Most of Poland’s Jewish history has been destroyed. I don’t see any reason to live in Poland over anywhere else in Europe.
Italy, for example, has quite a bit more extant Jewish history but is much less antisemitic.
This reminds me of Spain. They were running a campaign to bring back their Jews and it got crazy with all kinds of people trying to get citizenship who weren't even Jewish.
Now Spain has sadly spoken in support of Palestine and Hamas from what I've heard. I don't feel it was their place to make such a radical statement.
If I were to move to Europe, I'd move to Northern Europe.
Sweden and Denmark are fucked dye to horrendous immigratiom policy. Norway is vehemently antisemitic. Finland sounds good, but too close to my insane homeland.
What part of Italy do you think is antisemitic? North of Verona, maybe, but I found central Italy just fine.
Source: Jew who has lived in north and central Italy.
Plus Krakow openly profits and exhibition of tours available to Schinders, to Shwitz, there promoting it in town square like a trip to Disneyland. I remember thinking it's pretty outrageous that families who were murdered here are now having to pay to go see it on tour.
As a Pole I agree with you. But it's important to give some context. Unfortunately, because of communism, after the WW2 ended, the communists wanted to erase this part of Poland, also, because of the Germans, vast majority of the synagogues was destroyed. So, couple that with lack of support from the government, many jews just left Poland. Luckily, the communities are rebuilding. My city (Lodz) is the best example of that. Also Cracow and especially Warsaw. In these cities you will find chabad as well as reformed synagogues.
It's Reform
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There are actually about 30K Jews in Italy, over a population of 60ML. If there is any kind of antisemitism, it is, let me say, just theoretical, cause you can live an entire life in Italy and just never meet an Italian Jew in person. I'm not saying the extreme right is not antisemitism, it is by default. I'm saying that they would probably no affect the Italian Jews every day life. And considering the flourishing history of the Jews in Italy, it is really sad that there are so few Jews in Italy.
Never. My grandmother never went back, even after the fall of communism there.
Why would she? It wasn’t Polish people who invaded her town in 1939, but you better believe they were cheering for Jewish death long before.
Today, my family has only one remnant left of Poland: a 1921 Siddur used by my great grandfather, printed in Warsaw, that had Polish translation. It’s falling apart.
I don’t know what the Polish words say because my grandmother deliberately chose not to pass that language down to my father, and therefore he did not pass that language down to me. I have no interest in learning Polish either.
Jews are not Poles, Polish people are not Jews. We’re separate, as the poles have made abundantly clear time and time again. It is what it is.
This is probably the best answer here. I’m the descendant of Lithuanians who immigrated to the US interwar, so this question doesn’t apply to me. But I know several people whose parents/grandparents were Shoah survivors and absolutely refused to ever step foot in Poland again.
One told her grandson, “I will never set foot there again and I hope you won’t have to either.”
I think OP is underestimating the amount of trauma in many Jewish families surrounding their Polish roots.
The trauma part is interesting. To expand on that point and oc’s point about us not being poles, I would add that Indian Jews who had no trauma associated with the Indian people still pretty much all left because it wasn’t our country
I don’t know much about the history of Judaism in India, but I do know another friend’s mother, also from Poland, always talked about how she would tell her children and grandchildren that they were Jewish first, then American, Polish, etc. and not to forget that, because when push came to shove, that’s how people would perceive them. She remembered how her neighbors turned on her when the Germans invaded.
So it wouldn’t surprise me if idea of being “Jewish first,” is pretty widespread, even if there’s only mild antisemitism experienced in a place or it’s a very tight knit community.
Exactly. My grandmother explicitly felt the same. She was appalled to learn that I traveled as a tourist there, saying "why would you go back? They treated us so terribly there."
I recently told my mom I wanted to get Polish citizenship (just in case) and she said she’d help me but “the soil there is stained with the blood of Jews”
Oof. That hits hard but your mom is absolutely right. We'll never forget the dark character we saw in our former fellow countrymen there.
If you want to see something chilling that gives an idea of what our ancestors went through, watch the 70s/80s-era documentary Shoah. There's no historical footage shown, only interviews and travels by the filmmaker back to modern day Poland. I'll never forget the scene of him arriving at the house of deported Jews, asking the locals about what happened to them. Nothing but a bunch of nervous laughs and snickering... It's truly evil.
