I really don’t know where to start. I’ve been thinking about this for hours, and processing today is taking a lot of energy, and I’m exhausted. The contrast of what we did and where we went in Łódź is remarkable. There was the opulence of the lifestyle of the Poznanski family.

They had an amazing lifestyle but it was offset by their philanthropy, their generosity to their workers with healthcare, precautions in their textile factories in case of fire, and more. If you haven’t yet read Singer’s book “The Brothers Ashkenaz” you should consider it to learn about the lifestyle. economics, and challenges about the people who turned Łódź from a sleepy little agricultural village into a thriving metropolis1

There was lunch at the amazing restaurant, Anatevka, where the wine was Israeli wine, and the menu, while not kosher, highlighted some of the food served in Jewish homes.

Yiddish and Klezmer music was playing, the walls were filled with memorabilia from Jewish homes. So far, so good, right?

Our last stop of the day was at the Łódź Jewish cemetery where there are somewhere between 170,000 and 250,000 Jewish burials. One section has unidentified people who died in the Shoah. Outside the cemetery walls are stone fragments rescued from where they were used to build walls, and as a solid underpinning for roads, and even matzevot rescued from other cemeteries that had been destroyed.

The cemetery wasn’t destroyed but the sadness is that there is no one who remembers the dead, who still lives here. Are the people buried here remembered? Who is alive who still mourns? Does anyone say the names of those buried here or think about them? Do they still live in someone’s memory. Tomorrow we go to the Warsaw ghetto.