There's a misconception among those with only a casual interest in Jewish heritage in Poland: that when a property is restored to a Jewish community through the Union of Jewish Religious Communities in Poland, its preservation is thereby assured and it will be developed in a manner befitting its historical and cultural significance. Such views ignore the stark economic realities and tensions inher…

I learned today that my great-grandmother Else's elderly mother, Clara Hirschel (née Goldstein), was interned alongside her daughter and son-in-law at the transit camp I visited in Rybna (formerly Reibnig). Clara was a member of the prominent Goldstein family, several of whom moved from Kattowitz to Breslau in the mid-19th century. I'd previously found her husband's name on the Goldstein family to…

My paternal great-great-grandfather was Max Kornicker, born 11 May 1853 in Posen (now Poznań), in what was then the Kingdom of Prussia. He had several siblings, one of whom was Louis, born 12 September 1855. Louis married Jenny Moos in Berlin in 1888, moved to his new bride's hometown of Erfurt, Thuringia, and founded a factory in the city manufacturing woollen goods. He died in 1919 and it's pres…

Rybna (formally Riebnig) is a small settlement located along the Oder river in Opole Voivodeship, home to 300 or so people, many of whom seem to be involved in farming. There's a school building but no school, and no shops that I'm aware of. At the edge of the village there's a modest stadium where LKS Rybna play their home games (their club crest is a shark, and Rybna translates literally to "Fis…

Today is the third consecutive day I've travelled from Wrocław to Rybna, a small village known as Riebnig when my great-grandparents were interned in a transit camp there between November 1941 and March 1943, prior to their deportation to Auschwitz. The most convenient way to reach Rybna would be by car, but when reading Alfred Konieczny's research on the transit camp, I noted that deportees were…