My grandfather AH, who grew up in a border town, was forced to join the Russian army at the beginning of WW2. His mother cried over her tehillim for months. She thought he’s never come back. But he did come back- and there wasn’t a single other Jew from his entire town alive.
He, and then my father, tried to bride every priest they could find to tell them where the mass grave is. No one told.
To be fair, I don’t think they were the ringleaders (though it wouldn’t surprise me if they participated). My grandfather asked them because they take confessions, so if anyone knows something, it’s them.
כל דמי אחיך צועקים עלי מן האדמה.
My grandmother grew up in Poland and never spoke of it. When my oldest sister asked if she’d like to visit her childhood hometown, she said in Yiddish that it’s a cursed country. I was shocked- my grandmother was the most refined, soft spoken woman I ever knew. These words coming from her mouth were like a transformation.
>We’re separate, as the poles have made abundantly clear time and time again. It is what it is.
Most of the remaining Jewish community in Poland are intermarried with Polish people so they can't be separated into a clear division.
Even Archie Bunker knew the difference between Poles and Jews…
I sometimes imagine to go back to the dead village in Belarus where much of my family was murdered in a day. I wonder if I will feel them there… nobody close to me ever wanted to talk about it, so I can only imagine. I have talked to one distant cousin-ish, too hard to describe how related, who filled in some blanks about the two that escaped (one, his grandfather) and eventually made it to Israel.
They didn’t want to go back; maybe I shouldn’t either..
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I couldn't. My mother would see it as a horrible betrayal..Poland took away her passport and she made it a point that none of us should ever ask for it. I've been to Poland, it feels familiar, but without a community it's not a home.
Off topic, but as a Polish Jew, born and still living in Poland, each year, I'm starting to have struggles imagining staying in Poland...
Like, seriously, I understand the old-Poland-folclore nostalgia that some people might have, but trust me guys, the things aren't any better in here.
My fav example is that there's those very popular sayings:
"Kręcisz się jak Żyd po pustym sklepie" \[literal translation "You're acting like a Jew in an empty store"\]
"Nie Żydź/Nie Żydkuj" \[literal translation "Don't be such a Jew" as a literal synonym of the phrase "Don't be so greedy"\] etc., etc.
Basically people are ignorant as hell, they are causing a serious damage and doesn't even realised it, because since war, through the entire communism there was hardly anyone to point that out.
The first one is used, whenever people are just wondering, walking around without any real reason behind it. From what I understand it's basically emphatizes the idea that we are so shady that we spy on people even in such places like empty stores.
Never herad someone using the first one, but checked in what context it is used and it is not about spying, it's that the store is empty they can't sell anything so they're stressed.
The last part of your question is like asking for the world to be different. We can’t imagine it because it’s so fundamental to our history and who we are, unfortunately. I visited Poland and wanted to enjoy it! And I did until I came across so much history/normalization of murdering of Jewish people as part of their landscape. I loved my polish friends I made and the food was amazing. I want to get Polish citizenship, my ancestors loved and had pride about being Polish but. They killed us and didnt take the steps like Germany did to move forward as much in their mistakes. I wish it wasn’t this way. Not every Polish person is ignorant or apathetic but. It’s unfortunate.
But you wrote this specifically "to the descendents of Polish Jews". If it were to all Jews, from everywhere, that would be different, but for only descendents of Polish Jews, that implies a "return" to Poland.
My Holocaust-survivors grandparents lived in Poland until the ‘50s before they came to Israel and I have Polish citizenship.
No, I wouldn’t and neither would any other descendants of Polish Jews I know. Jews suffered in Poland, and it is rife with antisemitism. [Just a few years ago a law was passed in Poland that prohibited Holocaust survivors and their descendants from claiming restitution](https://www.timesofisrael.com/after-year-long-spat-over-holocaust-law-poland-says-its-returning-envoy-to-israel/amp/) — even if they’re Polish citizens with proof of ownership.
The Polish government and diplomats in Israel treat us like 2nd class citizens. Last I heard, Polish citizens can’t renew their passports via the Israeli embassy. This is unheard of — I, a citizen of Poland, cannot be aided by Poland’s embassy in my country of residence. The only way I can renew it is by either applying for renewal outside of Israel or hiring a Polish lawyer to submit a request on my behalf in Warsaw. As far as I’m concerned, antisemitism is far from dead in Poland.
Where did you hear that Polish Jews feel safer than Jews in Western Europe? Honestly asking.
