

17

Entering it is quite overwhelming to realize that the Nazis put so much work and resources into this structure that sheltered one of the most infamous men in the history of the world. On interior walls, pictures are hung of Hitler and other Nazi high officials meeting with Mussolini in planning sessions, and Hitler standing in a plush train car within the bunker.

I find it amazing and completing unsettling whenever I walk upon a place where this tyrant once walked. Oh well, I’m writing from my hotel room waiting for my wonderful cousins, Abby and Conrad Myers to join me in Krosno today. I’m looking forward to showing them around the town and meeting up later with Kasia from the local Subcarpathian Museum of Krosno, who is an expert on local history. I’ll let you know what we see today. Until next time, Love, Warren

18

PART II

Krosno Journal 4

Here, on my last full day in Krosno, my cousin Abby Mahler Myers and her husband Conrad arrived in Krosno from Warsaw where Conrad had been conducting some business meetings. They registered at the same hotel as mine. Since Abby and Conrad had been living in Hamburg for the past year, and since they were relatively close, I invited them to join me in Krosno. I promised to show them around the landmarks of importance to the Mahler family, and to introduce them to my friend Kasia, who arranged to meet with us in Market Square during the afternoon. Upon seeing Abby and Conrad in the hotel restaurant, I was immediately struck with the significance of our meeting here in our ancestral town, a town Simon had infrequently talked about with us because of the pain it brought up in him, for he had tragically lost so many family members. Abby, Conrad, and I embraced, and I saw the expression on Abby’s face, one that I imagine now in retrospect was, indeed, the very same expression upon my face on my first trip to Krosno. I recall back in 2008 feeling as if I were in a trance, or some sort of parallel reality from that of my daily life. I had dreamt one day of traveling to Poland, but until I actually stepped on Polish soil, the reality of making the journey sunk in only months later. While here, I walked through the streets of Krosno seemingly using parts of my brain, over the estimated 10% we humans use in the course of our day, where my senses were hyper activated, hyper sensitive to all I saw, smelled, heard, touched, and tasted. I additionally intuited that Wolf was leading me around by the hand on a journey of his life in a town I had only heard about. I stepped out of my hotel not knowing where I was heading, but somehow I made a direct line toward Market Square, which Simon later recorded on film, a Square located only one short block from the Mahler residence and butcher shop. That first day I found the Square, I sat on a bench for nearly an hour, tears occasionally and silently streaming from my eyes.

Abby and Conrad speaking in Market Square

with a Polish man who owns a dog exactly like

theirs (animals – the universal language).

19

Yes, this sense of simultaneous hyper reality and distorted unreality I saw evident on Abby face here in the hotel restaurant and lasting and intensifying for the remainder of our day touring the streets and personal landmarks of our town. We loaded into their rental car and parked very close to Market Square. Abby’s eyes widened as we entered the Square with a childlike “wow” coming from her lips. I guided them around the Square pointing our significant landmarks: here’s the place where Simon shot much of his film; here’s the apartment where the Mahler’s lived and the same wooden entry door they open into the building;

these are the steps they ascended, and this is where the front door of their apartment would have been. (Since the second floor on which they lived was gutted by fire after the war and subsequently rebuilt, this new renovation is not identical to how it appeared when they resided here.)

20

And here’s where Mahler’s butcher show stood.

Leaving the building and walking left onto the sidewalk and another left around the corner, we came to the courtyard of their building in which the entire Krosno family patiently posed for Simon’s camera. Directly across the courtyard originally stood their three-story synagogue. Though pictures of the building exist, unfortunately, we see only the top of the synagogue in our family film. The structure was destroyed by fire following the war, and a small building was built in its place. Kasia told me an interesting story about the synagogue. On the day Nazi storm troopers barged into the building and forcefully extracted Krosno’s Rabbi Fuehrer, the Rabbi placed a curse on the building.

21

To this day, no businesses that have rented the building have lasted more than two years, eventually having to close. I have traveled to Krosno five times thus far, and on each occasion, I witnessed a different business inhabiting the building.

We then walked the few blocks to where the Nazi set up Krosno’s small Jewish ghetto, squeezing approximately 600 people into four small three-story buildings. Kasia found documentation to suggest that the Nazis murdered Wolf here in 1941.

