Pióro

Spring has been coming often to our part of Poland. It snows for a week, whitewashing everything and then it soars, sending all the white-stuff into the Bobrówka stream, which cuts through the middle of town. This Saturday, we caught the cycle on the upswing: the sun was out and slush lined the streets.

Four of us headed to one of the two old Jewish cemeteries in town. It’s on a road that divides a collection of apartments blocks with some suburban houses. One of us had heard that it was a very “romantic” cemetery. I didn’t know what that meant, but it made me think of two Goths with a picnic blanket, necking by a tombstone.

Like the Christian cemeteries around, this one was fenced off, but unlike those cemeteries, this fence didn’t have a gate. We entered at a section that had been torn down, next to a hollow brick building. The building could have been an old synagogue. I’m not sure. There were two plaques on it. On one I could only decipher the word “Gestapo” and on the other, something about “Hitler.” There were sets of names and dates.

Also, in contrast to the hyper-manicured Christian cemeteries, this one looked positively bayou. It had a thick twiggy underbrush. Vines crawled everywhere. All of the stones were tilting and some had even been partially engulfed in the older hardwoods. I followed a path that someone had recently set into the snow. It took me to the middle of the north end, where it just stopped. I had to chuckle at bit, having arrived at a dead-end in cemetery.

We struggled to find a date on one of the stones, which was tough since none of us read Hebrew. There were a pair of stones that were written in German. The dates were from the mid 1800s, during Austria’s rule of the area.

I headed to the western side of the cemetery. The sun was a few hours from sunset. The houses next to the graveyard were quiet. It struck me as odd that these houses were so close to this neglected symbol. It exists like a box in the basement, with contents that should be saved, but whose caretakers have no intention of ever really revisiting. Living so close to this cemetery has probably made it invisible to the locals. It’s like a feature of the landscape, like any abandoned plot. It’s historical significance barely registers as people conduct their day-to-day. Again, the complete opposite of Christian cemeteries, which glow every night with a few candles lit by conscientious family members.

I made my way back to the entrance by the abandoned building. I found a hole in the building’s north side wall that I could squeeze through.

Inside, I found fewer liquor bottles than I had expected. I was in the main room, which was totally open. One side-room to the south-west had a sketchy-looking floor so I just stuck my head in to catch a bit of the sun setting over the cemetery. There was a hall on the east end of the building that ran parallel to the street. I could hear people walking and talking through the broken front windows. I kept still so they wouldn’t hear me.

Back at the hole in the wall entrance I found Patrick and Aaron waiting. Patrick decided to squeeze through the hole too. We went up-stairs. Patrick said he felt like he did when he used to break into construction sites as a kid. I felt the same way. Before we were wandering around an old cemetery; now we were trespassing.

The last stop was the basement. It was narrow and completely black. Patrick worked his lighter, but it kept going out. He said it was just like in a horror movie. Of course, that got my mind racing. It was very Blair Witch. We found someone’s bedding on the floor and, with practised calm, decided to leave.

I’ve found one site (you will have to hit the Union Jack in the corner of this page for the English version) with a history of the Jews in Cieszyn. It talks about some cemeteries, but I haven’t been able to find exact information on the one we visited. I’m not sure what records remain.