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About two hours outside of Krakow (I have no idea how many kilometres — the varying quality of Poland’s roads means it’s hard to estimate distances) is Bobowa, or Bobov. It’s a small, cute town, with a pretty city centre and rolling farming hills. Very picturesque.

Bobover hasidim come from here.  It’s one of the bigger sects (the neighborhood where I grew up, in Toronto, is now just full of them). A wealthy Brooklyn hasid rebuilt the synagogue about eight years ago. The entrance is through the courtyard, accessible down an alley barely wide enough for a car. It’s a large, wooden structure, plain, practical. Inside it’s just a large white cube, though with a dazzling aron (ark), multicoloured with all sorts of themes and motifs. Too lazy to describe; look at the pics.

But to get in you gotta get the keys. (This is common of cemeteries and synagogues all over this part of the world — there’s a local somewhere with the keys, paid a small stipend to be available for visitors and to do basic maintenance on the place.) So across the alley is a tiny barbershop, tiny and looking unfrequented. (Our Polish speaker, Maczek (the most curious person I’ve met here — more on him soon), told us the barber knows only two styles: bald and ‘wavy like the barber.’)

He opens the courtyard, then locks you in, and will be back in five minutes. On the way out he insists on showing us his shop with his small Israeli flag. He sees us off with an elaborate five-step handshake.

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I’m back from Sosnoweic, Zaidy’s hometown.

In the morning first thing, I walked to the city center. On the way I saw a man throwing breadcrumbs off a bridge into the creek. I tried talking to him; though he seemed friendly, there was just no way to ask why he was doing this, if it was something normal or, as improbable as it might be, tashlich.

I saw the shul — or, more accurately, where the shul used to be. The building, which by all acounts was something beautiful, was razed during the war; now there’s just a gap in a row of quaint three-story buildings, kind of like a missing tooth. Now there’s a makeshift market, two hallways running parallel from front to back, stalls on either side, with fiberglass ceilings and dusty cement floors, selling women’s underwear and sneakers and potatoes. There’s no sign that it was ever a synagogue. I don’t know if this is coincidence, but the facade between these two hallways, the only ‘front’ that there really is, has twin imprints shaped like luchos. A sign in the upper left hand corner advertises that there’s kebab in 20 metres.

Zaidy’s old apartment is around the corner from the shul, about three minutes away on foot from the city center. It’s a shpitzy part of town. The building’s tall, about five or six stories, recessed a bit from the street. I waited around a little bit, seeing if someone would open the door and I could sneak in. No luck. Around the back, there was only a man spitting and a very tired-looking woman in heels and childish socks. I hadn’t yet met with my contact — this was still before 9am — so I wasn’t about to try anything.

From there I went to the Jewish cemetery. It’s at the far corner of a large, complexly laid-out and extremely well-maintained non-Jewish cemetery, walled off and only accessible from a tiny side street. The guy selling flowers had the key and let me in. It’s overgrown but maintained; there are probably 150-200 standing tombstones, scattered and in concentrated bunches. Lots of open space. Some of the tombstones are clearly refurbished and even new; many are in ruins and no longer legible. There’s a small, respectable Holocaust memorial near the front; it looks like a very modern tombstone. The local caretaker at first didn’t think there was a Kajzer, then thought there might be, looked for a bit, then decided that there definitely wasn’t.
After I met with the local, Ola, who speaks a decent English. We returned to the apartment, and a woman let us in. Ola explained the situation, and the woman took us to the oldest occupant — who wasn’t home. The next oldest was next door: a nice old man, who told us that the building was destroyed and rebuilt in ’56, and he’s never heard the name before.

We went to the Town Hall, where the people we spoke to were unbelievably helpful — this should be emphasized — and went well out of their way to find anything they could. I didn’t know Zaidy’s Polish name, or when he was born. I wrote down his Hebrew name — my name — and that he was born, to the best of my knowledge, in the early-to-mid 20s. After a few minutes the guy returned with a old ledger book, yellowed a bit but in fine condition. We found the entry, in perfect hand, for Zaidy, No. 115: Majer Mendel Kajzer, born in Sosnoweic on February 18, 1921, at about 6pm, to Mozsek Kajzer, originally of Brenzin, but now of Sosnoweic, a Handloweic by profession (something to do with trading), 33 years old; and to Sura-Hena Rechnitz, 30 years old. Moszek’s name is on the bottom (though he signed it ‘Kaiser’).  Next week, Ola is going to look up more information in Katowice, a larger city a few kilometres away, where the archive is.

I’m still digesting this. Here are pics; captions seem unnecessary.

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