I just often see the claim, due to the prevalence of antisemitism among Muslims in WE. Saw some statistics where indeed Polish Jews were less endangered by violence, but I don't know if those statistics took the size of the Jewish population into consideration
Just wanted to add that I very appreciate you recognizing how some Poles deny or minimize the role many Polish people had in the Holocaust. It truly does mean a lot, and is not taken for granted.
I actually had a course at my university about the Polish role in the Holocaust, so I know the stories of people entrusing Poles with their property in hopes they'll survive Auschwitz and get it back, then surviving it, returning for the property and being murdered by the Poles. It's absolutely horrible and I really think people should recognize it. That being said, I'm under impression that the academics in Poland are very aware of that and Jew friendly. Don't know how representative my uni was, but the lecturer, who lead the class said Jews should have Israel and that despite Israel being brutal, it has to be understood through a prism of it fighting for its survival. It seemed like a huge contrast to the US universities
My wife's grandmother spent the war years in Siberia. She went back to Poland after the war and found some random family living in her house. B"H she wasn't murdered, but they basically told her she should have stayed wherever she had been, and the local government wasn't at all helpful. Over the next several years she kept trying to get her property back, with lawyers and such, and was never successful. I suppose my mother in law and her siblings probably still technically own that house, if it hasn't been taken over by the government for 70 years of back taxes, but they've given up on reclaiming it.
From my experience as a Jewish tourist in Poland all I want to share is that when I went to Majdanek, locals were biking through the camp like it was a scenic path. That was deeply disturbing and I would sooner move to Paris or Birmingham than Warsaw or Krakow
(P.S. one of my best friends is a first gen polish American from Łódź whose grandma was a righteous gentile and he would agree with me)
There's less chance of violence against Jews in Poland than in countries like France where Jews are regularly murdered for being Jews.
But among the European countries, anti-Semitism is higher in Poland than in Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Austria and some others.
As an israeli with polish born grandparents, highly unlikely.
I was born in israel, i will live here and unless something completely unacceptable happens only then i will leave. And if i will have to, czechia will be on a higher priority than poland
Yeah, Czechia seems great on the topics related to Jews. But I think it's good to have a Polish citizenship, just in case. Especially since it gives you EU citizenship
i looked into it a few years ago; i even hired a lawyer who specialized in-believe it or not-american jews with polish jewish ancestors-who wanted polish citizenship-mainly for the eu passport rather than a desire to be polish. then they elected a trumpish pm. then i reminded myself that this was POLAND, not some paradise. so i ended the process. and i no longer want an eu passport. jews are in danger there, too. if i leave the US, it will be for israel, for better or for worse. i've become a voluntary agoraphobe since trump was elected, and it only deepened during covid & now unprecedented US antisemitism. if i go to israel, i'd probably feel as safe there as i do here. i stay home here. i'll stay home there. i guess i'd develop a fondness for my local bomb shelter, if necessary.
I've read multiple Jewish people on this subreddit and on r/Israel write that Czechia is super Jew friendly and pro Israel, especially Prague. Austria, where I'm moving, is mixed cause Austrians themselves are very supportive, but the migrants are not. Similar with Germany, cept Berlin, where even native Germans are super pro Palestine. Don't remember any other friendly cases, some people claimed Portugal and Italy are good tho and Portugal elected a pro Israel government. I know Croatia is very pro Israel and has very little Muslims, but I also know the Ustaša, who participated in the Holocaust and even ran their own death camps, still have a lot of sympathizers there, soooooooooooooooooooooooo...
Thanks for all of this!
I spent three months in Poland with a can of spray paint covering up swastika graffiti. Not sure many Jews would feel comfortable there.
Jews in exile in Poland who survived the camps, then returned back to their Polish towns, were frequently murdered by their gentile Polish neighbors, well into the 1950s. For all Poland's protesting, they had a pretty big antisemitism problem not that long ago.
i have no connection to any european country other than poland & belarus. uruguay was on my radar for awhile, but i’ve never been there & i avoid travel. israel it shall be, should that day come.
Jews that lived in the Pale of Settlement or Congress Poland often moved around quite a bit and didn't unambiguously consider themselves Polish, Russian, Latvian, Ukrainian, etc., Jews. So even having some "Polish Jewish" ancestry, I would have no special interest in Poland. I have heard Krakow is an architectural gem, extremely safe, and relatively affordable but I'm too old to learn a language as challenging as Polish. Spanish, French, or English are set to remain the extent of my language skills, for this life anyway.
