{"id":30148,"date":"2024-06-11T11:26:20","date_gmt":"2024-06-11T09:26:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/austeria.pl\/?post_type=product&p=30148"},"modified":"2024-10-18T10:18:16","modified_gmt":"2024-10-18T08:18:16","slug":"jewish-cracow-legends-and-people","status":"publish","type":"product","link":"https:\/\/austeria.pl\/en\/produkt\/jewish-cracow-legends-and-people\/","title":{"rendered":"Jewish Cracow. Legends and people"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the turn of the last century and this \u2013 and the last millennium and this (according to the non-Jewish calendar, of course) \u2013 I wrote the content and gathered the illustrations for a book that I wanted to call\u00a0Jewish Krak\u00f3w. History \u2013 legends\u00a0\u2013 people\u00a0\u2013 places<\/i>. Circumstances at the time prevented me from having that book published, but the text of this book is largely based on the materials I prepared for it.<\/span><\/p>\n

The void left by the Jews who were murdered in Poland during World War II or emigrated shortly afterwards is particularly palpable in the Krak\u00f3w district of Kazimierz. The former Jewish quarter is always teeming with people, but essentially it is empty; its former residents are gone, not even their descendants are still here. And with them, the narrative that gave their lives meaning also evaporated.<\/span><\/p>\n

Most tourists interested in Poland\u2019s Jewish past visit three places: O\u015bwi\u0119cim, Warsaw and\u00a0Krak\u00f3w. O\u015bwi\u0119cim is the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, aside from Jerusalem the place that has branded the Jewish consciousness more than any other. Warsaw is the ghetto, seen from the angle of the uprising (which in this perspective is the founding myth of the Israeli army and the State of Israel itself).<\/span><\/p>\n

And\u00a0Krak\u00f3w? For centuries Jewish Krak\u00f3w was one of the most important cities in the Jewish world. Home to some of Judaism\u2019s most brilliant erudite minds, it was here, too, that the Ashkenazi identity \u2013 the identity of the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe \u2013 was formed. And yet Jewish Krak\u00f3w sadly has no identity in most people\u2019s consciousness. It is composed of empty houses, streets and squares with no narrative. There is a widespread conviction that the single greatest achievement of Krak\u00f3w\u2019s Jews in their more than 800-year history was graciously allowing themselves to be rescued by Oskar Schindler. And for this very reason, all that many people in the world know about Krak\u00f3w is that it is a town, somewhere near Auschwitz and a salt mine, where the Good German Oskar Schindler saved some Jews (and where there are lots of bars and pubs for a good time).<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Henryk Halkowski<\/strong>\u00a0(Cwi Hersz) was born in Krak\u00f3w on 27 December 1951. His father came from \u0141\u00f3d\u017a and his mother from Vienna. One of his grandfathers was called Hersch Baruch Engelberg, and the other Icchak Hersz \u2013 Henryk (Hersz) bore his name in memory of both grandfathers. Henryk was a qualified architect, philosopher, and historian. He was an unparalleled expert on the history of the Polish Jews, and in particular the Jews of Krak\u00f3w and the Krak\u00f3w district of Kazimierz. For years he was active in the Social and Cultural Society of Jews in Poland, and in the life of the Jewish community in Krak\u00f3w. He was a journalist, translator, the co-founder and editor of the Austeria publishing house, a fantastic tour guide around Krak\u00f3w, and above all a vociferous defender of the true image of Poland\u2019s Jewish heritage. In his publications and public appearances he strove to restore the Jews of Krak\u00f3w to their rightful place in history, for though that history stretched back over 700 years, and\u00a0Krak\u00f3w was for centuries the intellectual capital of the Jewish world, nowadays, in many people\u2019s eyes the whole heritage of Krak\u00f3w\u2019s Jews is fading into oblivion, eclipsed by the fact of the Holocaust.<\/span><\/h5>\n
It was Henryk\u2019s unfulfilled dream that an Ashkenazi Institute be founded in Krak\u00f3w, a museum and research centre that would bring both Krak\u00f3w residents and guests from elsewhere to a realization of the vast part of the Ashkenazi Jewish culture that is derived from and rooted here in Krak\u00f3w.<\/span><\/h5>\n
Henryk never wanted to leave his home city; he passed up a study grant to New York; he even tried to live in Israel, but came back after a year, because he could not imagine life without Krak\u00f3w.<\/span><\/h5>\n
He published critical but humorous essays on contemporary Jewish life. He published collections of legends from the history of Krak\u00f3w\u2019s Jews, he translated the works of Abraham Joshua Heschel, the great Jewish philosopher, and he brought that eminent figure onto the radar of the Jewish reader. In his last years he worked on his magnum opus: a new study of the tales of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov that instigated a polemic with existing works on this subject. He always said that after that book he would retire: \u2018If we live to see that, which I doubt.\u2019<\/span><\/h5>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":30138,"template":"","meta":[],"product_cat":[1567],"product_tag":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/austeria.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product\/30148"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/austeria.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/austeria.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/product"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/austeria.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/austeria.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"product_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/austeria.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_cat?post=30148"},{"taxonomy":"product_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/austeria.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_tag?post=30148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}