MARK KURLANSKY
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looking for foreign Jews to meet. What was the best way to run into the
Jews from America, Western Europe and Israel? They waited for them on
weekends in the cemetery. In the past five years most Central European
Jewish communities have grown, as assimilated Jews have begun reassert–
ing their Jewish heritage. The Budapest Community of one hundred
thousand is now thought to include one hundred twenty thousand mem–
bers. Last year the struggling Prague community had one thousand regis–
tered members and increased to thirteen hundred this year. But Western
Jews go to Central Europe to see death. Since the fall of Communism and
opening of the borders to easy, visa-free travel, the growth of Jewish
communities has attracted far less interest than the newly accessible con–
centration camps and cemeteries. Thus Poland, which has history but less
Jewish life than its neighbors, has become a popular Jewish destination.
The restored old town of Warsaw, the first postwar project, seems
sterile and too preciously preserved. The untouched medieval city of
Cracow is better, and the summer countryside of southern Poland with its
rolling hills and wildflowers is beautiful, in spite of the pollution and the
names like "Oswiecim" which keep reminding visitors of where they are.
You don't find many tourists going to Poland to take in the countryside.
So many tourists are Jewish that local entrepreneurs have had to start
making the little carved Hasidim dolls less anti-Semitic in order to move
them - make the eyes a little less sunken and demonic and ease up on the
nose. Foreigners come to see what is left of the ghetto, the Jewish ceme–
teries and the death camps - Sobib6r, Maidanek, Belzec, Treblinka,
Chelmno, Stutthof, Auschwitz-Birkenau. Poland has literally an embar–
rassment of riches in the field of Holocaust history. The Nazis didn't leave
anything to see at the Warsaw ghetto, but a heroic monument to the re–
sisters was erected. Tourists come by the busload, sometimes even posing
for group pictures on the steps. Nearby a man sells assorted souvenirs,
mostly books. The vendor is ready with an ink pad and stamp to mark the
endpapers of the books with his Warsaw Ghetto stamp. Not far away
from the flowered summer hills of southern Poland is Cracow, with its
untouched medieval center that makes it Poland's best bid for a tourism
center. Cracow also has location going for it. When tourists get off the
train from Warsaw they are greeted at the platform by eager taxi drivers
offering, "Taxi? Hotel? Auschwitz?"
The splendidly preserved walls of this rare city are papered in seem–
ingly every eye-level space with posters that say "AUSCHWITZ" in
large block letters. "Go to Birkenau and be back in Cracow at 4 p.m.,"
one of them advertised. A thirty-minute taxi ride from Cracow is the
most famous death camp of them all, with some half million visitors a
year. When a driver gets an Auschwitz fare he merrily informs the others
at the stand, "I'm off to Auschwitz, bye!" After all, it pays far better
