The train from Berlin to Warsaw was unmemorable.  I left early in the morning and I do not really remember the ride.  I do remember arriving in Warsaw and thinking, “oh jeez, this place again?” It’s six hours from Berlin to Warsaw and then another 2 hours to Zamosc via Lublin (even though it’s not that far away). The minibus to Zamosc was in some terribly weird location: a seemingly random parking lot two avenues behind Warsawa Centralna rail station.  There was a giant empty parking lots with other buses right across the street from the main rail station at the Soviet Tower that is the Palace of Arts and Culture.  Why couldn’t the minibuses just leave from there? When I arrived at the proper empty parking lot, there was literally nothing there. There was a little box with a guard in there.  I asked him in Polish if this is where the bus to Zamosc is. He pointed to a corner with some chopped up broken concrete. I walked over and saw the tattered up signage for the bus to Zamosc.  It was quite specific. I don’t think there were signs for any other minibuses at all. Why did this one bus leave from this weird place?    The sign said you can buy your ticket online.  I tried; it said online tickets are not available for this ride.  A few minutes later, an unfriendly younger lady arrived with luggage and I asked her about buying a ticket online.  She couldn’t crack a smile. She barely wanted to chat. She told me I can just buy one on the bus unless there are too many people and then I’m basically fucked.  Within the hour, quite a few more people arrived: about 15. I wondered how big this minibus would be because I was now getting that anxiety feeling that I would not be able to board.  

Soon enough, the minibus pulled up.  The driver took his cigarette break. We waited.  Then he took the luggage and piled it in the back.  Then we waited. We didn’t leave until a full half hour after our scheduled time.   Luckily, I was able to board. I sat alone in the back row where there were three other empty seats, but their cushions were completely worn out and had restricted legroom.  Within a few minutes of the journey, I learned why there is no official bus to Zamosc. It is because there is no highway or even bus-friendly roadway to Lublin. We left Warsaw on, literally, a mud road.  I looked on Google Maps to see where in the vicinity of Warsaw we were that they still had mud roads. We were in the western border of the city, taking a loop around the city to pick up some road on the east side.  This road on the east side, while not muddy, was really, really bad. The potholes were crazy. The path was insanely narrow. I had not seen such bad roads since being in Vanuatu. Eventually we reached some opening in the forest where we could see the massive highway being built adjacent to this road.  It made me glad to see that there was some project underway to make this disaster a bit better. I started Google-ing about this project and it seems like it’s been underway for quite some time. There was no active work going on. None of the construction site had reached the point of paved roads yet.    It was a lot of poured and leveled dirt and many unfinished overpasses.   I wondered where the overpasses would be taking people considering the road we were currently on did not have any intersections and it seemed like we were in the middle of nowhere.  

Once we got to Lublin, the road got significantly better.  At this point, the ride was no longer a joke and I felt quite confident we would arrive with our bodies intact.  I felt like I knew Zamosc well at this point. When we got to the bus station, I made the choice to walk to the old town.  The hostel was at the edge of the old town, so it was a straight shot. I checked into my hostel and attempted to have a friendly chat with the worker-boy.  He engaged with a smile and was shy about his English and I told him I understood everything he said and he does not need to be so shy. I checked in successfully and went to bed.  It was a long day of travel, after all.

A Day of Research

The video below offers a recap of the experience of the day. The writing below offers significantly more detail. I think readers will be able to live through the experience with me by both watching the video and reading the story.

The next morning, I was super excited to go to the Zamosc Polish State Archives.  My goal was to find the business address of my great uncle Ruvym Graf’s shop that we had discovered existed from the translation of my great aunt Surreh’s testimony.  We also learned that on their way out of Jozefow, they took the charred remains of whatever they could salvage from the burned down house and put it on a wagon and stored it in Ruvym’s shop and locked the door.  They never returned. Of course I was naturally curious to see where this building was and I wondered who the people were who discovered their “stuff” and if maybe anyone was kind enough to store it somewhere in the hopes that one day someone might come by and want to reclaim it.   I was also looking for my great grandmother Resza Graf’s death certificate because originally I was told in the Jewish Historical Institute that because she died in the late 1930s, the records won’t be public yet due to Polish privacy laws. At the time I had my meeting at JHI, I had zero records from the Grafs, now I had quite a few.  I also wanted to see if I could find great grandfather Eliezer Graf’s birth certificate because I could not find it online. Unfortunately, the records for the year 1883 are missing according to the Polish archives web site.

I took a taxi to the archive building.  I found my way to the entrance, although it was a bit confusing.  I entered an empty lobby. I looked around hoping to make eye contact with anyone walking by.  There was an office with an open door and a young woman at the desk. She made eye contact with me and invited me in the room.  I think her job was to welcome people. It’s too bad they put her in an office with a door where no one can see her. She should be out in the lobby.  I told her why I was there and what I was looking for, she had told me she could speak English. She went to go check on a few things and told me she’d be back.  When she returned she had a smile on her face and told me she would bring me to another room where another person would help me and bring me the books that I need to search.

