April 26, 2014: Day 2

 

Today we walked all over Krakow!  In the morning, we visited many synagogues.  Krakow had over 60,000 Jews and 60 synagogues.  Dan Ginsburg insightfully noted that this is 10,000 Jews per synagogue; however his comment was not so insightful because it is actually 1,000 Jews per synagogue.

 

Next we went to the Krakow ghetto. Definitely not what is pictured when you say "oh my god, that's so ghetto!" Our navigator Magda talked to home and business owners to gain access to historical buildings, now converted into apartments and stores. We have trouble understanding how the citizens knowingly or unknowingly live where hundreds died. We passed buildings with hebrew engraved in the doorway with a Polish restaurant sign hanging below.

 

We ate lunch in a train station turned restaurant with hundreds of other Jews from around the world, all of whom were on the March of the Living trip. Even with the vast amount of people in the building, some of the kids - and even the adults - ran into old friends from other groups. One group was particularly entertaining - singing, waving banners, and dancing around the building.

 

The afternoon was spent in the bustling square of Krakow, which Matt Schneider compares to Miami Beach because of the outdoor/indoor restaurants - but definitely not the weather.  We enjoyed shopping, ice cream, and even a little bit of sun!  A worker at the hotel joked, "The sun is always out! It's just behind the clouds."

-Dana Coleman, Madelyn Dukart, Rachel Klein