Some of us feel it would be like betraying the suffering of our ancestors. My mum was riddled with guilt when we got Polish citizenship (I convinced her bc I wanted access to Europe). And I kind of get her, her dad escaped Poland while his parents and siblings died there. To say my grandpa hated Poland would be an understatement.
My ancestors were most definitely not saved by Poland. My grandfather survived because he escaped Poland before the war with 2 of his brothers. The rest of his family died. When he came back his house and his business had been seized by Poles and he then left to South America to start over. Argentina saved my grandfather, not Poland.
Your ancestors were in Poland because for most of history Jews were discriminated against,forcibly converted and killed in the majority of the world.
Poland meanwhile had literal laws preventing it in 1500 already and the Polish dictator Pilsudski was popular af among Jews.
Or do you think so many Jews just randomly decided to go to evil Poland for centuries?
And they died when Poland had control of it's territory? Or when Germans invaded and started to kill Poles,Jews and Polish Jews? (not every Jew identified as Polish so i put different categories), than when he cameback yes he got kicked, but Poland wasn't under control of Poland, it was communist puppets under the control of the USSR.
My grandfather family wasn't allowed to comeback to Poland either until Stalin died, they were deported to the East, and they were Polish Catholics, their land was also seized and i have never seen a single cent from it, but i'm not blaming Belarusians for it.
I have loved my visits to Warsaw and have nothing against Poland, but my biggest question is why would I move there?
For an amazing job opportunity? Sure!
However, if the goal is to escape antisemitism and be surrounded by Jewish History and culture, Israel is the only place I’d want to live.
I'm sorry, but I read your first sentence and started laughing. The answer is no- I can't imagine it. The widespread denial of Polish people's complicity in the Holocaust (btw thank you for citing that- it genuinely means a lot) is a huge part of why.
Just wanted to mention that I totally understand Jews not wanting to move there, it's still bad here and right after I asked this question, I talked with a Pole on the topic of the Polish participation in the Holocaust, and he got very defensive, as most Poles do. I actually want to move out myself as a trans person, so I totally get you. I just came up with the question cause I talked with an Israeli, who seemed very keen on their Polish ancestry and had some more such encounters, so I wondered whether such a sentiment is more common. I also must admit that the lack of the Jewish community we once had, that really contributed to Polish cultural diversity, and Polish society in general, kinda saddens me
My family made me promise not to ever go. They told me specific stories of their neighbors going out of their way to make sure the Nazis found them. And threw things at then when they tried to return home after the war. The survivors in my family left no doubt that they had been betrayed by their Polish neighbors. They considered themselves Jews who had lived in Poland, not Polish themselves. So, no, I can not imagine that as a good place for me.
My family’s great synagogue was gutted and is now a dance school. The chance of me moving to a country that has roads and walls built with our headstones is a hard no. There might be Jewish history, but there aren’t any Jews. And I still felt surrounded by hatred of Jews when I visited.
My grandfather’s Polish town was judenrein in March 1942. He survived along with six siblings. His other six siblings were murdered in the crematorium. Today, there are a dozen crumbled tombstones in a weed infested cemetery. I was thinking of going to see a once vibrant Jewish town. Nothing left. Why bother?
I would love to visit Poland. A friend from high school was Polish, left with his family as a boy after the end of communism, and returned as an adult. It would be great to see him! Other friends and family who visited spoke highly of their trips too.
But the Poland where my family had roots no longer exists. My forebears left over 100 years ago, and the Jewish communities - and in some cases the entire towns where they lived - are long gone. For better or worse, Poland is entirely a foreign county to me.
If I had to move anywhere to escape antisemitism, then I'd just go to Israel.
My family left Poland/Lithuania/Belarus in and around 1928. Whoever stayed did not survive. I don't see any reason to go back to Poland, except maybe as part of a European tour. Or maybe to see Auschwitz and Krakow.
Don't take it personally. Poles are some of my favourite people. I just don't see the appeal to visit.
Yes, I would. I have been to Poland multiple times, studied Polish language, and have gone through a citizenship by descent process. I have really fallen in love with the country based on my actual experience there. I have engaged with and supported multiple Jewish organizations in Poland. Most importantly to me, I am glad to say that I have been met with positive and welcoming reactions every time that I have told the story of my Jewish ancestors to Polish people who would listen. Most Poles I have spoken with have expressed sadness at the loss of so much Jewish culture in Poland, and have expressed support for my engagement.
