Cape Town Holocaust & Genocide Centre’s Post-Memory tour to Poland
A tour to Poland organised by the Cape Town Holocaust & Genocide Centre (CTHGC) is on the go as the Cape Jewish Chronicle team prepares its August edition. In the next few editions of the CJC, we bring you news and opinions about the tour, current attitudes in Poland regarding the country’s Jewish past, and the experiences
of those who joined the tour.
Organised and led by the Director of the CTHGC, Jakub (Kuba) Nowakowski, and with the involvement of a number of tour guides, including Kuba’s wife, Gosia, the tour sees 14 participants from various parts of the world take in the Jewish history and current scenarios in Poland.
In the first of our articles, we asked Kuba and Gosia, who were both brought up in Catholic homes in Poland, what drew them to their country’s Jewish past.
For Kuba and Gosia, growing up in post-Communist Poland meant living among silent stones – buildings, synagogues, and cemeteries that hinted at a vibrant Jewish past but stood largely unacknowledged in everyday life.
It would take years, and a series of unexpected discoveries, for them to realise just how deeply intertwined that past was with their own stories – and to devote their professional lives to uncovering and preserving it.
Kazimierz without memory
Kuba was born in 1983 in Kazimierz, Krakow – a district today recognised as one of Europe’s best-preserved Jewish quarters. But as a child, the presence of that Jewish past
was all but invisible.
“My family had lived in Kazimierz for generations,” he recalls. “We were Catholic, a minority in what had once been a Jewish-majority neighbourhood. But none of that history was spoken about. The synagogues were there, but no one mentioned what they were or who had once filled them.”
Gosia heard titbits about the Jewish past of her hometown, Nowy Targ (called Naymark in Yiddish), from her grandmother, who recounted anecdotes of life in the town before the War. (The town had in fact been 60% Jewish, a fact Gosia learned later on.)
The interest sparked by her grandmother’s recollections was deepened by a school history teacher, who defied Communist-era taboos and refused to ignore the realities of the town’s Jewish history. “This teacher was a wonderful bridge to the past,” Gosia explains. “She was a great storyteller – and my interest definitely comes from her prompting.”
For Kuba, it wasn’t a teacher who first sparked his awareness of Jewish history – it was a football. “We were playing soccer one day and the ball flew over a wall,” he says. “We climbed over and found ourselves in an overgrown cemetery filled with mysterious gravestones carved with what looked to us like hieroglyphs. It felt like Atlantis. Something lost.”
That moment stirred something. Who were the people buried there? What had happened to them?
Hollywood comes to town
Later on, another event would shake Kuba’s understanding of his neighbourhood – and his nation’s past – more profoundly.
“When Steven Spielberg came to Krakow to shoot Schindler’s List, everyone was buzzing. He had just made Jurassic Park, and suddenly this global celebrity was filming in our dilapidated part of town. We were intrigued.”
But when the film premiered in 1993, the reaction in Krakow was less excitement than confusion and shock.
“No one had prepared us for what we saw. The film showed a Krakow we didn’t recognise – a city where Jews once lived in vast numbers, where they were persecuted and deported, and where Polish bystanders weren’t always heroes. That was a major rupture in how we understood ourselves.”
The infamous scene in which Polish children jeer at Jewish families being deported from Kazimierz hit hard. “It forced a confrontation,” Kuba says. “We had to start asking questions. About our families, our schools, our neighbourhoods. About why no one had told us any of this.”
From curiosity to commitment
For both Gosia and Kuba, those early questions turned into a lifelong quest. Both enrolled in the Jewish Studies Department at Jagiellonian University in Krakow. Kuba also began working with NGOs that brought together youth from Poland, Israel, and the United States to explore shared histories and dialogue across painful divides.
“At the time, it wasn’t a typical path,” he reflects. “Jewish history wasn’t exactly a booming career field. But for those of us drawn to it, it wasn’t about careers. It was about finding answers to things that had been hidden for too long.”
Among those fellow students was Gosia. Like Kuba, she grew up Catholic in a place where the Jewish story had been erased – but where traces remained if you knew where to look.
“She, too, had questions,” Kuba explains. “What happened to the Jews who once lived in her town? Why had their memory disappeared?”
