The photographer and writer Jason Francisco, an American who spends periods of each year in Poland and/or western Ukraine, has written a provocative (and evocative) text-and-photo essay about visiting Krakow’s old Jewish quarter, Kazimierz, in the winter and marking Hanukkah there. He called it Hanukkah in Holocaustland.
Francisco writes about contradictions and paradoxes, and provides insights on the evolution of both Jewish life and the broader concept of “Jewishness” there. These topics, of course, have been the subject of much writing in recent years, but Francisco has a particular eye — and supplements his writing with stunning images.
Among other things, he writes about the uses of Jewish built heritage in Kazimierz, in particular the evolving fate of a former prayer house that recently has been converted into a cafe — and another small prayer house that remains largely forgotten.
As we wrote in 2013, the Chewra Thilim Prayerhouse, located at the corner of Meiselsa and Bożego Ciała streets, was designed by the Polish-Jewish architect Nachman Kopald and built in 1896. The interior contains what Francisco describes as “the most important collection of Jewish religious wall paintings in Kazimierz, including floral scenes, animals, and landscapes of Jerusalem, Rachel’s Tomb and other locations from biblical Israel. Among the calligraphed texts still visible is a fragment from Proverbs, ‘The human soul is God’s candle.'”
Used by a dance ensemble, the “Krakowiacy Singing and Dancing Group,” after WW2, the building was restituted to the Krakow Jewish community (known as the Gmina) in 2001. Vacant since 2006 and unmaintained, it was rented out by the community as a commercial property — and in 2013, as we reported, the Gmina leased it to the “Mezcal” music club which, as Francisco writes, “installed a smoke machine and a neon-lit bar in front of the Aron Hakodesh, and held punk-themed raves several nights a week beneath the unprotected frescoes, interspersed occasionally with ballroom dancing nights.”
Mezcal closed down by early 2016. Francisco describes its current incarnation.
This winter, I found the building reopened as an upscale bar called the “Hevre Cafe” in a nod to its original name. The new bar was created by the owners of the popular Alchemia bar on Plac Nowy, a fabled drinking hole in Kazimierz, closely connected to the Jewish Culture Festival for the all-night jam sessions that renowned musicians who play the Festival also hold there. The décor of the new Hevre Cafe is fancier than Mezcal but the commercial use of the space is just as crass. The frescoes remain as vulnerable as ever.
What really shocked me was a new door to the street, and above it a new window, made quite literally by smashing through the Aron Hakodesh. Convinced that they needed a door on the Bożego Ciała side of the intersection, the Alchemia people obtained permission for the remodeling from the Gmina and from the Cultural Heritage Department of the city of Kraków, deliberately ignoring appeals by independent Kraków Jews to respect the building’s religious history. Now, in its current form, it is a place where locals and tourists can sip expensive drinks beneath Jewish ruins. It seems fair to say it is the most egregious example of exploitation of the neighborhood’s Jewish heritage, created in a dirty handshake between the official Jewish community and a local business that has been a partner to (and profited significantly from) the neighborhood’s revival.
(Francisco’s description is somewhat at odds with that of the guide and historian Tomasz Cebulski, who decried the creation of the new door, but reported that the frescoes were well preserved and displayed.)
Francisco writes about another former prayerhouse, which is unmarked and located in the interior courtyard of the building at no. 8 Mostowa, on the corner of Mostowa and Trynitarska.
The building stands out from every other building around it for its dilapidation. It still resembles the Kazimierz I first photographed during my first visit in the late 1990s, with a crumbling, exposed brick exterior, and a dank interior fitted with bare incandescent bulbs that seem constantly to struggle to illuminate anything. I first discovered the existence of the courtyard prayerhouse six years ago, and still know next to nothing about its history. I do know it was not restored to the Gmina along with other Jewish communal property in 1997, probably because it was privately owned. My guess is that the whole building was once heavily if not entirely Jewish, and the courtyard shul was built for the convenience of its residents.
I managed to see the inside of it on the day of the third candle, after my Polish teacher Piotr Słomian managed to call someone who knew someone who had the keys. Since the 1980s, it has functioned as a small glassblowing factory, making small tubes and vials for chemical and pharmaceutical use, still in use but irregularly so. Its interior seemed pickled in time, a perfect specimen of the communist era now grown dingy from neglect. No major changes to the space happened: wooden frames partitioned the space, whose high ceilings still seemed capable of a little majesty when encountered from the right angle. Lime-green soundproofing panels covered the walls, which might well contain synagogue paintings. The glass fittings for the original rounded windows were still in storage in the attic. The owners were patient with my curiosity, and curious themselves about the building’s Jewish origins, about which they knew nothing. Quite often I have encountered this attitude in talking to Poles about Jewish remnants in their lifeworlds. For many, the Jewish seems a little like ancient history, if a strangely recent variant of ancient history––a history that both fascinates and frightens them, a traumatic history both joined to and distinct from their own national trauma. A certain taboo-ridden mix of desire and aversion is a prominent legacy of the Holocaust in Poland.
Click here to read the full text-and-photo essay
Click here to see a gallery of wall paintings in the Chewra Thilim Prayerhouse
3 comments on “Jason Francisco: “Hanukkah in Holocaustland” (crosspost)”
Planning a visit to Poland next year, to trace my Jewish heritage. This website, & articles like this, are a treasured find. Thank you.
Glad you found us!
written in a style like Isaac Babels short narratives e.g. like “Mosaic”.
all you need to know about the Jewishness over there
appreciate such kind of writing !