From our special correspondent in Warsaw, Poland – Descendants of the 400,000 Jews imprisoned in the Warsaw Ghetto marked the 80th anniversary of their doomed uprising against their Nazi occupiers on Wednesday with concerts, exhibitions and speeches given by Polish, German and Israeli leaders. Family members of the survivors gathered to share their ancestors’ stories and asked questions about Poland’s fight against anti-Semitism today.
There are few visible traces of the 1,000-year-old Jewish presence in the Polish capital of Warsaw today. Only several walls and a synagogue built in 1902, which was used as stables by German occupying troops in WWII, remain.
But the story of those imprisoned in the Warsaw Ghetto, and their doomed, heroic uprising against their Nazi occupiers, is vividly told at the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews.
The imposing museum, which was opened in 2013, tells the history of the Jewish community in Poland, the largest in the world until WWII. Exhibits include a replica of a wooden synagogue from the 17th century that was destroyed in 1941. There are chilling descriptions of how the Nazis murdered European Jews, killing 90% of Poland’s three million Jews.
Although Poland has seen several episodes of anti-Semitism since the end of World War II, the museum's creation has been almost unanimously welcomed.
It is undoubtedly a step forward in the fight against the prejudice and violence that Jews in Poland have suffered throughout history and that sporadically resurface in the country.
The POLIN museum, a shrine in memory of the Ghetto
“This museum is incredible,” said Anette Weynszteyn, who had come from Sao Paulo, Brazil to attend the opening ceremony of a temporary exhibition which features a photo of her mother.
“My mother never spoke about what happened during the war until she was interviewed by the Shoah Foundation [Editor’s note: a project launched by Steven Spielberg in 1994 to gather filmed testimonies of Holocaust survivors.] That’s how I learned that everyone in my mother’s family, Jewish Poles, had died during the war,” she explained.
The exhibition, “Around Us a Sea of Fire”, marks the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and aims to portray the hell of the ghetto by drawing on civilians’ experiences through personal documents such as writings and photos.
A plaque below the photo of Weynszteyn’s mother tells her story. Stefania Milenbach was just 22 years old in 1943. Her parents, her sister and her husband had been deported to the Treblinka death camp where they subsequently died. But Milenbach, along with a small group of people, managed to hide in the rubble of the Ghetto, which had been methodically destroyed by the Nazis between April 19 and May 16, 1943.
She gave birth to a child who died of hunger several days later and managed to survive the last two years of war before emigrating to Israel then Brazil in 1950.
“I came for the first time in 2012, to learn more about this story because it is my story,” Weynszteyn said.
“The museum didn’t exist yet and I think it’s wonderful to put these testimonies on display. They deserve to be known by everyone so that a catastrophe like this will never be repeated,” she said, adding that she was worried by anti-Semitism in the country today.
“Yes, anti-Semitism still exists in Poland today, as well as everywhere else, such as in France and other countries”.
Children and grandchildren from around the world
Not far from where Weynszteyn was standing, a group of 10 visitors gazed at the photo of Leon Najberg, another Ghetto survivor.
Najberg was orphaned at 17 in 1943 after all of his family were killed. He managed to escape to the “Aryan side” of Warsaw, went into hiding and then, using false papers, joined the uprising in 1944 led by the Polish resistance against the German Army.
His daughter, Michaela, had come with her husband, her brother and their children to see the POLIN Museum's tribute to her father.
“He came to Israel in 1949, where I was born. He also fought in Israel’s wars and witnessed the birth of his eight grandchildren before passing away in 2009 at 83 years old. That was his great victory over the Nazis.”
As they walked around the exhibition, Michaela and her family praised the good work the museum had done in telling such harrowing storiesand seemed free of any resentment towards contemporary Poland.
Many historians have pointed out the passivity displayed by Warsaw residents during the massacre of their Jewish compatriots. Some studies have even revealed that the Jedwabne pogrom, which took place in the middle of the war, and the Kielce pogrom, which took place in 1946, were carried out by Poles.
But descendants of the survivors were quick to commend the Poles who had saved their relatives.
“A non-Jewish Polish resistance fighter hid my father-in-law in his attic for nine months,” said Michaela’s husband Reuven. “He took immense risks, for him and his family. He was afraid of being denounced by his neighbours. After the war, my father-in-law asked for the man to be recognised as a Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem,” he said.
“It’s very moving to see this exhibition,” said Reuven and Michaela’s nephew, Edan Najberg, 35.
“We’ve grown up with our grandfather’s stories. This exhibition is amazing and we have no resentment about what happened. Polish fascists supported the Nazis but it was Poles who protected my grandfather after the Ghetto’s destruction in 1943 and until the Liberation. And now Poland is a democracy. I live in London where I have many Polish friends in London. You can’t judge someone on their great-grandparents’ behaviour. My friends are good people, we share the same values.”
For Edan, a young Israeli, getting to know the history of the Warsaw Ghetto is above all a way to explore his own family history.
