On our way back, we stopped in Turka, Borynya’s biggest neighbor, and were heartsick to see that one synagogue was being used as a sawmill, another as a car repair shop. Yet in Poland such buildings seem to be cared for with more dignity. In Lesko, Poland, a well-maintained 17th-century synagogue draws tourists even if it is used as an art gallery that sells Christian icons. So does an even more elegant 18th-century synagogue in Lancut, where biblical passages decorate the walls surrounding a Baroque four-pillared bimah, or platform from which prayers were led. A synagogue guide, Miroslaw Kedzior, taught himself Hebrew to better understand Judaism.

“The Hasidim tell me I have a Yiddish soul,” he said.

As we made several such stops on our return to Krakow, we came to grips with what we had known abstractly: that Poland had been almost depleted of Jews both by the Nazis, the postwar pogroms and the Communist persecutions. There are 20,000 Jews left in a country that once had 3.3 million, according to Ms. Lieberman.

Yet shards of Judaism are being restored. Part of the effort is no doubt aimed at tourism. In medieval Krakow, largely intact, there are a half-dozen ancient synagogues, some that hold services, a well-preserved cemetery and a street with a dozen cafes that serve gefilte fish and matzo ball soup while gentile klezmer bands play Yiddish chestnuts. While charming, it was hard not to think of it as a Jewish Disneyland without actual Jews.

Yet cynicism aside, such efforts remind people that Jews were entwined in Poland’s soul. As in Warsaw, a New Yorker, Jonathan Ornstein, has led a revival, setting up a Jewish community center that boasts 550 members, some people who have discovered that they had Jewish grandparents who harbored them with Christian families then perished.

“Poland has had periods of estrangement and persecution,” Mr. Ornstein told us. “Let’s take advantage of a good period.”

While we were there, the center held a triumphant “Ride of the Living” along the 55 miles from Auschwitz to Krakow, with 70 cyclists taking part to underscore the hopeful future of Poland’s Jews. One was Marcel Zielinski, an 80-year-old Montreal man. He last walked the route as a 10-year-old liberated from Auschwitz and hunting for his parents.

When he arrived on his bicycle in his Day-Glo green outfit alongside his son and two granddaughters, his face a jubilant grin, it was hard not to be overcome.