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Centropa in Poland

3,500,000 Jews lived in pre Holocaust Poland, 3,000,000 were murdered and 500,000 tried to start life over after the war. With the coming of Communism and a wave of anti-Semitic violence, the majority fled for the west and for Israel. In 1968 a government-sponsored program against Jews sent another 20,000 out of the country. Every government since democracy returned in 1989, however, has been strongly positive to the country's Jewish institutions and organizations. Although the number of Jews living in Poland today has been exaggerated, what is not in dispute is that this small community is quite lively, with a Jewish school and kindergarten, an active synagogue in Warsaw, and Jewish community centers in Warsaw and Cracow.

Regarding elderly Jews in Poland today, those who we interviewed, they are scattered about the country in Warsaw, Lublin, Legnica, Cracow and a few other towns. Our interview team was headed by Anka Grupinska, a noted author of three books on Polish-Jewish relations.

Anka also served in Poland's embassy in Israel for six years during the 1990s and currently hosts a Jewish cultural program on public radio in Warsaw.

Our Polish project is unique: until Anka and her team begun seeking out these last witnesses to a world destroyed, no one-to our knowledge--had ever interviewed them about their lives in pre-Holocaust Poland.

That makes this archive of stories and images all the more compelling, and all the more useful for historians, archivists and social anthropologists.

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Centropa in Poland

Anka also served in Poland's embassy in Israel for six years during the 1990s and currently hosts a Jewish cultural program on public radio in Warsaw.

That makes this archive of stories and images all the more compelling, and all the more useful for historians, archivists and social anthropologists.

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Centropa in Poland

Anka also served in Poland's embassy in Israel for six years during the 1990s and currently hosts a Jewish cultural program on public radio in Warsaw.

That makes this archive of stories and images all the more compelling, and all the more useful for historians, archivists and social anthropologists.

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Centropa in Poland

Anka also served in Poland's embassy in Israel for six years during the 1990s and currently hosts a Jewish cultural program on public radio in Warsaw.

That makes this archive of stories and images all the more compelling, and all the more useful for historians, archivists and social anthropologists.

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Centropa in Romania

800,000 Jews lived in interwar Romania, which then included all of Moldova and a slice of northeastern Bulgaria. Around 200,000 to 250,000 were murdered during the Holocaust. Fewer than10,000 Jews live in Romania today; most of them are elderly as more than 340,000 Romanian Jews emigrated to Israel.

Between 2001 and 2007, Centropa employed two teams in Romania, a large country where elderly Jews are scattered in small communities separated by long distances and bad roads. In the northwest part of the country (where most elderly Jews still speak Hungarian) Ildiko Molnar directed our team. Ildiko, a graduate of the Jewish Studies program in Cluj, has worked for Centropa since 2001 and trained more than a dozen interviewers and editors.

In 2006 we began a cooperative partnership with the Goren Goldstein Center for Jewish Studies in Bucharest, and Anca Ciuciu is our education coordinator and Professor Felice Waldman is our historical advisor.

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Centropa in Romania

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Centropa in Romania

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Centropa in Romania

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Centropa in Russia

Using the term Russia can often be misleading, as the term is used to describe the Soviet Union, the pre-1917 Russian Empire, and the post 1991 Russian federation. Centropa worked in that section of the Federation we will address as Russia proper. We highly recommend an essay by Dr Michael Stanislawski who goes into some detail on the various historical chapters of Russian Jewry. His essay can be found through the YIVO website: http://www.yivoinstitute.org/pdf/russian_empire.pdf

Centropa worked through two separate offices in Russia. In Moskow, Svetlana Bogdanova conducted several interviews for us and concentrated on Soviet Jewish veterans of the Second World War. Most of our interviews, however, were conducted in St Petersburg, where we worked closely with the Adain Lo Jewish Community Center. Our coordinator there was Natasha Gordina. Although we have interviewed more than fifty people in St Petersburg, once again, we concentrated primarily on Soviet army veterans.

Our more than 120 Russian interviews offer a fascinating picture of how Jews lived in 20th century Russia. In these interviews you will find stories of those who fled to Central Asia during the Second World War, front line soldiers' stories, and even a few stories of those imprisoned in Stalin's gulags.