Origins

This is a sequence of posts about my recent trip to Poland, where I did some genealogical research. (It’s probably going to be about a lot of things — research methods, history, politics, memory, philosophy.) At the bottom of the post, I’ve typed out rough phonetic spellings of the Polish names and places.

Why did I go to Poland? 50% of my heritage is Polish. I had been to Poland at least eight times before, but every time was with a group, and only to Kraków. (More on that later.) This trip would be my first opportunity to see more of the country of my ancestors with some degree of flexibility.

I was also interested in doing genealogical research. Four of my great-grandparents came from Poland between 1906 and 1912, all on my dad’s side.

Our party of three had saved up for airfare to Warsaw ($500 round trip from Chicago O’Hare), a rental car, and some off-season hotel rates. We sketched out a loose agenda for November and December that would ultimately include the cities of Warsaw, Toruń, Gdańsk, Częstochowa, Kraków, Tarnów, Łódź, Zakopane, and numerous villages and small towns in between. 17 days in all, and four of these days were reserved for genealogical research. (More on that calculation later.)

The circumstances surrounding my great-grandparents’ immigration to America are questions that have taken on increasing importance for me over the last five years, and with more urgency in the last few months.

“What’s that all about?” My colleague Carol Spungen asked me. I’ve been trying to articulate my answer since she asked in September.

I seemed to be one of the youngest people in the room. I was among the last to get a seat, so I grabbed an open one on the periphery. Turns out I picked a seat next to PGSA president Chet Szerlag as well as Julie Szczepankiewicz. Fortuitous.

“What are your research interests?” Julie asked me when we met at the conference.

This is not how I responded, but here is how my interest actually developed:

I was an intern for CANDLES during the rebuilding effort as part of my university studies. At that time, my project involved research in archives about the experiences of US Army members during World War II. I found out my grandfather Bert Majewski was in a liberating battalion. (I say I “found out” because he died seven years before I was born. My information about him comes from other sources.) Bert was in the Timberwolf Division that liberated the Dora-Mittelbau concentration camp.

That realization was my first sense of the connection between the historical and the personal, the relationship between the broad contours of history that everyone knows, like World War II, and the granular stories that only one’s family knows.

The CANDLES project motivated me to seek out a position working for the museum. I ultimately worked there for 10 years and became the executive director. Part of my job was to help lead group tours of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

During one of those trips in 2013, I did some research in the archives of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. There I found many former prisoners with the same last name as me.

My great-grandfather John listed his birth place as Owieczkowo (translation: something like “little sheep village”) when he filled out this U.S. draft registration card in 1917.

As I became more involved in the Holocaust professionally, I became more interested in finding out how the Holocaust affected my ancestors and relatives who did not leave Poland. Are any of them still alive? Is it possible for me to meet them?

And as I learned more about the historical facts surrounding their existence, I became increasingly interested in knowing them personally. What were their lives like? What wisdom can I draw from their experience, or are there mistakes to be learned from?

Next post: Preparing for the research trip.

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Pronunciation Guide:
· Kraków: KRA-koof
· Toruń: TOH-roon
· Gdańsk: Like the word “dine,” but with a short hard g at the beginning and a quick “sk” at the end. (It’s basically one syllable. gDINEsk. You can do it.)
· Częstochowa: chen-stuh-HOVE-uh
· Tarnów: TAR-noof
· Łódź: WOOJ
· Zakopane: zak-oh-PAH-neh
· Szczpankiewicz: sh-ch-pan-KYEH-vich (the sh-ch would be the same combo of sounds as when you say “fresh cheese”)
· Majewski: my-EFF-skee
· Owieczkowo: ohvyech-KOH-voh

Notes: Pretty much all the r’s are rolled. The penultimate (second-to-last) syllable almost always receives the emphasis. The letter ę is not exactly “en,” but like a nasally “en.” Which brings me to the point: I’m still learning Polish and I’m making up my own phonetic spellings, so take all this with a grain of salt. If you see something in error, let me know — good learning opportunity.

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