{"id":4787,"date":"2026-05-04T00:42:37","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T00:42:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/4787\/"},"modified":"2026-05-04T00:42:37","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T00:42:37","slug":"rabbi-evicted-from-krakow-home-once-owned-by-jews-murdered-in-holocaust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/4787\/","title":{"rendered":"Rabbi evicted from Krakow home once owned by Jews murdered in Holocaust"},"content":{"rendered":"

JTA \u2014 When Rabbi Tanya Segal landed an apartment at 12 Jozefa Street in Krakow a decade ago, she was thrilled.<\/p>\n

Segal knew that the building had appeared in the movie \u201cSchindler\u2019s List,\u201d that it had once housed a rabbi and a Jewish house of study, and that the Jewish family that owned it in the 1940s was murdered in the Holocaust. She set out to create a pulsing heart of Jewish life where it had been extinguished.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was an open house,\u201d said Segal, a Moscow native and Israeli citizen who, as the founder of the Beit Krakow congregation, is the first woman to work full-time as a rabbi in Poland. Sometimes she hosted services, seders and Shabbat meals from her apartment.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody knew where I lived, where you can come, where you can ask to meet,\u201d\u00a0 she said.<\/p>\n

Then, last month, Segal was forced to move out, under police supervision. She had been evicted at the behest of a Polish bureaucrat charged with stewarding the building. In what watchdogs say is an extreme outcome of Poland\u2019s lack of a Holocaust restitution law, the building is officially \u201cownerless,\u201d leaving tenants in perpetual limbo.<\/p>\n

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\u201cPoland remains the only member state of the European Union that has not passed national legislation to provide restitution or compensation for private property seized during the Holocaust or nationalized by the postwar Communist regime,\u201d Gideon Taylor, president of the World Jewish Restitution Organization, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.<\/p>\n

\t\"\"<\/a>
\n\t\tThe courtyard of 12 Jozefa Street at the heart of the Kazimierz Jewish historic district of Krakow in 2024 (left) and in 1943 (right) during the Holocaust when Jews living in the building were killed. (Artur Widak\/NurPhoto via Getty Image \/ via JTA)<\/p>\n

While some Jews who were stripped of property during the Holocaust have been able to reclaim it or obtain compensation under what Taylor\u2019s organization said were \u201cnarrow technical circumstances,\u201d there has never been a broad and transparent effort at restitution like those undertaken in other countries.<\/p>\n

Not only has WJRO been fruitlessly pressing successive Polish governments for decades to address the issue, but the situation has actually grown worse, Taylor said.<\/p>\n

He noted that the Polish government\u00a0passed a law\u00a0in 2021 that \u201cprevents challenges to administrative decisions older than 30 years \u2014 even if those decisions were made without legal basis or in gross violation of the law,\u201d Taylor said. The new law blocked countless ongoing claims from moving forward.<\/p>\n

That law was passed while the country was run by the Law and Justice Party, which also criminalized statements suggesting Polish collaboration with the Nazi regime. It returned to power this summer, with a Holocaust revisionist historian at the helm.<\/p>\n

Over the years, non-Jewish Poles could apply for the return of properties with relative ease; all they had to do was cross the street and go to court. But for Jewish heirs, strewn around the world, the process \u201cis very cumbersome,\u201d said the country\u2019s chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich.<\/p>\n

And when Jews do try to seek restitution, the lack of a comprehensive restitution law gums up the works, he said. He noted that the problem was most acute in Krakow: In Warsaw, where he lives, most property was destroyed during the war, and there was little to reclaim in the way of structures.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Krakow,\u201d Schudrich said, \u201ceverything is standing.\u201d<\/p>\n

12 Jozefa Street is a case study in what can go wrong.<\/p>\n

Before World War II, it had been owned by Salomon Fendler, who transferred ownership to his daughter, Annie Isenberg. Both were killed in the Holocaust.<\/p>\n

It provided a backdrop in Steven Spielberg\u2019s Oscar-winning \u201cSchindler\u2019s List\u201d to a dramatic depiction of what befell nearly all of the neighborhood\u2019s residents. In the movie, Nazis chase Jews from their apartments, throwing their belongings from the balconies into the picturesque courtyard below.<\/p>\n

\t\"\"
\n\t\tFrame from the 1993 movie, Schindler\u2019s List.<\/p>\n

The neighborhood, the Kazimierz district, was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1978 because of its density of Jewish sites.<\/p>\n

After the end of communism, Poland\u2019s democratic government, founded in the 1990s, placed unclaimed properties \u2014 including 12 Jozefa \u2014 in the hands of custodians, known as \u201ccurators.\u201d<\/p>\n

Curators are supposed to protect unclaimed properties, but they also have to \u201cseek clarification of the heir\u2019s identity and notify the heirs of the opening of the estate,\u201d said a spokeswoman for the city of Krakow.<\/p>\n

In 25 years, no progress was made in that department for Jozefa 12 \u2014\u00a0even though descendants of the Fender and Isenberg families can be found.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a giant family,\u201d said Marta Kalamar, president of Beit Krakow and of the Foundation for the Center for Progressive and Reform Judaism in Krakow. \u201cAnd we could find some traces of people, after spending an hour on the Internet.\u201d<\/p>\n

But she said the curators are not as motivated or able to find possible claimants.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose curators almost never find those descendants, [and] there is no way to control if they\u2019re effective in it,\u201d she said. \u201cFor example, this curator doesn\u2019t know English or Hebrew. How do they find even those descendants? So they are known for being very ineffective in that main thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

