Zygmunt Stępiński

Director of POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews

Sandstone is good

for honing scythes

so all that is left

is a rib of stone

here a foot of stone

a tibia

there a shinbone

a bone of sto

a shrank of st

...

And no one knows now

or will ever know

what Aleph what Beth

What Gimel means

...

Jerzy Ficowski,

Script of a dead cemetery.

In Memory of Rachela Auerbach

Hebrew letters carved in stone, visible on broken matzevot which cannot be pieced together. A fragment of an inscription in Hebrew on a grinding wheel made from a Jewish tombstone. These are the first artefacts you will see in the 1945. Not the End, Not the Beginning exhibition, which tells the story of Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust and about their experiences immediately after the end of World War Two.

The space that opens the exhibition reveals a landscape after catastrophe—damaged and burned synagogue walls, desecrated Jewish cemeteries, ruined, looted, or occupied homes. Matzevot repurposed as building foundations and paving stones; Torah scrolls turned into everyday objects. This was the reality to which the Holocaust survivors were returning—a mere 10% of all Jews who had lived in Poland before the war. Sick, maimed, and profoundly traumatized, they were deprived of almost everything—their nearest and dearest, their entire communities, and their former way of life. They had no home and no possessions. They lived in fear of continued violence and antisemitism, which persisted even after the war had ended. Were they able to rebuild their lives in such conditions? Where did they find the strength to do so? After all, very many Jews perceived the postwar world as a pile of rubble and a graveyard where “no one knows anymore, nor will ever know, what aleph, beys, or gimmel mean.”

These words are taken from a poem by Jerzy Ficowski, which the author dedicated to Rachela Auerbach—one of the protagonists of the exhibition, a writer, journalist, and social activist. From dozens of contributors to the Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto, only three people survived: Rachela and brothers Bluma and Hersh Wasser. After the war, Rachela tirelessly strove to recover the invaluable documentation that served as a testament to the Holocaust of the Jews. That is how she understood the logic of her survival and subsequent actions:

And as I search for a new purpose for myself, when I fear too much and worry about my wretched existence, it seems to me (or perhaps I convince myself, to soothe my troubled conscience) that I do not have the right, but rather the obligation to live, for the memory of those who perished lives on within me. I do carry with me a living testimony—the tragedy of their annihilation.

Rachela Auerbach’s postwar life story, along with the stories of over a dozen others, constitutes the exhibition’s narrative. The motivation that drove Rachela in her efforts was just one of many that propelled survivors in various directions. The paths they took were vastly different—sometimes crossing or intertwining, at other times leading to entirely different destinations, never meant to meet. The polyphony of the voices of the exhibition’s protagonists resonates within specific historical contexts, which we present from the perspective of Jewish survivors. We deliberately chose this perspective, striving to capture their experiences at the time. The accompanying publication expands on this polyphony, complementing it with contemporary insights and reflections of the essays’ authors who draw from diverse fields while engaging with the photographs, documents, films, and other artefacts that are presented. They delve into the depths of what lies behind these items.

On the 80th anniversary of the end of World War Two, we show what that period was like for Jewish survivors—what they felt and thought, what choices they made in the immediate postwar years. This is largely the story of one group—those who survived the Holocaust—told through individual lives and personal perspectives. Perhaps we are already familiar with other stories about this period in Poland and across the globe. Let us also listen to this one, which has remained untold and practically unknown for many years. It may be painful and difficult, but it deserves to be heard and included in the broader narrative. It deserves to be remembered as part of the history of the end of World War Two and the people who lived through it.

Michał Trębacz

Acting Director of the Jewish Historical Institute

There aren’t many topics as closely tied to the history of the Jewish Historical Institute as the postwar history of Polish Jews. Established by Holocaust survivors, the Institute embodied their hopes for a revival of Jewish life. At the same time, it focused on studying the history of the Holocaust, making the preservation of the memory of it one of its most important goals. This revival could not have taken place without confronting the enormity of the loss and without working through the traumas associated with it.