As they studied together, Gosia and Kuba uncovered strange details in their own family lives – Yiddish words slipped into their parents’ vocabulary, Jewish dishes appearing each year on the Christmas Eve dinner table, unexplained absences of classmates in the late 1960s (a result of the anti-Semitic purge of 1968, when many Jews were forced to leave Poland).
“It slowly became clear that even though our families were Catholic, there were echoes of Jewish life everywhere. We had just never known how to hear them.”
History as responsibility
What began as personal curiosity soon became a professional calling. Both joined a growing movement in Poland – led largely by non-Jewish scholars, educators, and activists – dedicated to rediscovering, preserving, and teaching the history of Polish Jews.
“After completing my studies,” Gosia says, “I worked for 10 years in the Galicia Jewish Museum. Subsequently, I became a tour guide with a focus on the Jewish history of Poland.” Her interest in Jewish culture is reflected in her Master’s thesis: an examination of the crossover between Polish and Yiddish theatre before the War.
Their work spans education, cultural preservation, and international dialogue. They lead study trips, curate museum exhibits, and create platforms for young people to explore the layered and often difficult past they’ve inherited.
And over the years, they’ve seen a shift.
In the early 2000s, Jewish heritage in Poland started attracting more attention – partly because of increased tourism, and partly because international businesses, including Israeli companies, began to invest there. “But for many of us,” Kuba says, “it still wasn’t about tourism or job prospects. It was about truth.”
Remembering for the future
Today, Poland is a country where Jewish history is more present than it was in Kuba and Gosia’s youth – but where debates over memory and identity remain charged and unresolved. That’s exactly why, they argue, the work is far from over.
“Poland was once home to the largest Jewish population in the world,” Kuba says. “And then it became the epicentre of the Holocaust. That’s not just a historical fact – it’s a moral and cultural reality that shapes who we are today.”
For Kuba and Gosia, studying Jewish history is not just about honouring the past – it’s about building a future in which memory, complexity, and empathy guide the next generation.
“Our parents didn’t ask these questions,” Kuba says. “But we did. And now, we’re helping others to ask them too.” ●
Impact of the Holocaust on Poland
Kuba: “Poland once was the absolute centre of the Jewish world; then it became the absolute epicentre, a Ground Zero of Jewish death. This means that the country that once had the largest Jewish population in the world today has one of the smallest.”
Gosia: “I very much believe that Poland is poorer in a number of ways because of what happened. Poland lost a wonderful, interesting culture; it lost so much that enriched both our nations. The country lost many ordinary people, but also many intellectuals and thinkers. I often think about where my country could be if not for that. It’s a terrible loss. Poland would definitely be a much, much better place, I believe.”
When the past becomes a battlefield: Holocaust memory in a divided Poland
In Poland today, the study and commemoration of Jewish history – and particularly of the Holocaust – is not just an academic or cultural pursuit. It has become, in many ways, a reflection of a broader ideological divide within the country. The past is no longer a settled matter; it is a battlefield, where different visions of Polish identity and national pride clash.
On one side stands the liberal, pro-European segment of Polish society. For these individuals, confronting the darkest chapters of the nation’s past – especially the complex and painful history of Polish-Jewish relations during the Holocaust – is not seen as an act of self-criticism, but as an act of courage. They believe that truth-telling strengthens a nation. Acknowledging complicity, recognising the suffering of others, and making space for nuance are, in this view, essential to building a democratic and inclusive future.
On the other side is a deeply conservative current, often rooted in nationalist, religious, and Eurosceptic worldviews. For this group, the past is not something to be interrogated or complicated – it is a source of glory and pride, a narrative to be protected. In this view, any suggestion that Poles may have participated in the persecution or betrayal of Jews during the War is seen as a dangerous attack on the nation’s honour. Myths of resistance, heroism, and moral purity are held tightly, and efforts to challenge these myths are met with strong resistance – even legal repercussions.
It is within this divided landscape that historians, educators, and cultural activists work today. As one observer put it, “It is not the future that is uncertain – it is the past that keeps changing.” The struggle over Holocaust memory in Poland is not just about what happened decades ago. It is about who Poles are today, and who they wish to become.
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