Poland Day 20 - 21

Day 20

Ola and Myself woke up nice and early and had breakfast with Tadeusz. We then got our stuff together and the three of us went to the Jewish cemetery "Zydowski" - it is the largest Jewish cemetery in Europe (43 hectars or 106 acres). This massive Cemetary is home to many of the famous jewish entrepeneurs of Lodz, as well as; The victims of the Holocaust, victims of the Cholera, uprisings and everyday use. As this cemetary is so large, the cost to maintain it is just as great and therefore much of the cemetary is now one with the forest. It is actually a beautiful site to see the vines and ivy all around the graves and trees, as though life itself is forming around usually such a dead place. This magical presence that is formed by the graveyard was even used in many films. Certain section of the cemetary are currently being repaired/renovated by the generous donations of many people from Israel and the U.S.A. The majority of these section are those of the soldiers/citizens who died during the Holocaust. Although much of this renvoation has be done in a manner not to harm the nature or graves, some of the work actually requires moving the graves otherwise further damage to the preservation of its history could occur. In this graveyard, Izrael Poznanski was buried, his grave is one of the most cared for and beautiful in all the cemetary. We then left and headed to the grave in which Tadeusz mother (ola's great grandmother) was buried, in another cemetary. This cemetary was more different and was interesting to see how well kept it was. The reason this cemetary was more kept is that in the Zydowski cemetary, once you buy an area it is yours forever (but the duty of caring for the grave is that of the families)... While at this cemetary you can only rent the spot for 20 years at a time, then someone has to rent it again. So if after 20 years there is no one to pay the upkeep it is given to another individual. We laid some flowers down at the grave and a candle, then headed out to go for supper at Ola's Aunt Krysia house. We had an amazing meal once again (I have not yet found something in Poland I do no thoroughly enjoy). We all sat around till 10 pm eating and eating and eating until finally we were even to full to leave.... We got home and crashed after such a large meal!

Day 21

Darrin woke up once again to have breakfast with Tadeusz, while Ola slept till 10:30. But she's on vacation so she's allowed :) ... We had plans to meet Ola's old friend Ewa for 12pm at her office. The only thing was, where is her office... We left at 11:15 and arrived in the area around 11:45 ----> we forgot to bring the list of phopne numbers..... So we walked around for 2 hours looking in every office building and asking every receptionist if they know an Ewa Grzegorzewska and of course we were unsuccessful... We decided to give it 10 more minutes of searching when Ola finally got a hold of her Uncle Tomek... He was able to contact Ewa and to our surprise we see her stick her head out a window and flag us down.... (we happened to be in a small alley at the time, where her office was located... We still would have never found it! After one and a half hours of chit chatting, we left and headed back home, just to leave 10 minutes later to go to Tomek and Ania's for supper (it was a day of running around with our head chopped off)... We then called it an early night because our bus for Lodz left at 8am for Warsawa, which meant we had to wake up for 6 am in order to catch a bus to the bus station (ironic)!