The researchers at the Jewish Historical Institute consciously faced the challenge of confronting the history of the Holocaust. They collected eyewitness accounts, gathered documents, books and artefacts scattered throughout Poland—looted by the Nazis and ready to be transported to the Reich. That’s how the collection of the Jewish Historical Institute was born—a collection that symbolically reflects the history of Polish Jews, their mass extermination and emigration from Poland. Initially centered around sources related to the war, it was soon expanded to include other materials, many of which had survived the war’s devastation by sheer miracle. Over time, the Institute’s archives filled up with hundreds of testimonies, diaries, and memoirs of Holocaust survivors. Meanwhile, the storerooms at 3/5 Tłomackie Street filled up with numerous works of art and Judaica, including destroyed objects—Torah scrolls and objects from the Great Synagogue, demolished on Jürgen Stroop’s orders. As other Jewish institutions ceased to exist, their collections were transferred to the Institute. That is how the archives came to include the records of the Central Committee of Jews in Poland and documents from dissolved international organizations such as the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. The Institute’s researchers also focused on preserving traces of Jewish material presence in Poland over the centuries, resulting in a rich collection of photographs depicting Jewish cemeteries and synagogues, many of which no longer exist. It is a paradox of sorts that an institution envisioned as one of the pillars of the revival of Jewish life ended up primarily gathering evidence of the annihilation of an entire population.

This profound intertwining of social and political history with the history of an institution and its staff makes the exhibition 1945. Not the End, Not the Beginning truly unique for the Jewish Historical Institute. This exhibition also tells the story of the Institute itself. Today, when only a few thousand remain from the three-million-strong Jewish community in Poland, the Jewish Historical Institute serves as a guardian of their memory. Its collections, whose history dates back to the 16th century, recount the community’s past glory. They are tangible evidence of a world irretrievably lost and a supplement to the exhibition’s narrative. The Institute itself stands as a monument to postwar Jewish life in Poland.

Zuzanna Schnepf-Kołacz

“We, the Survivors.” About the 1945. Not the End, Not the Beginning exhibition

There is no fixed date for the end of the Second World War. For some, the War ended in 1944, when the Red Army entered the eastern territories of the Second Republic of Poland. For others, the War’s end was marked by the Soviet Army entering Warsaw on 17 January 1945 or entering the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp on 27 January 1945. The official, globally accepted date for the end of the Second World War is the capitulation of the Third Reich on 8 May 1945. There are many more dates, depending on personal experiences or the acquired point of view. The end of the War is referred to as “liberation,” or as the second occupation of Poland—this time, the Soviet occupation.

Different names, dates, locations—what did the end of the War mean really? What did it mean for those who had survived? We look at these issues from the perspective of Polish Jews—Holocaust survivors who survived in hideouts or using false identity, in concentration camps, with partisans in the woods, in the Berling and Anders armies. The largest group were those who survived the Holocaust in the Soviet Union. What did they feel and think at the very moment of liberation and over the course of the immediate postwar years? What was their situation and what opportunities were there, what decisions did they make, what drove them to reach these decisions? How did they go about rebuilding their lives after the catastrophe? Were they capable of rebuilding their lives?

For the people who had survived the Shoah, one of the first experiences after the end of the War was the void caused by the loss of their nearest and dearest, their homes, their communities—everything that could provide a sense of security, support and rootedness. It wasn’t until the end of the War that they truly comprehended the massive scale of the Nazi genocide. They were homeless in the most literal sense of the word—most often, they had nowhere to go, but also in the emotional sense—they had been deprived of their place on earth.

