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Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2000
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First Person
The Persistence of Memory
Joachim Russek, director of the Judaica Foundation, Poland
Joachim Russek is the director of the Judaica Foundation in the Kazimierz section of Krakow. The foundation was established in 1993 to rediscover and preserve the Jewish contribution to Polish cultural life that had existed for 700 years and ended in 1939.
 "It's a glorious history of a flourishing Jewish community which was present here in Krakow for hundreds of years and was wiped out in World War II. In 1939 there were approximately 68,000 Jews [in Krakow], most of them living in Kazimierz. In 1945 there were just 3,000 Krakovian Jews left, and 95% of them vanished in the Holocaust. After the war, Kazimierz became very neglected and forgotten.
The process of the revival started really in the second half of the 1970s. One reason for this was a dissatisfaction with the experiments of the time in the Polish People's Republic to build 'socialism with a human face.' It didn't work. Usually in such a situation, the Poles escape into history. When reality is grey and the future is dark, the only bright part is history. Jewish themes also appeared in films and books at this time, and for the younger generation it was a revelation to realize that there was a picturesque reality not so long ago that totally disappeared.
In the early 1980s, during the first Solidarity period when people were formulating the idea of new Poland, it was obvious that among many important issues there was a need to reevaluate certain chapters of our contemporary history. Among these black spots was the question of Polish-Jewish relations ... Our center ... is a civic initiative. Most of us involved are non-Jews, and the notion to become part of it was based on civic virtues: a group of citizens decided to take care of a little bit of forgotten cultural and historical heritage that was produced by another group of fellow citizens from a different ethnic and religious background.
What we are trying to do is not to reestablish Jewish culture, because we are not qualified to do so. Everything deals with memory. It teaches us that there is not one memory, there are not two memories. If you look deeper you will discover endless memories, and we try to learn to live with them. We try to protect what can be protected since so much has been lost from Jewish cultural heritage. It is an element of the Polish cultural landscape. If the Jewish heritage were to disappear from the scene totally, it would be as much a loss for Poles as for Jews.
We try to protect the memory of the Jewish presence on Polish soil through the centuries, because this is also an element that allows us to define our identity. In the 16th century — the golden age of Polish history, when Poland was a world power — ethnic Poles constituted a numerical minority. There were many other nationalities and they were subjects of the Polish crown. The Polish kingdom was flourishing. It is important as a counterbalance to those who think that Poland should be exclusively for Poles, because this sort of hyper-ethnocentrism can be dangerous. What we are trying to do is make a small but important contribution in establishing an open and civic society. I am deeply convinced that without an open and civic society the dream of new Poland never will become reality."
PHOTO: CHRIS NIEDENTHAL for TIME
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