Hadassah Buchwald is the co-founder of the Identity Preservation Project, based in New Haven, Connecticut

Rebirth in the Land of Ashes

I grew up in Poland, and no one would have been able to tell we were Jewish. The communist regime was oppressive for anyone, especially Jews, so within a year of the collapse of communism, my family moved to Israel. While the schools I attended in Israel from age 11 and on didn’t teach Torah from the traditional perspective, they served as my first introduction to our heritage.

At the end of my compulsory army service, I was recruited by the Ministry of Defense to return to Poland, where I worked in the Israeli embassy. In Poland, the land of Auschwitz and ashes, I began to visit the remaining vestiges of Jewish life. I was privileged to attend the Nożyk shul, the only surviving pre-war shul in Warsaw, which had escaped destruction because it was converted into a stable for the Wehrmacht.

Through these types of encounters with our history, I began to learn the tefillot, and soon became religious. Wanting to further my Jewish education, I came to the United States to study at Lander College, where I double-majored in psychology and Judaic studies.

I returned to Poland yet again, this time as a leader of the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation project to revive Jewish life in Eastern Europe. When people ask me what I did there, I turn the question around — what didn’t I do? Basically, brit milah and checking the eiruv. Everything else — early childhood through adult education, summer camps, the chevra kaddisha — were all part of the job description. Until today, I’m a member of the European Rebbetzins Association.

Lockdown

When COVID-19 exploded onto the world scene, I’d been settled in New Haven, CT for a while, while teaching in The Ramaz Middle School.

As the extent of the pandemic, and the curtailing of our usual activities, became clear, I began to think about how I could use all the enforced downtime to make a difference. Along with Dr. Michael Wiener, a tremendous under-the-radar baal chesed in the local community, I looked for a project — something that would be safe and responsible under the current medical guidelines that we wouldn’t normally have the opportunity to work on.

Because of my time in Poland, a land saturated with Jewish blood and history, I’d become sensitive to the obligation to remember the people who came before us, and the importance of carrying their legacy forward. Talking about my experiences, Dr. Wiener and I realized that for an American town, New Haven had a long and distinguished Jewish history, dating back nearly to the Civil War. Scattered throughout the city are batei chayim from a variety of different shuls, chevra kaddishas, and free loan societies. There’s even a Cemetery Road in East Haven, bordered by Jewish cemeteries.

So many of the headstones were toppled or unreadable; so many of these people had no one to care for their resting places. We decided to rehabilitate the matzeivos of these early Jewish pioneers.'