Newsletter - Spring 2011
The Wielkie Oczy Foundation Newsletter
A New Roof for the Synagogue
As reported in the in an earlier newsletter, the Foundation had renounced title to the synagogue in favor of the Wielkie Oczy gmina in order to save the building. For a more detailed discussion of this and what the future holds for the building, see our fall newsletter.
To stem the slow but inexorable weathering and disintegration of the building, the first order of business was to install a new roof. This was completed in November, 2010. Here are some photographs that depict the roof as it was, after it had been removed and the building with its new roof, gutters and downspouts in place.
We will report on further work as the plans are approved and work proceeds.
Video of the Synagogue
The Foundation received a request for permission to use the video of the synagogue that was produced for the Foundation in 2004 as part of a production being prepared for French television.
Here is an update of the video that has been posted on YouTube in HD:
"... We are preparing a historical documentary for a small educational cable channel called “TOUTE L’HISTOIRE” on “Jews of Poland from 1918 to 1939” written and directed by David Milhaud and Sylvie Meyer. In this film we are showing through film and photographic archives, and the interview of a historian and of witnesses (who were often children at the time), the life of the Jewish minority between 1918 and 1939, and how they participated in the political, social and cultural life of Poland at the time. We would like to know if we could use the short film on Wielkie Oczy synagogue you have posted on [YouTube] and if you have any other archives on Jewish life in Poland which we could use...."
Thaler Family Visited Wielkie Oczy in 2006
by Isaac Thaler
During the summer of 2006 my mother Chana, of blessed memory, my wife Hindy, my son David and I journeyed to Poland, my parents’ country of birth.
While in Poland we visited Wielkie Oczy. My father, of blessed memory, was born in Wielkie Oczy but by the time we made this trip he had unfortunately passed on.
Before our trip I was in contact with several people, specifically Stephen Landau and David Majus, who through the Wielkie Oczy Foundation, that they and Rabbi Murray Stadtmauer formed, are involved in the upkeep of the few remaining Jewish mementos that exist in Wielkie Oczy. I have personally witnessed the results of their tireless efforts to maintain these sites. Due to their involvement the Jewish Cemetery now has a gate bordering its entrance, a fence around its perimeter and is respected by the local populace. Unfortunately, the majority of the headstones at the cemetery are missing but it is well known that through the foundation they are still working to find and return the stolen tombstones. I have a personal interest in these efforts as my paternal grandmother, who passed away in 1929, is likely interred at this cemetery. I have, as yet, not been able to verify this assumption, but do hope to.
I also visited the local synagogue. It unfortunately stands in grave disrepair but thankfully is a site respected by the locals.
From left to right, the late Chana Thaler, of blessed memory, Isaac and his wife Hindy Thaler in front of the Synagogue in Wielkie Oczy.
David Thaler in the Jewish cemetery amidst what headstones remain.Another interesting item worth mentioning is that prior to my trip to Poland I received an e-mail from a woman in Wielkie Oczy. In it she recounted anecdotes about my father’s family in Wielkie Oczy before and during the war. In the letter it was mentioned that my family had resided on Krakowiec Road. When in Wielkie Oczy we parked in front of the grocery store and an elderly local man took an interest in us. My mother, who was fluent in Polish, asked him if he remembered the Thaler family from before the war. Without hesitation he answered in the affirmative and told us that they lived on Krakoviec Road! As you can imagine we were quite surprised by his answer.
This was my first trip to Poland and my time was limited. I do hope to once again travel to Wielkie Oczy to delve further into my family’s past. In the mean time, among other research, I am trying to establish the burial place of my paternal grandmother. On my return to Poland I would also like to visit the Porudenko Forest outside Lviv This is the site where the Jewish inhabitants of Wielkie Oczy, including members of my father’s family, were murdered on account of their being Jewish. [See the entry for April 16-18, 1943 here —Ed.].
Weiss Family Visited Wielkie Oczy in 2009
by Herbert Weiss
The trip to Wielkie Oczy we made in May 2009 has like everything else a history. I would like to mention this history here despite the fact that it is also a personal one.
.I had heard about Wielkie Oczy years after my father died even though he had been my link to this shtetl near Lemberg: his father was born there in 1880. All I knew about my grandfather before is that “he was born in Poland", went to Germany with his wife in order to find some work, had two sons, had been—as an Austrian soldier—a prisoner of war of the Russians during the first World War, and finally died there when he was still quite young, before Hitler came to power.I don't know if my father knew anything about Wielkie Oczy. All I can say is that he had kept some papers, and I was lucky to find before they were thrown away in the garbage after his death. And there, in these papers, Wielkie Oczy was a reality I couldn't ignore.
But it took years for me to look more carefully at them and to discover the importance of this place in the history of my family—a family of which my father didn't speak or didn't know maybe because he didn't care, and, a family about which I knew almost nothing. All I knew was that, as my father had once told me, they were all murdered during the Holocaust. (However, I discovered later that this was fortunately not completely true.) But the Holocaust was perfectly present for me despite the fact that I was born later, after these events. This history shaped not only the destiny of this part of my family I didn't know that much but also of other parts of my family I knew much better: this history was the reality and there was no other reality. I don't remember that I wouldn't know about the Holocaust as far as one can know it at all.
So we, my wife Sarah and I, went to Wielkie Oczy. We took the plane to Krakow, rented a car and drove on the highway eastward, through Galicia as it was called in the times of Austria-Hungary, and which was once upon a time a part of the Yiddishland that doesn't exist anymore.
We saw some highlights there: the shul in Lancut where Rabbi Elimelech of Lisensk studied with the Chosei of Lublin, the Ohel of Elimelech in Lisensk, some synagogues and memorials in Rzeszow, and then we took a little road through the forests to Wielkie Oczy. We thought that we would never arrive. How is it possible that the famous German Army, the armed forces of a highly civilized country, came to these villages to try to kill all the Jews they could find? And that's exactly what they did, helped by some local patriots. Finally we saw the name of Wielkie Oczy on a sign. We had arrived!
Wielkie Oczy is today a nice village: houses and streets seem to be in a good shape. We were not aware of any misery. Of course, we immediately saw the synagogue, the most imposing, centrally located building in the village—and today, as we all know, a ruin. We saw the cemetery completely destroyed lying in contract to the Christian cemetery with flowers and well-preserved headstones.
Helped by our Polish guide Bogdan and his son, we met some people of the village. We were even served a cup of coffee and cookies. But it was difficult to communicate because we don't know Polish and they didn’t know any foreign language. We also tried to get some genealogical information about my family in the town hall. But we got almost nothing and couldn't verify anything by ourselves. (The next day, we were able to look into the books in the town hall of Przemysl which indicated to us that the people of the town hall in Wielkie Oczy really didn't want to help us).
Our trip ends here, but I am afraid that this story actually ended some 70 years ago, when life for the Jews was not allowed to continue in this country they had lived in for centuries.
Today Poland is a part of the Western world and the Ukraine, especially the Western part of the country, aims at becoming a member of this Western world too. I am afraid that they were already a part of it when all these crimes were perpetrated. Most of these crimes—on an individual basis have never been judged—and those who did it were never punished.
What happened to the Jews of Wielkie-Oczy? What happened to their houses? Where are they buried? When and where were they murdered? What happened to their tombstones, to their shops, to the little wealth some of them had?
Almost nobody cares. I am not sure if I'll return.