Radzanów on the Verge of Change: Jews, Non-Jews, and a Returning Canadian

Abstract

This article examines changes in travel to Poland since the decade after the fall of communism. Using as its focus the author’s ancestral village, Radzanów, located north-west of Warsaw, it traces patterns in Jewish return to such places, shifts in Polish attitudes about Jewish heritage and history, and the impact of key heritage institutions and tourism trends. In Radzanów, a derelict synagogue building and an unmarked burial ground desecrated by the Germans in wartime are the lasting markers of pre-war Jewish life.