In the next room, I think I sat there for forty minutes before I realized that the first lady did not actually give anyone any information about me.  She merely was trying to tell me that in this next room, I would have to start the process to request the books that I need. Of course, that’s not what she said because she specifically said someone was going to come help me and bring me the books.  As soon as I realized I was totally fucked and I had just wasted forty minutes of research time sitting there doing absolutely nothing, an American family with a Polish genealogist entered. The mom, dad and son were quite characters. They had already visited quite a bit of the region and seen lots of evidence of their family in Zamosc.  The genealogist had their books prepared for them so when they arrived, they could start searching right away. Of course, the yentas that we are, we did the whole “where are you from thing” and they were quite sympathetic to the fact that I was sitting there doing nothing. The Polish genealogist, Michal, was incredibly friendly and told me that I could use the books he was using when I was done.  I told him I think I am woefully unprepared and I had not expected to comb through thousands of pages of books in Polish on my own. I might need to cut my losses. He instructed one of the archive workers to help me.

Finally this “lady” that was supposed to “come bring me books” comes over and introduces herself and makes absolutely zero effort to speak Polish slowly or to speak any sort of broken English.  She’s speaking Polish full steam ahead and unfortunately, I do not know how to say “slow the fuck down, please.” Well, I can say “please”. She basically explains that I have to fill out a little post-it note with the inventory ID of the book/document that I want.  Then I give it to the worker, then the worker gives it to me. I asked her where to get the inventory ID. She pointed to this multi-thousand page book that was sitting on the table. Had I known at that time that the Polish “search the archive” web site had all of that stuff in that book already in their database, I would have thanked her and used the web site to start searching for inventory IDs.  I had been using this web site for the past month or so. However, I would not make this connection until the Jewish Genealogy conference (where I did eventually find the inventory IDs). I was also in a bit of shock that I got absolutely no help from the archive workers. I understood that their job was just to retrieve and store documents and they are not librarians. I guess I couldn’t believe that there was nothing else to be done. It did not feel “right”. Michal showed me how to fill out the index card, and he also got one of the old ladies to bring out the index cards of the Jozefow books.  They were also missing 1883 (just like the web site said), so I decided to cut my losses officially. I figured might as well go to Jozefow and visit Magda and see the cemetery again to find my great-grandmother’s grave.

This time around, I easily found the minibus to Jozefow.  While I was still in the archive, I was on Facebook Messenger, sending messages to all of these names of people who had volunteered to help me from the various Facebook groups I had joined.  Through three connections of people, I was connected to Maria, a local Zamosc lady and activist. On my way to the bus station feeling extremely disappointed, she asked me what I was looking for.  I told her I wanted the address of Ruvym Graf’s business. She told me to give her a few days. I said ok.

I arrived in Jozefow easily.  I got a disgusting hamburger at the local tavern.  Of course the entire time I was there I was wondering what shop existed there before the Nazis burned the town to the ground.  I had messaged Magda and Alessandra to give them a heads up that I was coming. Magda wrote back that she was busy working with the mayor so she couldn’t help.  However, when I got to the town hall, she was there anyway and she did indeed help me. Just like the last time, once I arrived, Wladyslaw left the room. He did not crack a smile or really respond to my presence, he just left the room just like last time. Magda and Alessandra started their sifting through books again. This time, they called out “Resha Graf” and I was like… you’ve got to be kidding me. They, indeed, found her death certificate. Really remarkable. They also found a birth record of a child named Haim, who we know probably did not survive much longer than his birth.  My great-grandmother had 3 children who died in their infancy. Now we know one of their names. She also kept saying “icko, icko” which I knew meant Itzak but we don’t have an Itzak in our immediate tree. I told her to copy it for me anyway and I’m sure I’d be able to match it with one of the Itzak Grafs in our extended tree.

After the copies were given to me and things quieted down, Magda again mentioned that my family must have been rich.  It’s amazing that this statement she made was on both of our minds. I hadn’t stopped thinking about the fact that she made this statement since she had said it two weeks prior.  Since then, I had had a few conversations with people about what she could have meant by this statement. I did not acknowledge that she said it this time. Maybe, in her definition of the word, she was right.  My family owned a business and had a big house for 10 children. Maybe that made them rich in her mind? They had a dual income household because Ruvym was quite older than the rest of the kids. That was probably rare for the time.  By no means was my family part of the Polish nobility or did they own any farmland. I guess everything is relative. Maybe in Poland they do not realize that associating Jews with wealth is an antisemitic trope. Perhaps her choice of words could have been better: maybe instead of “rich”, she could have said “not poor”. I proceeded to the cemetery.

At the cemetery, there was a man there taking photos.  He said something to me in Polish, I don’t know what, but he was smiling.  I asked him if he spoke English and he made a face like he didn’t so much. I told him my great-grandmother was buried here.  He immediately stopped smiling and left the cemetery. I’m not sure what that’s about. Good riddens.

I found her grave covered to the top with overgrowth. It was easy to find thanks to the work of the Gidonim web site.  I cleaned up the gravestone. I took photos and video. It was in pristine condition.  I said a prayer. At this point, I had found so much in Jozefow. So much more than I ever thought I would find.  I feel like I went full circle with finding my grandfather’s birth certificate two weeks prior, to finding his mother’s death certificate and then finally her gravestone.  

