Jewish Poland Revisited: Heritage Tourism in Unquiet Places

4. Shabbos Goyim: Polish Stewards of Jewish Spaces

C H A P T E R F O U R SHABBOS GOYIM: POLISH STEWARDS OF JEWISH SPACES One doesn’t struggle with ghosts; one placates them and lures them back. —Ruth Gay Why would a Pole open a Jewish bookstore? Jewish visitors ask. A non-Jewish Jewish bookstore would be cause enough for suspicion (what are they doing with our culture?). But a Polish one? This combination violates the basic order of a Jewish moral universe built from grandparents’ stories of Poles turning over Jews to the Nazis for vodka. Zdzisław Leś, owner of the Jarden Jewish Bookshop, recalled his inspiration for opening the shop; it had missionary and accidental aspects. “I visited this normal bookshop, in this very building, in which sat two bored women selling crime stories and third-class literature. And there was one shelf, maybe two small shelves, on which was written ‘Judaica .’ Ten titles! And I asked them, ‘Do you know where you are?’ I thought it was a scandal, and I told these women so. So I took it over, moved it next door, threw out the other 90 percent of the books, and began to increase the Judaica. And now I have about 150 titles—in practice, all of what is published in Poland. And it is the only Jewish bookshop in Poland.”1 The books range from high culture—the newest academic works in PolishJewish studies—to local legends, photo albums, and Holocaust memoirs and films, some of which Zdzisław and his wife and co-owner Lucyna have published or produced themselves.2 They also sell trinkets, such as brass kabbalistic talismans and plastic screen-prints of synagogues and barbed wire. He 124 Jewish Pol and Revisited wrinkled his nose at them, but shrugs, “People buy them.” They stock klezmer music Cds, Jewish figurines, a few cards, and the odd ritual object. After Steven Spielberg chose krakow as the location for filming Schindler’s List, visitor demand led them to add “Schindler’s List tours” and then a companion guidebook. The bookstore is open every day—every day except Yom kippur, that is, the holiest Jewish day of the year. Other “Jewish” businesses here have expanded with flash and fashion along with the boom in Jewish culture, but the bookstore plods along at its own more considered pace. Zdzisław doesn’t have much capitalist spirit. He often dissuaded customers from his Auschwitz tours, confiding to them, “It’s really very expensive to go with us. It’s much better if you just take the bus from the main station. Here, I have the schedule written down.” Of course, more business would mean less time for conversation and fewer breaks to visit the closet-sized Club of Leftist Intellectuals upstairs. Zdzisław used to direct krakow’s House of Culture, the omnipresent communist-era center for community arts and cultural ideology, where he introduced a series called “Meetings with Jewish Culture.” There were gatherings with authors of books, concerts of Jewish songs, and other events. Zdzisław trained as a Slavicist at the university. He attributed much of his sensitivity about Jewish influences on Polish culture to his familiarity with Polish literature. He poked fun at Polish nationalism and said that many of Poland’s cultural heroes were actually Jews. He always had an example up his sleeve: I don’t know if you know that the best Polish poet of the twentieth century was Jewish. Bolesław Leśmian. And [he was] the best master of Polish language. Many Polish poets in the twentieth century were Jews: Tuwim, Leśmian, Słonimski . . . isn’t that a paradox? And some other fields, history for example, science. Maybe our stupid nationalists will finally understand that Polish folklore , which makes them have an orgasm, owes Jews a lot, and that their favorite potato pancakes are also a Jewish recipe, that our so-called folk art was also inspired by Jews, and this [Polish] nation was only copying what they invented. So consider this: if so many Jews have done so much for Polish culture, why shouldn’t two poor Poles like us do something for Jews? adopting orphaned Memory If in the early 1990s, as anthropologist Jack kugelmass has noted, Jews visiting Poland were able to stage their performances of Jewish memory un- shaBBos goyiM 125 contested as actors,3 as the decade wore on these visitors were increasingly...