We had nowhere to live. At the same time, some irresistible impulse drove us back the ghetto. […]

In silence, overcome with pain, we looked around—every stone, every pile of rubble reminded us of the life we used to be part of. A fragment of a pipe sticking out here, a bent rod and a charred, burned tree there—that was all that remained of our world, bestially razed to the ground. My gaze rested on a torn, dirt-stained prayer book, on a rusty, chipped pot... Suddenly, I saw my family home again—my father and mother...¹

That is how Władka Meed (formerly Fajgiel Peltel Międzyrzecka) recalled her return to Warsaw in January 1945.

More or less at the same time, on 19 January 1945, in Końskie, 150 kilometers from Warsaw, Halina Zawadzka was standing on Kilińskiego Street, emotional about Soviet soldiers entering the town:

The Russians lifted the death sentence from me, restoring my right to live and my human dignity. I finally realized that I had survived the Germans, and this realization brought on the feeling of an intense, utter loneliness. I felt the long-suppressed pain of losing my entire world and the void in the hostile environment around me. I began to cry again.²

On that same day, Irena Grocher left the bunker on Mariańska Street in Warsaw. She noted in her diary:

At 10PM I stepped out of the bunker into the free world. I was overwhelmed by a strange sensation. I should be ecstatic, jumping with joy. We had suffered so much for such a long time to experience this very moment. […] Why am I not happy at all? I just feel as if my heart stopped beating. Yes, that’s the longing for those I have lost. What now? How do I navigate the future, alone in this unfamiliar world, with no money and no profession? An unfinished student, that’s who I am.³

Three accounts which describe the situation taking place almost at the same moment reveal a shared experience among the surviving women who, only upon liberation, fully grasped the magnitude of loss of their entire world. The question remains: did the War truly end for them at that moment?

For each person, the symbolic end of the occupation might have been linked to different events. For some, it was the sight of Polish or Soviet soldiers; for others, it was returning to their pre-war homes or hometowns, finding their loved ones, or revealing their Jewish identity to the Polish surroundings. However, many Jews did not experience these aspects of liberation—they had no one and nowhere to return to, and even if they did go back to their former places of residence, they often fled quickly, fearing for their safety, intimidated by local Poles. Frequently driven by fear, they clung to their false wartime identities. For them, the end of the War remained incomplete. Samuel Puterman wrote:

I did return, but no one rejoiced. With my heart beating fast, I walked […] to the spot where we had been separated a year earlier. […] I was greeted by the lingering smell of burning and the empty eye sockets of a burnt-out house. My heart stopped beating [...]; it tightened and shrank painfully, and it has remained that way to this day. The beautiful dream of freedom was only fulfilled in a tiny part. It ended in front of the house where you were supposed to wait for me.⁴

With the end of the War, a question arose about the reason for one’s own survival. Why did I survive while millions of Jews perished? The answer was not only found in the objective circumstances that made the survival possible. Just as often, Jewish testimonies cited a miracle, divine providence, fate, luck, or chance as the cause. The latter, understood as a combination of circumstances, was highlighted by Małgorzata Melchior as a factor that determined life and death during the Holocaust to a much greater extent than in more peaceful times.⁵

It seems that one could think similarly about the role of chance in the immediate postwar years. This was a period dense with events, with national borders shifting and vast segments of populations moving or being forcibly resettled. There was a shortage of food, medicines, and other essentials, while widespread demoralization, violence, and crime prevailed. At the same time, the new government was implementing its policies while simultaneously combating the anti-communist underground. Everything was happening very dynamically and often in unpredictable ways. Meanwhile, the wartime mechanisms that determined events or processes remained in effect. Belonging to a particular nationality or social group could still lead to discrimination, persecution, or even death.

In the exhibition, we present—much like on the face of a clock, with its hands marking the immediate postwar years—events, processes, and circumstances that had a decisive impact on the lives of survivors in that intense period. We talk about the void left by the Holocaust, the returns of Jews to their hometowns, the antisemitism they encountered there—from the reluctant bewilderment of “You’re alive?” to threats, antisemitic flyers, and even murders and pogroms. We show the initial commemorations and efforts to document the Holocaust, as well as the refusal of Polish society to accept Jewish mourning, including the destruction of monuments and the desecration of graves. We present the dilemmas faced by survivors and the arguments for either staying in Poland or leaving. We follow in the footsteps of those who decided to rebuild their lives in Poland (functioning within the Jewish community; involvement in communism; hiding their Jewish origins) as well as those who, often through illegal emigration organized by the Bricha organization, ended up in Displaced Persons camps and, subsequently, after often prolonged waiting and wandering, settled in various places around the globe.

