Bringing Passover back to the town where the Nazis killed our relatives
The house Hilda Chazanovitz’s family probably lived in before the Holocaust (2015) Courtesy of Hilda Chazanovitz
“You two should know each other.”
This was the unexpected email message I received from Andrzej Folwarczny, the founder of the NGO I had traveled with to Poland in November 2014. He was referring to a woman named Sharon whose family, like mine, was from the city of Radom. She had also traveled to Poland with the same NGO I did, Forum for Dialogue.
Two days later Sharon called me. Our grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins had been murdered in Poland during the Holocaust. Her father and both my parents survived and immigrated to the United States after the war. During that first conversation we realized it was impossible to escape this legacy, although Sharon and I had each spent most of our lives trying to break free of it.
We might have continued to remain merely phone friends and email correspondents except for the coincidence that my husband and I would be traveling to the West Coast a few weeks later, staying just 30 miles south of Sharon’s home near San Diego.
Once home to 100,000 citizens pre-World War II, Radom had been a center of commerce, industry and scholarship in the Kielce province, located in central Poland, roughly a 90-minute drive from Warsaw and Krakow. A vibrant Jewish community of 30,000 represented almost one third of the total population then.
There are few, if any, Jews living in Radom today.
No one in either of our immediate families ever returned to Poland. “Poyln iz vegn toyte yidn. Di Polishe hobn undz kimat ale umgebrakht,” my mother would say. (Poland is about dead Jews. The Poles killed almost all of us.) My mother blamed Poles and Nazis equally. Those few family members that did survive the Nazi death camps – Auschwitz, Bergen Belsen, Buchenwald and Dachau – had done so thanks to skill, hard work, trickery — and ultimately mazl (luck).
Sharon later told me that her father, Velvel, shared some of his experiences and pain with her; my parents largely remained silent. They avoided becoming close to anyone, including surviving family members who lived near them in Brooklyn; even to me. I suspect they were terrified of once again losing those they loved. If Sharon had any emotional scars from growing up as the child of a survivor, they weren’t readily apparent. She was funny, animated and articulate. I was more restrained and an attentive listener.
But over the course of our friendship, I learned about Sharon’s father’s nightmares and anger, which led to verbal abuse and violent outbursts. Sometimes, he threw plates or whatever might be in easy reach. No one got hurt, but realizing how she had lived throughout her childhood was astonishing to me. I knew these kinds of stories well. So many survivors channeled their pain into anger.
My parents, on the other hand, channeled their anguish into excessive protection and emotional restraint. They were difficult to live with, but I never felt fear or danger in their presence. Silence muted their grief.
After six weeks of phone calls, Sharon and I met for lunch at La Costa Resort in Carlsbad. She was petite, with beautiful olive skin and a wide smile. We hugged as close relatives would and began talking.
We discovered our families had lived two streets away from each other in Radom before the war. When I showed her my iPhone photos of the neighborhood where my family once lived, she knew exactly where it was. The home of my mother’s family was now boarded up, with “Danger” signs posted in Polish, and several heavy support beams on all sides to keep the building from collapsing.
“My father lived at Szpitalna just across the same square,” Sharon said. You know, we may even be related.”
We didn’t look alike, but there was no mistaking the powerful connection between us. Meanwhile, I sensed a certain irony in our talking about the harrowing experiences of our survivor parents while we took in the view of the golf course and savored our delicious lunch. “My parents would have never eaten in a place like this; they rarely ate out,” I said. “My mother used to say: “Never eat out in restaurants; they’re dangerous. Who knows what they put into the food?” Sharon nodded and laughed.
As we were leaving, I mentioned that my carry-on bag had been damaged beyond repair. “Let’s go look for a new bag; there’s a great little shopping center nearby,” Sharon said. I avoided shopping malls, and preferred shopping alone. But Sharon was such good company, I agreed. As we approached our destination, my enthusiasm faded. The shop was filled with no-name merchandise, in discontinued styles and colors. I announced to the young clerk inside, “I need a small spinner carry-on, with exterior pockets, lightweight, in black and suitable for International flights.”
The clerk went into the back storage area and returned with the perfect black Samsonite. Thrilled with my purchase, my thoughts went elsewhere.
For my parents and probably other survivors, luggage was no ticket to freedom or joyful new experiences, but rather unplanned journeys likely to end in tragedy.
During the summer of 2015, and with my new Samsonite in tow, Sharon and I traveled to Poland together. We drove to Radom and walked the very streets our families once walked.
While there, we met with educators, community leaders and government officials and a literature teacher, Zbigniew Wieczorek. Meeting Zbigniew through an NGO called Forum for Dialogue was the beginning of an extraordinary partnership. Together, we began restoring the narrative of the Jewish community in Radom.
Our first collaboration was the Jewish Trail, launched with twelve descriptive plaques marking significant Jewish sites from Radom’s past. Included was the site of the Orthodox synagogue, burned to the ground by the Nazis. Plaques in Hebrew, English and Polish were unveiled in 2017.
Zbigniew, a Christian Pole, helped us plan and co-host almost 70 local officials, educators and students, as well as our own family members, for the first public Seder in Radom in decades — possibly since the end of the War.
We returned to Radom days before the Seder in April 2016. The Haggadah we had prepared was printed up beautifully as a blue and white booklet.
The Seder was held in the dining room of the city’s Jewish community center. A huge U-shaped table was covered with white linen tablecloths. Flowering branches graced the towering windows. At every table setting lay a copy of our Haggadah and an individual Seder plate with the haroseth we had prepared with the chef. The cooking staff also made pierogi from scratch and a variety of salads.
Sharon, Zbigniew and I greeted everyone with a “chag sameach!” (Hebrew for “Happy holiday!”). I asked how many in the room had ever been to a Seder before, which a volunteer then translated into Polish. Only our family members raised their hands. We began reading the Haggadah, with several local teachers translating certain passages into Polish. By evening’s end, we were celebrating a shared experience, connecting generations of people of different faiths through the story of Passover.
Since then, Sharon and I have returned to Radom many times. We took part in an annual Jewish culture festival, hosted Shabbat dinners and welcomed descendants of the city from France, Israel, Canada and the United States. This past September we vacationed in northern Poland. I know my cautious mother is shaking her head somewhere, puzzled about my friendship with another daughter of Jews from Radom that she never knew. Though who knows? Maybe the families did know each other? That possibility continues to delight and preoccupy me.
As for the Samsonite bag I bought at the bargain store, it’s still in my closet. The handle is starting to give, but the suitcase, like my friendship with Sharon, is taking me to places I’m no longer afraid to visit.
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