159/365: Karst springs in Tomaszów Mazowiecki

159/365: Karst springs in Tomaszów Mazowiecki, originally uploaded by Magic Madzik.

June 8th

There isn't a better remedy against a bad mood than a long and exciting bike ride. This time I decided to take a train South-East to Tomaszów Mazowiecki and tour the area, which is very picturesque with the Pilica river winding through it.

The picture above is of the karst springs in Tomaszów, the so-called Blue Sources. The light didn't lend itself to making the blue show up in photos, but the sand at the bottom, pushed out by the spring geysers, gives an idea of the colour.

There were also swans with their swanbabies!!

This was actually my last stop on the tour, right after the Pilica River Open Air Museum, where, among old millstones and river barges I saw these:

On the left, the T-34/85, supposedly the best of its kind in WW2 warfare. On the right, a rare prototype vehicle from the Luftwaffe, recovered from the bottom of the Pilica where it sank in 1945. It's the only one in existence, and it still works! The museum plans to give rides in it at some point.

They also had an old train station:

and a model of a floating mill:

The part of my trip that was supposed to be the most exciting turned out to be a bust- although a bust with a promise. The 14th century castle ruins in Inowłódz are no longer ruins- they are being reconstructed!

Which also meant that I couldn't walk onto the site and visit it. So, I took a walk around the little town and saw, instead, the church of St Idzi:

Or St. Gilles, if you will.Said to be built in 1086 by Prince of Poland Władysław Herman in gratitude for the conception of his son, Bolesław Wrymouth, but other sources say it is more likely to have been funded by Bolesław himself, around 1138. A statue of said father and son stands nearby:

Done with that, I went to seek out traces of the Jewish community in Inowłódz. Before the war they made up a third of the locals...before the war. Four hundred people, all gone.

This is a horrifying reality I keep encountering while touring my country- mere traces of a people who were once very much at home here. We all know about it, but...

Well. A curious memento of Jewish presence is an early 19th century synagogue:

It was badly damaged during the war, and used as a storage facility until its renovation in the early 80's. From then on, it was a library, and finally it was sold to a private owner who turned it into a store.

Yes, a grocery store.

The polychrome inscriptions are the only thing remaining from the original decor, and they are unique in being prayers for the Russian Tsar (the building dates back to times when Poland was partitioned and this area belonged to Russia). The southern wall has an inscription in Hebrew, the northern wall in Russian. The names of new tsars were painted over the old ones upon succession.

I asked the owner about the controversy of keeping shop in an old prayer-house. He claims to have spoken to authorities of the Jewish community in Poland about it, and that they do not consider it a holy place anymore since the Torah scrolls were removed from the building long ago. However, the synagogue is on the list of national artefacts and so the building and inscriptions must be preserved.

With a little help from the local librarian, I found my way through the forest and terrains belonging largely to a chalcedonite mine to another sign of Jewish presence in Inowłódz: the cemetery.

Built in 1820, it is now abandoned and difficult to locate in the forest- you have to do some mild trespassing. Most of it was destroyed by the Germans in WW2.

After the cemetery I took a shortcut (which, proverbially, made for a long delay) through the forest to the amazing bunker in Konewka:

The Anlage Mitte, another memory of the war, was built as an operative HQ for the Nazis. It was never used as such, but it's impressive nevertheless. The railway bunker is 380 metres long, and was meant to house two of Hitler's personal trains.

I suffered from a lack of tripod, but plan to come back again. The tour is kind of crazy, it leads down a ladder into the service duct, which besides being creepy, is dank, dark and dirty:

All in all it was a very nice ride, and I want to do it again- in better weather, light, and perhaps with some company...

On the map, as usual, the planned route is in red, the actual ride in blue:

View Okolice Pilicy in a larger map

36/365: Macevas in the snow

36/365: Macevas in the snow, originally uploaded by Magic Madzik.

February 5th

Someone (superd?) from the currently unavailable Photojojo forums asked me about the Jewish Cemetery in Lodz, and I realised that I had only been there twice, and had no photos to show for it. Today was a sunny day, and I hesitated as cemeteries are probably best photographed when it's misty and dreadful, but the gates close after dark, so I couldn't expect to linger there after sunset. It worked out better than I expected. The sun was sharp, but I was among trees and gravestones, and up to my bottom in snow. Perhaps the cemetery does not look mystical or haunting in these pictures, but I like them anyway. I'll save the haunting for spring, when the rains come.

As usual, a bit of history about this place. The 'New' Jewish cemetery was built in 1892 on land procured by textile industry magnate and philantropist Israel Poznański (whose palace and factory I've already mentioned) when the first, 'Old' Cemetery dating back to 1811 was found to be full and impossible to expand. The project stumbled but gained speed in 1891 due to an outbreak of cholera near Lodz which caused a pressing need for a new burial site. Poznanski laid out the funds for the cemetery on condition that he would be allowed a large parcel for the construction of his impressive family mausoleum.

The New Cemetery suffered greatly in both world wars, and from destructive communist ideology later- the Old, first Jewish Cemetery in Lodz was completely destroyed in 1949 by construction work. The government of the time found no place for such sentimentalism and instead of renovating the Old Cemetery it built apartment blocks over the area, without even granting the respect of exhuming and moving the bodies.

The New Cemetery very nearly shared a similar fate, but luckily it remained mostly untouched until the free elections brought a time more respectful of history. It was not in good shape, however. World War One brought fights right to the cemetery grounds, destroying much of its architecture. During World War Two the Nazis left the graves untouched but took apart all the buildings, starting with the synagogue and ending with the wall. The cemetery had been included in the Litzmannstadt ghetto and many Jews, Gypsies and resistance fighters were executed right on its grounds. These deaths are commemorated on the so-called Ghetto Field, where a mass grave contains an estimated 43,000 victims of the Holocaust as well as ghetto hunger and misery.

The New Cemetery is said to be the final resting place of 160,000 people, many of them Lodz citizens of great renown. Today, after history's many shameful attempts to destroy or repurpose the area the New Jewish Cemetery is a protected national heritage site. It covers 96 acres- it is the largest Jewish necropolis in the world outside of Israel, and is under the care of the Monumentum Iudaicum Lodzense foundation.

More information about Jews in Lodz and the Litzmannstadt Ghetto can be found here. The cemetery website is here.

Please see my Jewish Cemetery Set on Flickr for the rest of today's pictures.