What the curators are good at, Kalamar said, was managing the properties to keep them full with rent-paying tenants. The original curator at Jozefa 12 leased the apartment some 25 years ago to a Jewish family that would later become members of Segal\u2019s community, she said. They were required to undertake some necessary renovations, which they did, she added. In 2015, Segal sublet the apartment from the family, who have declined to comment publicly.<\/p>\n

The first curator was dismissed about six years ago, after Kalamar\u2019s foundation reported he had been carrying out unauthorized renovations of the historic building\u2019s fa\u00e7ade, she said.<\/p>\n

The replacement curator, Marcin\u00a0Trzeciak, quickly petitioned the court to bar her foundation from \u201cintervening in this building\u2019s heritage preservation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\"\"
\n\t\tPolice were dispatched to oversee the eviction of Rabbi Tanya Segal from 12 Jozefa Street in Krakow, Poland, July 31, 2025. (Photo courtesy of Marta Kalamar\/ via JTA)<\/p>\n

He was unsuccessful in this attempt, but he did manage to have the original lease declared invalid. An appeals court issued the ruling on May 22 and sent its explanation to Segal on July 14.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Poland when you find any significant error in the contract, you can invalidate it even 25 years back,\u201d said Kalamar.<\/p>\n

She said she wrote to the curator on behalf of her foundation but never heard back. \u201cThe curator never responded to any of the letters sent by the rabbi or the foundation, never picked up a phone from anyone nor replied to any email,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Trzeciak did not respond to JTA\u2019s requests for comment.<\/p>\n

Segal had to move out. The eviction took place July 31 without incident, in the presence of police \u2013 as requested by the curator, Kalamar added.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was really painful, and it was, of course, sad,\u201d said Segal.<\/p>\n

The city spokeswoman said that because Jozefa 12 was transferred to the Municipal Building Authority more than 20 years ago, the city has no information on \u201cwho occupies the premises located in this building, nor whether any eviction or enforcement proceedings are pending against the residents.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\"\"
\n\t\tA German policeman checks the identification papers of Jewish people in Krakow, Poland, 1941. (National Archives in Krakow via JTA)<\/p>\n

She noted that there are many cases of claims on property still open in Krakow.<\/p>\n

The Foundation for the Center for Progressive and Reform Judaism in Krakow, established in 2017, is in the process of renovating a synagogue in a courtyard on the corner of Mostowa Street and Trynitarska Street, three blocks from 12 Jozefa, as a potential permanent home for the congregation.<\/p>\n

For now, they rotate between various sites for prayer services. The building on Jozefa Street where the rabbi lived was \u201cvery meaningful to us\u201d as part of the rotation, Kalamar said, noting that most of the congregation members \u201cwere born in Krakow and feel connected to its Jewish history.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like Schudrich, Segal came from abroad to serve in Poland. She left her native Russia shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, when Jews were finally permitted to emigrate en masse, and settled in Israel. There, she received her rabbinical ordination at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 2007 and moved first to Warsaw before beginning to build a Reform congregation in Krakow in 2009. She said she had visited Poland occasionally as a student and \u201creally felt this emptiness from the Jewish point of view.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, the community has 30 official members but can draw hundreds on holidays, said Segal, who also serves a Czech Republic congregation. In 2012 she helped officiate at her congregation\u2019s first bat mitzvah ceremony, and she also launched what she called the Midrash Lab, which reinterprets Jewish texts using music, dance, and theater.<\/p>\n

Since her eviction, Segal has filed a complaint against the bailiff to the court, \u201cfor turning what should have been just a voluntary handoff of a flat to a forced eviction with police assistance,\u201d Kalamar said. \u201cThe forced eviction had no legal grounds at that time, as the regulatory deadline for handing off the flat had not yet passed and also the rabbi agreed to hand off the flat voluntarily.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\"\"
\n\t\t12 Jozefa Street in the Kazimierz district of Krakow was a set for scenes in \u201cSchindler\u2019s List.\u201d (Screenshot from Google Maps via JTA)<\/p>\n

No date has yet been set to hear the complaint, said Kalamar, who said she is also looking into whether Trzeciak had the court\u2019s permission to seek Segal\u2019s eviction. If not, she said, \u201cWe will file a complaint against the curator with the court.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whatever happens now, Segal says she will not be deterred in her efforts to grow Jewish life in a city where it neared extinction, even if she has lost the ability for now to teach from an epicenter of Jewish experience: a home in a historic Jewish neighborhood.<\/p>\n

For now, she has moved into a small apartment originally purchased for her son, who died during the Covid pandemic. The apartment is also in Kazimierz, but it is too small to host more than two or three guests.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will not sit and we will not cry about it. I didn\u2019t sleep a few nights, but it\u2019s OK,\u201d Segal said. \u201cI\u2019m back.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JTA \u2014 When Rabbi Tanya Segal landed an apartment at 12 Jozefa Street in Krakow a decade ago,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4788,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[792,779,3960,3958,56,3959,3961,3962],"class_list":{"0":"post-4787","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-krakow","8":"tag-holocaust","9":"tag-holocaust-restitution","10":"tag-jewish-community-of-krakow","11":"tag-jews-in-poland","12":"tag-krakow","13":"tag-poland-holocaust","14":"tag-schindlers-list","15":"tag-world-jewish-restitution-organization-wjro"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4787\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}