Two-thirds of Lublin’s Jews were exterminated in a single month of the Second World War. The remainder of the 40,000-strong community, who had lived peaceably with their gentile neighbours for centuries, were dispatched to their deaths soon after, but their souls live on in a beautiful city that has preserved their memory with loving care.
The Chachmei Yeshiva, so famous pre-war that it won the town the nickname Jerusalem of the North, is enjoying new life as the Ilan Hotel, thanks to one of today’s handful of modern Lubliners, as the city’s Jews have always called themselves.
Chachmei Lublin Yeshiva. (Photo: Anthea Gerrie.)
The No Name Theatre, joint top attraction for Jewish visitors, preserves an archive of every home demolished in the liquidated ghetto and exhibits haunting pictures of the inhabitants, which are also displayed in many locations around the town.
Even Lubliner cuisine lives on, thanks to a non-Jewish cook who has made it her mission to research and serve authentic dishes once enjoyed on Shabbat and holidays, in a popular restaurant (of which more later). Naturally, there is a a Memorial Trail, its first stop the Grodzka Gate, which separated the Jewish and Christian communities in the 15th century and became the heart of the predominant pre-war Jewish neighbourhood. Here, the NN Theatre tells the story of Lublin’s Jews in pictures and stories over several floors.
Grodzka Gate in Lublin. (Photo: Anthea Gerrie)
It is the antithesis of a slick museum – and all the more moving for it. There are no captions in the exhibition, simply titled Memory of the Place; the people in the photographs remain unknown unless and until a visitor from elsewhere recognises a relative and is able to give them a name and biography.
The memorial trail continues to many more locations. But there is more to this city than lost Jewish sites, and its beauty may come as a surprise to visitors. Not to Poles, though. They have been flocking here from other regions since Isaac Bashevis Singer spread the word about the city’s glories in his novel The Magician of Lublin.
British tourists remain thin on the ground, despite direct flights from London. Those who do make the journey will find a beautifully preserved Old Town, rich in houses with decorative 18th-century façades, a thriving new city enlivened by a large student population, and the medieval castle in whose shadow the destroyed Great Synagogue once stood, now home to the world’s most comprehensive collection of works by 20th-century Jewish artist Tamara Lempicka.
Lublin Culture Centre. (Photo: Anthea Gerrie)
You don’t have to stay at the former yeshiva turned hotel to visit its built-in synagogue, open to all except on Shabbat, when it is reserved for occasional groups convening a minyan for prayer.
Guest rooms at the Ilan Hotel are simple but spacious and clean, and the Olive Tree restaurant serves fresh and appetising food with Israeli wines as well as excellent local beer. There is even a mikveh on site. Kosher food can be organised on request.
The owner of the Ilan also owns Za Kulisami, a stylish restaurant in the modern and striking Centre for the Meeting of Cultures, worth visiting to enjoy the rooftop bar with its apiaries, as well as to admire the striking interior architecture or attend performances.
Elsewhere, at Mandragora, open for for the past 20 years, Izabela Kozlowska-Dechnik serves up Jewish recipes such as wonderful cabbage-tomato soup with raisins and almonds. There is klezmer music every Friday night and a special Shabbat menu.
The best onion pletzels (they were invented in Lublin) are baked at the Kuzimiuk family bakery near the Grodzka Gate, which also sells superlative challah, pastries, and the coconut pyramids usually reserved for Passover year-round.
Krakow Old Town Market Square. (Photo: Anthea Gerrie)
The Lubliner Festival of Jewish Culture is a newish annual event taking place over two days in late August, but the country’s most famous such celebration of a lost community is staged in Krakow, a four-hour train ride south, over eight days in June.
Highlights of the 33rd edition included an opening concert by virtuoso Israeli cellist-singer Maya Belsitzman and her partner, drummer Matan Ephrat, playing specially commissioned works for a concert dedicated to the victims and survivors of October 7 with the local, non-Jewish wind quintet, and a klezmer-backed performance of Yiddish song. Music is a main focus, with concerts every night and workshops and lectures by day.
Not to be missed as part of the festival offerings is the Seven Synagogues walking tour, which tells the history of Kazimierz, the ancient Jewish quarter where Jews settled in mediaeval times. Astonishingly all these beautiful shuls, including some dating back to the 16th century, survived both the war and communism.
Headstones at Krakow New Jewish Cemetery. (Photo: Anthea Gerrie)
Kazimierz, which evolved into an inter-racial neighbourhood during the 19th century, is the place to stay even when the festival is not running, given its wealth of bars, music clubs and vintage shops.
Our base, the Golden Tulip, was well situated, half a block from the main thoroughfare of Josefa and on the tramline route to the Old Town.
Of the many Kazimierz restaurants featuring Israeli as well as Ashkenazi fare, the Bazaar Bistro for chilled beetroot soup and schmaltz herring with sour cream and salad was notable, while Cheder, serving Middle Eastern mezze and delicious ginger lemonade, coffee and cocktails, is a main kibbitzing point for the neighbourhood, sometimes holding evening performances of its own.
Krakow’s finest dining, however, is a tram ride from Kazimierz in the old city. Szara Ges, recognised by Michelin, sits on the largest medieval town square in Europe and offers world-class international cuisine.
When the Nazis established a ghetto in a city that had not had one for centuries, they decided to transport all Krakow’s Jews to a dingy neighbourhood across the river, closer to the railway tracks, for more efficient extermination.
Podzgorse, where today’s ghetto boundary is marked movingly by a square lined with empty chairs, was also home to Oskar Schindler’s factory, now transformed into a dramatic, traumatic museum telling the story of the Krakow Ghetto and its doomed inhabitants.
Altar and chandeliers carved from salt at Wieliczka salt mine. (Photo: Anthea Gerrie)
It was a relief to turn from its claustrophobic corridors packed with photographs, newsreel and artefacts into a lively neighbourhood with a museum of contemporary art and street-food alley.
The Krakow region won Poland its first two Unesco World Heritage Site awards, one for the city’s Old Town, the second for the Wieliczka salt mine half an hour outside the city, worth a visit for its astonishing sculptures.
Here, deep beneath the surface, visitors flock to see a huge, high-ceilinged church complete with altar, chandeliers and religious reliefs carved out of salt not by artists, but talented miners wanting a suitably formal chapel in which to pray for their own safety in a dangerous job.
Many tour operators offer day trips to the mine as a follow-on from a trip to Auschwitz, but don’t try to look around both of them in one day. It will be far too demanding – and not just physically.
Ryanair and Wizz Air fly to Lublin and Krakow from London, and Ryanair also serves Krakow direct from Manchester. Rooms at the Hotel Ilan can be booked at hotelilan.pl. More information at poland.travel/en, lublininfo.com and krakow.travel/en t
