cineSOURCE magazine

The Benefits of Commemoration
by Doniphan Blair

Irena places a family photo on the monument at the mass grave in southern Poland containing her family, with her Uncle Nick and Cousin Stefan. photo: D. Blair

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I COULDN'T STOP CRYING, ALMOST
since I arrived in Mszana Dolna, a resort town of 7,000 in the scenic foothills of southern Poland’s Carpathians Mountains, probably more tears than I had shed in the entire last 20 years. Not only is Mszana Dolna where my grandfather Mendel, grandmother Miriam, aunt Irena and uncle Salek Rotkopf were murdered by the Nazis, it is the site of an ambitious attempt to memorialize, remember and revive Polish Jewish history.

Called Sztetl Mszana Dolna (see Facebook page here), the project is led by Urszula Antosz-Rekucka, a theologian, high school ethics teacher and town resident, and supported by her daughter Rachela, son Jakub, and husband Mark but also the town’s mayor, Anna Pękała, her staff— notably the tireless, always smiling Agnuska—and other Mszanians, as well as some Polish NGOs.

My family—my brother Nick, daughter Irena, nephew Stefan and niece Willa—and I decided to travel to Mszana after my mother, Tonia Rotkopf Blair, died last December 9th. We wanted to spread her ashes on her family’s mass grave but also be there on August 19th, just as we were in 1997 and 2005, to commemorate the killing of almost 900 people on that day in 1942.

We hadn't seen anyone at the site before, but this August 19th, which was a Friday, there was a crowd: Urszula, her daughter, who was translating, her husband, Mayor Pękała, and a few others, including a young Sztetl Mszana Dolna participant named Tomasz, I believe. He told my daughter he may have some Jewish roots and me that he was interested in art and was doing a lot of drawings.

That so many people showed up was no surprise. We had contacted them and told them we were coming. But it was also the 80th anniversary of the slaughter and the first meet-and-greet of an ambitious, multifaceted two-day event, which Urszula and her team had organized. It would start two days later, on Sunday, so as not to interfere with the Jewish Sabbath.

"As soon as I saw Urszula, I started crying," my brother told me.

The memorial for almost 900 people in Mszana Dolna, Poland, that the Blair family has visited since 1980, recently rebuilt by Sztetl Mszana Dolna. photo: D. Blair

Actually, we had only just found out about Urszula and the Sztelt project from Nick’s old friend John Glenn. Before driving up from Hungary with his new Hungarian wife, Judit, to chauffeur us around in his van, he had wisely thought to google “Mszana Dolna” and found Urszula’s page. “The pre-war Mszana Dolna was a typical shtetl where both Christians and Jews lived,” she writes in its heading, “We want to save the memory of it. Help me if you know anything.”

After Nick messaged her on August 18th, she responded almost immediately.

Although I was not as effected as my brother, initially, I was astounded to see the memorial, set in a small bosque on a picturesque hill two miles from town. Where there had been no sign and a dirt path into the small ravine, there was now a detailed sign at the road, a row of freshly planted trees, and a wide, 150-foot-long, brick walkway. Moreover, the memorial, built in 1946 by Jakub Weissberger, who had escaped to the east but whose entire family was slaughtered there, looked refurbished. In fact, it had been completely rebuilt the year before in an exact replica of Weissberger's original design.

“In memory of 881 Jews from the lower Mszana neighborhood murdered by Hitler’s thugs on August 19th, 1942,” Weissberger had the masons inscribe it, “Whose last words are the silence of this place.”

After our meeting at the memorial, which is called Pańskie, Polish for "our Lord's meadow," Uzrsula led us down the hill about a mile to the old Jewish cemetery. There they had built a brand new memorial honoring the four "small" mass graves geolocated by experts. Soon after our arrival, my brother told me that he felt our grandfather must be buried there. We know from a list provided to us by an older mayor of Mszana that Grandfather Mendel died before the August 19th, 1942 massacre, either of natural causes or, for some infraction or other, what can be called "bulletosis."

After the old Jewish cemetery, Urszula led us into town, behind a factory, to a third mass grave, interred with 22 Jewish youth. They had acquired a couple of guns, were planning an attack, and were probably ratted out.

Actually, we had already visited the Jewish graveyard and rebel's mass grave in 1997, while filming “Our Holocaust Vacation”, our documentary about our mother and our family, which played on American public television. We also met the mayor back then, having gone to the mayor’s office unannounced, cameras blazing. The mayor at that time, Antoni Rog, was undaunted. He calmly welcomed us in and started recounting the town's history, and opening its archives. He knew a lot about its Jewish aspect. Ultimately, he took a half a day off to show us around the graves, train yards and other sites related to the Holocaust in Mszana.

