Poland’s chief rabbi leads delegation to remember Oct. 7
WARSAW – Chief Rabbi of Poland Michael Schudrich led a delegation of five Polish Jewish community leaders, including himself, on a recent visit to Israel to show solidarity with Israelis following the October 7 massacre.
The group met with President Isaac Herzog, the families of hostages, evacuees from the Gaza area, and soldiers. They visited the sites of the massacres and fighting, including Netivot, Sderot, Re’em, Kissufim, and Be’eri.
While normally, it is Israelis sending delegations to Poland to visit Holocaust sites in Poland, Schudrich said the objective, in this case, was to show Israelis that “we’re with you; we’re one people” and “also to see for ourselves and tell about it to more of our people, not only the Jewish community, but the [Polish] community at large.”
Upon returning home on Thursday, Schudrich said that at the beginning of the war, when many other solidarity missions arrived in Israel, his community was busy in Poland “getting the message out.”
“We’ve never done a solidarity mission before from Poland,” said Schudrich. “All five of us feel the obligation to go back and tell others.”
October 7 was a terrible pogrom, but Schudrich said that it wasn’t like the Holocaust because the State of Israel and the Israel Defense Forces exist. “While it didn’t work perfectly on the 7th, it did on October 8,” he said. “The pogrom and the Holocaust were “not the same thing, but on the other hand we hear things on the human level that resonate in the same way.”
Schudrich said that he had the honor of helping soldiers stationed at a base near Kissufim. They had ordered tactical pants and shirts from Poland, but the shipments were canceled due to Houthi maritime terrorism. The soldiers contacted the rabbi, and he brought the tactical uniforms with him.
“To be able to see our soldiers, these gibborim [heroes], was incredibly important,” he said.
The rabbi also found his meeting with Herzog inspiring because the president was asking about the Jews of Poland while Polish Jews were worrying about the Israelis. Due to their capacity to show so much care for one another, “I feel great hope for the beautiful Jewish people,” he said.
The idea for the trip was his own, said Schudrich. The World Mizrachi organization, which has organized dozens of delegations from communities across the globe since Oct. 7, coordinated the Polish leaders’ visit.
“At a time when the State of Israel is in deep pain and we are confronting an ongoing security threat on multiple fronts, it has been so encouraging to see how the Jewish people have a real desire to be here with us,” said World Mizrachi acting COO Rabbi Danny Mirvis. “The missions that we are able to facilitate are designed to be far more than ‘bearing witness’ trips but to give people the sense that they are truly experiencing what Israel is going through and are able to demonstrate that the concept of one people with one heart is really what defines us as a nation.”