Kesher Talk

Jews in odd places: Poland: There were a ton there before the Holocaust, but it turns out not every Polish Jew who survived the slaughter left right away -- they were kicked out years later. But this summer, many Poles welcomed Jews back with open arms. The Forward has the story:

The leader of the Communist party in Poland, Wladislaw Gomulka, blamed the Jewish "Zionists" for fomenting the student unrest [in 1968] and announced that the Jews "were free to leave." Leon Ejdelman (pronounced Adleman), then a Jewish student in Szczecin who now resides in Yonkers, N.Y., knew what this meant. "In a Communist country, where no one was allowed to leave, Gomulka's suggestion was a way of telling us to get out," Ejdelman explained. In a matter of months, thousands of Jews throughout Poland were fired from their jobs and their membership in the Communist Party was revoked. By the end of the year, 13,000 Jews felt forced to leave the country and consequently gave up their citizenship.

This summer, the Jews of Szczecin finally reunited in the town for the first time since the traumatic events of 1968. Former residents flew in from all over the world — the United States, Canada, Australia, Israel, Germany, France, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium and different cities within Poland itself. Szczecin, a port city located on Poland's western border with Germany, was actually part of Germany until the end of World War II, when the allied countries decided at the Potsdam Conference to turn it over to Poland. Many Jews returning to Poland after the Holocaust settled in the new city rather than go home to their own towns and villages, fearing the reaction of their former neighbors.

Szczecin quickly became a thriving Jewish community. In 1946 the Polish government allowed the Jews to open their own Yiddish day school, called the Peretz School, after the well-known Yiddish writer, Yitzkhok Leybush Peretz. (Yiddish was deemed "kosher" by the Communist authorities, in contrast to Hebrew, which was verboten due to its Zionist and religious associations.) There were three Jewish sleep-away camps in the area around Szczecin and a well-organized communal life for Jews of all ages.

Little remains of the vibrant Jewish life in Szczecin today. The reunion participants were eager to revisit the places of their youth, but they harbored no illusions. On a tour of the former Jewish sites, they discovered that the Peretz School was now a sleekly renovated training center for teachers, and the few active members of the community were frail and elderly. One notable exception was Roza Krol, the energetic organizer of the reunion, who is, like many of the reunion participants, in her fifties.

But it wasn't just nostalgia that moved the former Szczecin residents. It was the unexpected enthusiasm of the Poles. The Jewish reunion was written up in a number of Polish newspapers (sample headline: "In '68 They Were Forced to Leave Poland, and Now — Back to their Youth"). Even the highly esteemed Gazeta Wiborcza, often referred to as The New York Times of Poland, sent a reporter to cover the reunion in Szczecin. "TV cameras followed us wherever we went," Krol remarked. The governor of the province, Zygmund Meier, participated in the unveiling of a plaque on the former Peretz School and later invited a group of the reunion participants for a business meeting in his office about doing business with Polish companies and hopefully investing in Polish companies as well.

posted by William @ 9/09/2003 08:18:27 AM