The Blair family, (lf-rt) Stefan, Willa, Nicholas, Doniphan and Irena, at the new memorial built by Sztetl Mszana Dolna at the old Jewish graveyard, where forebear Mendel Rotkopf is probably buried. photo: Kinga McInerney

Back then, the rebel memorial was in a thicket behind a factory, completely overgrown. Now the brush has been cleared and the memorial cleaned, but the factory remained, and the owner didn’t like people parking in his lot.

Generally speaking, however, the Mszanians have been extremely welcoming to my family—post-war, of course. In addition to Mayor Rog, there was Jadwiga, the woman who helped my mother and my father, Vachel, when they came the first time, in December 1980. They were sleuthing the lead of the postcard my mother received from her family in 1941—many postal services still operated during the war—which was postmarked Mszana Dolna. Jadwiga took them through the fields to the memorial and, when my mother started to cry, embraced her.

Jadwiga also invited them for a meal at her house, a quarter mile away, and did the same when they returned in 1997, along with me, my brother and his wife, Tania. We kept our cameras in their cases then, having decided to let my mother enjoy a quite chat in Polish with Jadwiga.

That was also when, walking back up the dirt path from the memorial, my father told me, “This is the last time I will be coming here. But I want to be cremated and my ashes brought here,” which we did in 2005 and why we decided to follow suit with my mother.

Although my father was an Ohio-born Protestant, he developed a strong affinity for his Jewish in-laws and their culture. His statements at the mass grave, notably “It’s a disgrace to civilization,” which we did film, are some of the more moving moments of “Our Holocaust Vacation”. When he died, we found his subway reading in his hand bag: Primo Levi’s “Survival in Auschwitz”.

I assumed I had Jadwiga’s last name and address in my address book, but unfortunately I didn’t. Before leaving New York, I should have looked through my mother’s address book, although we had trouble enough remembering her ashes and the required death certificate.

Somewhere between Pańskie and the Jewish graveyard, Urszula invited us to attend the two-day commemoration, which we were just then learning about. Alas, the rest of my family had a pretty tight itinerary, on route to Hungary, the birthplace of my brother’s mother-in-law and where my niece and daughter were flying back to America in four days. But I accepted. In fact, it was all expenses paid, I was amazed to find out, including meals and a room in the lovely hotel and spa Janda. Mszana is known for its mineral baths, massages and hiking.

Guests and onlookers at the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the mass grave in Mszana Dolna. photo: D. Blair

After meeting with Urszula, her family and the mayor, and our whirlwind tour, it was after five, and we hadn’t had lunch. They directed us to Mszana’s premier modern restaurant, The Perla, replete with a “veggie burger,” which Irena had: grilled vegetables on an organic bun with sweet potato fries. "Delicious," she said.

Then we headed back up to Pańskie and some serious sobbing.

Walking down the new brick path, Nick and Willa each carried a dirt-filled pot with the wild-looking flowers Irena found, while we were eating at the Perla, and thought Tonia would like. Although she also used Google Translate, Irena has some basic Polish, a famously difficult language, which she started learning in 1997, when she was 16 and hanging out on the streets of Lodz with the Polish kids.

By the time I took out my guitar and started singing “Si Mi Quieres Escribir”, the Spanish Civil War love song that Tonia and Vachel courted each other with, we were all crying. I was bawling so hard, the usually-reserved Stefan even came over from his father’s side to give me a hug.

After singing some of my mother’s favorite Yiddish and Spanish tunes and one Beatles song, “Help”, I read the long chapter about her family, “Miriam and Mendel”, from her book, “Love at the End of the World”, which was published when she was 95 and is available through all major bookstores. Just as when I read her chapter “Auschwitz” in the back of Birkenau death camp, her precise, poignant words conjured her spirit. This time her words also brought to life her family, noted John, who was sitting with Judit on a tree stump to one side of the grave.

By then the sun had set, and it was time to spread Tonia’s ashes, speak our piece, and do our family’s traditional meditation, a long “om.” Although I neglected to prepare, I decided to say how, no matter how difficult dealing with the Holocaust is, it was still easier than not dealing with it, largely addressing my nephew and niece, 23 and 21 respectively. Having visited Auschwitz two days earlier, Stefan and Willa were embarking on the noble quest of tackling that horrific history, as I could see be their many questions.

As tortuous as it may be, we can learn to move beyond the hate, nightmares and recrimination to a modicum of understanding. The love and beauty our family—as well as individuals across the entirety of humanity, including on the opposing side—have produced can sustain us through the darkest degenerations of humanity. In her moving, poetic statement, Irena said something similar.

