In Oświęcim, the town in southern Poland where the Nazis built the Auschwitz death camp, a memorial park has been opened on the site of the destroyed Great Synagogue to honor the town’s once-thriving pre-WW2 Jewish community.
The Great Synagogue Memorial Park was inaugurated with a concert and candlelit ceremony November 28 — 80 years after the Nazis occupiers burned it down on November 29, 1939. The site was long an empty lot, with in recent years signage describing the synagogue. Oświęcim’s mayor, around 200 local citizens, and some 50 descendants of Oświęcim Jews attended the dedication.
The park is a project of the Auschwitz Jewish Center (AJC), a prayer and educational center established in 2000 that includes a museum dedicated to the Jewish history of the town, which was known in Yiddish as Oshpitzin and whose population before the Holocaust was more than half Jewish.
The Park project was supported by the town of Oświęcim as well as institutional and private donors from Poland and elsewhere.
The park “was yet another step in commemorating the Jewish heritage of Oshpitzin, the Jewish community which existed in the town known for being next to the site of Auschwitz,” AJC Director Tomasz Kuncewicz told JHE.
We aim at serving as a model of how to preserve the memory of a destroyed Jewish community. We created a simple, minimalist, green and welcoming space which on one hand commemorates the tragic history and on the other is a beautiful pocket park in the center of the town.
The AJC is housed in a complex that includes the restored Chevra Lomdei Mishnayot Synagogue, Oświęcim’s only surviving synagogue, which for decades after WW2 had been used as carpet warehouse.
The Memorial Park includes the demarcated outline of the footprint of the destroyed synagogue, within it a path made out of stone slabs, and several benches. (Click the arrow below to see pictures of the design.)
Archaeological excavations in 2004 discovered candlesticks and other material from the synagogue, including the Eternal Light (Ner Tamid), which are now displayed in the AJC’s Museum.
The Memorial Park includes a replica of the candelabra as well as a triangular structure containing historic photographs of the synagogue.
In his speech at the dedication of the Memorial Park, AJC Director Kuncewicz said that in today’s world we must learn from the past.
He noted that the destruction of the Great Synagogue in Oswiecim took place just one year after the Kristallnacht pogrom in November 1938 provided a prelude to the Holocaust. And he warned against increasing hatred, racism and politically exploited polarization in today’s world.
The November pogrom in Germany was the result of a campaign of hatred, spreading prejudice and superstitions against the minority, which constituted less than 1% of the society. They were portrayed by the political propaganda of the time as the main enemy of the German nation.
Today, unfortunately, similar mechanisms are again politically exploited, whether against refugees or more recently against LGBT Poles. The media, including even public ones, promote pseudoscientific theories, superstitions and prejudice against our fellow citizens and neighbors.
Remembering the history of 80 years ago only makes sense if today we do not look at hatred passively, otherwise we better forget.
Oshpitzin Facebook Page with more pictures
Download full speech by Tomasz Kuncewicz
Read a Times of Israel article about the Memorial project
8 comments on “Poland: Memorial park at site of destroyed Great Synagogue dedicated in Oświęcim, the town where the Nazis built Auschwitz”
My grandmother, Míriam Wolf, maiden name Silbiger, daughter of Yehudah Silbiger, lived just 2 doors away from the great synagogue. Her father Yehudah was the cantor on the high holy days in the great synagogue, as well as cantor all year round in the chevrah lomdei Mishnayos shul.
On my grandfather’s side, Henech Wolf, he is a descendant of the first rabbi of Oshpitzin, rabbi Nosson Aharon Wolf.
The excavation mentioned in the article was initiated and conducted for a documentary film called “A Treasure in Auschwitz”, produced in 2004. The remnants found were part of this excavation done by Yariv Nornberg and Yahaly Gat, both from Israel.
Archaeologists from the University in Torun were also involved
My name is Elka Elshtein. My mother who just passed away was born in Oscwecim in 1929. She lived there with her 3 siblings. Her name was Leah Silbiger (Bochner) on her mother’s side. Her brothers were Yankel and Avrum and sister Gitel (Gusta). I am lookin for survivors of the family
My mother (born 1912 in Oswiecim) was as well a Silbiger – Bilha Silbiger – and she lived together with 7 siblings. She left for Cracow 1926. During the war she was in SSSR, come back to Poland after the war and left 1969 for Sweden.
I’d visited Auschwitz in 1982 – in the midst of Martial Law in Poland (long story) – but my husband hadn’t been there and I wanted to return. We went there 4 1/2 years ago; I’d arranged for a private tour guide (someone who’s employed as a guide at Auschwitz-Birkenau) via the Auschwitz Jewish Center (at the Museum of Jewish Heritage here in NYC), since we didn’t want to be part of a large tour. I *highly* recommend doing that; there were *hordes* of large tours (even on a weekday in early May) and we were the only people with a private guide. Summer is even worse, so plan accordingly – and if in fact you want to hire a private guide, you need to arrange it 2-3 months in advance (the cost for the two of us was equivalent to $65 [payable when you make the reservation] and the tour lasted for 3 hours, including – at our prior request – a visit to Birkenau). Our guide was very pleasant and extremely informative.
Additionally, we’d also arranged – via the AJC in NYC – for a tour of the AJC in Oswiecim and for an (all-day) driver. The driver picked us up at our hotel (in Krakow) early that morning and brought us back early that evening (the AJC doesn’t charge for those arrangements, but they gratefully accept donations). Further, the woman at the (NYC) AJC also arranged for us to have lunch after the tour – at Cafe Bergson (which is immediately adjacent to the AJC in Oswiecim, and it’s inside what was formerly the house of the last remaining Jewish resident of the town. His family donated the house to the AJC after his death, and a fundraising campaign enabled extensive renovations). The lunch was *delicious*, it cost us only 25 PLN/each, and the young woman working at the cafe was very friendly.
Our tour guide from the AJC was a very well-informed and very enthusiastic young man (he was spending a year doing that in lieu of military service) and the cost was only 10 PLN per person (we’d also arranged in advance to have him take us [with our driver] to the [small] Jewish cemetery). Afterwards we met the (very nice) director of the AJC and we asked what was an appropriate amount to tip the guide (20 PLN).
In my second paragraph above, I meant to say that the AJC doesn’t charge for *making* those arrangements (certainly there was a charge for the [all-day] driver ).
80 years is no time, shortly the chidren of today will regard the horror of WW2 as just another event in history if we are not careful so the opening of this park is a step in the right direction but education on its own is not sufficient, we cannot stand by and ignore the increasing rise of anti semitic literature and publications and pretend that it will go away, if we do that we have learned nothing!