There were once some 25,000 Jews in Kielce, but there are none there now, at least none that identify themselves as Jews. The Nazis murdered 20,000, and 42 who remained were killed by a mob that attacked the Jewish community house in 1946, a pogrom more than a year after the war was over.

Nevertheless, last month, the synagogue building was once again used for its original purpose, the books and documents on the shelves covered over. Many local people - non-Jews all - were invited to the festivities: Friday night and Saturday morning services, a traditional Shabbat dinner, a Havdalah ceremony, a guided walk through formerly Jewish areas of the town, and a party.

What happened in Kielce has happened in other Polish towns: Pinczow, a former shtetl; Przemsyl; Piotrokow, the home town of the chief rabbi of Israel, and in many smaller villages as well. Shabbat services in buildings that used to be synagogues are appearing like dots, or perhaps Jewish stars, all over the map of Poland.

And it's mostly due to one man, Chicago lawyer Michael Traison. His 17-year involvement in what sounds like an oxymoron - Jewish life in contemporary Poland - is unexpected and unprecedented. He does it for many reasons, but in a sense it all comes down to one: "It is a personal act of yizkor," mourning and remembrance, he says.

Before he explains further, Traison, who is 63 years old, articulate and passionate about his subject, likes to offer a bit of history. In 1939, there were some 3.3 million Jews living in Poland, a country whose shape changed often, as it incorporated parts of Ukraine, Belarus and other nations. At other times, a large part of Poland was under Russian rule, including the area where his parents were born, which is now called Bratslav. Traison calls the entire area "Yiddishland - this one big area, this great Jewish country that existed."

That locale "was the Jewish homeland for centuries, until the creation of the State of Israel," Traison says. "It was where our culture was created, the oven in which our whole culture, aside from the Sephardic part, was baked." In the United States, he says, 90 percent of the Jewish population has roots in the land that at one time or another was Poland.

"Our foods, our ways of doings things," come from these lands, he says, noting great commonalties between Polish and Jewish culture, from a fondness for borsht to the use of words like pushke and shmatta (Poles even refer to a low-class woman as a shiksa) to synagogue music, much of which is derived from church songs, he says.

"The Holocaust was such a traumatic event for this reason," he says. "There is not one other nation where our ties were as deeply woven into the fabric. You're looking through the names of towns as you pass them, and you feel you're looking through the phone directory in Skokie or Lincolnwood. These are family names. Our roots are deeply sunk into the soil."

In an article he wrote for Chicago Jewish News in 2005 on the death of Pope John Paul II, Traison described being in Poland: "I felt like I was looking into a pool and viewing a reflection of our own unique experience and feelings. The Poles and the Jews share so much, that they lose sight of similarities that are uncommon, if not uncanny. Two nations who lived without their own land for centuries. Two peoples often held in low esteem by foreign nations. Two nations who have suffered at the hands of invaders. Two people whose religion cannot be easily separated from their national identity."

"This Polish perspective is not easily understood in the context of our experience in so many other lands of our two-millennia-old dispersion where there were higher degrees of assimilation," he wrote in the article. "Our presence in Poland was markedly different. The degree of assimilation was more limited. The physical contrasts between the Polish and the Polish Jewish lifestyles were stark, with huge numbers of our people living so apart from Polish styles that many could not speak Polish at all, and of those that could, it was a strongly accented version.

"We dominated the cities, and the urban commercial and professional sectors, constituting 25 to 35 percent of the population of the five largest cities and even larger percentages of the towns, especially in Galicia (southern Poland) and in the east toward Bialystock and Lomza.

"The feeling we were two nations living in one territory is reinforced by the fact that Poles and Jews even call those cities and towns by different names."

By the end of the war, 90 percent of the Jews of Poland had been murdered by the Nazis, Traison notes. Of the 200,000 that remained, some fled to the Soviet Union, others to the United States, Israel or Sweden. Others, he says, "just went quiet," choosing to blend in with the local population, which was not so much anti-Semitic as xenophobic.

"The country is 95 percent Slavic and Catholic," he says. "They don't entertain diversity. The rural areas are like 1930s Mississippi. It's better not to be known as Jewish." However, after the fall of Communism in 1989, with growing democratization, "Jews started to emerge and identify themselves as Jews."