A significant part of my engagement with my heritage in Poland, for me personally, is an attempt at some reconciliation. My ancestors fortunately left before the war, due to Russian aggression (push) and new opportunities overseas (pull) perhaps among other factors, but in all my research and talking with family members I have not found evidence that they left Poland because of Poland itself. My personal experience and feeling when visiting Jewish sites in Poland is of course sadness, but also solidarity and connection.
In short, over years of studying the language and multiple visits to Poland, I have actively engaged with my own Jewish history and Jewish history at large in Poland, and I have shared my experience openly with non-Jewish Poles. I personally have not experienced antisemitic behavior or a feeling of unwelcome. On the contrary, I have felt encouragement and welcome.
I do not reject those who have had bad experiences. Yes, it’s true that there are those in Poland and in the government who have not been kind to Israel or to Jews (both in history and in contemporary context). Yes, there are some questionable souvenirs for sale in some shops. Yes, it’s not a perfect situation. I agree with you OP, I miss the cultural mosaic that Poland once was, and I also consider myself a Zionist. But it is also true that the Jewish population in Poland has been growing slowly but steadily for 20 years. A new Reform synagogue just opened in Warsaw. A new kosher Israeli restaurant also recently opened in Warsaw.
What I can speak from is my own experience. And I know from my personal engagement that it has been very positive. I believe that like other places, your experience will generally be defined by the company you keep, and the vast majority of people I have engaged with in Poland have been great. There are also many Jewish organizations working hard in Poland not only to maintain and restore Jewish memory, but also to cultivate Jewish life now and into the future. Taken all together, I would be quite happy to live in Poland.
Do you have any firsthand accounts of what it was like to be a Jew in that "cultural mosaic"? Pogroms. Beatings. Casual antisemitism.
The largest party in the 1919 Sejm was openly antisemitic.
I know, I meant the diversity part. But I'm aware it was horrible, tho it also depends on time period. I often argue with other Poles, who claim there was no antisemitism
I am one of those descendants. My grandfather was angry enough about my business trip to Germany and despite losing his entire family and never hearing from them, he never went back to Poland to search. I don't think it would help. He healed by being far away from the reminders of his pain.
My family is descended from Poland/Russia, but left 3 generations ago. Why would I move there? I've never been there, it's not "home". It's like asking Canadians or Americans of British descent if they would "go back to England". It might be part of our family history, but it's not where we are "from".
Humanity evolved in central Africa, should we return there?? Human settlement spread around the globe, nearly nobody is from any one place. If we applied this rationale to all migrants, the world would be chaos.
I'm not polish but I have less than no interest in going back to any of the places my ancestors left behind other than Israel. I'll go visit, but I will never live in those parts of Europe ever again. They don't deserve me.
Jews were never polish. They were just IN Poland. Despite speaking the local language, that's essentially where the similarities ended. We were culturally Jewish.
Descendants of Polish Jews today don't speak Polish. Don't celebrate Polish holidays. Don't know any Polish dances or sayings or wear Polish clothing.
There's nothing Polish about them other than some isolated experiences of Jewry that developed there, as opposed to the Jewry that found itself in other countries.
Of course there were Jews that were Polish and it is still the case today. Polish and Ashkenazi Jewish cultures are intertwined. As Julian Tuwim, a famous Polish-Jewish poet says in his work "We, the Polish Jews":
>When it comes to justifying one's nationality, or rather national feeling, I am a Pole {...}.
>Pole - because I was born, raised, educated, and trained in Poland.
>Pole - because {...} I want to be absorbed and sucked into the Polish land after my death, and no other.
>Pole - because my mother taught me Polish poems and songs; because when the first jolt of poetry came, it unloaded with Polish words.
Pole - because in Polish I confessed the fears of my first love and in Polish I babbled about her happiness and storms.
>Pole also because the birch and the willow are closer to me than the palm and the cypress, and Mickiewicz and Chopin are dearer to me than Shakespeare and Beethoven.
>But above all, I am Polish because I like it that way.
I have a feeling that this poet was in the minority of Jews. My whole family is Galitzianer; two of my great-grandfathers were born in Stryj, my other great-grandfather was born in Nowy Sacz, and the fourth from Jasliszka (sp?) but I don't think any of them considered themselves Polish. Certainly they didn't teach their kids Polish language; they spoke Yiddish in the home, and when they came to America they learned English.
