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Introduction

This online exhibition is the result of a study tour of Poland undertaken by students of the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies, University College London (www.ucl.ac.uk/hebrew-jewish). The tour was requested by those enrolled in the 2000-2001 MA Holocaust Studies programme, following a similar event organised by Sir Martin Gilbert, founder of the programme in 1995. The tour was organised and led by Robin O’Neil, a PhD Student and retired CID officer, and Dr Michael Berkowitz, Director of the MA programme in Holocaust Studies. We were joined in Poland by Michael Tregenza, a Lublin-based independent scholar and expert on Operation Reinhard.

A chipped and worn tombstone in the restored Jewish Cemetery at Tomaszow Lubelski.

One of the guiding aims of the tour was to gain an appreciation of Jewish culture and society before the Holocaust. This exhibition reflects those aims in trying to paint a broader picture of Jewish civilisation in eastern Poland. For many, the relative inaccessibility of the areas in question means that Auschwitz or Dachau are the only sites commonly visited. Few among us, even scholars, ever venture as far as Belzec, Sobibor or Treblinka. Fewer still have set foot in the old towns of Galicia, visited the former synagogues or long-forgotten Jewish cemeteries. It is a great loss that so few will see the wonderfully restored synagogue and museum in Wlodowa, that so few will experience the peacefulness of the hidden Jewish cemetery in Josefow. This exhibition will hopefully allow a wider audience to at least gain a better understanding of the fading remnants of Jewish civilisation in eastern Poland.