The hands of the invisible clock did not always move in the same direction, nor did they always measure the passing months and years in a regular manner. The postwar period operated to its own rules. It was unpredictable, suddenly changing its course, stopping, or accelerating. We recount the life stories of specific individuals—more than a dozen protagonists of the exhibition—who strove to rebuild their lives in this unstable reality, not knowing what would come next. Did the survivors really have an opportunity to make real choices and shape their postwar destinies in a pre-set manner in such circumstances?

Decisions about how and where to rebuild one’s life often depended on broader historical processes and events as well as on the influence of the surrounding environment. They were largely a matter of chance and only in small part the result of individual, conscious choice. The years described in the exhibition were a time of decision-making. Among the most crucial decisions was whether to stay in Poland or to leave and settle abroad. While the choices made may not have been irreversible, they significantly shaped the subsequent life stories of the survivors and of the new generations of Polish Jews.

On the other hand, as Małgorzata Melchior points out, the liberation was for the survivors the moment they regained control over their lives and, to some extent, over the world that surrounded them. After the years of occupation, they were aware of the process of starting a new life and they wanted to be the ones to decide what this new life would be like. Dawid Fogelman described the end of the War as follows:

“That is when I became acutely aware that I am a newly born human being, that I finally regained my freedom and that I was about to start a new life.”⁶

A new life. Being reborn. The reconstruction, alongside the postwar void and ruins, is the second key theme of our exhibition’s narrative. This chapter in the postwar history of Polish Jews, largely unknown to the wider public, presents the survivors in an altogether new light.

They emerged from the Holocaust having experienced an enormous trauma, stripped of everything that is most important in life, and yet they were opposed to being perceived as victims. They wanted to be active and to assert their agency. They aimed to shape their lives independently, both on a personal level and within the Jewish community in Poland and beyond. They felt themselves to be part of an international Jewish community, with its culture, traditions, and history.

They seemed to echo the sentiment of the title of a well-known postwar film: “We, the survivors.⁷ We are here, and here we want to rebuild our lives.” It did not matter whether the rebuilding involved reorganizing their personal lives or manifested itself in their involvement in various Jewish institutions and organizations after the war. Each attempt to find their place on earth during those times required extraordinary strength and determination, despite the trauma, homelessness, the ruins of their former lives, and the hostility of their surroundings.

The photo we show in the exhibition symbolically illustrates the effort to reestablish one’s life after the Holocaust, building it anew on the ruins of the obliterated world, in an entirely different reality. The young man in the photograph is Ze’ev Shevach,⁸ a native of Białystok, active in the ‘Dror’⁹ Zionist movement and, from 1945, a member of the Bricha organization [Hebr.: ‘flight’].

Ze’ev Shevach among the ruins of the Łódź ghetto, 17 September 1945. Photo: Ghetto Fighters’ House

The photo was taken on 17 September 1945, on the eve of the Yom Kippur holiday. In the background, we see the ruins of the ghetto in Łódź, the city that in the immediate postwar years became the center of the reviving Jewish life in Poland, both with regard to institutions and to political, social, religious and cultural activity.

We do know that the majority of Ze’ev Shevach’s nearest and dearest perished in the Holocaust. Sixteen members of his family are listed in the register of Holocaust victims at the Yad Vashem Institute,¹⁰ including his father Henoch and his younger sister Szraga, two years his junior. Ze’ev himself remained in Vilna until 1941. Then, along with other Zionist activists, he travelled to Kazakhstan where he waited for the end of the War. He returned to Poland in the summer of 1945.¹¹ One of the organizers of the Dror kibbutz in Łódź, he became involved with Bricha, an organization that connected Jewish activists and volunteers from various countries. These were primarily young people who had survived the Holocaust and created a grassroots network assisting in the illegal or semi-legal emigration of Jews from Central and Eastern Europe to the British Mandate of Palestine.

