Wakses knew better than to look for Jews there. They went directly to the cemetery. The few Jews left in Łódź knew that the best chance of meeting foreign Jewish visitors was to wait around the cemetery. When Jews came to Łódź now, they were looking for the dead. On Saturday mornings, Shabbat, Jews went to the cemetery and waited for weekend visitors like the Waks family.
Piotrkowska Street was being cleaned up and transformed into a commercial pedestrian mall to greet the new capitalism. But most of Łódź was chipped and peeling, its bygone affluence revealed in the richly decorative architecture. The wood-paneled mansions with long sweeping stairways that used to belong to the mill owners were now museums. Some of the old mills were still operating, like the colossal red brick gothic cottonworks of Poltex, and a few two-story wooden houses with outdoor staircases, where mill workers’ families crowded together, were still standing.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union and its trade bloc, Łódź was again without a local economy. It had lost its Russian market. Between 1990 and 1993, forty thousand Łódź textile workers were laid off. Almost half of the 285 factories had closed.
The same thing had happened at the beginning of the century. In 1918, when Poland received its independence, Łódź had also lost its Russian market. The Poles started getting their wish, that often-proposed answer to “the Jewish question”: The Jews, on the bottom of the crumbling economy, were leaving Poland, not by the hundreds but by the hundreds of thousands. In the seventeenth century, three-quarters of the world’s Jews had lived in Poland, after fleeing anti-Semitism in Western Europe but stopped from going further by anti-Semitism in Russia. But over the next four centuries Poland became an increasingly unfavorable place for Jews to live. By the 1920s, only one out of every five Jews in the world still lived there. Even so, it had the second-largest Jewish population in the world. Only the United States had more, and that was because so many Polish Jews had moved there.
I CCHOK F INKELSZTAJN’S CERTAINTY about his decision to move from Łódź to Paris was a little shaken when he finally arrived at theGare du Nord. After days of bumping across Europe, as he made his way from the high-roofed ironwork railroad station and out into his first Parisian day, his first thought was, “
This
is what they call the city of light?”
There had been more light back in Łódź, with its wide streets and ornate buildings. Even in the smaller ghetto streets there had been more light. It was 1931, and the buildings of Paris had not been cleaned for centuries. Everywhere he walked he looked up at blackened buildings.
Still, Finkelsztajn had not had many choices. He was a cabinetmaker, but there was no more work in Łódź. No one had money anymore. Paris was alive, even if it was coated with the color of mourning. The markets were full of food—fruit and vegetables and meat. In Paris, when a man wanted to smoke a cigarette, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack and took one out. When the pack was empty, he would go to any corner store and buy another. In Poland, if a man wanted a cigarette and he had the money for one, he would go to the store and buy a single cigarette to smoke. Sometimes he might buy two or three cigarettes.
As Poland got poorer, moves were made to exclude Jews from universities and to force shops to stay open on Saturdays, which meant that practicing Jews could no longer be shopkeepers. Finkelsztajn had had no intention of going to a university: nor did he observe the Sabbath—or for that matter, any other religious practice. He did not really believe in religion. He believed that the future was socialism, a kind of social justice that would do more to improve the lives of working Jewish people than religion ever had. But he had also heard about an increasing number of Jews who for no apparent reason
Piotrkowska Street was being cleaned up and transformed into a commercial pedestrian mall to greet the new capitalism. But most of Łódź was chipped and peeling, its bygone affluence revealed in the richly decorative architecture. The wood-paneled mansions with long sweeping stairways that used to belong to the mill owners were now museums. Some of the old mills were still operating, like the colossal red brick gothic cottonworks of Poltex, and a few two-story wooden houses with outdoor staircases, where mill workers’ families crowded together, were still standing.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union and its trade bloc, Łódź was again without a local economy. It had lost its Russian market. Between 1990 and 1993, forty thousand Łódź textile workers were laid off. Almost half of the 285 factories had closed.
The same thing had happened at the beginning of the century. In 1918, when Poland received its independence, Łódź had also lost its Russian market. The Poles started getting their wish, that often-proposed answer to “the Jewish question”: The Jews, on the bottom of the crumbling economy, were leaving Poland, not by the hundreds but by the hundreds of thousands. In the seventeenth century, three-quarters of the world’s Jews had lived in Poland, after fleeing anti-Semitism in Western Europe but stopped from going further by anti-Semitism in Russia. But over the next four centuries Poland became an increasingly unfavorable place for Jews to live. By the 1920s, only one out of every five Jews in the world still lived there. Even so, it had the second-largest Jewish population in the world. Only the United States had more, and that was because so many Polish Jews had moved there.
I CCHOK F INKELSZTAJN’S CERTAINTY about his decision to move from Łódź to Paris was a little shaken when he finally arrived at theGare du Nord. After days of bumping across Europe, as he made his way from the high-roofed ironwork railroad station and out into his first Parisian day, his first thought was, “
This
is what they call the city of light?”
There had been more light back in Łódź, with its wide streets and ornate buildings. Even in the smaller ghetto streets there had been more light. It was 1931, and the buildings of Paris had not been cleaned for centuries. Everywhere he walked he looked up at blackened buildings.
Still, Finkelsztajn had not had many choices. He was a cabinetmaker, but there was no more work in Łódź. No one had money anymore. Paris was alive, even if it was coated with the color of mourning. The markets were full of food—fruit and vegetables and meat. In Paris, when a man wanted to smoke a cigarette, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack and took one out. When the pack was empty, he would go to any corner store and buy another. In Poland, if a man wanted a cigarette and he had the money for one, he would go to the store and buy a single cigarette to smoke. Sometimes he might buy two or three cigarettes.
As Poland got poorer, moves were made to exclude Jews from universities and to force shops to stay open on Saturdays, which meant that practicing Jews could no longer be shopkeepers. Finkelsztajn had had no intention of going to a university: nor did he observe the Sabbath—or for that matter, any other religious practice. He did not really believe in religion. He believed that the future was socialism, a kind of social justice that would do more to improve the lives of working Jewish people than religion ever had. But he had also heard about an increasing number of Jews who for no apparent reason
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