I took my cousins next down the small hill, across the bridge over the River Wislok, up a short hill through a plush and green children’s town park, which was used by the Nazis to march, torture, murder, and bury in a mass grave approximately 2100 Jewish residents. Hearing the laughing and playing of the young children today masks but can never extinguish and heal the past horrors. We stopped and looked up as a mother placed her young son, who appeared to be about 3 years old, on what looked like a state board positioned on a track hanging from the tall trees approximately 15 feet from the ground. The mother tethered the boy to the board, and gently pushed the boy out on the track, where he came to a complete stop half-way held in suspension. His mother and people from below yelled commands for him to grab a nearby rope to pull himself forward as he tried to lunge his body simultaneously to propel the board and himself forward. Undeterred and seemingly unafraid, at least less afraid then his mother suspended on a ledge of the tree appeared to be, the boy patiently pulled the rope and positioned his body forward, and gradually but very slowly, rolled himself to the tree ledge ahead. At this point, onlookers gave the boy an enthusiastic cheer and applause bringing out a big small of accomplishment on his face. Once through the park, we walked two blocks to Krosno’s Jewish cemetery. Though the front gate was padlocked and opened by city officials upon request, I knew of a

22

segment of the plaster wall that had collapsed over time. I guided Abby and Conrad through my not-so-secret entrance beyond the sheltering trees and bushes into a vast cemetery, with a number of headstones in various positions and conditions. On some, the Hebrew writing could be clearly read, while on others, time had left in various states of legibility.

Conrad walked throughout the space until he reached a concrete slab signifying a recently-discovered mass grave. Kasia has some reasons to believe that Wolf may have been buried there. Abby seemed visibly uneasy, though I would not term it as “upset,” but more curious as to who may be resting here and the circumstances of their deaths. Kasia informed us that the cemetery only contains a fraction of the original headstones since Krosno residents plundered the space and stole a number of the stones for the purpose of conducting repairs on their homes. They continued doing this until town officials banned the practice. I have been thinking more about my mortality since my mother’s passing last year. I am now in THE senior generation in my immediate family. I’ve long thought about where I will be buried, and I know for certain I don’t want to lie with my parents in Henderson, Nevada. I don’t like deserts! I could be buried near Simon and Eva in Southern California, but though I feel connected to my grandparents, the thought of spending eternity in California doesn’t thrill me. I’ve been thinking of burial in my ancestral town, in the old Jewish cemetery of Krosno. I’ve talked with Kasia, and she thinks this is a good idea. In my now five trips to Krosno, I’ve felt closer to the land, the culture, and the people. I’ve always felt connected with my Polish mischpucha. Kasia said she would look into the procedures I need to go through. Since time was passing quickly before our meeting with Kasia, we left the Jewish cemetery, and waited just a few minutes to Market Square when Kasia showed up. She apologized for being late (only 5 minutes) because was at her new apartment repairing old wooden furniture with varnish. She said the fumes got her high, as she giggled with a naughty look on her face. I introduced her to Abby and Conrad, and we sat at an outdoor café on the Square for coffee and tea. I had a double espresso, after which I too felt high.

23

Kasia welcomed them to Krosno, and gave a brief history of the area. At university, she specialized in history and European studies. She has worked at the Subcarpathian Museum of Krosno for the past ten years. After drinking our legal drugs (caffeine) we walked around the Square and on the street the Mahler’s lived and worked. Kasia filled in the blanks of my knowledge as it applied to the former Jewish quarter of the town. Kasia took us on a private tour of the Museum, which originally served as the residence of the Bishop of Poland. In the basement, as we began the tour, the Museum is fortunate to have a piece of the original stone and mortar wall surrounding Medieval Krosno. We observed fragments of tools and utensils from the Stone Age, to miniature models of Krosno as it may have appeared during the 13th through the 17th and into the 18th centuries C.E., including the changes that took place in burial rights and customs during varying time frames.

The Subcarpathian Museum of Krosno boasts the largest collection of original kerosene lamps, including over 8000 examples from the earliest to the era of electric lighting.

Little Known Fact: well, at least I didn’t know this. Sometime in the mid-19th century, famers on the outskirts of Krosno discovered a sticky black substance oozing from the ground. Not knowing what it was or what to do with it, they came up with the idea of schmiering it on wood planks as a preservative. Someone discovered that it burned, and used it instead of candles to light their home. It didn’t work out very well because a black substance, carbon, accumulated on the ceiling. They devised a way to separate out a clear liquid, which they called “kerosene,” and used it in the newly invented kerosene oil lamps. So essentially, people from the Krosno region of Poland invented uses for petroleum-based products, and the rest is the history of global warming.

24

Actually, Hitler chose to invade Krosno as soon as he entered Poland to capture the nearby air field and the extensive oil fields. Kasia led us through a few other exhibits, including oil paintings by famous Polish artists, a very small display of silver Jewish religious articles, which included Hanukkah Menorahs, Shabbat candelabras, and doorway mezuzahs, and posters from past Museum special exhibitions.

Since Kasia’s husband, Matt, was to pick her up relatively soon at this point, we retreated back to the café we had frequented earlier. As we were drinking another hit of legal drugs, a man approached our table, with a friendly and eager expression on his face. The man knew Kasia, and though he could not speak much English, rapidly spoke in Polish, which Kasia translated for us, about how much he had gotten out of my presentation two days earlier. He said he was now excited to learn more about the former Jewish community of his town, and the next thing he said touched me at such a deep level that I could not hold back the deep well of tears erupting from my eyes.