People walking to the old Jewish cemetery in Mszana Dolna for the unveiling of the new memorial. photo: D. Blair

In fact, it was Miriam and Mendel’s love and my mother’s determination to build on it that led her to become the youngest nurse in the Lodz ghetto and work diligently, with almost no medicine and little food, to help heal. It also inspired her to explore romance and relationships with young men (some kissing but otherwise chaste) in the middle of history’s most massive outpouring of hate and death, including with a German pilot in the airplane factory in Freiberg, Germany. Despite the terrible trauma of losing her family and enduring Auschwitz and five and half years of total, genocidal war, that spirit of love, romance and hope somehow sustained her.

As she wrote in “Miriam and Mendel”, and I read through a blur of tears in the waning light: “My parents provided all they could but especially their ideas and their love. Although their names and identities will eventually disappear, their values will remain in my children and their children.”

As it happens, however, their names and identities will not disappear, due to the efforts of the Sztetl Mszana Dolna project. In fact, Urszula made a point of mentioning Miriam and Mendel and their experience, which she had only just learned of, as she did with the forebears of all the descendants in attendance, during the two days of commemorations, events and dinners.

It started on Sunday with a trip to the Jewish cemetery. I walked the mile and a half from town, carrying another pot of wild flowers to honor what we now believe is the grave of my grandfather. A Polish scholar living in Hamburg, where I assume she is married to a German, gave a dissertation on the cemetery, which has headstones dating back to the 17th century. She even translated some inscriptions from the Hebrew, which she reads but can not speak.

On the way back to town, I rode with the talkative Polish woman we met on Friday at the graveyard, where she was painting enamel black the cemetery fence in preparation for the event. Named Kinga, after the 13th century Polish queen who renounced royalty to become a good Samaritan nun, her last name is McInerney, since her husband is Irish—yet more intermarrying, although they're both mathematicians.

Kinga hails from an upper-class Polish family, which lost everything except a vacation home in Mszana, due to their obsession with art and painting. A devout but modern Catholic, who can’t abide the literalists, Kinga is fascinated with the stories of the Old Testament.

To fortify ourselves against the inclement weather, which was producing a light rain, we dipped into a sweet shop with her husband and two cute, precocious daughters. Then we went to the teach-in part of the Sztetl Mszana Dolna program. Held in Mszana’s open air marketplace by the river, there were kids' activities, like learning to write Hebrew letters, and adult explorations, like Urszula’s recounting of Mszana’s history.

Jakub Antosz-Rekucka translates for his mother, Urszula (lf), and a Polish scholar on Jewish culture at the old Jewish cemetery. photo: D. Blair

“Mszana was co-created by Jews, who were a quarter of the population, some figuring among the community’s leaders,” she said, or something in that vein, a few times over the course of the weekend.

The market event climaxed with a performance of an excellent Klezmer band, which consisted of a woman singer/violinist and an accordionist and bassist. They did “Tumbalaliaka” and “Bei Mir Bist Du Schön”, two songs Tonia and I used to sing together, although not with their jazzy overtones.

Afterwards, we repaired to Mszana’s famous “wine cellar” restaurant, a welcome relief since the temperature had dropped, and I was in shorts. Ironically, that was where we ate after filming in Pańskie in ’97 and found their large, fancy chairs funny.

The dinner was for about 50, including the musicians, the organizers and the descendants of the victims: Hanna, granddaughter of Jakub Weissberger, who built the original memorial, Saul, who recited the Kaddish, and his wife Denise from Florida, Svi and his wife and her two sisters from Israel, and others. As is Urszula’s modus operandi, she thanked everyone by name, cited a few details about their forbears and expressed preternatural warmth.

The actual commemoration was the next day. Since it started at 3:00, I had time see Antoni Rog, the ex-mayor, and his son Jakub. We met at the Perla, over another excellent meal. Rog looked great, after some shoulder surgery, although he still smoked, which remains popular in Poland. Now retired, he keeps busy taking care of his grandson, building him an elaborate play structure, but also helping resettle some of the 200 Ukrainian refugees housed in Mszana.

“Although we have taken in almost three million refugees,” he told me, Jakub translating, “We don’t have any refugee camps. They are mostly with families.” He also gave me some pessimistic prognostications on the war.

The commemoration at Pańskie was attended by well over 100 people, including over a dozen of the victim's descendants, three rabbis, two Hasidic brothers from the U.S. and one from Israel, the German consulate in Cracow, many other dignitaries, and dozens of interested Poles from the community. It featured the Israeli rabbi’s sonorous recitation of the Kaddish and an honor guard of Polish scouts, boys and girls.

It continued at the Jewish cemetery with the unveiling of the new monument, the rabbi doing “Psalm 23”, one of my favorites, and an open mic. I took the opportunity to thank the generosity and vision of Urszula and the other Mszanians, whom I noted had always treated my family well. As we were leaving the cemetery, Urszula grabbed my hand and held it as we walked back to the car, a silent but solid and deeply appreciated expression of solidarity and affection.

