Piotr Stasiak

On Shabbat (September 14, 2024; 11th of Ellul 5784) Kee TayTzey, Piotr Stasiak’s soul completed this cycle. In Barry Cohen’s Opening the Drawer: The Hidden Identities of Polish Jews,  At age 15, Piotr Stasiak enacts the book’s title, discovering the documentary proof that his Jewish father Leon Stasiak is Lazar Sylman. His father survived Buchenwald and Auschwitz and finally was rescued by his Catholic mother and her brothers. Piotr Stasiak was both a child of Jewish survivors and Catholic Righteous Gentiles.

Piotr’s parents raised him in the Jewish people’s covenant. Only by indirection did he initially learn the meaning of being a Jew. Still, he grew to be a leader of Beit Polska and a key exemplar of the determination among a small group of Polish Jews to foster Jewish memory and learning.

Piotr Stasiak was the most humble person. A physicist by training, he was a kind of secular Hasidic rebbe by temperament. His bold sense of wonder was a warm combination of a trained scientific mind and a shy religious soul. He was raised by people who were suspicious of religion, but he came to understand the power of community in offering presence and community. To walk on the beach with him was to be introduced to wonder.

Piotr Stasiak oversaw the Tarczyn cemetery restoration project.

He was part of the bridge generation that built the current Jewish Renaissance.

He was a person who made things happen. This emergence happened in association with his cousin Zigmund Rolat a few older survivors who cared about Jewish memory. 

Piotr Stasiak taught me by showing me the Soviet cemetery near Kazimierz Dolny because we shouldn’t forget they were individual human beings. He showed the importance of his family’s legacy in Czestochowa, a cause he spearheaded with survivors. He organized projects to preserve neglected Jewish cemetery in Poland. When few seemed to care he advised and aided others trying to organize similar projects. His work on the Tarczyne Cemetery near Warsaw is a model of volunteer effort that attracted members of Beit Polska, Polish Catholics, and volunteers from various walks of life.

After a World Union for Progressive Judaism meeting in London, he introduced me to a version of a “Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert” revival. 

There are so many associations with Piotr’s presence in my mind: he attended my grandson’s Brit Milah in Sunnyvale, CA. Piotr reflected about the joy of this child who was born a premie and was celebrated almost three months after his birth. Our last conversation was about good wishes for that young man’s Bar Mitzvah and could I please solve the financial problems of Beit Polska which he over saw from the Polish side.

Piotr entered the hospital for tests and matters deteriorated. May his memory and example be for a blessing.