I first met Jonny Daniels in the Warsaw airport; I heard a booming, unfamiliar voice with a British accent saying something about the anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto and the transformative experience I could only assume I was about to have. I was among a group of jet lagged American students who had just arrived in Poland for a Holocaust education and service trip. The trip was led by the organization From the Depths and focused on not only what had been destroyed in the Holocaust, but what remains today.

Daniels is the founder of From the Depths, which works to preserve memory of the Holocaust. The organization draws its name from Psalms 130, in which a psalmist pleads for mercy, saying “from the depths, I have cried out to you, O Lord.” These “depths” are a metaphor for anguish, and the goal of the organization is to bridge the dark, painful past of the Holocaust to a better future. Since starting From the Depths three years ago in Poland, Daniels has been working to uncover Jewish hiding spots and unmarked graves, commemorate Poles who saved Jews from Nazis, and return Jewish gravestones used for post-war construction back to Jewish cemeteries.

He realized that thousands of Jewish gravestones are to this day used as building material in Polish family homes, roads, and even playgrounds, and no one is working to honor the individuals they represent. Daniels tasked himself with this project and decided to move to Poland from Israel. He was born and raised in London, England, but took a gap year in Israel before college, fell in love with Israel and never moved back. He then served in the Israeli army as a paratrooper and went on to study Political Science at Bar Ilan University in Tel Aviv. After getting his degree, Daniels worked as an adviser in the Israeli Parliament, so navigating a new political and social scene wasn’t new for him. Poland, however, was a unique challenge, especially for a foreign Jew who wanted to dig in Polish backyards.

The uncovering of what remained of Polish Jewry after the Holocaust is a very recent occurrence in Poland, which has a long history of antisemitism. During Nazi occupation of Poland, some Poles participated in the killing of Jews. After the war, there were several outbreaks of antisemitic violence targeted at Jewish refugees. Under the Soviet-imposed Communist regime which lasted until 1989, the tiny number of Jews left were used as scapegoats by both the regime protesters and the regime itself.

Some disturbing remnants of this history are easy to spot in modern-day Poland and were a source of culture shock for the American students—myself included—who traveled around Poland with Daniels. On a narrow, crowded street of Warsaw, we passed an antique store with the cover of a Torah scroll displayed in the window. Decorating this cover was a Nazi uniform cap. Several blocks away from the store was a souvenir shop with Jewish caricature dolls. The dolls came in all sizes, were dressed in Hasidic black clothes and Jewish prayer shawls, and generally held a large gold coin. I mustered the courage and asked a shop owner, “What are these for?” She responded in broken English, explaining “ehh… people who look like this…in the past,” (she added, probably remembering that there are none left) “have a lot of money and keep it. So if you have one, you will have a lot of money and luck!”

In a place that seems completely devoid of sensitivity—where sacred Jewish texts, swastikas, and Jew dolls are all just souvenirs along with Warsaw fridge magnets—it’s remarkable that Daniels has been able to find so many Poles willing to help with Jewish restoration work.

Volunteers including Polish Strongman Federation members—led by the winner of the Strongman Cup, the strongest man in Poland—have helped move the (physically and emotionally) heavy Jewish gravestones used in construction projects back to Jewish cemeteries. A group of Polish high school students teamed up with the firemen in their tiny rural town to clean the abandoned local Jewish cemetery. Several hours of driving away, residents of Krakow help run the local Jewish Community Center, which is staffed almost exclusively with non-Jewish volunteers. These volunteers play a crucial role in helping the few local Jews, many of whom have only recently discovered Jewish roots, to explore their history and identity.

The trip allowed me to meet both individuals who entirely lack sensitivity and care, and individuals who are willing to help commemorate a history that they have no personal connection to. It has been several months since the trip but I’m still processing these polar opposite realities existing side by side. I’m only beginning to formulate the questions that I didn’t have the time to ask in Poland.

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RT: How did you get into the business of Holocaust education?

JD: I started working in Holocaust education when my daughter was born. We named her after my ex-wife’s grandmother, who was a survivor of Auschwitz and unfortunately passed just before my daughter was born. And I realized that there would be nobody around to speak and to tell the stories to my children. No survivors would be left. And it was on our generation to do something about it.

I flew to the States and I met with Professor Elie Wiesel and asked him, “Professor, how can I be involved? Who am I? You know, I’m not a Holocaust historian, I’m not an educator, I’ve got no PhD. How dare I discuss such a thing?” He said to me, “Jonny, your generation needs to stand and must stand and become witnesses of the witnesses.” He said to me, “Jonny, you’re my witness.” So really what spurred me in terms of Holocaust education was the thought process that our generation is the last connection to those survivors and we have to stand and do something. If we don’t, absolutely nobody else will. And that’s when I really decided to start my organization, dealing with the issue of Holocaust memory.

RT: Why was Poland your focus?

JD: My great-grandfather himself survived the Holocaust. He was born in Poland. I was born and raised in the United Kingdom and Holocaust survivors were a very important part of my upbringing.

Poland, you know, was the main focus, the center place of the Holocaust. This is where the majority of killings were. This is the site where most of my Jewish brethren lost their lives. So in terms of dealing with that, I found that Poland would be the most interesting place to work. Over the last few years Poland turned from a very difficult communistic regime which they had up to about 25 years ago, into a country where there were people who had interest in discussing their past, were interested in building for a future. So in terms of the work that we do, really, there wasn’t anywhere better for us to do that than Poland itself.

