It was a Shabbat that few will be likely ever to forget. Last Friday’s ceremonies marking the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz concluded late in the afternoon, forcing many Jewish participants to stay over in Krakow for Shabbat.
It was a Shabbat of prayers and communal feasting that brought together Jews from all ends of the Jewish spectrum in a affirmation of Jewish life and celebration of the Jewish world.
It was a Shabbat that provided for many participants a much-needed emotional release, in high contrast to the tears and mourning of the commemorations of the Nazi horrors during the preceding days.
“Many thought that having the commemorations on Friday was inconvenient, because they’d have to stay over”, said British scholar Jonathan Webber.
“But having it on Friday provided a marvelous opportunity for people to move emotionally and morally from the commemoration ceremony to something positive, something with a future,” he said.
“It was important to have a Shabbat dinner, with many different people [so that] people could find peace after a deeply disturbing and traumatic day. And I think it worked”.
-In Krakow’s modern Forum Hotel, where official delegations and dignitaries stayed, scores of Jews from various countries and backgrounds prayed together last Friday evening.
The daveners, with different levels of observance, represented a wide range of scholarship, Jewish knowledge and experience. They came from different political and communal positions.
On Saturday morning, they filled the historic, 16th-century Remuh synagogue in Krakow’s ancient Jewish quarter, Kazimierz. It brought the synagogue-which often scarcely can muster a minyan-extraordinarily alive.
Some even spilled out into the street to dance following services. “Shabbat itself is meant to be a slight foretaste of the spiritual world to come,” said Great Britain’s former chief rabbi, Lord Immanuel Jakobovits, who headed the official British delegation to the Auschwitz commemoration.
“It is a time for reflection. It was healthy to have Shabbat right after the Auschwitz commemorations. It showed again the indestructibility of the Jewish spirit”, he said.
After Friday night services, about 70 Jews went on to a festive Shabbat dinner in a hotel function room.
Seated around a huge horseshoe-shaped table were what one participants called “a smorgasbord of Jewish life.”
Guests included the entire spectrum of the Jewish world: from Jakobovits and his wife and young Polish Jews just beginning to learn about Jewish life and traditions; from ambassador Ronald Lauder, head of The Ronald S. Lauder Foundation, to the activist American rabbi, Avi Weiss, who had been briefly detained by Polish police after spending several hours at the church at Birkenau.
The group included Poland’s venerable Chief Rabbit Menachem Joskowicz, a white- bearded Ger Chasid and Auschwitz survivor; Steven Katz, the new director of Washinghton’s Holocaust Memorial Museum; a representative of the Israeli Foreign Ministry and representatives of the American Jewish Committee, the Simon Wiesenthal Center and other organizations.
They were also non-affiliated Jews, both secular and religious who simply had stayed over for Shabbat. These included Haddassah Lieberman, daughter of an Auschwitz survivor and wife of Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn, who had been a member of the official U.S. delegation.
The meal-and a similar lunch after services Saturday- was arranged by Webber and Rabbi Michael Schurdrich, the Lauder Foundation representative in Poland.
The food was strictly kosher, flown in frozen from London and prepared by a caterer there who is an Auschwitz survivor.
In an atmosphere of almost tangible release after the trauma of the Auschwitz commemorations, participants sang and even danced. There were speeches and divrei Torah, or words of Torah.
“I thank God Shabbat was there”, said David Singer, director of research and publications of the American Jewish committee.
“You needed a sense of closure. To stand at Auschwitz and then get on a plane and go home would have left me with my emotions confused”, he said.
“We needed an affirmation of life – and that is what this Shabbat was”.
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