After reflecting on a busy first day in Poland, I am touched by the remarks of Rabbi Schudrich during our visit to the Nozyk Synagogue. While addressing the long term effects of the Holocaust on Poland and the Jewish population, he said something to the effect that we have no ability to change how many Jews died during the Holocaust; however, the Jewish community has developed a deep and profound understanding of what it feels like to be in crisis and to need to flee one’s home for safety, and as a result, they have rallied to support the Ukrainian refugees who are fleeing their homeland to avoid the Russian invasion.
This willingness to help strangers and the depths of human connection across cultures were themes I heard recurring throughout my conversations. I ate dinner with the principal of the Jewish Day School in Warsaw, and she shared that they have opened their doors to Ukrainian students– students who do not know the language, who have suffered trauma, and who come and go, sometimes without warning. While they do not have the resources to meet all the learning needs of these new students, they are providing community for them and ensuring that their education can continue, even while they are far from home.
And of course there was the young man at dinner who shared his story of going to the border to help Ukrainian refugees. His Catholic Polish grandmother created a humanitarian legacy of hiding Jews during the Holocaust and helping them to freedom, and now he follows in his family’s footsteps by funneling resources to Ukrainian refugees in Poland. He continues to live his family’s legacy of empathy by ‘continuing to be the thing that they did not have but that they needed.’ It isn’t possible to just sit back and watch while others suffer when you know what it is like to suffer yourself.
This type of humanity and empathic connection is critical. History tells us that the most horrific of acts are most possible when we cease to see the humanity in others, and it was beautiful to see how the contemporary Polish community was harnessing their lessons of the past in order to help support those living in chaos and pain now.