Anatewka

Note the Fiddler in the upper right corner!

Anatevka, Anatevka.
Underfed, overworked Anatevka.
Where else could Sabbath be so sweet?
Anatevka, Anatevka.
Intimate, obstinate Anatevka,
Where I know everyone I meet.

Soon I'll be a stranger in a strange new place,
Searching for an old familiar face
From Anatevka.

I belong in Anatevka,
Tumble-down, work-a-day Anatevka.
Dear little village, little town of mine.

These words, from the lyrics of Fiddler on the Roof, remind us of the value of home, of the small town, of small town life. Even when things are difficult, as they are in this fictional story of a Russian-Polish shtetl, so beloved in American high schools, on Broadway, and on tour in small cities all over America, the value of community -- and its religion, its customs -- offers a kind of comfort in anticipation of the new and unfamiliar.

All right. It's hokey. But when we spent the day recently in Łódź -- a day like so many during this long winter, snowy and gray -- it was delightful to find the restaurant Anatewka and to settle into the kitschy comfort of a long-lost culture.

Łódź was an amazing experience. A former textile and manufacturing town, before the war  Łódź had a population of 600,000, a third of whom were Jews. The entire Jewish community was murdered during the war.

Today there are again about 700,000 people living in Łódź. It has a number of things going for it -- in particular a thriving repurposed textile complex-turned-shopping-arcade called Manufactura and within it an enormous branch of contemporary art museum, MS2.

That was our goal in Łódź -- outside our apartment building here in Warsaw there is a rotating electronic billboard that from day 1 of our arrival has been calling us to Łódź: "When in Łódź, see Correspondences!"

"Correspondences" builds on the Łódź collection of modern art built by the "a.r." group, including husband-and-wife artist team Wladislaw Strzeminski and Katarzyna Kobro, and Hermann Rupf's Bern collection, to bring together works by Picasso, Klee, Kandinsky, and many others. The billboard, of course, advertises the headliners, but the exhibit (and the entire collection displayed at MS2) introduced us to Polish artists as well.

The museum was not intuitively organized and ranged over a number of floors, which meant that we looked at the regular collection before actually seeing the special exhibition. There were a few highlights, such as the discovery of Kobro and the clean, crisp lines of her smooth sculptures, and a few surprises, such as the video of cars, buses, trams, and people with the voiceover that enabled me to burn the third person plural of "to go" for vehicles into my brain: Jadą. Jadą. Jadą, Jadą. as the trams and cars went by.

At Manufactura, too, we found ourselves at E. Wedel -- the amazing chocolate shop based in Warsaw with its wonderful and warming hot chocolate, fresh-baked croissants and bread, yummy salmon salad, all very necessary after our first adventure in Łódź.

Because when we arrived at the currently very grotty train station in Łódź (the main train station is under construction, and the alternate one looks like a Greyhound station in Dayton or Detroit and smells about the same), we went directly to our first Holocaust site: Radegast Station.

It was through this station on the edge of Łódź, still extant as you can see, that the entire Łódź ghetto, and many from surrounding areas, were sent to death camps. Now open as a memorial, museum, and research station, the station has its original brick floors and lack of heating. On this cold, snowy Saturday we were alone, and not surprising; not everyone in Łódź even knows that it exists. (Our taxidriver, for one, who told me he has lived in Łódź for over 40 years, took us first to the OTHER Pomnik Ofiar -- the Monument to the Victims of Communism, not the Monument to the Jewish Victims of the Holocaust. He was dubious when he finally asked a colleague where to go and dropped us off at the station that such a museum existed, as were we, until we investigated further.)

But it does. Around the room were displays of photos from the Łódź ghetto, letters and documents, explanations of the transports and their primary destination, Chelmno extermination camp. A trunk found in a building of the Łódź ghetto after the war had belonged to a couple from Vienna, murdered at Chelmno. And the long wooden research table in the middle of the room gives visitors the opportunity to page through actual transport lists, now laminated, with names and names and names of those who perished in the camps.

Outside the station are actual railcars and a number of memorials to those who were murdered. The museum opened in 2005, some sixty years after the last transport left Łódź. It was really moving to be there, and to be alone in the cold and damp, with buildings looming around the site that seem to still be working warehouses. This glimpse into the past, the horrible past of Łódź and all of Poland, made ending the day at Anatewka even more important.

I'm sure there are other interesting things to see and learn in Łódź, and perhaps we'll be back in the warmer weather. But I was glad to experience it on a cold and gray day. What a history. What a loss.

The restaurant Anatewka is run by a tall, heavy, gray-haired man in his 60s, who plays the host, greeting guests at the door and bringing a shot of homebrew to the table before your meal. The surroundings are both authentic and overdone: live music on the violin and guitar, including by a girl who climbs up a ladder to become the "fiddler on the roof"; lace tablecloths and real candlesticks with wax running down the sides, framed portraits of Jewish men with sad and serious faces. The rooms are small and packed with furniture -- dressers and side tables and many tables for guests. Real artifacts surround you: menorahs and musical instruments and even chests of coins at the door, signifying the wealth of the community. The restaurant teems with life: as Jewish Łódź once did.

The slogan of this wonderful restaurant? "Czarowne miejsce, gdzie czas zatrzymał się w fabrykanckiej Łodzi." An enchanted place in industrial Łódź where time has stopped. Important to remember what was, and what transpired.