Scattered throughout Poland are synagogues in various architectural styles that once served a large and venerable Jewish community. Found in towns ranging from Zamosc and Orla to Krasnik and Lancut, they remind Poles and foreign visitors alike that Poland was home to one of the most vibrant and important Jewish centers in the Diaspora before the […]
Regrettably, Poland continues to drag its feet concerning a problem that should have been resolved years ago. To this day, Poland is still the only major European country that has not passed comprehensive legislation for the restitution of property seized by the Nazis during the German occupation and nationalized by the Communist regime after 1945, according […]
On September 15, 1939, two weeks after Germany’s invasion of Poland, German troops occupied the small town of Kleczew, population 2,996, and proceeded to impose a reign of terror on its 746 Jewish inhabitants. Some two years later, they were systematically murdered in a nearby forest. The Jewish community of Kleczew, as well as Jewish communities in […]
I’m writing this from Czestochowa, Poland, where I was born 72 years ago. The city is best known for the Jasna Gora monastery. Visited by around four million pilgrims per year, it is a shrine to the Virgin Mary. The cloister houses the Black Madonna, one of the holiest icons of the Catholic Church. My […]
As Poles wrestle with the extremely complex legacy of the Holocaust in Poland, where three million Polish Jews perished in six short years, a cabinet minister in Poland’s government has suggested that historical accounts of the 1941 pogrom in the town of Jedwabne may be nothing more than “very biased opinions.” As reported by the […]
Is Poland’s new defence minister, Antoni Macierewicz, fit to hold public office? That’s a legitimate question following the disclosure that he flirted with the possibility that The Protocols of the Elders Of Zion, a notorious antisemitic tract, may be an authentic historical document, and that he supports its twisted thesis. In an interview in 2002 […]
When I was last in Warsaw in the summer of 2009, the site of the future Museum of the History of Polish Jews was cordoned off to the public, and it wasn’t clear when construction would begin, much less end. The project to build a museum in honor of what had been one of the […]
Since the fall of communism in Poland in 1989, Poles who had concealed their Jewish ancestry with a zealousness bordering on fear and/or self-hatred have come out of the closet in droves, proclaiming and embracing their Jewishness to various degrees. The “new” Jews, whatever their Jewish lineage may be, are Jews by choice, says Poland’s […]
The Polish philosopher Jozef Tischner wrote, “When reflected in a crooked mirror, the face of a neighbor is distorted. The neighbor is always worse than we can imagine, he is false, treacherous, evil.” Tischner’s observations may be applied to Louise Steinman, an American Jew of Polish descent for whom Poland was “a black hole, a […]
It’s a mall with a difference. The Manufactura Center, a sprawling complex of bright red brick buildings in the heart of the Polish city of Lodz, looks a lot like any sleek shopping mall in North America or Europe. Set on 27 hectares at the corner of Zachodnia and Ogrodowa streets, this modern mall has […]