Today, Traison asserts, while it is impossible to know exactly how many Jews are living in Poland, a knowledgeable guess is 8,000 to 10,000 individuals who are halachically Jewish and identify themselves as such. There may be 80,000 others who had one Jewish parent and as many as 200,000 with one Jewish grandparent, he says.

A Jewish boy born in Detroit in 1946, as Traison was, would seem far removed from scenes of European bloodshed. He grew up in an Americanized household where, he says, "it was central to our existence that we were Jews and Americans. Yet our cultural ties to our homeland and our people were very very strong. I was brought up steeped in Jewish history."

He continued that interest as an adult. When books about the Holocaust began to appear in numbers in the 1970s and '80s, he included those in his reading and was particularly taken by one detailing life in the Lodz ghetto, which included diaries and notes written in the margins of other books by ghetto inmates and discovered after the war.

"Photos of life in the ghetto made it more and more vivid," he says. "I found films, the Roman Vishniac pictures (of pre-war European Jewish life), Martin Gilbert's book about the Holocaust. By 1992, I had an extensive library. My mind was filled with these pictures and diaries, and I felt compelled to go to Poland and see a few of these places, see the towns I was reading about."

He knew that most American Jews would never attempt such a trip, out of revulsion.

"When you mention Poland, most Jews feel it is a forbidden land, nothing but a cemetery," he says. "People have created the idea that Poles were responsible for World War II and the Holocaust."

Why do so many Jews in some ways "have more powerful, passionate feelings about Poland than about Germany?" he asks. "You have the strongest feelings about those to whom you have the closest ties. When a family member betrays you, it is worse than when a stranger does."

Traison wanted to find answers for himself on these matters, and for that, he had to visit Poland. He flew to Warsaw, alone, intending to stay for four days, then go on to Israel.

"I couldn't speak a word of Polish and few Polish people knew how to speak English," he says. "I was basically on my own, communicating by body language, isolated, yet knowing the streets, the places, almost like I had been there before."

The connection to the land was instantaneous. "I feel like the month I was born, October 1946, there must have still been smoke from the chimneys of the camps, and I must have inhaled the souls of some of our people," he says.

On that first visit, "for whatever reason, I had positive experiences," he says. "I encountered Poles and they saw me walking, wearing a kippah. People would offer to show me the local cemeteries or synagogues. They viewed it as part of their own Polish history and culture." He also met others "who were afraid I was coming to take back my property. There was a certain amount of fear and anxiety, but many people were very hospitable."

That visit was "a life-changing experience" for Traison, he says. Soon he found himself visiting there four times a year, then every month. Eventually he combined the journeys with his law practice - he is a principal in a large Chicago firm, Miller, Canfield, Paddock and Stone, that has three offices in Poland, and practices commercial law.

He has lived in Chicago for the past 10 years, but also has an office in Detroit and one in Poland. Divorced, he has twin daughters who live in Israel. One lives and works on a moshav; the other writes for the newspaper Ha'aretz and runs its English-language Web site. His ex-mother-in-law, he reports, was Polish, a survivor of the Vilna Ghetto, and he learned much from her, including "her way of being super-clean. Poles are immaculate. It's a stereotype born out by some truth."

As for Traison himself, his trips to Poland grew more frequent and his involvement in projects relating to the Holocaust and the country's Jewish population more intensive. (He notes that a Google search of his name and "Poland" yields dozens of entries.) Today he spends about 25 percent of his time there - about a week out of every month - and is now engaged in 75 different projects.

One has been ongoing since 1998. Every July, a ceremony is held in Krakow honoring non-Jewish Poles who are doing something to preserve Jewish heritage. Traison spearheaded the effort, which is now financed by the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation and the Israeli Embassy. So far, more than 160 individuals have been honored at ceremonies attended by Traison, Polish dignitaries and the Israeli ambassador.

The projects the individuals engaged in have been varied, from cleaning up Jewish cemeteries to saving synagogue buildings from destruction to writing books about Polish Jews to preserving and publishing manuscripts by Holocaust victims found after the war.

One recipient created an exhibition of Judaica and Jewish history in a renovated former synagogue. Another found the lost manuscript of a diary written in the Lodz Ghetto, traced the author, preserved the manuscript and arranged to publish it.

"I wanted to make sure the people doing these things were properly thanked," Traison says. "The people who are honored every year really appreciate it. They come to the ceremony with their families."

