Archive for June 28th, 2009

I left Krakow at 8am to catch my bus to the border town of Cieczen. The town situated three hours by mini-bus from Krakow was a beautiful mixture of Polish and Czech architecture (nearly identical). The walk across the city took an easy 45 minutes and left me with an hour and a half to catch my Direct 4 hour train to Prague. I waited, having a brief lunch in a restaurant in Czech before gearing up and catching my train (30 minutes late) to Prague. 15 minutes later, the attendant comes into my compartment and asks where we are going (without speaking any english). I figure out something is wrong and say “Praha”, “Prague.” She shakes her head and said no no no…. no praha. No. points out the window and motions to get off at the next station. Confused I ask her why, she doesn’t understand but keeps telling me to get off at the next station and says – NO Praha.

Chuckling to myself at the wonders of travel, I get off the train at the next station only to be ushered onto a bullet train right next to the one I’d gotten off. The problem? The train I was put on was going to Polom. Sweaty, Hot and severly lacking airflow the entire direct train packs onto the already full Polom train. with people sitting in the aisles and standing in the door corridors we ride for another hour – the beleaguered air conditioning not able to cope.

Sweaty and miserable we’re then ushered off the train at Polom and pushed like cattle onto buses. Again too few buses too many passengers. with people standing in the aisles on the big coaches we head toward another city. Without direction other than clerks pushing us toward the next destination I feel lost and unable to get my bearings. I threw myself to the wind and just enjoyed what little I could during the travel. without airflow, stuffed human beings in tin cans raise the humidity level considerably.

The buses arrive at a bus station in a town I’ve never heard of and couldn’t find on my map and they point down the street saying Praha. without knowing it, ten minutes walk down the street we find (much to our delight) the Train station. we wait for a 45 minute late train which should connect us to Prague. From there its 3 hrs to Praha, we’ve already been traveling for four since the border town. we board the train, again unventilated with only small windows at the tops of the car just in time to miss another summer torrential downpour. Humid and rife with the smell of humanity we pack into the train cars and fit 8 people to a cabin with people still out in the hallways. The train takes another 7 hours to arrive in Praha at 11:45pm. We’ve been pushing since 8am.

The problem was that due to the catastrophic flooding which is apparently unexpected for this time of year, many of the main rail lines were flooded or washed out. In addition 10 people had been killed by the flooding and many roads had washed away. Due to these problems, there were only a very few open rail lines to Prague. As if this wasn’t enough of a problem, a lot of the rail lines don’t connect until Praha, leaving the rail companies to have to bus their passengers between the lines. Then the Queue of trains trying to use the few open lines made for delays of up to 6 or 7 hours. It made for a wonderful time and a great day journeying to Prague.

I arrived in Lipsk around 8 am. Disembarked from the minibus and headed from the supermarket down toward the great cathedral. From there I started wandering the streets until I could find the local library. Wandering through the open streets, watching the fields of wheat and grain swaying in the summer breeze, I felt nearly as tranquil as the little town I had arrived in.

I located the library and made my way inside. I met the librarian and we quickly discovered that neither of us spoke the others language. She went back into the stacks and came back with a colossal 1980’s Polish to English dictionary and began to translate a sentence I had written.

Seeing a computer terminal nearby I pointed and expressed Internet. She understood and let me get on while she went to work translating. I quickly booted up Google and although in Polish I opened the language tools section and went to their translator. I then quickly began typing my questions.

“I am looking for my ancestors, Haskell/Chaskell, Berger, Loseman… Any of these names buried here?”

“I understand, Please wait a moment”

“Maybe, Catholic priest mastered a document about Jews in Lipsk. Maybe. Wait.”

“Is there a Cemetery? Or the old synagogue or schools?”

“Yes. Cemetery. Only two Jew buildings still.”

“Can I see them?”

“Yes, But one may be school. Synagogue torn down – pool now.”

“Wait forty minutes and I can master you to the Cemetery and Old Jew street.”

I sat patiently as she finished her shift, we were then joined for 10 minutes by a young man who was studying a little bit of English. he had just finished high school and was eager to try out his English although nervous as well. He said he could walk with us for a few minutes and translate but couldn’t stay long. I repeated the earlier conversation to him and then asked him about the graves and any records about deaths or families living in Lipsk from the end of the 1800s.

The answer was – the Cemetery was pillaged, parts of it were taken by farmers and the tombstones broken or thrown away. What little was left was kept on a forested patch of ground preserved from farming a little outside the city. It had a memorial but the only stones there were from 65-75. She said there were no Jews left in Lipsk. No one took care of what was left of the cemetery.

We arrived a few minutes later. The cemetery was as described. a small corner of a field down a dirt road. Completely overgrown, what few tombstones were left were in the far righthand corner under a large tree. All placed together and relatively recent. I kneeled in the grass and undergrowth. Focused myself and connected with the spirits and feelings of those who may have died or lived in this place. My ancestors, my family.

I felt like they only passed through. That this place was only a temporary stop on an ageless journey. My mind turned and all I could think was our family was nomadic, this place wasn’t our origin or destination, only a stop along the way.

We left the cemetery and walked on, reaching a small building which was where the last Jews in Lipsk had lived. It had survived since the 1850’s with some moderate upgrades in the 1970’s. it was rough and abandoned, but still had curtains inside and a little well outside. We continued on to the Jewish street Ulica 400. There we met the Catholic priest who had written about the Jews in Lipsk and although our translator had left us, we communicated through sign language that the only other building was a home, which may have been the school house my great grandfather helped build. From there we walked to the town’s new recreation center, built where the synagogue had stood. He gestured to the large open pool demonstrating how big it was and what it looked like.

We headed back to the Library and the Librarian gave me a copy of the priests book, in Polish but none the less a palpable reminder and perhaps a guide to what came before.

I left the library with the librarians contact information and headed to the bus stop to return to Augustow.

At the bus station I found I’d missed the bus and had to wait until 4pm for the next bus back. As I was reading the sign my translator and his younger brother (who does Parkour) stumbled upon me, invited me back to their house for a drink and then decided to give me a tour of the monuments and sights of Lipsk.

We saw the Church, Monuments to soldiers from Lipsk, Communistic monuments, old artillery, and the river and lands around the City.

We then had a quick lunch of pizza, and meandered around until later that afternoon. Then my translators younger brother decided to demonstrate his Parkour ability, starting with a J-flip, and going into two aerials, first a back flip and then front flip, followed by running up the bus station wall and doing another back flip, then running off the top of a hill and doing a front flip to land on a narrow ruined wall below. Impressed we talked for a bit more about university and what they wanted to study and then I caught my bus to Augustow.

I waited in Augustow for 6 hours for the 10pm bus to Krakow ( a tiny little minibus for a nine hour ride ) and then checked myself into my hostel, booked my hostel in Prague and made my way the next morning for a 15 hour ordeal.