The Jewish Genealogy Conference would be taking place in Warsaw. I was in Zamosc. To get back to Warsaw, I had to go through Lublin again. I would take the bus from Zamosc to Lublin and then board a train to Warsaw. I realize this is the best travel itinerary now that I’ve done the direct bus on the crazy road to Warsaw in the opposite direction. When I made the booking, I completely forgot that the bus station is on the direct opposite side of town from the train station! Then I realized this would be the perfect opportunity to visit the people at The Grodzka Gate! What is that, you ask?

A week earlier, while researching genealogy in Berlin, I came across a history of Jozefow on this obscurely named web site: “The Grodzka Gate”.  The URL was awful: teatrnn.pl. Questions: is this a theater? What is Grodzka Gate? If the organization is called Grodzka Gate, why is the url teatrnn.pl?  None of this made any sense and I kept reading more and more. It ends up that Grodzka Gate is the actual gate in Lublin that I walked through many times that descended into the weird circular parking lot.  The story of the founding of this group, which is meant to document lost Jewish Lublin through art and exhibition, is that they are locals in Lublin who wondered why there was a giant parking lot in the middle of the city.  

When the locals started researching about what was there before the parking lot and how it was the former Jewish Quarter, a grassroots effort was started to document this lost quarter. There is now a 3D model available of the quarter based on historical documents.  The group has expanded to document the entire Lublin region, included Jozefow. I thought it was incredible that these locals had the same experience as me, wondering why there was this weird parking lot just right outside of the old city!!  I was not alone in my curiosity and this time, it was locals who wanted to solve the puzzle. I wondered if I would be able to go back. I sent them an email introducing myself and letting them know I would be at the conference and that I would like to meet them.

When I arrived at the bus station in Lublin, I grabbed my bags and made my way into the old town. At this point, I was very familiar with my way around Lublin. I went directly to the Grodzka Gate building and went into their main office and said hi to the receptionist. She was completely caught off guard. I explained who I was and that I sent an email and another worker from another room overheard me talking and came out to greet me. She apologized for not having responded to my email and explained that the receptionist who I was just talking to had just returned from vacation. I told them my story: about what I’m doing in Poland and what I’ve discovered. I learned that quite a few of the workers there would be at the conference in Warsaw and we would have more time to socialize there. I had a train to catch!

The Jewish Genealogy Conference was very much worth going to.  I learned an incredible amount on how to continue my research in the Polish archives and how to take it to the next level by searching church records pre-1830.  I learned about the various types of documents to look for in the inventories. I also learned about the corruption in the Warsaw rabbinate and the FODZ. Some of the most disappointing seminars were those run by these groups.  They have no mission, no vision, no plans. They are just asking for money. I think the money pays their salary. So, if they haven’t received a bunch of donations recently, they aren’t getting paid. I can understand why that might be a problem.  At the same time, the FODZ web site mostly hasn’t been updated since 2014 with a small amount updated in 2016. There is no documentation for plans or projects or anything that would help someone who wants to donate understand where their money is going.  The rabbi of Warsaw told a bunch of jokes like it was a standup routine and then said he wanted to lay it on for real: he needs money. That’s fine that he needs money, but tell us for what, ya know? Name a single project, maybe? Anything? Yea, they couldn’t name a single thing.  There was no time for real Q&A. One guy asked about the money from the sale of land from synagogues and mikvehs and where that money is. We learned that there’s no money there or process to claim that money.

I met the leader of the Zamosc JRI-Poland archive project. I want to volunteer but it seems that the actual data entry part of the JRI’s mission is nearing completion and just needs some project management.   All of the knowledge is stored in the brain of the founder Stanley Diamond, who was talked about like he was a God. When this guy retires, this organization is going to go with him and it’s a damn shame.  They need a 2nd generation project. They need to start indexing the non-civil documents: residential records, school records, business directories. Some people have already started this on their own: genealogyindexer.org is an amazing project.

So here’s how I feel about all of this: other countries have managed to index their records without the help of foreign non-profit organizations. Poland can do this too. The Polish archive workers should be the ones going through the records and putting the pieces of the puzzle together and handing over the documents to us.  They are holding on to a treasure trove of information about our families and then expecting us to come to their country and do all of the research ourselves. They do have a service where you can pay them to do the search for you but all of the communication must be done in letter writing in Polish, only. Based on my personal experience, the archive workers and employees at the town halls have enough free time on their hands to take part in an indexing project. Town hall workers could easily piece together family trees with the documentation they have. There unfortunately is no initiative, and it seems that there is no drive to take this next step. There is lots of rhetoric about wanting to help. It seems they like seeing that there are Jewish people that are still alive that are willing to come to Poland so they can feel better about all of the abandoned synagogues and cemeteries they see all over their country and sometimes in their backyard.  Some people like Maria actually are helping. I don’t know how many others like here there are.

After five weeks in Poland I left educated, disappointed, elated, loved, hated, disgusted, used and appreciated.  Yes, it is possible to feel all of those things. Was my family rich? I highly doubt that. They lived in a town that had just got electricity before the war.  Everything is relative I suppose. What I know for certain is that we were there. We had to leave. My grandparents wanted nothing to do with that place after the DP camps.  The resettlement in Szczecin, Posnan and Legnica failed miserably. What happened there is yet to be documented. They experienced persecution and hatred, like all of the other refugees.  It was apparently so bad that it triggered the creation of the DP Camps. I do not want any land that my family might have owned “back”. I’m not sure we were landowners, but we do have proof that Ruvym rented a flat through Surreh’s testimony.  

What I want is our records. Those are ours. I want each and every piece of documentation that mentions our name on it. I feel like they are mine. I do not want my family to live in Poland or become a landlord or anything psycho like that. What I want is ownership of our name and our history.