This is my family's story, but it could be yours too. Ours goes like this: my grandfather, Isaac, and all his family were from a small city in north western Poland called Konin. In 1905 they emigrated, no, escaped Polish anti-Semitism, grinding poverty and vicious persecution to a glorious new life of freedom and complete tolerance in America in 1906.
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Click to listen to the documentary, 'Family mystery, family myths'
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I know next to nothing about my family's history, where they lived, what they did, what kind of people they were. But one thing was made clear: the Poles were terrible people who kept the Jews isolated and that I should hate them. I should hate them for the unforgivable sin of the organised attacks and public vilification known to all Jews for its utter infamy: the dreaded pogrom.
It seems this was all a lie.
Fate of the Jews
"There is no reason to believe that the Jews suffered from any pogrom's in Poland at the end of the 19th century," said Theo Richmond, taking a sip from a cup of espresso. The author of the book 'Konin: a Quest' knows more than anyone about the history and fate of the city's Jewish community. I spoke with this genteel writer at his house in a leafy suburb of London, also called Richmond.
His father was a man named Rychka, a Jewish immigrant from Konin. His family and, as I have now learned, my family left Konin simply to seek a better life elsewhere. "Perhaps one of your myths is this idea of an implacable hatred of the Jews by the Poles. This is not entirely fair. Of course there was anti-Semitism, but there was anti-Semitism everywhere. Remember, Poland was a refuge for Jews escaping from Spain."
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Dr Lucja Pawlicka Nowak of the Konin Regional Museum where a collection of Jewish artifacts are displayed
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No Persecution
Dr Lucja Pawlicka Nowak, is the director of the Konin Regional Museum and the self appointed curator of the Judaica [historical and literary materials relating to Judaism] which survived the Jewish community's decimation in the Holocaust. She even has the last remaining Torah Scroll from the old synagogue. She agrees that there was no Jewish persecution at that time. "I found some traces of conflict, but no pogroms, no burning houses, no killing people, no destroying property. Please remember the Jews have always been a closed community. They were not easily assimilated. This could have resulted in friction, but only friction." I asked her if she knew my family name. She did not.
Family roots
Desperate for any information about my family history, I looked up Konin's birth, death and marriage records at the municipal archives in Poznan. There I found records of the marriage of someone who could have been my great, great grandfather, Chaim Beryl Graubert (sometimes Grobert, or even Graubarz depending upon the entry).
I read with fascination about how he and his wife Brucha produced five children, one of whom died at five years of age. And I was shocked to discover that he was also illiterate, very rare amongst Jews who must learn to read in order to worship. He was also poor. He began his career as a shoemaker, but was quickly demoted to handyman. No surprise then that his descendent, my grandfather Isaac, wanted to start fresh somewhere else. Of Isaac himself, I found nothing in the archives.
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Do you seen any Graubert, Grobert Graubarz or Groubert's in there? A ledger from Poznan municipal archives
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Ancestors
In the end, I visited Konin's old synagogue, now the local public library. It is a place where all my ancestors surely prayed, married and celebrated. It is the last tangible connection to a people about whom I know next to nothing. I don't know why that matters, but it does.
The American writer Ambrose Bierce defined genealogy as "An account of one's descent from an ancestor who did not particularly care to trace his own." That may explain why all I have of them is a building that is now a library and a few names in a few ledgers.
And, oh yes, I have one more thing, I finally have the truth.
Tags:
genealogy,
Groubert,
Holocaust,
Jews,
Konin,
Poland,
Poznan,
Richmond
Chris Wadecki,
18-04-2006
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As told in earlier posts, the anti-Semitism in Poland is neither as widespread nor as dangerous as in other parts of the world. And has never been. Most of what I read about this tragic topic in Western sources is either out of context or historically incorrect. Out of ignorance or malice? Who could tell.
But facts remain facts. When looked in to with serious effort and international comparison one can only discover that Polish anti-Semitism is neither as widespread nor as dangerous as in other parts of the world (Russia, France, Germany, USA and even Sweden). And I repeat: it never has been.
I'm prepared to discuss this at anytime.
