A Chosen Few - Mark Kurlansky [161]
“But they won't let you unless you are Jewish,” pointed out the daughter.
“We are Jewish,” said the mother.
Some of the children had discovered photographs of a grandfather in a long black coat with a beard. Sometimes they did not even know what that odd clothing meant. A few of the teenagers were not Jewish but were simply curious. They, too, were welcomed, because it was hard to say who was Jewish. One non-Jewish girl who had come out of curiosity afterward told her mother how much she had enjoyed the camp. The mother only then confessed that she was Jewish.
A teenage boy who had only learned that his mother was Jewish when he was 12 said, “The funny thing is, the Poles knew first. They always know before the Jews. I don't know how they do it. Kids used to call me Jew, and I didn't know why. How do they always know?”
After a month the teenagers would go home. Some took up praying. Some tried to keep kosher. But they found that out in Poland, they could not continue to live the life they had learned about at the camp. At least at the camp these young Poles had experienced what Jewish life would be like. The food was uncompromisingly kosher. The men wore yarmulkes even outdoors, though it wasn't required. They sat around with their yarmulkes on, talking about how they could never do this in their home town. Two boys from Warsaw estimated that in the Praga section, a notoriously tough part of Warsaw on the other side of the Vistula, “someone with a yarmulke on would live for about two minutes.” Another boy told a story of a family he knew in Praga that drew blackout curtains every Friday night so they could light Sabbath candles.
These teenagers had had socialist educations in which equality of the sexes was a strong belief. As they learned about Judaism, they had hard questions. They wanted to know why women didn't wrap tefillin, why they were not called up to read the Torah, why they were separated from men. They would consider abandoning atheism but they would not give up equality of the sexes.
The camp forged amazingly good relations with the locals in the aiea. There was a farmer who let them milk his cow so that they could be assured it was kosher milk. Michael Schudrich, the American rabbi who ran the camp, talked a baker into setting aside a separate room with separate mixing bowls and pans, where he would bake for the camp, under rabbinical supervision, an excellent round, crusty Polish peasant bread. The camp ordered dozens of loaves, and the baker was pleased to have the business.
One day in the summer of 1992, two men from a nearby village rode their ten-speed racing bikes to the door of the main estate building at the Lauder camp. One had the broad, rough, beat-up hands of a farmer. The other, who looked a little more refined, started speaking in Polish to an American who asked the nearest bilingual teenager to translate—a good-natured fifteen-year-old with shaggy long blond hair and a borrowed Lauder yarmulke. The two bicyclists looked around admiringly at the wood-paneled manor house. They talked about how it used to be in a complete shambles. Then it had been rebuilt with glass and aluminum. Now it looked like the old manor. Very nice, they both agreed.
After a few minutes they said, “Well, thank you,” and shook the long-haired boy's hand, got on their ten-speed bikes, and pedaled off to continue their trip.
“What strange men,” said the boy.
Why?
“They don't hate Jews. He even shook my hand!”
NOT FAR AWAY from those flowered summer hills is Cracow, whose untouched medieval center makes it Poland's best bid for a tourist destination. Cracow also has location going for it. When tourists get off the train from Warsaw, they are greeted at the platform by eager taxi