There is something deeply moving in the image of a young man standing against the background of the ruins of the ghetto. He lost his family and his home in the Holocaust and yet he was actively helping other surviving Jews build their lives anew, in a different part of the world. Yom Kippur was approaching, one of the most important Jewish holidays which marks the end of Ten Days of Repentance. In Jewish religion, Yom Kippur is a Day of Reconciliation, a day in which God absolves people from their sins. It is, in some way, like the beginning of a new life.

Ze’ev Shevach soon left Poland. He had three children, he died in Israel in 1994.¹² Two years before his passing, he submitted a list of members of his family at the Yad Vashem Institute—sixteen Jewish men and women from Białystok who were murdered in the Holocaust.

¹ Władka Meed, Po obu stronach muru. Wspomnienia z warszawskiego getta, transl. Katarzyna Krenz (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo ‘Jaworski’, 2003), 302–305.

² Halina Zawadzka, Ucieczka z getta (Warszawa: Ośrodek KARTA, 2001), 161–162.

³ From the diary of Irena Grocher, Jewish Historical Institute Archive (AŻIH), ref. 102/103, [in:] Pamiętniki z getta warszawskiego. Fragmenty i regesty, ed. Michał Grynberg (Warszawa: PWN, 1988), 300.

⁴ From the diary of Samuel Puterman, AŻIH, ref. 302/27, [in:] Pamiętniki z getta warszawskiego…, 323.

⁵ Małgorzata Melchior quotes Michał Głowiński, [in:] Małgorzata Melchior, Zagłada a tożsamość. Polscy Żydzi ocaleni “na aryjskich papierach.” Analiza doświadczenia autobiograficznego (Warszawa: IFiS PAN, 2004), 310.

⁶ From the diary of Dawid Fogelman, AŻIH, ref. 302/35, [in:] Pamiętniki z getta warszawskiego…, 310.

⁷ Mir lebngeblibene [We, the Survivors], produced by: Film Unit of the Department of Culture and Propaganda at the Central Committee of Jews in Poland under the direction of Saul Goskind and Josef Goldberg, screenplay and production: Saul Goskind and Natan Gross; the film premiered in March 1948 in Poland.

⁸ Ze’ev Shevach was born in 1921 in Białystok. His family name before the war was most likely Szewach (this surname was relatively common among the Jews of Białystok). I haven’t come across any information regarding his pre-war first name, which in all likelihood was different too. Perhaps his first name was Wolf, which is the equivalent of the Hebrew name Ze’ev (meaning ‘wolf’).

⁹ The organization was a youth ‘offshoot’ of the Poalei Zion Right, which aimed to establish a socialist Jewish state in the Middle East.

¹⁰ Ze’ev reported the death of his father, sister, aunts, uncles and cousins, https://collections.yadvashem.org/en/names/search-results?page=1&s_submitter_fn_search_en=Zeev&t_submitter_fn_search_en=yvSynonym&s_submitter_ln_search_en=Shevakh&t_submitter_ln_search_en=yvSynonym (accessed: 5 August 2024).

¹¹ Levi Arieh Sarid, Ruin and Deliverance. Pioneer Movements in Poland throughout the Holocaust and during its Aftermath 1939–1949, volume I: The Road of Torment and Rebellion (Tel Aviv, 1997). I wish to thank Lior Inbar from the Archive of the Lochamei ha’getaot [Ghetto Fighters’ House] for providing information on Ze’ev Shevach and about this publication.

¹² I wish to thank Dan Barbur from the Genealogy Department at the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw for finding this information.