Most tourist trips to Europe are filled with exhilarating tours of castles and cathedrals, museums and moats, art and architecture. I love these trips — the tours, the sights, the food, but during my most recent travels, I got stuck on two troubling topics.
The first: Where are the proudly proclaimed markers of historical Jewish life and contributions in the great European cities? Why are they — we — too often erased, or at least largely invisible in the tours and guidebooks?
Second: For all the glory and achievement, how is it that humankind still hasn’t learned to respect religious, ethnic and cultural differences, or at least tolerate them?
Turning to the first question, don’t get me wrong, I’m not a Euro-neophyte. I’m fortunate enough to have studied, worked and traveled extensively. Yet, most of those trips weren’t focused on my Jewish heritage. This time, however, I made a point to do that.
My quest started in Split, Croatia. There within the walls of the vast third century CE palatial fortress of Roman Emperor Diocletian stands the tiny Split Synagogue, one of the oldest Sephardic temples still in use.
Built in the early 1500s, the synagogue somehow has managed to survive, much like the vines and shrubs that cling to the walls of Diocletian’s fortress.
That the tiny shul and community center, accessed via security camera and buzzer, still serve as a center of worship and solidarity for Split’s remaining 150 Jews is a solemn and joyous testimony to the endurance of our people.
On the wall to the left of the bimah is a plaque inscribed with the names of the community’s 150 Jews who perished in the Holocaust.
Around the corner on one of the city’s central plazas is a historic marker recalling Split’s own Kristallnacht when Jewish businesses were ransacked and shopkeepers beaten.
Yet, even as I pondered the fate of Split’s Jews, I had cause to think about the clash between other people at another time.
In Split, we toured Diocletian’s former mausoleum. The Roman emperor had persecuted Christians. After his death, Christians took their revenge. They emptied his tomb and that of his wife and converted the grand mausoleum into a cathedral.
No one knows what became of the bodies. All that remains are the bones of the emperor’s two daughters who died before him. Their tiny tomb sits atop the cathedral’s entrance, a lonely reminder of parental love and religious-secular hatred.
We next traveled to Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina, where 2,000 people died in two wars as Yugoslavia unraveled after Tito died and Communism ended in the 1990s.
Today that city is rebuilding. Yet, the scars of war — bombed-out buildings and shrapnel-pocked roads — are everywhere. Also, everywhere, calls for prayer from mosques and pealing church bells compete for the attention and affection of the people.
As for the Jews? I found just one sign — an empty lot with a Star of David and a menorah on the surrounding fence, all that remain of a synagogue destroyed during WW II.
In sharp contrast stands the Czech Republic’s robust Prague Jewish Quarter, bustling with tourists and Jews who survived both the Holocaust and the Communist regime.
The history of Prague’s Jews is storied. It is one of Europe’s oldest recorded and best-known Jewish communities, dating back to at least 965.
In its pre-WW II days, Prague boasted a Jewish population of more than 92,000 Jews, almost 20% of the city’s population. At least two-thirds of the city’s Jewish population perished in the Holocaust.
Today while just 2,000 Jews live in Prague, there are synagogues of all denominations, an old age home, a kindergarten, kosher restaurants and a kosher hotel.
Among the more memorable, sobering and humbling sights in the Jewish Quarter are a cemetery dating back to the 12th century and the Pinkas Synagogue, which lists the names of 77,297 Czech Jews who perished in the Holocaust.
Outside of Prague is the city of Terezin (Theresienstadt) and the concentration camp through whose gates walked 150,000 Jewish men, women and children. The guide at Terezin kept saying that it was a “transit site,” not a concentration camp. This insistence was unsettling . . . disturbing . . . infuriating.
From the Czech Republic, we flew to the Netherlands. There we spent a joyous few days seeing tulips galore and 290 Vincent Van Gogh paintings (290!), Rembrandt’s home and seven Vermeer masterpieces.
Then, we plunged back into our Judaica explorations. We visited Anne Frank’s hiding place, the Netherlands’ newly opened National Holocaust Museum, the Artis Zoo where Jews also hid, and the Hollandsche Schouwburg, a theater which on July 18, 1942, became a deportation center. Today the site is a haunting memorial to the victims of the Holocaust.
More happily, we visited the 17th-century Portuguese Synagogue, built by Amsterdam’s Sephardic community — one of the largest and richest Jewish communities.
This synagogue, with its soaring barrel-shaped construction and gleaming brass candle candelabras, remains an active house of worship. It also is the site of one of the oldest Jewish libraries in the world, founded in 1616.
Returning home, I continued thinking about my two initial questions.
Generally, I understand why Jews, along with other non-Christian religions, are not the focus of the “story” of Europe. We’re not the majority, not the main interest of most tourists.
It makes me grateful that there is now a thriving business in Jewish-themed genealogical tours. Still, I wish there was more inclusion in general tours, not just of Jewish contributions to world culture but of all religions, cultures and countries.
Of course, there is also the problem of “uncomfortable” truths that limit the telling of the Jews’ and other people’s stories in Europe. There are anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, racism, colonization . . . the list goes on. Yes, I’m talking to you, Belgium tour guide, who pointed out all the pretty boulevards King Leopold created, but failed to mention the people he enslaved in the Congo to pay for all that gory glory. And yes, I’m speaking to you, Terezin guide, about your refusal to call the site a concentration camp.
As for my second query — simplistically put as “Why can’t we all just get along?” what can I — or anyone — say?
Millennium after millennium, we as a species have failed to learn to respect, accept or even navigate around our differences.
Diocletian persecuted the Christians. The Christians yanked the emperor from his tomb. European nations waged war after war millennium after millennium, and then, came Hitler seeking to annihilate the Jews. Thirty years ago, Yugoslavia came apart and neighbor turned on neighbor. Today, again, there is war in the Middle East.
Five countries in three weeks. Everywhere my husband and I went, we saw the best and the worst of civilization. Tulips and turmoil. Art and anguish.
On the long flight home, I thought about my two seemingly unrelated questions. Mid-flight, I realized something. They were actually connected!
If we all could learn more about our unique and simultaneously shared history, maybe, just maybe, we could be more tolerant of our differences. Then, perhaps, that tolerance could foster greater respect, reduced hatred and less violence. It’s not a simple or a complete solution to the world’s problems, but it would be a step in the right direction.
