Over sixty years after the Holocaust, Poland is building a Museum of the History of Polish Jews. Yesterday, amidst pomp, ceremony, and media coverage, the cornerstone for the museum (which is expected to open in 2011) was laid. The museum commemorates the rich Jewish heritage of the past, the pious Jews whose blood soaked the very earth upon which the museum will stand. American and Israeli cantors sang songs and important people made speeches.
But what of the future? Dovid and I decided to attend the event, tefillin in tow. What better way is there to memorialize our ancestors than with the tefillin which they faithfully wore as they prayed to G‑d during the pogroms throughout the ages and during the darkest days in the Warsaw Ghetto?
In the sunny square overshadowed by the towering monument to those who died in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, we met many elderly Jews who remembered prewar Warsaw—the great center of Jewish life, scholarship, and culture—home to over 350,000 Jews. Laying tefillin in the streets of Poland is the surest way of showing that no one can snuff out the Jewish spark. Potentates come and go but the Jewish people will live forever!
A journalist managed to snap a photo of us which we later found had made it to the AFP coverage of the event.