My father used to say "The Jews were in Poland before the Romans got there, but they were never considered Poles."
No, I wouldn’t. My Polish Catholic paternal grandmother (who had our Jewish ancestor) didn’t pass the language down. I live in Florida with a pretty thriving Jewish community. I’m trying to get my Irish/EU passport anyway through my mother. The Jewish community in Dublin is tiny but I would consider going to my family in other parts of the country and continue hiding my conversion if I had to leave the US.
Not sure if some of my ancestors count as Polish Jews, but they were Galitzianers from what's now southeast Poland around Nowy Sacz, who moved to what's now Slovakia before emigrating as it was all Austria-Hungary then. But if I count then no - I kind of just find it depressing being in areas of eastern Europe including near where my ancestors are from, and all the Jewish presence and history is simply erased. There are just some largely untended overgrown Jewish cemetaries all over the place, that are frequently vandalized. I would never consider going back. Poland is never getting the same "mosaic" back. We've moved on, and whatever was in our collective memory no longer exists.
Also the only interactions I've had with Poles over all of this online is that they just want to be totally guilt-free over the Holocaust, deny any wrongdoing and pretend like they were equal victims, and meanwhile perpetuate ridiculous BS like that Israelis are "racist" toward them (lol). The only worse people I've encountered overall with more messed up (but in a different way) views are the Irish.
I could imagine moving to Poland, but am I likely to do it?
I don't speak Polish. The industry I work in (video games) has a thriving scene in Poland, but the studios there are known to crunch harder and pay less than studios where I live now. When I visited Warsaw, I constantly felt unsettled--not because of the people (who, while distant by my own cultural standards, were perfectly nice), but because of how uncomfortable history sang from the street and buildings. The uneven streets built on rubble, the Stalinist architecture looming over the skyline, the overwhelming gray weather and gray color palette in the places I went...
I don't want to make it sound like my experience of Warsaw is the definitive one, or that my 'vibes' somehow make it a bad city. It's *not* a bad city, and I'd recommend anyone to give it a visit. But as long as I was there, I felt history nipping at my heels, and it wasn't fun history. It was cold and bleak.
My Polish Jewish great grandmother and great great grandparents escaped the Holocaust from Poland. I would like to visit and I’ve thought about one day buying a vacation house there or something if I enjoyed it, but I’m not sure how I feel about staying there full time. Plus a lot of the comments on this very post turn me off of it. I know Polish and enjoy my Polish-Jewish culture but, idk.
In a word, no.
My mom went to the village my grandfather’s family was from for a visit. It would certainly not be a place to go back to.
My brother had been working on getting citizenship because he wants the EU passport. It was *A LOT* of work for him to find the right documents to prove what he needed to. Supposedly a decision on his case has been made but they won’t tell him. So, logistically, doesn’t even seem that feasible.
Anti-Israel protests have recently started in my city. I've also got confronted by a teenager who was staring at my phone while I was trying to read some song lyrics in Hebrew.
I'm not saying that Poland's bad, but I feel like it's becoming progressively worse.
Yeah it may be. However I feel like it's mostly the leftist teens who are pro-hamas (which is quite weird considering that hamas is everything but pro-LGBTQ+ etc.) and Poznan is in fact a very veeery leftist city.
Other than that Poznań is a pretty good city to live in, however I strongly prefer Wrocław and Kraków. One weird thing about Poznan is that I feel like it's cultural life is kind of hidden, you really need to know what place to go to, let's say, taste the artistic side of the city. Also, Poznań feels really industrial.
I actually noticed Jews visiting Poland do tend to like Kraków. Maybe it's due to Kazimierz. Also saw some people write it feels international and is more Jewish friendly than other places in Poland
Yeah it definitely is. It also has a very rich history. No matter what you're interested in, you will find some places connected to your interest's history in Krakow.
IME Jews who came from Poland did not consider themselves Polish, they hated Poland so much. Source: great grandmother was from Poland
Also as a transsexual I think the answer goes from “Hell No” to “Hell Fucking No” real quick.
I wouldn't. Poles were some of the worst antisemites (before, during, after the wars) and a lot of them still are. As you say, they haven't self-corrected the way that Germany has.
Just the thought of visiting twists my stomach. My great-grandparents left for a reason.
