Newsletter - Fall 2009
The Wielkie Oczy Foundation Newsletter
Incorporation --- The Foundation has incorporated as a not-for-profit public charity in the United States under the laws of the State of New York. In addition, the Foundation was granted section 501(c)(3) tax exempt status by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) of the United States. All contributions from U.S. donors are tax-deductible in accordance with IRS regulations and to the extent allowed by law. If you are located outside the United States, please consult your local regulations.
The directors and officers of the corporation are:
David Majus (Israel) – President
Rabbi Murray Stadtmauer (U.S.), Vice-President
Stephen Landau (U.S.), Secretary & Treasurer
At this time, the Foundation maintains no formal membership roll, but does maintain a mailing list and makes its activities known through its newsletter or the Wielkie Oczy KehilaLinks web site hosted by JewishGen. All activities of the Foundation are financed through public donations.
The by-laws of the Foundation provide for the election of up to five directors to serve for a term of one year. Directors do not need to reside or be located in the United States. The business of the Foundation is conducted in English, using such electronic means as e-mail, instant messaging, and free or low cost Internet telephone or teleconference.
If you would like to play an active role in the activities of the Foundation as a director, please contact us by e-mail.
Cemetery Memorial
Conceptual Designs
Here is a design for a memorial at the Jewish cemetery in Wielkie Oczy. The headstones selected for the memorial will be those that over the years had been taken from the cemetery and later recovered or those that had been toppled over and strewn about. It is no longer possible to associate them with graves they had marked.
Here is another design for the cemetery memorial that also makes use of headstones. To read why some of these headstones to this day have not been restored to the cemetery, see this article, which appeared in the Polish-American newspaper Nowy Dziennik. The Foundation cannot proceed with construction until funding is in place.
Wielkie Oczy Takes Title to the Synagogue
On June 22, 2009 title to the synagogue in Wielkie Oczy passed to the gmina, that is the municipality of Wielkie Oczy. The agreement to transfer title was entered into by the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland (Fundacja Ochrony Dziedzictwa Zydowskiego, or FODZ) and the Union of Jewish Religious Communities in Poland (UJRC). The Joint Distribution Committee (NY) was instrumental in maintaining channels of communication between FODZ-UJRC and the Wielkie Oczy Foundation, which supported the transfer of title with specific conditions. We'll explain why it was important for the town to take title and what those conditions were, but before doing so we must acknowledge the dedication to the preservation of the Jewish heritage in Poland of Monika Krawczyk (Director of FODZ, Warsaw) and Herbert Block (Assistant Vice President, the Joint Distribution Committee) without whose expert guidance this agreement would not have been concluded. We also must thank Rabbi Michael Schudrich, the Chief Rabbi of Poland, who has visited Wielkie Oczy, for his interest and support for this effort.
The Synagogue
The current synagogue building dates from 1927 when a repair of damage that dated from World War I and a restoration was financed by Elias and Rachel Gottfried of New York. Today the building is in a sad state of disrepair and is subject to a slow but persistent decline. Over the years the directors of the Foundation have attempted to address the need to preserve a synagogue building that would never again host a congregation or function as a house of worship. Restoration as a town cultural center and library, with a fitting memorial to the now-gone Jewish community seemed like a worthy direction to pursue, but the issues always seemed complex and insurmountable. The cost, for one, would certainly be in the tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, and it was not at all clear who had title to the building.
Jewish Communal Property in Poland --- In his thoughtful discussion of Jewish communal property in Poland "The Restitution of Holocaust-Era Jewish Communal Property: An Unfinished Item on the Jewish Diplomatic Agenda" in the Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs, Herbert Block notes:
"When properties are actually restituted, they are often in a dilapidated state and can actually be a financial burden on the Jewish community. For the most part, governments are also quick to give back cemeteries and ruined synagogues (especially in the provinces), which have little or no financial value, to communities that do not have the capacity or financial means to maintain or repair them."
The description is particularly apt in the case of the synagogue in Wielkie Oczy, which stands in a dilapidated state, sorely in need of major structural repair. Located in an out-of-the-way, rural part of the country, it is indeed a property having little or no commercial value.
Town officials were supportive and indicated that the town would be interested in appropriating funds for the purposes we outlined, but not before the issue of title was settled. Whether true or not, we were told that in some cases municipalities had invested in the repair of what had been Jewish communal property only to have title contested, leading to prolonged litigation, additional cost and loss of use.
This is where our story might have ended were it not for a message that we received indicating that a hearing concerning the status of Jewish communal property in Wielkie Oczy was going to be held, and asking if our Foundation was interested in asserting a claim on the property.