Meeting Locals From Jozefow

On my walk back to the town center, the same guy who connected me with Maria connected me with Stanislaw Kowalczyk and his son Pawel.  Stanislaw was the headmaster of the Jozefow high school and now served as superintendent. I gave him a text and his son called me back. He asked what I was doing and why I was there, in a friendly way.  I told him I’m looking to connect with Polish people and culture and I have seen enough sad stuff. He mentioned something about meeting for a coffee later and I said the last bus to Jozefow was leaving in 30 minutes so we would have to meet in Zamosc.  We ended the call with some vague plans. A few minutes later, he asked me where in Jozefow I was and I explained that I was staying in Zamosc, and he was like “no, where are you right now?” I was in the tavern having a beer, as it had just started to rain.  They arrived a few minutes later to meet me! What a surprise!!

They immediately asked me if I wanted to see the site in the forest where the mass murder took place.  I said I did not. I had seen my share of sad stuff and I really just wanted to connect with locals and meet people who live here now.  We ended up having a fantastic afternoon. Pawel is my age and works on cruise ships as a first officer. He speaks fluent English. He explained everything to me.  We went to the mines outside the town, then went for a drive through the forest to the dam, then we went to another forest where we saw an old wooden church and had a fantastic traditional meal at the restaurant where the daughter worked, then they took me to their house at the edge of the forest and I met the mom who treated us to cake and coffee.  They have a beautiful yard overlooking the fields and the forest. Finally we went to the local brewery. I caught the bus from near the brewery back to Jozefow. We got to know each other well and I was so honored to meet them. They treated me to everything. The daughter refused a tip. It was a true cultural exchange.

Ruvym Graf’s Store

When I got back to the hostel, I checked my email and lo and behold, there was an email from Maria with an image attachment.  It had the address of Ruvym’s business at 16 Bazylianska Street. She mentioned that the Soviets had renumbered the buildings so going to the current address wouldn’t make sense.  Still, she had found what I was looking for and found it the very same day I had contacted her! (A few weeks later she would contact me again with the reconciliation of the #16 house address with a pre-war map of the town identifying the building properly as #3.)

She mentioned that she was doing a cemetery cleaning event at the cemetery in Szczebrzeszyn the next day and I could join her. I told her I would as long as I didn’t go to the Belzec Death Camp memorial (at that point, I wasn’t sure if there was a regular bus there and if I could make it back in time).  What a way to cap off the day. In a single day, I had found my great-grandmother’s grave, met locals in Jozefow and found the address of my great uncle’s business. It seemed that the more time I spent in the region, the more I would discover and it made me want to stay longer.

The next day, I had decided I would just spend my time in Zamosc.  The Facebook connection also connected me to Daniel, the guy who has the keys to the synagogue in Zamosc.  We met for coffee in the morning and had a lovely chat. He allowed me free entrance to the synagogue museum where there was an interesting exhibit containing photographs of old Jews in Zamosc from a surviving family.  After that I went to the Zamoyski museum and saw all of the old big paintings of the Zamoyski family. There wasn’t really much else of interest unfortunately. I was hoping for more geographic detail about the towns they founded.  Alas.

Later on, Maria picked me up and we went to Szczebrzeszyn.  We cleaned a bunch of tombstones and she asked me to calculate the dates.  She was able to tell the century of the tombstone based on the design. She mentioned that the FODZ was a corrupt organization and they put up fences for a lot of money but then no one knows where the rest of the money goes.  She understood that the only way to get things done was through grassroots efforts. She handed over to me the archive inventory ID of the “list of business signage” for the Zamosc archives. This was the secret that I needed to know, there was no “business directory”.  The literal translation for the document I was looking for is “list of signs”. The Zamosc archive documented its catalog of businesses by writing down the names of the signs above awnings or on business doors. “List of signs”. I never, ever would have found that in the archive inventory index. Like, ever. It frustrated me that Maria was able to discover this in a few hours whereas the archive workers just pointed at the 5,000 page inventory book to me as if no one had every asked to see a 20th century list of businesses from this city.  I started building a bit of a theory about modern day Polish people wanting to help Jewish people and how they could actually go about doing it. This was now the second grassroots activist I had met who openly distrusts the FODZ. I was looking forward to meeting the FODZ people at the conference the following week.

The next morning, I hauled ass to the bus station and took the bus to Lublin.  We arrived early at the bus station. The train station is on the opposite side of town.  I had to walk through the old city to get to the train station and then it came to me! I would have enough time to visit the Grodzka Gate and say hi to them!  So, I did just that. I saw the door was open and I walked up the stairs and at reception I surprised the ladies sitting there. Eventually, an English speaker arrived and was very happy to see me.  She showed me around the place and introduced me to others including a guy who would be at the conference as well. I explained to them that I just wanted to know them and be connected to them and to say hi and thank you.  I wasn’t asking for anything. Also I had to catch a train.