Let freedom ride: Biking from Auschwitz shows Poland is safer for Jews than NY

The July 4th holiday is a celebration of freedom, including our American freedom of religious faith.

But that proud tradition is crumbling today in the face of antisemitic violence on our streets — contrasting, in profound irony, with a country where 3 million Jews were put to death by occupying Nazis: today’s Poland.

Last Friday, more than 200 bicyclists, mostly Jews, gathered at the notorious Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp for the 9th annual Ride for the Living, a 60-mile ride from the site of mass slaughter to the vibrant city of Krakow, Poland.

Organized by the Jewish Community Center of Krakow — yes, there is one — the event represents a powerful sense of historical healing, as Jews enter the death-camp site and then turn our backs on it and ride away.

As the group set out, following an introduction led by two survivors of the camp itself, it was escorted by a phalanx of police cars and motorcycles. 

One might think we were being protected as potential “soft targets” — high-profile Jews, including the Israeli consul and a representative of Poland’s chief rabbi, all gathered in a “high value” symbolic site.

We were, indeed, being protected — but only from road traffic, blocked by the police on our behalf. 

As we cycled through Polish villages, we were cheered by waving, approving families gathered to watch. 

That evening, at a mass Shabbat dinner, there was no overbearing security presence at all: No airport-style scanners, no uniformed police at a gathering of Jews from around the world. 

Poland today is “the safest place for Jews in Europe,” as Queens-born Jonathan Ornstein, the powerful speaker who built and leads the JCC Krakow, put it.

The contrast with the New York I’d left behind was unavoidable.

The same evening we gathered for dinner, anti-Israel protesters stormed a Democratic Party fundraiser near Madison Square Garden — just another assault in the ongoing series of such actions in a city where antisemitism has become all too apparent.

As Jews wearing yarmulkes walk unselfconsciously in Krakow, they are targeted for physical attacks in Brooklyn.

Not only is it safer to be a Jew in Krakow than in New York, Ornstein says, but Poland is a place where — crucially — a rebuilding and growing Jewish community can do so in an approving environment. 

Yet one cannot attend an American synagogue today without seeing a visible police or security presence. 

At a recent service in my own shul, the congregation had to listen to instructions on what to do in the event of an attack before they could hear the rabbi’s discussion of Torah. 

This was more than pointing out the fire exits, but a detailed list of precautions.

We were told not to look for children in the youth service, lest it give a gunman easy targets, but to let them be evacuated separately.

We were warned that we might have to turn off the sanctuary lights and crouch below our seats — to give the impression that the room was empty. 

What was the message being sent to our children? That Judaism is a dangerous choice, a religion where one must pray under armed guard?

In Krakow, in contrast, the Jewish community center has grown from under 100 members to more than 1,100, as Poles whose families had hidden their Jewish roots come out of the long shadows cast by the Nazis and the Communists and, as Ornstein puts it, “are welcomed back into the fold” — voluntarily.

The approving climate for Jews in Poland developed, in part, from its horrifying history. 

Museums there celebrate centuries of Polish Jewish culture, the story of a people who once numbered more than 3.3 million here. 

But, Ornstein says, that retrospective celebration has led to  a climate of tolerance for the growing Jewish population — including visiting Israelis — in today’s thriving Poland, Europe’s bulwark against the Russian war on neighboring Ukraine. Indeed, Ukraine’s Jews have been welcomed, too.

The appreciation of what has been lost has allowed Judaism to regrow from its remaining roots — and, with support from around the world, has helped build the Krakow Jewish Community Center into a major institution. 

This is what America is at risk of losing: an approving environment for Judaism, for a Judaism that does not have to take cover.

Howard Husock is an American Enterprise Institute senior fellow and author of “The Poor Side of Town — And Why We Need It.”