Of Klezmers and Conciliation.(14th annual Jewish Culture Festival in Cracow, Poland)

Byline: Belinda Cooper

When I first visited Kazimierz, the former Jewish ghetto of Cracow, it felt empty. Its 60,000 Jews had perished in Nazi concentration camps and, even in 1985, few Poles had moved in. The place was an eerie void. My father pointed out the building he'd lived in as a poor student in the 1930s; it was a burned-out shell. Others stood deserted but for a handful of squatters and alcoholics. In front of the main synagogue on Szeroka Street, one small gallery sold Jewish-themed art to the occasional tourist. The flourishing culture of Jewish Poland was gone and, it seemed, all but forgotten.

Now Cracow is hosting its 14th annual Jewish Culture Festival, and everything's changed. I remember the still-subversive feel of the first one I attended, in early 1990 just after the fall of communism. Its non-Jewish organizers spoke movingly about the importance of rediscovering Poland's Jewish heritage--something of an official secret under the communists. Young Cracovians danced to klezmers and listened to talks on Jewish subjects. Well intentioned as it was, watching non-Jews sing Yiddish music on what, in effect, was a vast Jewish graveyard left a sad aftertaste. The anti-Semitic graffiti that soon appeared added to the gloom.

Only a few years later, the strange phenomenon of the "virtual Jew" was in full swing: Jewish culture without Jews. The Ariel gallery had become a cafe in which Polish waiters donned yarmulkes and "Jewish fish" graced the menu. Steven Spielberg's movie "Schindler's List" had put Kazimierz on the tourist map. A new Jewish bookshop featured "Schindler's List" tours. Vendors sold souvenir carvings of Hasidic Jews, side by side with wooden Madonnas and Christs. A modern Center for Jewish Culture appeared on the market ...