“My grandfather fought, took up arms, killed German soldiers, SS members … so of course this history has influenced some of my life choices such as joining the Israel Defence Force for several years”.
Govt ‘playing a game’ with WWII history
For the children and grandchildren of Warsaw Ghetto survivors, the POLIN Museum helps to explore family histories and promote awareness among young Poles. Those interviewed by FRANCE 24 seemed unaware of the controversies surrounding the memory of the Holocaust and the martyrdom of Polish Jews, particularly since the PiS, the nationalist, conservative, anti-European right-wing party, took office in 2015.
In January 2018, Poland’s Sejm (the lower house of parliament) passed a bill which punishes "whoever accuses, publicly and against the facts, the Polish nation, or the Polish state, of being responsible or complicit in the Nazi crimes committed by the Third German Reich" by a fine or a penalty of imprisonment of up to three years”.
The newly introduced legislation is nothing less than an attempt to rewrite history, says Krzysztof Izdebski, a lawyer and former leader of the Jewish community in Poland.
“The government is playing a political game. They’re manipulating the statistics of the people who helped the Jews during the war. They exaggerate the figures because they only want to hear about this version of history. It’s a narrative that appeals to many people, the story of the Poles who helped the Jews, but it does not reflect the historical reality at all.”
The 42-year-old lawyer is all too familiar with the complexities of Polish anti-Semitism. “In my family, my grandfather’s brother was denounced by one of his childhood friends and killed by the Germans. However, his son was sheltered by another Polish family during the war and survived. So it’s complicated,” he explained.
“By wanting to forbid people from speaking out against the Poles that collaborated with the Germans, the government is politicising history. This isn’t just about limiting public debate and threatening academics and all those who research the Holocaust. Jewish organisations continue to protest against this law.”
‘It’s part of our identity’
Véronique Felebok, a French theatre producer and daughter of a ghetto survivor, also criticised the current Polish government’s policies. “We are left-leaning people and I think this government is anti-Semitic and fascist. It is not possible to deny Poland’s responsibility for the Holocaust, it’s outrageous. And the government’s positions on homosexuality or abortion are also a turn-off.”
This is the third time that Véronique, accompanied by her mother, her children and her cousins, has travelled to Warsaw for the commemoration. “The first time was in 1993. I was with my father who was returning to the city he had left 50 years earlier and in which he had climbed through the sewers. He was 7 years old in 1943; his parents had been killed by the Nazis. He wanted to visit the house where he had been hidden when he left the Ghetto,” she said.
“In 1993 there was still a lot of anti-Semitic feeling in Poland. In the old town of Krakow, several Poles shouted at us in German: “Raus Juden” (Get out Jews). My father fled to France to escape the anti-Semitism. After the war, soldiers from the Polish Resistance shot at the Lodz orphanage where he had been placed. So – under threat again – he was put on a train to France.”
She wrote a play about her father’s story and her first trip to Poland. In 2014, “Those who remained” was staged for the first time and was based on the memories of two children who survived the Warsaw Ghetto: Paul Felenbok (Veronique’s father) and his cousin Wlodka Blit-Robertson.
“Ten years ago when we came back, the atmosphere was much less hostile. We felt that the Poles were on our side. They handed out daffodils [a symbolic representation of the yellow star], they formed a human chain around the Ghetto. We met a lot of non-Jewish Polish students who were very empathetic, it was incredible and very moving.”
This year, 17 members of her family made the trip to Warsaw in what is gradually becoming a sort of pilgrimage. "There are the children, the grandchildren, the great-grandchildren ... I'm coming back to pay tribute to my father (who died in 2020) and to his whole family. And then, there is this incredible museum, it is crazy, it is the most beautiful tribute," she said.
“We want to honour their memories,” added Véronique’s 17-year-old son Alix. “The Warsaw Ghetto is an important part of our family history. I’ve come here to remember it and pay tribute to those who fought. I’ve known about the uprising since I was born. My grandfather told me all about it; it was his childhood. This story shaped his life.”
In the living room of the Warsaw hotel where the Felebok family is staying, Véronique hadtrouble containing her emotions. “My mother saw her 18-year-old cousin deported before her very eyes. My father told me when I was 10 years old how he was hidden behind a false wall that the German soldiers were about to break down before being miraculously called away. It’s all part of our DNA. We are shaped by it,” she said.
Keeping the memories alive
There are now few remaining survivors and direct witnesses of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. But for their descendants, the commemoration marks the passing on of family legacies that are both heroic and tragic.
“What worries me is that my generation is the last generation to have known people who lived through that era; in my case it was my grandparents, who were children at the time,” said Izdebski. “So now the question is who’s going to keep those memories alive in the generations to come? Our community in Poland is tiny and not getting any bigger. So one day, this part of history will be preserved by Poles that have a different memory of it.”
Today, despite difficulty in collecting accurate statistics, an estimated 10,000 Jews continue to live in Poland.
This article was translated from the original in French.