POlish kids learn how to write Hebrew at a teach-in at the town's open air market that included a history lecture and a Klezmir band. photo: D. Blair

Later that evening, at the group dinner at the Mayor’s office, Urszula delivered an hour plus lecture, worthy of a PhD dissertation, on the Jews in Mszana. She went into detail on many of the families and figures, like Jakub Weisberger, who built the memorial and whose granddaughter Hanna was in attendance.

“He build the memorial,” Hanna had told me earlier, “so the Poles couldn’t say they did it, which is good—unless they were like Urszula,” she added.

Urszula also told the story of a Jewish man who moved to Mszana, fell in love with a Christian woman and married her, even though his family disowned him. Then, during the war, when it became apparent what was afoot, he convinced a gentile friend in Cracow to claim he had an affair with his wife, and write a letter to that effect, which would prove to the Nazis their daughter was not genetically Jewish.

The theme of deep intimate relations between Jews and gentiles, and how it formed Mszana, was one Urszula kept repeating. Apparently, it was something she had to work hard to uncover, as it was only recently Mszanians started to open up about it. Although Mayor Rog showed us in ’97 a book written by a Mszanian by hand about the war years, Urszula’s quest for living testimony had to wait until one elderly man began talking. Then others joined in.

Having become interested in Judaism and Jewish culture while studying theology at Cracow’s famed Jagiellonian University, Urszula hit upon her bold historical project around 2000.

Another amazing story she told concerned Mszana’s Catholic pastor, Father Stabrawa. Apparently, he had been somewhat antisemitic before the war, caught up in that evil spirit, which seized Poland in the 1930s, after Marshal Piłsudski, who was a dictator of sorts but friendly to the Jews, faded from power.

Once the war started, however, Stabrawa reconsidered his views and became friends with the rabbi of the synagogue across Mszana’s main square from his church. Indeed, his feelings and actions advanced so far, he was arrested and deported to Auschwitz, about 60 miles away. He was executed on August 17, 1942, two days before the rabbi and his congregation were mass murdered at Pańskie.

I cracked a tear as Urszula related that story, which highlighted both her interest in Jew-gentile connections and her fearlessness in addressing Polish malfeasance, when she noted Stabrawa had been an antisemite. As it happened, I was in Auschwitz on August 17th and saw some priests carrying flowers to honor Stabrawa.

Urszula Antosz-Rekucka speaks with Hanna the granddaughter of Jakub Weissberger, who built the first memorial for the mass grave in 1946. photo: D. Blair

It is the redemptive journey through harsh opposition or radical change that really tugs the heart, rather than the steady path to sainthood. Indeed, the only time my mother cried during the filming of “Our Holocaust Vacation” was when she recalled her chaste but romantic interaction with the German pilot. He brought her silk stockings, no less! Although she really needed a loaf of bread, his gift reminded her that romance can bridge the impossible divide, which feeds the soul.

Since Urszula does not speak fluent English, her torrent of words were translated by her daughter Rachela but mostly by her son Jakub, a herculean task he enacted with humility, grace and passion. Indeed, I got to know Jakub in those three days, starting with sitting next to him at the first dinner on Saturday night. That was when he explained the noise from upstairs at the restaurant was a Polish wedding, which I snuck up to see for myself. It included blasting music, strobe lights, wild dancing and serious drinking.

Jakub started helping Urszula in his teens, about 15 years ago. Now he is taking his PhD at the 650-year-old Jagiellonian University, which his sister and father as well as mother attended. His dissertation: How Polish singers misinterpret Bob Dylan’s lyrics when singing his songs, which are popular there.

He also works for a medical journal specializing in the issues surrounding Auschwitz. In the early 1960s, it was the first to publish the Jagiellonian researchers who identified “survivor trauma.” American psychologists only followed in 1964.

At the commemoration at Pańskie, between bouts of translation, Jakub whipped out an accordion and played a haunting melody of his own composition. In the course of our time together, we had fascinating discussions about his mother, the Holocaust, current Polish politics, the Polish psyche, Dylan and Witold Gombrowicz (my favorite Polish author), often accompanied by Justina, his also very interesting and beautiful fiancée.

Doniphan with Antoni Rog, the old mayor of Mszana who befriended the family when they were making their movie 'Our Holocaust Vacation' in 1997, who now works placing Ukrainian refugees around Mszana. photo: Jakub Rog

What a weekend, from copious tears and transcendent truths to feelings of kinship and community and, perhaps most important, how to wield the redemptive power of commemoration. One week later, I am only beginning to absorb it, which is fortuitous for the next leg of my journey.

On Wednesday August 24th, I entered Ukraine.

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached .

Posted on Aug 27, 2022 - 03:32 AM