Return of the rabbi

last updated 8 January 2015

Krakow, Poland

Krakow this week got its first full-time rabbi since the Holocaust wiped out the city’s Jewish population. Rabbi Avraham Flaks, a Russian-born Israeli, said his mission is to help reinstill a knowledge and appreciation of Jewish culture. Krakow had a vibrant Jewish population of 60,000 before World War II. Only about 2,000 survived the Nazi death camps, and most survivors emigrated. The few hundred Jews now living in the city are mostly the children of people who hid their faith, posing as Catholics during the communist era. Many found out they were Jewish only after the 1989 fall of communism opened up archives.