8 | FEBRUARY 9 • 2023 

I

t’s impossible to truly process 
what it means to visit a site 
of mass murder — especially 
when you’re traveling with a 
White House 
entourage. On 
his first visit 
to Poland, the 
country from 
which his family 
fled antisemitism 
more than a 
century ago, 
Second Gentleman Doug 
Emhoff was flanked by members 
of the Secret Service and Polish 
security and trailed by a handful 
of traveling journalists and up to 
50 local ones.
I had not met Emhoff before 
joining this six-day trip to 
Poland and Germany, but 
what you’ve heard is true: The 
man is thoughtful, deliberate, 
unpretentious and a proud Jew. 
Yet it is one thing to be 
personable while on the 
campaign trail and quite another 
to do so while processing the 
horrors of the Holocaust.
“It’s quite overwhelming,
” 
Emhoff told me as we tried to 
warm ourselves at Cheder, a 
bustling coffee shop and cultural 
center in Krakow’s historic 
Jewish quarter, Kazimierz, before 
returning to the bone-chilling 
Polish winter. Ancient and 
modern Jewish books in Polish, 
Hebrew and English lined the 
shelves, and Moroccan-style 
kneeling cushions adorned the 
hardwood floors.
“It’s all part of the story of 
unraveling,
” Emhoff added, 
“about what happened in my 

own family’s past.
”
It’s easy, two years into the 
Biden-Harris administration, 
to forget that Emhoff first 
made a name for himself as an 
entertainment lawyer, not as a 
politician’s spouse and accidental 
spokesman for liberal and Jewish 
issues. Emhoff told me that his 
wife, Vice President Kamala 
Harris, and President Joe Biden 
— who has often said it was the 
deadly 2017 Unite the Right 
rally in Charlottesville, where 
marchers chanted “Jews will not 
replace us,
” that sealed his deci-
sion to run — had both encour-
aged him to make antisemitism 
a key part of his work.
When I asked if he’
d spent 
much time thinking deeply 
about the issue before he became 
the White House’s leader on it, 
Emhoff said: “I think all Jews 
think about antisemitism.
” But 
for “people in my age,
” he added, 
“it wasn’t as in your face as it is 
now.
”
There was that one incident, 
though, as there is for many of 
us. As a young lawyer, Emhoff 
said, he was out with people 
who didn’t realize he was Jewish, 
and a few of them “made some 
pretty vile, antisemitic jokes.
”
“You could cut the tension,
” 
he told me. “
And I didn’t say 
anything. I’ve regretted that for 
many years.
“There have been times when 
I didn’t say anything and I wish 
I had,
” he continued. “So now, 
I’m gonna keep speaking out as 
much as I can.
”
It’s hard to imagine now, 
watching Emhoff forcefully and 

personally call out antisemitism 
past and present in clear and 
concise language.
“My great-grandparents fled 
persecution in Poland 120 years 
ago. I am here because they were 
able to leave. Yet, so many others 
were not,
” he said at an antisem-
itism roundtable at the Galicia 
Jewish Museum. 
“Given the rise in antisem-
itism, it is important for me 
— and for all of us — to put a 
spotlight on the history of Jews 
in Europe,
” he said. “We know 
that in some cases knowledge 
about the Holocaust among 
young people is vague or non-
existent. We must find new 
ways to remember and educate 
the next generation about the 
horrors of the Holocaust. To tell 
the testimonies of survivors. To 
remember the stories of those 
that perished. And work to 
ensure ‘never again.
’”

JEWISH LIFE, PAST 
AND PRESENT 
For many American Jews, 
Poland is all about the past. It 
was, of course, a thriving center 
of Jewish life for centuries. On 
the eve of the Nazi occupation 
in 1939, 3.3 million Jews lived 
here, nearly 10% of the country’s 
population, and perhaps a 
quarter of Krakow’s.
By the end of the war, 
according to Yad Vashem, only 
380,000 of them remained 

alive. Some 31,000 Jews lived in 
Poland in 1960, according to the 
North American Jewish Data 
Bank, and it dropped to 3,200 in 
2010, though there has been a 
revival of Jewish life here in the 
years since. 
The Polish government’s 
record on reckoning with the 
Holocaust is troubling, especially 
under its current right-wing 
leadership, which enacted a law 
in 2021 restricting restitution 
claims by Jews and others who 
had property stolen by the Nazis.
I was bothered to see, at the 
Auschwitz concentration camp 
and the factory where Oskar 
Schindler saved 1,200 Jews from 
extermination, the emphasis 
placed on the non-Jews who 
suffered during the war.
After Shabbat services at the 
Chabad of Krakow on Friday 
night, I asked people what it’s 
like to live as a Jew here now. 
One Orthodox woman, who is 
27 and has two kids, told me 
she does not experience much 
antisemitism day to day, but 
that there is a broad sense that 
the Poles were only victims of 
the Nazis, not also their accom-
plices.
I found Krakow’s small Jewish 
community — estimates range 
from 200 to 1,000 or so, but that 
was before the flood of refugees 
from Ukraine — to be a shining 
example of living Jewish values.
On a bustling block near the 
old Jewish quarter of Kazimierz, 
the Krakow JCC is impossible 
to miss: Rainbow umbrellas, 
reminiscent of umbrella street in 
Jerusalem, hang above the court-
yard. A bright sign in Ukrainian 
greets the nearly 500 refugees 
who come to the community 
food pantry and clothing bank 
each day. 
It is this work in particular 
that makes me most hopeful for 
the Jewish future — not just in 
Poland, but globally. 

insight
‘Live Without Fear’

Kamala Harris’ husband, Doug Emhof
 , 
opens up about his Jewishness as he 
visits his ancestors’ Polish hometown.

PURELY COMMENTARY

continued on page 9

Laura E.
Adkins 
The Forward

U.S. EMBASSY POLAND

The Second 
Gentleman, 
Douglas Emhoff