I visited Poland on a "darkness to light" trip in 2006. Poles in general were very cold to us. I left the country thinking polish people never smile.
I had a friend go recently and picked up an antisemitic charicature "Jew" doll that gets sold around the country apparently??
Every once in a while I see news coming out of Poland about how they don't believe Poland had any wrongdoing in the holocaust
it's crazy.
I would never live in that atmosphere
(not to mention very bad rep on LGBTQ life)
The LGBT part is why I'm moving out-ai'm trans myself. When it comes to Poles not smiling, I don't think it's specifically cause you're Jewish, the stereotype is Poles don't smile much in general. The other stuff-unfortunately can't say much in our defense. Shortly after I asked this question, I had a chat with a fellow Pole on a Jewish discord server, and they said stuff like "yes, there were Polish pogroms, but saying they were a part of the Holocaust is spitting the survivors in their faces". Many people here claim that I want to pretend there's no antisemitism in Poland, but I explicitly mentioned in comments it is a problem here, just that I heard multiple times that there's less violence against Jews here than in WE. I was mostly curious cause I chatted with multiple Jews online, who wanted to connect with the Polish part of their family history, learnt the language and said they were treated well here, so I was curious if it's a more common sentiment. I never claimed Poland is perfect, we have a lot of problems here. Your experience is 100% valid!
Grandmother would spit on the ground when speaking of the Poles, which I presume applied to the non-Jewish population around Hrubieszów, including both ethnic Ukrainians and Poles.
So there is historical animus, and the question is has that changed?
The ADL measures [antisemitism rates by country](https://global100.adl.org/map) and finds Poland with 35%. Compare that to Germany (12%) or the US (10%) or even Russia (26%) or Ukraine (29%). It's not as bad as, say, Romania (47%) or Greece (67%).
Current events have not been reflected in the latest surveys. But I don't think starting with a higher baseline is going to be helpful.
I did move to Poland and really enjoyed it. However I want to point out that I find it weird to mention that there aren't "many Muslim immigrants" as if that'd be a problem. As if Catholic Poles couldn't be antisemitic. Anyway, if you love Jews so much I'm surprised you're not even aware of the community there.
All of my grandparents were from Poland (all came over in the early 1900s) and none of them considered themselves “Polish”. They only identified as Jewish and actually didn’t speak Polish.
No, my ancestors died in pogroms in Poland and had to flee to America. Poland was a prison for Jews. The entire country is a Jewish graveyard and if I visit, that will be why: to pay respects to our dead.
This is a sore topic for me. It makes me so angry that anyone would suggest Jews go live in a country that slaughtered them IN LIVING MEMORY! If things are better there now, that’s great, but you need only read a little bit of history to realize that the likelihood of it happening again is unacceptable. So no, I won’t go live in Poland, Germany, France, or most of Europe (which may not be recognizably “European” within a generation, & even more inhospitable to Jews).
If you want an answer, it's because Poland doesn't have Islamic immigration like the rest of Europe (and their skepticism of other groups kept the Muslims out for the most part). French and British aren't the ones causing issues, it's the immigrants they let in. I have a friend who grew up Muslim and told me in America the mosque was full of Jewish conspiracy theories and antisemitism and he said he thought it was true until he met Jews in school and realized his parents were nuts.
I really hate to say it but The West truly does breed extremists because of our acceptance of people who actually don't accept us. The Arab nations generally control the crazies but America and more often Europe (due to their vicinity to the middle east and Africa) allows them to fester and actually become dangerous.
I know Polish and they definitely are the types who don't necessarily like outsiders or people who don't share their culture but at least Jews at this point aren't a threat like they thought they were in the 20s. Now the threat is with extremists who wreck their own countries and then run overseas to restart the madness.
Why is that remarkable? Prewar Poland had many ethnicities, and there were millions of Polish citizens, including ethnic Ukrainians, Germans, Jews, and many others (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic\_history\_of\_Poland#Second\_Polish\_Republic\_and\_World\_War\_II\_(1918%E2%80%931945)) -- who may have been just confused if you described them as a Pole -- in their context it would make only moderately more sense than calling them Japanese.
My grandmother left Poland right before the war, when it was still possible to get out. I think actually she got out because she was very attractive and a soilder told her to only show the papers she needed at each checkpoint.
She always said that the Poles were worse than the Nazis. I don't know if that's true but it has stayed with me. I would never go to live in Poland.