In addition to the simple act of thanking the honorees, Traison says he hopes to "make it known to the Jewish world that there are such people in Poland, and to encourage other people to do the same thing."

Another project involves the Shabbat services held in towns that formerly had a large Jewish population, but where there is no identifiable Jewish presence today, such as the recent one in Kielce. Some of these have drawn as many 150 people, Traison says.

"People who have roots in these towns fly in from different countries," he says, "and members of the Jewish community from Poland come. I also bring in Catholics and other non-Jews to participate. Often the Jewish groups are insulated from the rest of Poland and it leaves the Polish people standing on the sidelines seeing this pilgrimage coming to their town and wondering what it is all about. We welcome all people to watch what we do and to participate."

In the most recent event, in Kielce, "the local people did a wonderful thing," he says. "The building is a warehouse of documents, full of shelving and papers and files. They took it and kind of carved out a way to create a feeling of being in a sanctuary. You didn't see the books and shelving. Many local people there were witnessing a Jewish service for the first time in their lives. It was a renewal."

Another major project took place in February 2007: the dedication of a synagogue in a renovated yeshiva in Lublin, one of the storied centers of Jewish life and learning before 1939. There were once 40,000 Jews in the city, about half of its population.

The Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz provided extensive coverage of the event, which was announced in the Polish media by headlines like "The sages are returning to Lublin." The newspaper noted that, despite the presence of the chief rabbi of Poland, Michael Schudrich, and a handful of Polish Jews, "the ceremony was an entirely Polish event ... Most of the speakers, Catholics and Jews, waxed nostalgic about the days when Jews and Poles lived side by side in Lublin, and they showered praise on what they described as 1,000 years of coexistence." The dedication ceremony received extensive coverage in the Polish media, with one newspaper even publishing a special supplement, Ha'aretz noted.

There are many other ongoing projects. Traison has underwritten and published a Haggadah translated into Polish and has done the same with a wedding book, a cemetery book and a Shabbat evening book that is now used all over the country, he says.

Traison is anxious to make Jews living in other parts of the world aware of the fact that "there are Jews in Poland," he says. "Most people think that Jewish civilization and people were completely and totally decimated" in the Holocaust. "In spirit that is accurate, but literally it is not the case," he says.

He names four other themes and reasons for the work he does in Poland.

The first is "to make a statement that Jews were once there. To walk in those streets, to make our food so it can be smelled in those streets. There is one word for it: zachor (remembrance)."

Another theme: "To say to the Polish people and the world, despite all that happened, Am Yisrael Chai" (the Jewish People lives).

Another, more pragmatic reason: "For the Polish people to be together with Jewish people, to break down barriers so that Poles can meet Jews, Jews can meet Poles, so Poles get to see what Jews are, that they are not some ancient mythological figures."

Yet another reason: "To enhance and support ways by which fellow Jews who find themselves living in Poland can enrich their Jewish lives and identify with Jewish people; to support the efforts of those who want to be part of the Jewish people."

"When Jews make a journey to Poland they are going on a pilgrimage," he says. "In addition to the mourning and crying, which we must experience - I can't be in Poland without experiencing it - I don't want to turn my back on a place that is a part of our heritage. There is a Jewish life that must be supported and sustained. I tell Polish people: I feel this is my homeland too. The ties I have to that land as a Jew are inseparable from my identity as a Jew."

Traison also visits Israel frequently. When there, he says, "I see the contrast between when our people lived in Europe. We were living at the goodwill of the nobility or the king. We were always at risk. The only country where we were truly 100 percent accepted as fellow citizens was here in the United States. In Israel, we are people with a country, a nation.

"What a miracle that I live in an age when there is a Jewish state, with a Jewish ambassador, a Jewish army. When we speak to non-Jews, we are speaking on behalf of our people from a position of legitimacy, of statehood," he says.

"I'm not naive," Traison says. "I know there is good and evil in every country. There are Polish people who did awful things to our people, and others who saved Jews. In Poland, there are the largest number of Righteous Gentiles, and there were also evil people. But the vast majority were silent bystanders.

"I have met many Jews who said to me, I wonder what I would have done" in the same situation. "I hope to G-d I am never in that position."

So Traison continues his projects in Poland, regarding each one as "a personal act of yizkor. I can't save a single life of those who died, but I can keep their memory alive," he says. "I can help the descendents of that Polish Jewish population, and I can do something to nurture them. In a sense, that's saving a life during the Shoah."