Don’t get me wrong. As a child of two Holocaust survivors from Poland, I am repulsed by the idea of setting foot in Poland. Many years back, when my elderly cousin Channusha’s husband Srulek, also a survivor, agreed to accompany his grandchildren on a trip back to Poland he brought his own water there. So how can I explain myself? Perhaps I can offer the underlying logic in the following as an explanation. When asked why he kept robbing banks, which universally have such high security in place, the robber responded: “Because that’s where the money is.” Poland was the epicenter of the horrors of the Holocaust, ergo, the “go to” place for traces of the period. For me, travel to Poland was motivated by personal family history. I have now made three consequential trips to Poland, the last of which I just completed.
As I said, I am a child of survivors, but I was not my parent’s first child. Both of my parents were from Sosnowiec, Poland, a city somewhat less known than Warsaw or Krakow but of similar demographics. It had a thriving Jewish community before the Holocaust. Having the misfortune of being situated some 20 kilometers from Auschwitz, its Srodula ghetto became a “stopover” facility for transports to Auschwitz. This exacerbated the already deplorable conditions in that ghetto and had the bizarre effect of an increase of the Jewish population of a city in Poland during the Holocaust.
At the very end of 1942, my sister Sara was born. I never knew her, something that became a core element of my psyche. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t know about her existence and her brief story. When Sara was about 6 months old, my mother, Sophie Topiol, took her and went with my mother’s sister Raquela and her two daughters, Sara and Hanna, approximately 5 and 7 years old, along with a few other people, and dug a hole under a building in Srodula to serve as a hideout. Needless to say, the conditions were even worse than in the ghetto overhead. They had two buckets—one for the water they would sneak in at night and a second for human waste. A few of the other occupants began insisting that my infant sister be killed for fear that her cries would expose them. Nevertheless, after a short time, the conditions were so intolerable that the other occupants left, leaving behind my mother, her sister and the three girls. They had a contact in the building above who baked for the Nazis and ghetto residents and who occasionally dropped some bread to them.
They remained in the underground hole for six months, until the ghetto was completely evacuated, and their only occasional source of sustenance was taken. At this point, as my mother described, when they emerged, my now 1-year-old sister was smaller than when they entered the hole six months earlier. They were immediately taken to Auschwitz/Birkenau where, on January 13, 1944, the three girls were thrown on a truck to be taken to the crematoria and killed.
That story of Sara’s short life has lived deep within me for my entire life. It is a constant of my existence. And yet I could never understand why that was so. I had never met or seen her. There were no pictures or any other tangible evidence that she ever existed. Yet, as a child I naively fantasized about seeing her someday. As I was growing up, I was frustrated that I was unable to even say Kaddish while my parents were alive. When my parents passed away, and I began saying Kaddish for my sister, I still felt frustrated that there was no gravesite for her where I could say Kaddish. This frustration led to a determination that I would go to the crematoria at Birkenau so I could say Kaddish where she breathed her last breath. So, on my sister’s yahrzeit in 2018, I went to Auschwitz/Birkenau where, by prearrangement, I met with a group from J-Roots and said Kaddish. To add to my own feelings, the emotional responses of the young men and women of the group ripped through me. That was trip No. 1 to Poland.
After the first trip I planned to repeat the trip to Birkenau every year to say Kaddish on Sara’s yahrzeit. The following year I did just that, with the additional plan of a more extensive exploration of my family’s history. This time I not only visited Sosnowiec, as I had done on the first trip, I stayed there in a hotel. At night I walked the streets where my parents had lived, passing their former residence, my grandparents’ residence and the locations of the shops where they had their businesses. This was all planned.
What I hadn’t planned was striking. I had a guide, Malgosia Ploszaj, with whom I had worked on the first trip and who had voluntarily done extensive research into my family history. One morning she suggested we go to the Sosnowiec municipal building to see what we could learn. To say the least, municipal building employees in Sosnowiec are not more helpful than anywhere else. Somehow Malgosia managed to convince person after person to let us proceed through the building until after a short period we were at a lower level in the central records area talking to the director of the records department. The discussions were in Polish, which I don’t understand, but I watched as the director began ordering associates to gather materials.
After a few minutes, one of the associates came in with an old record book, replete with a seal, and laid it open in front of us. Facing us was the official birth record of my sister! My shock was overwhelming. Here was the first physical evidence of my sister’s existence. Something I could see and touch. Not only did I never think I would see this, I never even thought it existed, given that she was born during the Nazi occupation. While I stood frozen, Malgosia and the director seemed to be debating the content and meaning of the record. The reason there was a record was that the Nazis, in their obsession with records, had kept records of the births. The reason they were debating was that the record wasn’t in Polish, their native tongue, but in German. They seemed confused by the location where my sister was born—apparently not in the Srodula ghetto—but street names changed often depending on which government ruled.