“Now because of your film,” he said excitedly, “I now see my Market Square through Simon Mahler’s eyes.” Abby too let go of the emotions this generous and kind man brought up in her. The man then talked about a priest he knows that once lived in Krosno as a young man, though he now lives in Ohio at the age of 93. During the Nazi occupation, as a 15-year-

25

old boy, he served as a currier for the local partisan underground resistance fighters. During one of his runs, members of the Gestapo caught him carrying a message, and quickly arrested him. During hours of interrogation and torture, he never betrayed his comrades. The Nazis eventually transported him to Krakow, and placed him in their so-called “racial studies” to determine whether he manifested an “Aryan” background, as depicted in the film that followed our Mahler film in the Square. Nazis ultimately sent him to Bergan-Beltzin concentration camp. Sometime after the camp was liberated, he immigrated to the United States where he became a priest. He has scheduled to return for a visit to Krosno early next year. As the man was talking with us at our table, the divisions I had been discussing with Abby and Conrad throughout the day literally surfaced, the generational divisions with many in the older generations clinging to the prejudices of the past toward the Jews with their desire to maintain the monoculture of contemporary Poland, coming in conflict with the desire of many in the younger generations to resurrect a more multicultural environment, reflected by the cultural and social contributions of past Polish Jewish communities. In front of us we engaged with a man whose passion for learning about people different from himself mingled with recurrent sounds of “Yid, you yids” expelled by the man seated alone at a table directly behind Abby. Though I would rather she did not have to experience this directly, she was aware of what I had been relating to her ever since I first traveled to Poland. Actually, the previous two days while she and Conrad traveled around Warsaw, they witnessed the “Jew with coin” iconography I had discussed. This brings up a point that first came to mind on my initial trip to Poland: as one who is currently in my homeland as “white” – though this has only been the case since the end of WWII (see Karen Brodkin’s book, How Jews became White and What This Says about Race in America), I can never truly know the “racialized” experiences of those currently constructed in the United States as “people of color” (blacks, Latin@s, Asians and Pacific Islanders, Native Americans). I can now at least begin to understand the “racialized” (yes, “racialized” and NOT merely prejudices of others based on our “othered” religious beliefs) experiences of being a Jew in Eastern Europe, from the iconography, to the comments, to the hesitation of some to shake my hand believing I have been fathered by the Devil, to the feeling that I am seen as an “odd curiosity” at best. To be quite frank, while I see real changes occurring in Poland in terms of Polish people’s relationships with Jewish people, and I have hope for an even better future, at times I don’t feel safe here, emotionally or physically. When the man left our discussion saying he hoped we would all meet again soon, Abby called her mother, my aunt Roberta (Bobbie), wife of my mother’s brother, Jack Mahler, who died a few years ago. It was so nice to hear her warm voice coming from the phone speaker as we all listened. Abby handed the phone to her new best friend Kasia as Bobbie expressed her gratitude for all Kasia has done for our family over the years. I

26

have expressed many times my gratitude to Kasia for helping to bring our relatives who had been taken from this world too soon home to a joyous reunion. Kasia’s emotions spilled over as she thanked Bobbie for her kind words. This scene brought together previously separate parts of my life into a unified and continuous whole, and Abby and I too wept with gratitude. Bobbie then reminded me of a story my mother, Blanche, had relayed to me in parts over the years. Evidently, another of Simon’s brothers, Fischel Mahler, came over to the United States. During the German occupation of Krosno, he, his wife, and two young children apparently escaped into the surrounding woods. They somehow made their way under the cover of darkness over a period of time to the Baltic Sea where they booked passage for New York City, where they lived for a time with Simon and Eva. They soon moved to Chicago for a few years and eventually settled in Israel. Following the war, Fischel traveled back to Krosno where he searched for any surviving relatives. He discovered that his eldest brother whose name we don’t remember (I had previously and apparently incorrectly thought that David was the eldest) was sent with his wife to Siberia when he refused to join the Soviet army. Fischel found him there with his wife and two adult children who became physicians. I now have a desire verging on need to find any remaining members of this segment of our family. We said good bye to auntie, and Kasia readied herself to leave us as Matt showed up. Though we spoke words to one another as we stood, our silent embraces and eye contact through the moisture clouding our sight spoke more than the sounds we uttered. We understood the significance of the day, the poignancy of our relationships, and the impact we experienced here that will follow us I am sure for many years. I took Abby and Conrad to my favorite Krosno restaurant, Buda (meaning “hut”), and over a delightful meal of many delectable courses, we reflected on the events of the day. After a relatively sleepless night for all of us, we traveled to Krakow where I caught the train to Vienna, where I will stay for two days with my friend Pawel, his wife Belinda, and son Femmie. Abby and Conrad explored the old town ancient center of Krakow before traveling back to Hamburg. The end, but certainly not the conclusion, of a magical journey. Warren For my Poland PowerPoint, of my 2008 - 2011 visits and presentation in Krosno, Poland, go to: http://www.slideshare.net/wblumen/remembrance-rescue-and-recovery-going-home-to-poland

27