Lublin: A Special Place

"The Magician of Lublin," famous book by Isaac Bashevis Singer depicted on this display in the Old Quarter.

Lublin is a special place for us. We have been staying here for a week and I feel strongly the presence of my mother and her family in this place. This especially came home to me when Carol discovered a photograph of my mother in an extraordinary cache of pre-war photos of Jewish Lubliners (in the photo perhaps also my grandmother and uncles). The photos were discovered during renovation of an Old Town house, which turned out to be a Jewish photographer’s studio, and have been lovingly preserved and shared with the world by Brama Grodzka (see more on Brama below). My grandmother’s family – Wajcenbrodt – was also from Lublin. My grandfather – Chaim Boruch Hochberger – was from a nearby town – Łęczna, which we also visited. It was about 2/3 Jewish before the War (2,500 Jews).

My mother was born in the Jewish hospital built by the community in 1886, and located right next door to where the family lived. The hospital is still here today and functions as a Maternity and Gynecological Clinic. It did not, however, escape the Nazis’ venomous anti-Semitism. On March 27, 1942, the Nazis killed all the patients, some of the staff and looted the equipment.

Lublin is a special place apart from family connections. The historic district – Old Town – goes back almost a thousand years. It is beautifully restored and kept. The almost 500-year old Jewish quarter – which housed one of Poland’s most important Jewish communities – existed side by side, separated by Brama Grodzka (the Grodzka Gate, also known as the Jewish Gate). It was destroyed by the Nazis after they murdered all the Jews.

Brama Grodzka (www.teatrnn.pl) is now the name also of an extraordinary Lublin historical, education, cultural center, archive and museum, which in fact is located in an historic building at the Gate. It has a special focus on restoring the memory of the now-absent Jewish presence in Lublin, not only through its ongoing work but also its “Lublin. Memory of the Place” exhibit. Its focus on Jewish memory includes becoming the guardian of the Jewish trail in Lublin, seeking to document the presence of every Jew who lived here in the period before the War as well as every building, and organizing research and tours of shtetls and “shtetl routes” focusing on the 62 Jewish communities once located in the borderland area of Poland, Ukraine and Belarus.

We also visited Dom Słów (House of Words – teatrnn.pl/domslow). Located in an historic building that housed a well-known Lublin print shop/publishing house (one of many in this “City of Words”), it contains a great exhibit on how students at Catholic University in Lublin (almost 20,000 students there today) began clandestine organizing in the 1970s during communist rule, using simple printing devices sometimes ingeniously smuggled into the country in parts. Another exhibit describes how the print shop here was hired to do printing for the communist regime, but in the evenings published clandestinely for the opposition. Their operation was eventually revealed for which they lost their lives. There is also an amazing collection of old printing presses and other printmaking paraphernalia which they use to conduct frequent workshops for students.

There are many places of Jewish memory in Lublin too numerous to mention. Re the Ghetto itself, we didn’t get the chance to circumnavigate it but there are markers on the sidewalk that do highlight the perimeter. Especially moving is the Umschlagplatz memorial almost 3 miles from the city center, which includes over 100 plaques along the wall memorializing each and every transport to the killing centers, not only from Lublin to Bełżec but from all the shtetls and ghettos to Bełżec, Sobibor and Treblinka. The route from Lublin to this location is marked by 21 informational plaques each with a metal band with a different Hebrew letter arranged not in order, but haphazardly to symbolize “the destruction of the foundation of Jewish culture - the printed word, and at the same time the end of life for the pre-war Jewish community in Lublin.” The 22^nd and last letter is placed in the ceiling of the memorial at the foot of the train track, a memorial meant to symbolize a cattle car. A moving youtube video of the memorial and one of the marches to it that occur here annually is at https://youtu.be/VGGU2rPU9NA

Another important place of Jewish memory in Lublin is Yeshiva Chachmej Lublin, opened in 1930, and one of the largest in the world. The Nazis used it as a hospital so it was not destroyed. Besides now serving as a hotel with a kosher restaurant, it contains the beautifully restored synagogue of the Yeshiva (still occasionally used) and a museum about the Yeshiva and its founder and rector, Rabbi Meir Shapiro.

Along the banks of the Czechówka River, there is a breathtaking 100-metre long mural designed in the form of a documentary about the historic Jewish quarter, using archival photographs. “Here, on the banks of the Czechówka river,” writes former Brama Gradzka director Tomasz Pietrasiewicz, “once flowing under the Jewish quarter, the memories of the demolished district are rinsed out and resurface on the walls of its embankment. The black-and-white mural is documentary in a form which testifies to the past.”

We also visited the Old Cemetery, obtaining the key to the locked gates from the Ilan Hotel in the former Yeshivah. The cemetery dates to the 16^th century, and the oldest matzevot (tombstone) dates to 1541. It is the oldest Jewish cemetery still existing in Poland, and is regularly visited by religious pilgrims because of their connections to spiritual leaders and teachers buried there. Many of the thousands of tombstones are damaged or missing but a few hundred still remain (in various states of decay) including many going back to the 16^th and 17^th centuries.

Old picture of my mother (2nd from right on bottom). My grandmother and uncles might also be there.

The Jewish Gate (Brama Grodzka) pictured in two eras.

Brama Grodzka (museum) entrance, in building where Gate is.

Chachmei Lublin Yeshiva, 1930, now Hotel Ilan but still containing the original synagogue in the yeshivah and a museum.

Lublin Rav Meir Shapiro's funeral procession in 1935 along the street where my mother lived.

Unlocking gate at Old Cemetery

Ohel of Famous Seer of Lublin,Reb Yaakov Yitzhak haLevi Horowitz, early 19th century Hasidic spiritual leader (allegedly with clairvoyant powers) - https-//teatrnn.pl/lexicon/articles/the-seer-of-lublin-yaakov-yitzhak-halevi-horowitz-sternfeld/