To resolve the question of the address of my sister’s birth, the director called the head of the Sosnowiec Museum, where they kept records of street maps during different periods. We then piled into a car and went to the Sosnowiec Museum. The head of the museum then established that the location in question was a site outside of the ghetto (unexpectedly) where a Jewish hospital had been. At the location there was now apparently a still functioning hospital (not Jewish). The head of the museum now also joined us as we all went there. After some negotiating at the entrance to the hospital, we were allowed to enter the lobby area. There I stood, one year after saying Kaddish at Birkenau where my sister breathed her last breath, in the hospital where she was born and breathed her first breath. This was trip No. 2 to Poland.
Until this year, I had not returned to Poland after my second trip due in part to COVID and the aftermath of Oct. 7, 2023. As is probably evident, my travel to Poland has been more about personal family history than broad exposure to Holocaust history. I try to coordinate my Birkenau visits with a group so that I can say Kaddish. I had talked a number of times with Rabbi Dovi Shenkman (“Rav Dovi”), who runs a program from Ashreinu Yeshiva in Beit Shemesh. The program there seemed particularly well thought-out and meaningful, and this year we were finally able to coordinate our trips so I could join them when they went to Birkenau.
While I spent less than 48 hours in Poland, from my arrival in Krakow to my departure (with them) in Warsaw, I had the great fortune of joining the group for the tail end of their eight-day trip. Joining Rabbi Shenkman in leading the group was Rabbi Wohlgelernter (“Woggy”). Their leadership of the group was truly remarkable. The pace was rapid and the information flow was intense and emotional. Most striking was the sensitivity and maturity of all the young men of the group. The leadership was effective in ensuring that this was not merely eight days of visiting concentration camps and work camps, but a life-forming experience. They visibly came away with an internalization of the principle that the events of the Holocaust were not only sad, past historical events but lessons for personal growth in their conduct and pursuits in life. While at Birkenau, I had the opportunity to share with them my sister’s brief history and say Kaddish. Seeing how moved they were made the experience even more meaningful for me.
Still, the most unexpected part of this trip was yet to come. After leaving Auschwitz in the evening, we traveled to Lodz for dinner and then to a small town called Dabie—a town most have never heard of. As the bus approached Dabie, “Rav Dovi” gave clear notice that we were entering a very quiet residential area. We emerged at a church, in front of which was a plaque in memory of the 1,100 Jewish residents who had lived there before the Holocaust. As he explained, this had been a predominantly Jewish town. This became one of the first places where the Nazis began to round up the Jews and put them on a sealed truck for a short ride during which the exhaust pipe was rerouted into the back of the truck. By the end of this short ride, at what was to become the infamous Chelmno death camp, all those in the truck had died. This was one of the earliest implementations of the gassing approach to the mass murder of Jews. From there, we quietly walked a few blocks and around the back of an old building. Inside, we carefully walked up two floors of ladder-like stairways before reaching a raw attic, over the two floors of occupied residential apartments. Whispering, with one or two flashlights and phone lights to illuminate the way, we carefully avoided fragile floor boards and overhead rafters as we crossed to the other end of the attic. Before us we were then barely able to make out the Hebrew lettering which had been over the Aron Kodesh when the building had been a shul before the Holocaust. With the primary shul area now converted to apartments, we now stood facing the last vestige of this former shul. After some speculation as to whether anyone else had been (snuck up to?) this location since the last trip by Ashreinu, we noticed a yellow ribbon pasted on the wall. Someone had indeed been here since Oct. 7, 2023—connecting what some consider two Holocausts. We proceeded to quietly say Maariv, filled with the emotions and sense that the spirit and soul of Jewish prayers were returning to this synagogue.
To finalize this episode and trip, the group was taken by bus into a deserted wooded area. There, in the open field, were the remains of the Chelmno death camp. Standing out under the stars, Rabbi Dovi led a collective siyum (culmination of a learning process) after which Rabbi “Woggy” recited Kaddish, praying for an elevation of the souls who had perished there, and the group sang and danced to the future of the Jewish people.
I left feeling that my trips to Poland had morphed from more personal pursuits to more universal experiences. There are many reasons to choose whether or not to go to Poland. One thing is clear: It is a means to remember the Holocaust.
Sid Topiol, Ph.D. is a retired pharmaceutical research scientist.
