SAVING A Place That Time Forgot

Ostrava and Hlucin, two Czech towns with a rich Jewish history, were under Jewish radar until a fateful hockey trip last summer.

Fragments in Hlucin: The Nazis destroyed gravestones and used the fragments for paving. Courtesy of joshua lewittes

by Joshua Lewittes

It was a pleasant and peaceful day on Aug. 21, 2007 in the Czech Republic town of Hlucin, but even the serenity and warm weather couldn’t mask the ugly events that had taken place there more than 40 years before. Nor could any Holocaust classes at my New York City yeshiva prepare me for what I saw that summer day.
Along a dried up brook in Hlucin tombstones that once memorialized the lives of that region’s Jews lay littered like trash. During the German Occupation, the Nazis removed the cemetery’s gravestones so that there wouldn’t be any reminders of the Jews of Hlucin. They then meticulously placed the tombstones — which they smashed to pieces — in the brook to slow down the water and

prevent erosion. In 1945 the Russians further desecrated that hallowed ground by building a cemetery for Red Army soldiers on top of the Hlucin Jewish cemetery. Thoughts quickly flowed through me like the water that once added beauty to that sacred burial site.
How could people be so disrespectful to the dead? What motivated them to reduce tombstones to rubble to use as construction materials? As my younger brother Jack and I walked around the area, and even tried to piece together these shattered stones, we wondered if some of the deceased’s descendants were still alive in Hlucin or whether, like so many from that region, they too had perished in the Holocaust.
We spent the day pulling broken gravestones out of the dried-up brook and reading the Hebrew inscriptions from the more than 100 mud covered gravestones that the Nazis had desecrated. Only seven months earlier in January a group of Czech construction workers had unearthed the stream of stones. Now a non-Jewish volunteer who considers himself an amateur archeologist comes once a week to pull these gravestones out of the stream by hand because there’s no money to pay for such equipment.
When the gravestones are eventually all removed, inventory and photo documentation will begin. Just recently the municipality of Hlucin agreed to return rights to the cemetery to the Jewish community which hopes to restore dignity to the burial site and create a memorial. But again, there’s no funding for that project either.
Jack and I were in the Czech Republic to play ice hockey with Czech kids in Ostrava, a town one mile away from Hlucin, where our ice hockey coach, Martin Cejka, is from. We were invited by Coach Martin, who coaches the NyICECATS and Ramaz’s junior varsity floor hockey team, to play against an elite level team in the Ostrava arena. Our goal was to improve our skills by practicing and playing with the Czech team.
Armed with a duffel bag of kosher food we stayed with our coach’s parents for 10 days as we scrimmaged against kids who had never met Jews before. Though we spent several hours a day learning the sport’s fundamentals, the real lessons took place off the ice.
Before I left home, I began to think about what happened to the Jewish community in Ostrava. I was curious if there had ever been a Jewish community there and if any remnants remained. To be honest I had never heard of Ostrava (unlike Prague which is famous for its Jewish community and culture).
After doing some research on the Internet and with the help of Coach Martin (who is fluent in Czech) and Lisa Feder of the Czech Heritage Action Initiative (CHAI) — an organization that supports the continuum of Jewish life in the Czech Republic — I contacted the Jewish Community Center (JCC) in Ostrava to arrange to learn more about their Jewish life.
Coach Martin is not Jewish but was instrumental in organizing my visit. We arranged to meet with several Jews from Ostrava and learned that before 1939 the town was home to approximately 10,000 Jews. During the Holocaust the Jews were sent primarily to Theresienstadt and then on to such Nazi death camps as Auschwitz and Treblinka.
After the war, there were only about 250 survivors from Ostrava. Many of the surviving Jews left after the Communist coup of 1948 and subsequent invasion and occupation by Russian troops in August of 1968. Today there are only 126 registered members of the Jewish community of Ostrava, the majority of whom are 61 years old or older. All that remains of Ostrava’s rich Jewish history is a monument to the Jews who died during World War II; the JCC built on the site of a pre-World War II synagogue; and two cemeteries, one of which doesn’t have any tombstones because the Nazis and Communists destroyed them as well.
When Jack and I first arrived in Ostrava we first met with Pani Jirina Garajova, the chairwoman of the JCC and a child survivor of Theresienstadt. Her parents were killed when she was 3 and Garajova was found hiding. Garajova, now in her 60s, is the youngest member of the Jewish community of Ostrava who openly declares her Jewishness. While there are a few other Jews who live in Ostrava, they do not consider themselves Jews nor do they participate in any JCC activities, she explained to us.
