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As she was sorting out old stuff cluttering a closet, she found identity documents in a suitcase that showed both her paternal grandparents were Jewish. This revelation, more than anything, caused a profound shift in her identity and made her finally think of herself as a Jew. She learned a few Hebrew words and delved into reading the Old Testament. She envisioned herself wrapped in a simple white shroud with mourners placing stones on her tomb, rather than the flowers found in Catholic cemeteries. "I will be buried in the Jewish cemetery as a Jew," she said. Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich confirms her wishes will be carried out. Grodzka-Guzkowska's gradual embrace of Judaism paralleled cultural shifts within Poland after the 1989 collapse of its communist government, as it began its painful but ultimately successful transition to democracy. These days, although there is occasional vandalism of Jewish cemeteries and some anti-Semitism persists, Polish Jews sometimes say they feel safer walking the streets of Warsaw in a yarmulke, or skullcap, than they would in many Western European cities. As Poles with Jewish roots feel freer to explore a heritage that once spelled death, the nation's Jewish traditions also are going mainstream, with students packing Jewish history and Hebrew courses and all kinds of people flocking to Jewish festivals held in Krakow, Warsaw and even in smaller towns.
In 1939 Poland's Jews numbered nearly 3.5 million, about 10 percent of the population. Today, there are no firm statistics on how many people in this nation of 38 million identify themselves as Jewish. The Conference of European Rabbis estimates that Poland's Jewish population has grown from just a few thousand to more than 20,000 over the past 30 years. Many of the prewar Jews were traditional Orthodox believers who lived in villages or shtetls that formed the archetypal image made famous in "Fiddler On The Roof." Many others became fully integrated into mainstream Polish society: doctors, writers, military officers, scientists. Amid Poland's cultural changes, aging Poles with family secrets feel it is finally time to pass them on to the next generation. In some cases, such discoveries spark personal transformations, inspiring adult men to undergo circumcision or to take on new names. Most of those who decide to live as Jews are in their 20s or 30s, with the older generations often still too fearful of anti-Semitism to want to live openly as Jews. Grodzka-Guzkowska is a prominent exception. "It's an amazing story," said Rabbi Stas Wojciechowicz. "Three generations after the war people are rediscovering their Judaism and some are undergoing formal conversion. ... It's the third and fourth generation that is closing this cycle." He said he also has been struck by how so many Polish Jews belong very much to the Jewish and Catholic worlds simultaneously. His synagogue, for instance, practically empties of worshippers around Christmas and All Saints Day, a major Catholic holiday when Poles visit the graves of ancestors. "They say they are sorry but they need to be with their parents at those times," he said. "Almost everybody has this story of a divided family, with one part Jewish
-- mostly the younger generation -- while the older one isn't." Not long after Grodzka-Guzkowska embraced her Jewishness, it proved an obstacle to her being honored for her wartime heroism. A Jewish boy she had rescued was reunited with her in 2007 as a grown man. William Donat petitioned Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial to name her a "Righteous Among the Nations" in recognition of her wartime heroism. But Yad Vashem hesitated on the grounds the award only recognizes non-Jews. As Yad Vashem wavered, Chief Rabbi Schudrich and her friend Gebert, a prominent member of Warsaw's Jewish community, made the case that she should be given the award because she had acted during the war with the consciousness of a Catholic, not a Jew. "Magda decided in a moment to save Jewish children," Schudrich wrote in a 2008 email to Yad Vashem. "Why are we taking so long?" The Jerusalem-based institute ultimately ruled in her favor: It honored her in 2009.
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