RT: On the student trip, we met several people who had just discovered that they were Jewish. I was wondering why is it that it has taken so long? Why is it that people have held on to that secret for decades after the Holocaust?

JD: Well after the Holocaust Poland was taken over by the Soviets. It was a communist regime where any kind of religion was looked down upon, and especially Judaism. Poland was also remarkably antisemitic. In 1968 there was a purge where the Jews, the few of them who had remained and were public about it were sort of, you know, held responsible for the evil communism in this country, which, needless to say is untrue. And so to be Jewish under communist rule wasn’t something, necessarily, that you’d want to speak about. So those that did keep their Jewish roots, or knew of them, would hide them. And there was obviously the epidemic of hidden children, where children were hidden during the Holocaust who then later found out that their parents weren’t actually their parents and that they were saved from the train going to Auschwitz or hidden in a monastery and no one came to collect them. So the last 25 years you get this openness in Poland, this democracy. There’s been a real want and interest to understand that past.

RT: How do you think antisemitism in Poland is different from Western Europe and North America? I think this is particularly interesting because everyone in our group of Americans had culture shock over the fact that there were antisemitic caricature Jewish dolls sold in souvenir stores. It’s really something that people almost don’t believe exists, but it does, clearly.

JD: In Poland, Poles don’t view them as antisemitic. In Poland, Poles view them as good luck charms. They don’t see it as something that’s anti semitic or wrong and it’s a question of sensitivity whether we view them as wrong. Needless to say, it’s not nice to portray or caricature anybody. However, on the other hand, they’re not doing it to necessarily be evil. In fact Poles have them in their houses as good luck charms. We know it’s nonsense and pathetic. However, they feel that it’s something sort of meaningful and important to them.

And it differs from Western antisemitism especially that we’ve seen a rise in. Because antisemitism in the other parts of Europe isn’t the same antisemitism that it was seventy years ago. Seventy years ago we were seeing antisemitism by Christians, we were seeing antisemitism by locals. Killing of the Jews was done by Germans and Poles and Ukrainians. What we’re seeing now in Europe is that antisemitism is unfortunately happening by radical Islamists. And they don’t have those in Poland. Poland is a very Polish country, with very few immigrants. So we don’t really see that kind of antisemitism.

RT: Has antisemitism been in the way of your work? Have you experienced it? Has it hindered anything you’ve tried to do?

JD: I think it’s very interesting that in Poland itself, I don’t feel or see much antisemitism. The antisemitism that is here is definitely not institutional. It’s not antisemitism that comes from the government or from any main institutions. It’s more from people and that purely comes out as a result of ignorance as opposed to anything else. By ignorance, I mean people who have heard something about the Jews but have never met one before. For example, I was with the right-hand man of the Polish Minister of Culture and he turned to me and said “oh, we all know that Jews treat women the same way that Arabs treat them. Women aren’t allowed this, they aren’t allowed that… When they divorce their husbands, their children get taken away.” You know, a very strange understanding. But more than anything it’s all ignorance and from the fact that there are no Jews really living there for them to ask, that they have these opinions. So antisemitism hasn’t really affected me at all. In fact the philosemitism, the strong connection towards Judaism that a lot of Poles feel has actually helped.

RT: On the trip you mentioned that in some social circles Jewish things were seen as cool – Jewish cuisine, Jewish names among a completely Polish populations.

JD: Right so 10% of the Polish population pre-1938 were jews and Jews had a large impact on the Polish culture. Some of the most famous writers and singers and chefs and cuisine, were Jewish. And there’s been sort of a nostalgia to that past that’s presented itself over the last few years. In Poland last year there were something like 28 Jewish culture festivals where Jewish music was played, Jewish food was eaten, and people feel very strongly connected to that. A lot of people will tell you that they know they have Jewish roots or they can feel that they have Jewish roots. So it’s seen as something very cool.

RT: Could you talk about the Polish volunteers that restore graveyards and report mass grave sites. In a culture that’s historically been antisemitic, what is their motivation?

JD: We have to remember that Poland was the country that Jews lived in for close to a thousand years when no one else would take us in. There wasn’t one country that wasn’t antisemitic. You know, the United States was grotesquely antisemitic until a couple of years ago. So times change and people change and I think we’re seeing a lot of that on one hand. And on the other hand, like we spoke about before there is an interest amongst the young generation to look at their past and a certain nostalgia. And so I think it’s that more than anything else.

RT: Is the Polish Jewish community growing or shrinking?

JD: It’s definitely shrinking. There’s the issue that the older Jews are dying. It’s also not the easiest place to be a Jew. Kosher meat isn’t readily available so a lot of people will move and head off to other places, go to different countries, for example, Israel, the United States. So it’s definitely not a sustainable community. There’s no sort of real Jewish life to be had.

RT: Does that mean it’s going to get harder to commemorate Jewish life?

JD: Of course. But I mean it’s a trend. Like we’ll see synagogues in certain states and cities in America where there once were Jews and there no longer are. And again it doesn’t necessarily mean anything bad. So this is just a trend that we see a lot and it’s nothing specific about Poland per say. It’s just Jews are a traveling people.