[Leica] Nathan's PAD 20/6/2023: a walk in Lublin

[Nathan Wajsman]

I am spending 3 days in Lublin, Poland. The main reason is that I have been invited to give a couple of lectures during the summer school of the local university here, but it also gives me the chance to explore the city where my father was born and where he lived the first 14 years of his life, until World War II broke out and his world was destroyed. Before the war, Lublin was one of Europe’s main centers of Jewish learning, with between 1/3 and half of the city’s population Jewish, at least 40,000 people. Only a few hundred survived the Holocaust (my father among them), and what was once the Jewish quarter only exists in photographs and memories. With the exception of a couple of streets, it was razed to the ground in 1942-43.

Today, Lublin is an attractive, vibrant city of about 350,000 inhabitants, many of whom are students since the city is the main center of higher education in eastern Poland. Here are five images from yesterday’s walks around Lublin.

Lublin Castle. On the right is a grassy area, which used to be Krawiecka Street (Tailor Street). My father lived in no. 11 on that street:
https://www.greatpix.eu/All/Picture-A-Day/i-vC3znqG/A

A large yeshiva was completed in 1930. The Germans used it for their purposes during the occupation, the subsequent Communist government turned into part of the medical university. It was returned to the Jewish community in the early 2000s and is now a hotel catering mainly to religious Jewish visitors to Lublin, and it also contains a synagogue:
https://www.greatpix.eu/All/Picture-A-Day/i-th7Fnhp/A

The synagogue in the former yeshiva. The Lublin congregation is small, and it is part of the larger Warsaw congregation, about 2 hours away:
https://www.greatpix.eu/All/Picture-A-Day/i-pDwcwVs/A

The Ukrainian consulate in Lublin, expressing its gratitude. Lublin, beeing in the east of the country, has taken in a large number of Ukrainian refugees:
https://www.greatpix.eu/All/Picture-A-Day/i-m4j9XDz/A

In the afternoon, I sat down for a pint at one of the many bars on Krakowskie Przedmiescie Street, and looked at the human traffic passing by:
https://www.greatpix.eu/All/Picture-A-Day/i-CJx93t4/A

And in the evening, on my way back to the hotel, this delightful scene:
https://www.greatpix.eu/All/Picture-A-Day/i-WRH7jZx/A

And presiding over it all is Józef Piłsudski, Poland’s first post-independence leader (the country was partitioned among Prussia, Austria-Hungary and Russia in 1795 and regained its independence after World War I in 1918):
https://www.greatpix.eu/All/Picture-A-Day/i-XQptN5x/A

More to come.
Nathan

Nathan Wajsman

Alicante, Spain
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