Warsaw, Poland - Nearly 70 years after most of his family was wiped out in the Holocaust, Shmuel Glitzenstein is proudly fulfilling what he knows they would have wanted.
Glitzenstein and eight other young men have just become the first rabbis ordained in Poland since World War Two, the latest sign of a revival of Jewish culture and spirituality in one of its historic heartlands.
"We have made history," said Glitzenstein on Monday at the rabbinical college in Warsaw, Chabad Lubavitch Yeshiva, where they are completing a year of studies.
They received their diplomas in a ceremony at a hotel in the Polish capital on Sunday evening.
Glitzenstein, 21, comes from a family of rabbis originally based in the central Polish town of Lodz. When the German Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, his grandfather was studying in what was later to become the State of Israel, so escaped the Holocaust.
"My grandfather was very proud of me when I came here to study, though he could not witness my graduation because he died two months ago," said Glitzenstein.
"I am so grateful that I was able to devote myself here from morning to night to my studies."
Before the war Poland was home to some 3.5 million Jews, one of the largest Jewish communities in the world, but most of them were murdered by the Nazis in ghettos and death camps such as Auschwitz built on Polish soil.
Today Polish Jews are believed to number just 20,000, though growing numbers of Jews from Israel, the United States and elsewhere visit the country to trace their family roots.
"Not one spiritual leader was ordained in Poland since 1939 until now... It has taken a long time to revive this tradition, but better late than never," Meir Lau, chief rabbi of Tel Aviv and himself a Holocaust survivor, told Reuters by telephone.
"Without spiritual leadership we cannot promise the continuity of the Jewish people. The main concern of all generations is to ordain rabbis for the leadership of the next generation," he said.
The nine young rabbis studied at a Jewish school or 'Yeshiva' run by Chabad Lubavitch, a Hasidic movement of Orthodox Judaism which is based in New York but traces its origins back to late 18th century eastern Europe.
Chabad Lubavitch runs more than 3,000 educational institutions in more than 70 countries worldwide.
HITLER DID NOT WIN
"Poland was always a centre of Jewish study in the world. People used to come from all over the world to study the Torah (the Jewish holy book) here. This was stopped by the Nazis," said Rabbi Shalom Stambler, head representative of Chabad Lubavitch of Poland who is based in Warsaw.
"The opening of our 'Yeshiva' (in 2005) and the ordination of the new rabbis is the best answer we can give to Hitler and the Nazis, it shows they did not win."
The newly ordained rabbis will return this week to Israel, but they will be replaced by new students in the autumn.
"We hope the 'Yeshiva' will grow and grow," said Stambler.
Among other signs of burgeoning Jewish activity here, a new Jewish culture centre recently opened in Krakow in southern Poland. Krakow, the traditional heart of Polish Jewish life, is also hosting an annual Jewish festival this week.
Israeli President Shimon Peres visited Poland in April to mark the 65th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.
Jewish community leaders say the government and president of Poland -- now a member of the European Union and NATO -- have worked hard to foster good relations with Israel and the global Jewish community, but anti-Semitism has not disappeared.
"The other day I was waiting to cross a road when a bus driver made a throat-slitting gesture at me," said Rabbi Channoch Rosenfeld, who has moved to Warsaw from Israel to help train and educate Jews here about their religion and culture.
But despite such abuse, the main response of Poles seeing devout Hasidic Jews sporting their traditional beard and wearing their trademark fedoras is curiosity, he added.
"When I walk around people stop me and ask what it is all about. I tell them Poland is a country with a rich Jewish heritage. We have come back to show we are still here, still alive."