Polish City Has First Jewish Festival In Decades
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
(JTA) — The city of Lodz, once a major Jewish hub in Poland, hosted its first Jewish festival in decades.
Hundreds attended the Festival of Tranquility last week in the central city over the Jewish holiday of Shavuot.
Drawing on similar events in Krakow, Warsaw, Budapest and other cities throughout Central and Eastern Europe, the Lodz festival featured films, Torah study sessions, workshops in calligraphy and cooking, and a concert.
The event was organized by Rabbi Dawid Szychowski, the envoy of the Shavei Israel group from Israel, which facilitates the return to Judaism of descendants of Jews, among other activities.
Lodz, about 80 miles from Warsaw, was historically home to one of the country’s most vibrant Jewish communities – and one of the largest ghettos during the Holocaust. But Jewish life all but disappeared from there in 1944, according to Michael Freund, the founder of Shavei Israel.
Nearly all of the ghetto’s 164,000 residents were murdered in the Holocaust, according to the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem, along with 90 percent of Poland’s pre-Holocaust Jewish population of 3 million.
Many survivors hid their Jewish roots to the best of their ability, including from their children.
“Despite the fact that thousands of young Poles had parents, grandparents or even great-grandparents who had to hide their Jewish identity for decades, Judaism has witnessed a revival in Poland since the downfall of communism and we are happy that we can celebrate it,” Freund said.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
