Though neither of her parents hailed from Lodz, Rochelle Michaels felt an almost irresistible desire to visit the Polish city during a Jewish heritage and memorial program five years ago.

A member of the Lodzer Centre Congregation, Michaels was in the sanctuary when the event was announced from the bimah, and she witnessed first hand the immediate and visceral reaction of congregants.

People stood up and proclaimed they would never go to a memorial in Poland, she recalled.

“They were angry and very upset, and they spoke about personal experiences in Poland and said they would never go back.”

At the same time, they were torn by the desire to return to the land of their birth to visit for the last time the cemeteries where family members were buried, she added.

Intrigued by the reaction and the program being assembled by the Polish government, Michaels decided to make the trip along with her then 14-year-old son, Sam.

“I felt it was important to go and bear witness,” she said. “After a time at the Lodzer [Synagogue], I felt I wanted to go to Poland to take a part of their hearts with me, to honour the survivors and to recognize the victims.”

Michaels said the program was incredibly emotional, and it was made all the more so by the efforts of the current generation of Poles to honour and recognize the Jews of their community who were killed in the Holocaust.

Altogether, several hundred Canadians participated in the 2004 memorial.

A program to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the liquidation of Lodz’s Litzmanstadt Ghetto – the “Jewish Memorial and Heritage Program” in short – is planned for Aug. 24 to 31.

So far, interest from the Jewish community has been “surprisingly very modest,” said Andrew Pirowski, project manager for Panorama Travel, the official tour operator for the event.

Not only are Canadians reluctant to make the trip, so, too, are Americans.

“We have found people from the Toronto area. We have a group, but nothing compared to the numbers five years ago,” he said.

“We had expected more, and the city had expected it would generate more interest. We understand the survivors are aging, but they have family and we expected they would continue their ties to their grandparents’ roots.”

The Polish government has set up a  website to publicize the event (http://www.ghetto.lodz.pl/) and in it, Lodz mayor Jerzy Kropiwnicki noted that the commemoration will honour the city’s Jews as well as the Poles who risked their lives to save them.

“This monument will become an evident symbol of humanity in the hell of German occupation, both for the Jews and the Poles,” Kropiwnicki stated.

“There is no way to comprehend the crime that was committed here. We can only remember it. For a decent man, there is no choice but to side with a victim. For a decent city like Lodz, there is no choice either. And any previous neighbour relations – good or bad – are irrelevant. There is a crime, a perpetrator, a victim and a witness. I could not see any other role for my city but to stand up for the victim and to testify.”

Michaels is planning to revisit Lodz this summer, and this time she’s taking her younger son, Ezra.

Ezra, 14, consulted with his older brother, who has taken a variety of trips abroad and said his most memorable one was to Poland, followed by a visit to Israel.

“Ezra wanted to have that experience too,” she said.

For the children of survivors – Michaels’ father, Henry Kay, was from Kielce – such a trip holds “many memorable moments,” she said.

One special recollection from the 2004 visit was a children’s concert remembering the Jewish children who did not survive. The event attracted so many Poles that the venue quickly filled up and those who could not get inside stood outside in silence.

“When we came out they left a row for us to exit and faced us as though they wanted to share with us in that experience,” Michaels said.

On the final day, the program was scheduled for the train station “to remember the last transport. People filled the street to honour those who survived,” she said.

Many Lodzer congregation members remain bitter over their treatment at the hands of their former neighbours, But Michael believes “the country is changing, and [that] needs to be recognized.”