Regards
Chris Wadecki
Jonathan Groubert,
18-04-2006
- The Netherlands
Hmmm, a lot of meaty responses. First to you Mr Edwards. I think Theo Richmond said it correctly when he referred to an "intractable belief by the Jews in Polish anti-Semitism." Indeed, this was the message conveyed to me by my father and his family and, as this program bore out, turned out to be a gross exaggeration. It seems clear there was anti-Semitism and persecution and that anti-Semitism persists today (see my program on the Jewish genealogist in Lodz)
http://www.radionetherlands.nl/features/dutchhorizons/underforeignskies/050824ufs?version=1
It also seems clear that time and distance have magnified it to proportions that the available evidence does simply not support. I think it's time for Jews to reexamine what really happened in Poland during the time of the Pale of the Settlement. I wholeheartedly support Yale Reisner's view.
Is the name Graubert/Graubart/Groubert/Grabart common? If you put all the variants together it's common enough. One tip I was given was, because the name is Germanic and not Slavic, it likely originates from Prussian Koeningsburg, today's Russian Kaliningrad.
Yale J. Reisner,
17-04-2006
- Poland
Mr Edwards is poorly informed. We see roughly one hundred visitors per month in our office at Warsaw's Jewish Historical Institute who are visiting Poland precisely for the purpose of visiting their ancestral hometowns or to find doucmentation of their families' past. We know of many cases of individuals who have sought to reclaim family properties: Some have succeeded, others have failed and most are still tied up in long-running court proceedings. There is, indeed, antisemitism in Poland as elsewhere, but it is neither as widespread as Mr Edwards seems to think nor as dangerous as in France, for example, at this time. That doesn't excuse any antisemitism that does exist, but Mr. Edwards' information is inaccurate.
I say this as one who has lived in Poland for over a decade and who wears his kippah openly on the streets and public transport of Warsaw. (I grant that Warsaw is much more open to difference than are smaller towns and villages.) As for the "vicious antisemitism" of the past, why did Jews live in Poland in greater numbers and for more centuries than anywhere else? Was it really becuase it was the worst place for us to be? Were our ancestors collectively that stupid? Or maybe, just maybe, it was actually *relatively* OK at a time when Jews had been expelled from most of Europe and were not being admitted to many other countries at all? It took the Germans to come up with the "final solution."
Kay Buttfield,
17-04-2006
- Australia
I would like to contact Jonathan. I enjoyed your story. My Great Grandmother's surname was Grabert, family legend tell us they escaped persecution in Poland in the mid 1800s. I don't know much else though. I have seen the name as Graebert. Is it a common name?
STEVE EDWARDS,
04-03-2006
- USA
I am happy Mr Groubert has such a pleasant story to tell. Unfortunately, I think he is living a dreamworld from reality.
Since my grandfather and his brothers studied under a great scholar in Radin or Radon, Poland, and I frequently visited my grandmother and her childhood friends in a Boston home for the aged, I learned a lot about life in late 19th century Poland (then part of Tsarist Russia). They were forced out by vicious anti-semitism, which continues to this day.
Two recent movies made in America on attempts to document polish Jewish family history show horendous hatred still exists.
In one film, several survivors of the Holocaust in Chicago hired a young Polish-catholic graduate student to write a history of their town's Jewish population. The movie showed the Polish townspeople of today showing such vicious anti-semitism toward his project that he had to give it up.
A second movie was about an orthodox family that wanted to go back to see a unique Polish Catholic farm family that hid their father from the Nazi's in world war II. The Catholic family was very unusual in what they did - and at the end of the movie, the Israeli Ambassador and Polish officials came to award them the title of rightous gentile, and their name and good deed to be commemorated in a special park in Israel for eternity.
But, the American Jewish family also saw the descreated Jewish cemetery which had not be cared for since the war and had been descarated so badly that human bones were lying around in the tall grass. A local man showed a grave stone that he saved secretly from being destroyed by the locals. The young people in the town yelled at and made obscene gestures to the visiting Jews, which shocked me. There may be some Poles like late Polish pope who shared a house with a Jewish family and had positive feelings for Jews, but generally, the masses of Poles are still anti-semites in my opinion.
I have yet to hear of one Jew who has returned to Poland to demand return of his family property as has been the case in Germany. Indeed, I do not know of many Jews going to visit ancestoral hometowns in Poland. Those Jews going to Poland seem to go simply to pay respects to the million murdered Jews in Aushwitz death camp.
