A brand new assortment of images of Kazimierz, Kraków’s former Jewish quarter, by photographer Jerzy Ochoński captures the transformations and contrasts he has noticed throughout a love affair with the district lasting over 4 a long time.
Kazimierz is excessive on the must-see checklist for many guests to Kraków. Typically identified in vacationer guides as merely “the Jewish quarter”, for nearly 500 years after its basis it was an unbiased metropolis on an island on the Vistula River.
Within the Second World Warfare, many of the Jews nonetheless residing in Kazimierz have been pressured right into a ghetto established throughout the river by the Nazi German occupiers. Only a few survived the Holocaust, and lots of of those that did later fled postwar Poland.
Bereft of a lot of its former inhabitants and haunted by their destiny, Kazimierz fell into disrepair and infamy through the communist interval.
Szeroka Avenue, early Eighties
The New Jewish Cemetery on Miodowa Avenue, 1978
Kids play within the ruins of a Kazimierz townhouse, late Nineteen Seventies
Kupa Avenue, mid-Eighties
It was presently, within the late Nineteen Seventies, that the younger Jerzy Ochoński first started to go to. His girlfriend from faculty (and now spouse) had been born in Kazimierz and lived there together with her household, and he would stroll her dwelling.
“That was my first contact with Kazimierz – on the time a ruined, dilapidated, depopulated and uncared for district,” says Ochoński.
Tempel Synagogue, 1985
The New Jewish Cemetery on Miodowa Avenue, Eighties
Cracovian Jews pray on the Remah Synagogue, Eighties
Later, when the couple lived collectively in Kazimierz, a buddy lent Ochoński Meir Balaban’s guide in regards to the historical past of the Kraków Jews.
“Curious, I learn it and had the possibility to check the historical past it described with the fact. I lived 5 minutes away from Szeroka Avenue. That was once I took my first steps with images.”
“Over time, I’ve taken 1000’s of pictures in Kazimierz – some higher, some worse. I nonetheless {photograph} the district, as I’m fascinated with its historical past and tradition, which I’m continuously exploring and studying about.”
Inside of the Izaak Synagogue
Eric Strom, a 13-year-old from Connecticut who was the primary boy to mark his bar mitzvah in Kazimierz in additional than twenty years, meets the world’s press on the Tempel Synagogue
Praying on the grave of Moses Isserles, the Sixteenth-century rabbi referred to as Rema (after whom the Remah Synagogue is known as), 2013
From the Nineteen Nineties onwards, Kazimierz was reborn, changing into well-liked with locals and vacationers alike, with a buzzing nightlife, maze-like streets full of small cafes and outlets, and a variety of cultural points of interest.
On the coronary heart of this was the world’s rediscovered Jewish heritage, together with the annual Jewish Tradition Pageant, which was launched in 1988 and is now one of many largest occasions of its sort on the planet.
Over time, a lot of the district has been rebuilt and gentrified, main some to really feel it has misplaced a few of its earlier appeal. Others have additionally criticised Kazimierz’s “Jewish” components, typically focused at vacationers, for turning the district right into a “Jewish Disneyland”.
Shalom on Szeroka Avenue, the finale of the nineteenth Jewish Tradition Pageant, 2009
Restored store indicators on Szeroka Avenue, 2015
Stitching-machine tables exterior Singer, one of many unique Kazimierz bars
A summer season evening exterior the Stajnia pub
Ochoński’s photographs seize the contradictions of Kazimierz – a “sophisticated place” that “folks come to go to, typically travelling a good distance to take action”, “but additionally a spot from which, for many years, folks fled”, as Jakub Nowakowski, director of the Galicia Jewish Museum, places it in his introduction to the Ochoński’s new assortment of images.
Kazimierz is without delay ”the silence of its slim streets” and “the hustle and bustle of Plac Nowy, which for some us will all the time be ‘Jewish sq.’”, Nowakowski continues. It’s “a spot thick with the traces of the presence of Kraków’s Jews”.
“Synagogues, cemeteries, townhouses, faculties, former factories, streets, empty plots of land, homes of prayer, outlets and stalls: a microcosm of locations which had the life ripped out of them.”
The Previous Synagogue, Szeroka Avenue
A resident on Plac Nowy
However, notes Nowakowski, folks in Kazimierz as we speak are writing their “personal, new tales within the shadow of the historical past of Kazimierz Jews” – some inextricably linked with the previous, though most of their authors have “nothing in widespread with this Jewish world”.
Jerzy Ochoński’s images illustrate many of those tales, the transformations of Kazimierz up to now 40 years, and the contradictions intrinsic within the make-up of the district.
Józefa Avenue, 2006
The Jewish Neighborhood Centre on Miodowa Avenue, based in 2008, pictured in 2019
Avenue artwork on Lewkowa Avenue, 2020
The previous Jewish cemetery, 2008
High: “The great of man is the overriding purpose of the Celebration’s actions” reads the signal on works on Św. Wawrzyńca Avenue, mid-Eighties; backside: the identical constructing in 2021
Statue of Jan Karski, the House Military courier who introduced studies to western leaders in regards to the scenario of Jews in occupied Poland, on an empty pandemic-hit Szeroka Avenue
A courier on an empty Bożego Ciała (Corpus Christi) Avenue through the COVID-19 pandemic
All photographs © Jerzy Ochoński. All these and lots of extra pictures may be seen in Ochoński’s assortment Faces & Locations: Krakowski Kazimierz, out there on-line right here. Extra of his work may be discovered on his web site, which affords all kinds of photographs of various elements of life in Poland, in addition to picture providers.
Ben Koschalka is a translator and senior editor at Notes from Poland. Initially from Britain, he has lived in Kraków since 2005.
