The spiritual home of Polish Jewry has for centuries nestled in Kazimierz, a bruised corner of Cracow. There are seven synagogues in the city, the Remu cemetery, which houses the grave of the legendary Talmudist Moses Isserles, and, today, several busy “Jewish-style” restaurants. Every evening the bittersweet tones of Klezmer, the music of the ghettos, drifts over the cobblestones.

But there are no Jews.

Before the war 70,000 lived in the city; now the registered Jewish community amounts to no more than 176 members, many very old. The Jewish tourists that flock to Kazimierz every year are from America and Israel and they experience a virtual world; the merest hint of a disappearing culture.

Tadeusz Jakubowicz, head of the Cracow Jewish community, describes it as a theme park on the lines of Disneyland. He calls it “Jewland”.

Typically a tourist eats a not-quite kosher meal and then goes on a guided tour of places where Oskar Schindler lived, buys a wooden carving of a Jewish musician and listens to Fiddler on the Roof piped through the sound system of his air-conditioned coach.

After the Holocaust Kazimierz became a beaten-up neighbourhood renowned only for its drug peddling. The Communists used the emptied Jewish district as a place to dump the embarrassingly poor.

By simulating Jewish life the spruced-up Kazimierz may not be very authentic but at least it is raising the awareness of young Poles about Jewish life rather than Jewish death.

“Not long ago the only thing Poles knew about being Jewish was Auschwitz,” Poland’s Chief Rabbi, Michael Schudrich, says. “All they knew was that Jews got gassed and burnt - who would want to be Jewish under those circumstances? So that’s why we want to build on things that Polish Jews did not know, the dynamism of Jewish life.” Suddenly it has become chic to become Jewish. Young Poles finger Star of David necklaces and search their family trees for Jewish roots. But will this new modish interest in Judaism fill the empty synagogues?

Two organisations, the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation and Shavei Israel, are building up institutions and schools to give Cracow’s Jews a real spiritual home again.

According to some estimates, there are 1,000 Poles with Jewish roots in Cracow, some of them ready to come to the faith. They are being helped by a text-messaging service that reminds them of Sabbath timings and a kosher home-delivery service.

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