Ohio Jewish Chronicle, 1990-11-15

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The Ohio Jewish Chronicle
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*'     Jewish Community for Over 60 Years
VOOJME68,
NUMBER47
NOVEMBER 15,1990
27CHESHVANS751,
.DEVOTED   TO   AMERICAN   AND   JEWISH   IDEALS   -
Kahane's ideas live on
New- equipment stops
greater fire damage.
Romania's Rabbi Rosen
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holds fast
*Hep, Hep Hooray!' and
Rabbi Meir Kahane
page 5
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16
IS
4,S
ROOTS AND BRANCHES
to Poland produces
documents thought destroyed
By Miriam Weiner
How often have you heard
someone say "my ancestral
town was wiped off the map
during the Holocaust and
all the records were destroyed?" It is simply not
true. During a recent tour to
Poland, 21 American Jews
participated in a historic opportunity to visit their ancestral towns, have open access
to government archives and
documents and take virtually unlimited photos of documents representing the history of their family.
For Marvin and Janet
Greenberg of Lexington,
Mass., this tour represented
the opportunity to visit
Krasnystaw and Rejowiec,
small towns outside of Lublin. Janet's father, Philip
Waldman, of Columbus, was
born in Rejowiec, and when
he learned of her plans to
visit there, he spent two
hours trying to talk her out of
the trip, because "surely
everything was gone."
Marvin came along to
share in discoveries and "to
be there for the sorrow they
would find during visits to the
death camps at Auschwitz
and Majdanek." Fortunately, Marvin brought his
video camera and returned
home with over eight hours
representing their remarkable journey into the past.
In Krasnystaw, the Green-
bergs were met by the
Mayor, newspaper reporter
and town elder, which had
been pre-arranged the day
before by the Greenberg's
local guide in Lublin. According to Janet, "The sincerity
of the people we met was
overwhelming. They were
very willing to help us without conditions. We were
taken to the remains of the
Jewish cemetery, now an
over-grown field with high
tension wires running
through it like an ugly scar.
We found a few stones with
incomplete inscriptions. The
synagogue building is still
standing and now is occupied
by a shut factory. There is
virtually nothing to identify
it as a former synagogue."
Janet's father had described in some detail the
layout of the town, and it was
not difficult to locate the
street where he once lived.
There were a few dilapidated
wooden houses remaining,
and as we walked by each
house, I could see Janet wondering if "that was the one."
We visited the local muse
um where the enthusiastic director proudly showed us the
extensive museum collection. Artifacts included old
photos, maps and postcards,
but the real surprise was saved for last. Finally, the director unlocked a cabinet and
brought out portions of
several Torah scrolls which
he said were saved from the
synagogue when it was "dismantled." The edges were
charred and torn, with no
outside. covering to protect
them.
The next item to emerge
from the cabinet was a wallet
which, upon examination,
left us all speechless when we
saw the Hebrew letters. It
was actually made from a
Torahscroll!
When the director produced a seal bearing a Mogen
David and the name of a
Mizrahi organization in
Krasnystaw, I was seized
with the urge to use that seal!
The director brought a stamp
pad, and I promptly began
stamping whatever I could
find, including Janet's
prayerbook, once belonging
to her grandmother. When I
asked for Janet and Marvin's
passports, they handed them
right over, and I stamped the
last page with the seal of a
Jewish organization once
thriving in Krasnystaw. This
may take some explaining
later, but it seemed like a
good idea to me at the time.
On to Rejowiec where we
struck pay dirt with the first
old person we stopped on the
street who told us about the
Jewish history of the town.
She pointed out the potato
field which had once been the
Jewish cemetery.
It was getting late, and we
were impatient to discover if
there were surviving documents such as birth, marriage and death records. We
asked the old woman where
births are registered for the
town, and she told us the office was closed. Persistence
is vital in such a situation,
and so I asked where the person lived who had the office
key. It seems the town clerk
also performs weddings and
was about to begin two ceremonies.
Our next request was
"please direct us to the site of
the weddings." Lest you
think any of us are fluent in
Polish, .please know we
couldn't have accomplished
a thing during this tour without the outstanding services
of Mariola, our ORBIS trans-
see TRIP pg-10
:  1
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