King Charles actively helps Jewish community to grow in Krakow
The Jewish community is growing in a location where they were once murdered in their millions
In what was the worst place in the world for Jews 80 years ago, a miracle is blooming. The city on the doorstep of Auschwitz, whose 70,000-strong community dwindled to a reported 100, is enjoying a once-unimaginable renaissance in Jewish life as increasing numbers of Krakow residents discover their unsuspected Jewish roots. And the unlikely architect of this phenomenon is our own monarch.
“Here in Krakow, from the ashes of the Holocaust the Jewish community has been reborn,” King Charles said in the only public statement he made after visiting Auschwitz this year. He spoke not from the camp, where he attended the 80th anniversary of its liberation, but at the Jewish Community Centre in Krakow he built after visiting survivors there in 2002 and vowing to give more help than the tiny community could even dream of.
The King positively kvelled as he added: “Standing on the steps of this wonderfully vibrant centre, having encouraged its construction and taken immense pride in opening it 17 years ago, I was filled with a sense of hope and optimism at the life and energy which coursed through the building.” And even more importantly, he confessed, seeing that new life blossom and grow exponentially on his latest visit had given him renewed hope as patron of World Jewish Relief, in a bleak new era of antisemitism.
No wonder Jonathan Ornstein, chief executive of Charles’ passion project, hailed the King with the greeting: “Welcome to your JCC,” in January. “You can draw a direct line between Charles choosing to get involved here and our community having a future,” he explains as we talk six months later in the building where it all began.
“Without this JCC there would not have been much hope for the community – and without Charles there would be no JCC,” says Ornstein. And perhaps no shidduch for the American, whose own wife was one of the city’s ‘lost’ Jews, unaware of her heritage until adulthood. Now their daughter attends the JCC pre-school, the first Jewish kindergarten to be opened in Krakow since the Holocaust.
Ornstein, who met his bride at a Chanukah party in this building to which she was unwillingly dragged by a sister newly celebrating their Jewish blood, says her story is “remarkable in how unremarkable it is, because that’s what’s happening today in Poland”. Yet their romance seems as unlikely to an outsider as the way Ornstein originally made his living in Krakow – teaching Hebrew to 150 non-Jews pursuing a Masters in Jewish Studies. “They had to do three years of mandatory Hebrew and Yiddish, and now we’re teaching Hebrew at our own Ulpan.”
Why the rush to study a dead civilisation in a country which lost 90 percent of its 3.5 million Jews in World War II? “Poland became a place of Jewish ghosts and shadows,” admits Ornstein. “After the war many survivors went underground and hid their Jewish identity to protect their families from persecution under Communism. But in 1989 Poland woke up from a bad dream, and a fascination with the culture which vanished with the murdered Jews developed in response to a hole in the Polish psyche. There was pent-up interest because for 45 years learning about it had been denied. No-one talked about this culture which had been part of Polish life for so long – there was no closure.”
Curiosity among locals led to the unlikely birth of the Krakow Festival of Jewish Culture, set up by two non-Jews 34 years ago – a joyous annual klezmerfest, which this year featured a talk by Ornstein. To a packed room he laid out the unlikely evolution of Krakow from the city where Schindler compiled his list, which saved only a pitiable few from deportation to the death camps.
Yet despite the interest in Krakow’s Jewish antecedents created by the festival, Ornstein points out: “What was missing from this Jewish renaissance was the Jews.” However, reviving the music and retelling the legends of the old Jewish neighbourhood Kazimierz, home to the JCC as well as half a dozen magnificent synagogues, did create a sympathetic environment for what was to follow when Charles arrived in the city in 2002. It seems to have been a case of “build it and they will come”.
“After being very moved when he met some of our Holocaust survivors, the then Prince of Wales asked how he could help,” explains Ornstein, who was yet to head up a centre no-one imagined would come into being. “We said we had no shortage of places to worship, with all our synagogues, but we could use a day centre for our survivors. Charles said he would see what he could do.”
After Charles met with World Jewish Relief in London, a vastly more ambitious and generous offer was made. “They visited and saw what was going on here – an underground student movement who found out they had Jewish roots and were meeting. It was like a magnet, pulling people in who were finding out they had Jewish roots.”
A full-blown community centre was proposed, coming to fruition within a few years of Charles pledging some of his own money. Thanks to his involvement, World Jewish Relief were able to raise enough funds to build it. And come they did, swelling the student group whose successors have gone on to found a full-scale Hillel at the university. “As the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of survivors found out they were Jewish, the real magic of the non-Jewish interest in all things Jewish allowed actual Jewish life to be fostered.”
In addition to the pre-school, Cheder, Ulpan – and the space for senior citizens originally requested for Holocaust survivors, of whom 58 remain – the JCC organises a weekly Shabbat dinner for more than 100, an annual charity bike ride attracting 300 cyclists from all over the world, “and the best Jewish choir in Krakow”. Their 1000-plus members have also helped feed, clothe, shelter and teach Polish to nearly half a million Ukrainian refugees in the past three years “because 80 years ago, when the Jews were the victims, the world was silent,” says Ornstein in explanation.
Seeing the community, which has also been swelled by Israelis moving from France, Belgium and other parts of western Europe since October 7, grow is something which never ceases to excite this optimistic believer. “Our reborn community has become a symbol of hope and resilience, welcoming 100,000 visitors a year. It’s why I thanked Charles, when he came back here, for giving our community, transformed from victims to caregivers, the most precious gift possible – life.”