In Krakow, Jewish Culture has Become Hipster Culture

Travel Blog  •  Terry Ward  •  07.16.07 | 4:03 PM ET

In June, more than 20,000 people descended on Krakow, Poland for the city’s annual Jewish Festival—complete with Hasidic dance performances, Hebrew calligraphy lessons and klezmer music galore. But perhaps the most interesting thing about the gathering was that very few of the festival-goers were Jewish. Jewish culture is gradually making a comeback in Eastern Europe. And in Krakow, it seems, it has become downright trendy.

Before the Holocaust, writes Craig S. Smith in an eye-opening article in the New York Times, Poland had the largest Jewish population in Europe. Then, every tenth Pole was Jewish. Home to some of Hitler’s worst atrocities, the country now counts only 10,000 Jews in its 39 million citizens. Fewer than 300 of them live in Krakow.

Still, miniature brass menorahs are for sale in souvenir shops, Jewish-style restaurants dish up pirogis and non-Jewish musicians play klezmer music for crowds, writes Smith.

From the article:

The revival of Jewish culture is, in its way, a progressive counterpoint to a conservative nationalist strain in Polish politics that still espouses anti-Semitic views. Some people see it as a generation’s effort to rise above the country’s dark past in order to convincingly condemn it.

Smith continues:

Sometime in the 1970s, as a generation born under communism came of age, people began to look back with longing to the days when Poland was less gray, less monocultural. They found inspiration in the period between the world wars, the time that was the Poland of the Jews.

It calls to mind a 2002 segment from This American Life, when Philadelphia Daily News reporter Erin Einhorn traveled to Poland to track down the Catholic family that saved her Jewish mother from the concentration camps. Einhorn arrived in Krakow expecting anti-Semitism, but instead found a roommate with a Hebrew letter tattooed on her shoulder, hip clubs blasting klezmer music and an old quarter that had been converted into something of a Jewish theme park.

For some Jews, the implied commercialization of their culture is offensive. But for others, what is happening in Poland sounds like a triumph of culture over history.


Terry Ward

Terry Ward is a Florida-based writer and a long-time contributor to World Hum.


3 Comments for In Krakow, Jewish Culture has Become Hipster Culture

klezmer 07.09.08 | 6:46 AM ET

It is video it is removed at festival to the Jewish music in Krakow:
http://klezmer-music.blogspot.com/2008/02/blog-post_21.html

petition 07.30.08 | 10:32 PM ET

It seems like a good thing in my opinion. Would it be better if nobody was paying attention to the culture?

Bacha 08.17.08 | 8:59 PM ET

Well… I live in Krakow, I am not Jewish, and still I attend the festival each year. And I love it! the ambience! the music… but isn’t it good? would it be better if nobody cared?
Anyway,I honestly recommend the festival! Under the link below you can watch the video from this year’s Jazz Klez Session (within the JKF). For me it’s one of the best parts of it!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7L7qESnTw0

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