After deliberating the matter, it was agreed that FODZ, UJRC and the Foundation would waive any claim to the synagogue in favor of the municipality of Wielkie Oczy in exchange for certain commitments to be undertaken by the municipality. In an e-mail to Rabbi Schudrich on March 9, 2009, Stephen Landau wrote:
"[The position of the Wielkie Oczy Foundation] is to restore and preserve the building itself, not as a synagogue but as a public library that sets aside space for a permanent memorial to the Jewish community of Wielkie Oczy, while at the same time restoring and preserving what artifacts remain to indicate that at one time it served as a synagogue; this includes the plaque that still hangs on an internal wall commemorating the generosity of Elias and Rachel Gottfried in funding the restoration of the synagogue in 1927, the Magen David that exists over the front door, etc. There was also to be affixed to the building a memorial plaque (details to be worked out, of course) to the Jewish community and those lost in the Holocaust."
Thus, with the passing of title, the Foundation can now focus on monitoring the progress toward full restoration of the building over a period of years. The Foundation will also raise funds to memorialize the Jewish community of Wielkie Oczy in a fitting memorial to be a permanent fixture of what one day will be the municipal library.
Donation to YIVO
Thanks to the generosity of Emma Mars of Scarsdale, NY the Foundation was able to scan over 500 pages of the book of minutes of the Wielkie Oczy health and welfare society or landsmanshaft (the Erste Wielkie Oczer, K.U.V.) covering the period October 1934 to December 1957. The book and a CD of its scanned pages were donated by Emma to the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research at the Center for Jewish History in New York City on June 28, 2009. The minutes are largely written in Yiddish, although names more often than not were written in their English equivalents. We have not translated the book to any other language, and no attempt has been made to evaluate its contents for any historical or genealogical references it might contain.
Emma's father Leon (Leo) Weiss was born in Wielkie Oczy and brought his family to the United States in the late 1930s. He eventually became the secretary of the society and kept the minutes for the society's meetings. The book remained with his family after his death. We do know, that YIVO has had in its archive the successor volume, which dates from 1958, but since the society was founded in 1903, there may be other predecessor volumes somewhere out there waiting to be discovered.Again, our appreciation goes to Emma for allowing us to image the book and for donating it to YIVO.
Thank you Emma!
Visit the YIVO Archives at the Center for Jewish History in NYC to view the book and its contents, or make a donation to the foundation in the amount of U.S. $50.00 or more and we will send you a CD of the book of minutes with over 500 imaged pages covering this most significant historical period in the life of the Vilkocher Jews and their landsleit members of the Erste Wielkie Oczer, K.U.V. Be sure to include your e-mail address on the donation form.
Have You Signed the Petition?
It wasn't anyone connected with the Foundation that we know of, but one Joseph Ceder, prompted no doubt by the Nowy Dziennik article or our translation of it (see above), started a petition addressed to the President of Poland calling for the return of tombstones to the Jewish cemetery in Wielkie Oczy. As of October, 2009 there were 53 signers. We can do better. See the petition here and add your signature to it.
Update: in 2018 the headstones that were the subject of the Nowy Dziennik article were returned to the Jewish Cemetery in Wielkie Oczy through the efforts of the local authorities, the good people of Wielkie Oczy and those of you who supported this effort through petitions such as described above. Note too that the petition creator has removed the petition from the Change.org website.
Visits to Wielkie Oczy
A handful of those who have kept up with these newsletters over the years have visited Wielkie Oczy.
Zvi Orenstein was born in Wielkie Oczy and raised on Korczunek, a manorial farm (no longer in existence) situated a few kilometers north of Wielkie Oczy. Now living in Israel, in 2005 he published a memoir in Hebrew entitled "Remember, Don't Forget", an English extract of which appears here. Also in 2005, his son Dov visited Wielkie Oczy and commissioned this drawing of the synagogue there.If you have visited the town, have photos and a story to tell, or would someday like to visit under the auspices of the Foundation, send us an e-mail and let us know.
YIVO Holdings Documented
Recently, the Foundation was given an inventory of the landsmanshaft or fraternal society's holdings in the archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, located in New York City. When the society, the Erste Wielkie Oczer, K.U.V., a New York Corporation, went into receivership and was liquidated in 1984, its assets were taken over by the the New York State Department of Insurance. The society's records were then turned over to YIVO by the Department of Insurance. The inventory of those holdings have been given to the Foundation and are produced here publicly for the first time. The records are accessible and there is no doubt much information of interest to those researching family genealogies.
If you live in the New York metropolitan area or are visiting, a trip to YIVO may well be worth your while. Researchers are encouraged to visit, look through the records and document information that can be shared through the facilities of the Foundation with others researching family connections to Wielkie Oczy.
The Foundation wishes to thank Mr. Leo Greenbaum, Accessioning Archivist at YIVO for facilitating the donation of materials to the archives and for providing visitors with access to the Wielkie Oczy materials earlier this year during the summer.
YIVO Holdings
Record Group No. 1806
RG Title: First Wielkie Oczer Sick Benevolent Society, Records of
Source(s) of Data: 1) WOWW, 2) ACC 28/06, 3) Mt. Zion, 4) Mt. Hebron, 5) Mt. Carmel, 6) Beth Israel