On Saturday, March 11, we arrived in Wroclaw, Poland for the first of three city visits. Our first dinner was at CK restaurant on Market Square with Professor Gosia and her daughter Agnes who both work at the University of Lower Silesia. We had a wonderful dinner filled with conversations about the healthcare system in Poland and women’s rights. Since the next day was Sunday, we decided to go to two different church services. Four of us went to the Evangelical Lutheran Church and seven participants went to mass at Saint John the Baptist Cathedral on the Cathedral Island. I went to the Lutheran Church and found it to be very much like a Protestant church service in the United States, although Polish was the only language spoken. The hymns sounded very familiar and they even had a children’s church.
After we ate lunch, we took a walking tours. I was in the group that learned about Jewish history and what happened to the city in World War II. Since Wroclaw was a German city during World War II and not part of Poland at that time, it was sheltered from the war for the most part since it was far from the Eastern front and not directly involved in fighting on the Western front until the last year of The war when the Allies bombed the city and 75% of the buildings were destroyed. After World War II, the Communists were in power and it took 20 years to rebuild. Our guide’s father was a mason and involved in rebuilding the city. Today only 300 Jewish families live in Silesia. Most surviving Jewish families after World War II immigrated to America or Israel.