Garajova introduced us to Walter Kranz, an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor and native of the town. We spent two days with Kranz, one of the most energetic people I have ever met, and he talked to us for hours about his life and the Jewish history of Ostrava. I have over six hours of videotape from my interview with him with Coach Martin acting as our interpreter.
Though his knowledge of religious observances and customs was limited, he recalled his bar mitzvah and going to synagogue. When he was 17 years old he was sent to Theresienstadt. His grandparents died in Auschwitz, but his parents and younger sister miraculously survived. Mr. Kranz returned to Ostrava after the War to become a coal miner. Now he’s a father of three children, a grandfather, and a widower.
Kranz took us on a tour around Ostrava to show us where the synagogues and cemeteries were once located before they were destroyed in the war. At the site of a former cemetery, razed by the Communists to make room for a park, is a large memorial plaque which reads “yizkor” and “in memory of the Ostrava Jews murdered by the Nazis in 1939-1945.”
The monument was built in 1994 to commemorate the 55th anniversary of the first transport of Jews in Europe, which occurred from Ostrava. This transport in October 1939 consisted of 1,291 Jewish men sent to the first resettlement camp in Nisko and San in Southern Poland.
Most of the Jews in Ostrava are Holocaust survivors and former hidden children now in their 80s. They depend on meager reparations from the German government and some additional support from the JCC.
The JCC conducts Jewish educational classes and cultural events including a program for the six Jewish children who live in Ostrava. While there is no rabbi, cantor or even a single Torah scroll in Ostrava some Jewish holidays like Rosh HaShanah, Yom Kippur and Chanukah are observed by the community. During those times a spiritual leader from Prague, 210 miles away, is sent to the JCC to lead services. There are no weekly services.
Two years ago the JCC founded an agency called Project Tikvah to provide Holocaust victims with social activities and services including assistance with homecare, meals, and transportation to and from rehabilitation. These services allow Ostrava’s aging survivors to remain independent in their homes. However, because of poor funding Project Tikvah invariably runs out of money before the year ends. The current deficit for the year 2007 is $15,000, according to Garajova.
The fact that many Holocaust survivors are dependent on the JCC’s resources saddened me the most. While it is vitally important to remember the Holocaust, that is not enough. The least we can do for Kranz and others survivors like him is to ensure that their remaining days are dignified and that they remain in the comfort of their own homes.
There is a concept in Judaism called tikkun olam, repairing the world. By helping these Holocaust survivors and preserving the memory of those Jews who lived in Ostrava, through the restoration of cemeteries for instance, we can help repair the world.
To that end, I have been working with Lisa Feder, founder of CHAI, who helped create a Web site that details the history of the Jews of Ostrava and includes photographs and a personal message from me. I have also been raising money for Project Tikvah, which supports vital services for survivors and restoration of the Jewish cemetery in Hlucin.
So far, I have only managed to raise about $2,500. My Jewish hockey team, the NyICECATS, is planning an event to raise funds and awareness. We plan to sell raffle tickets, goodie bags, and NyICECATS T-shirts. We’ll invite players and their families to skate after watching one of our games.
“The ability to run the NyICECATS Hockey Program for Sabbath observers stems from the wonderful freedoms we have to practice our religion in this country,” said Jamie Lassner, vice president and a coach of the NyICECATS. “It is those very freedoms that the Jews Ostrava did not have during the Holocaust years and under Communist rule. The NyICECATS heartily agreed to assist Coach Martin and Josh Lewittes in bringing awareness to this very important cause in an effort to remember the past and be thankful for the present and hopefully future freedoms.”
Recently, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) in New York has agreed to help. Representatives of the JDC traveled to Ostrava in January and met with members of the Jewish community. The JDC will ensure that donations reach the JCC in Ostrava.
The nicest part of my fundraising efforts so far is finding out about donations from people I do not even know who saw my Web site. I am also so excited that the JDC will be looking into the needs of the Jewish community of Ostrava and will help raise the necessary funds for these Holocaust survivors.
For more information about how you can aid the Jewish community in Ostrava please visit www.remember-ostrava.org.
Joshua Lewittes is a sophomore at Ramaz Upper School in Manhattan.

Westchester Jewish Conference

Westchester’s Jewish Community Relations Organization