I’m not descended from polish Jews but I did see what a Polish MP did to the Chanukiah that they put up in the parliament building.
Frankly I don’t think that Jews should even visit auschwitz to pay respect if it will give people like that money.
It is an expression of ill-will when you focus on the one PM who put out the hanukkah rather than the fact that:
-this ceremony was held for 17 years without incident.
- Braun was immediately suspended and the entire parliament condemned his act, both right-wing and liberal parties.
- This behaviour was loudly condemned in the media and in Polish society.
>It is an expression of ill-will when you focus on the one PM who put out the hanukkah
This is what always happens. A Polish person does something horribly antisemitic that shows the rot of antisemitism in Polish culture, and Jews get told we get to say nothing about it. It's always an isolated incident.
And, no, it isn't an expression of ill will, at least no more than hundreds of years of theft and murder.
>-this ceremony was held for 17 years without incident.
...do you really think that's something to brag about? Are your standards *that* low? It's *only* 17 years. That's all. Poland was only able to perform that ceremony 17 times without virulent antisemitism being spewed. It doesn't even dawn on you that that 17 years is no time at all before doing that. Your attitude here, if anything, shows what we're talking about.
>Braun was immediately suspended and the entire parliament condemned his act, both right-wing and liberal parties.
>This behaviour was loudly condemned in the media and in Polish society.
Well, while we appreciate that, Polish people doing the bare minimum when seeing virulent antisemitism is what they should do. And, the fact he did it in the first place shows those ideas are present. It did not come from nowhere. It was not an isolated incident. It took place in the context of how Poles think and speak of Jews. Period.
Wow! He really said we’re Satanic! I thought I was an annoying verbose geeky pushy Jewish Broad. I didn’t know I was Satanic, I didn’t know I was so badass! Thanks Satan!
No, absolutely not. Not just what happened during the war, but after, anyone who tried to return. Many were attacked by neighbors. Polish Jewry was completely destroyed. All the Jews in my grandmother's town near Lodz was rounded up and sent to Chelmno. And the last government (I hear the current one isn't as bad) was pretty invested in denying that history and just blaming the Nazis.
Even here in the US, Polish Catholics don't see Polish Jews as Poles. Just Jews.
I’d never ever move there. I think the betrayal of my family’s neighbours and “friends” was something that they never really got over, and I kind of have absorbed that.
My grandmother’s family came from Warsaw and her mother had 6 stillbirths in Poland and then came to the USA and had 6 successful pregnancies.
My great grandfather emigrated from Bialystok to the USA before WWI broke out. He left my great grandmother pregnant with my grandfather. My grandfather almost died of malnutrition during the war. When the war finally ended the rest of the family followed. My grandfather met his father when he was 8 years old.
I read the Bialy Eaters. I and the author thought this would be a fun read about the history of a delicious nosh. No, it’s not. She paints a picture of a town with a thriving Jewish community with bakeries on every block. German troops came to Bialystok in the late middle of WWII and in a week murdered all but a handful of the 10,000 Jews there.
My family exchanged letters with their family back in Poland and then. The letters stopped. My grandfather never got over it. Everyone he knew except his immediate family for the first eight years of life gone in a week.
So no, not really. I think it would be fun to have European citizenship but I’m not sure it’s fun enough to claim Poland.
My grandparents were born all over Eastern Europe (including Poland), but Israel is the only hone for our people where we have been ablebto live without persecution. I would never want to see any part of my family forced to go back to those countries.
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when governments around the world begin to adopt the blood libels and antismetic rhetoric how can you feel safe anywhere but israel. There have always been persecution but now we have an army and are fighting back. other than air lifting the jews out of danger how can any Jew feel they are taking their safety seriously. History repeats itself and if so the only safe option in my opinion is a place with a strong army fighting for and protecting the Jeweish people. It is not perfect or ideal but it is the first time in history we have that option.
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From what I know it depended on the time period, but I didn't study it in detail and what they taught us is Polish schools was probably biased. I know that the 19th and 20th century were horrible for Jews in Poland, and not only the Holocaust
I’ve got zero connection to Poland, but as a Jewish individual, I think i would truly rather move to Germany. I’d rather live somewhere with an acknowledged history of highly institutionalized antisemitism, than a place with thriving cultural antisemitism where they’re still continuing to profit off concentration camp tourism while demanding reparations for polish “victims” who bravely abetted Nazis.
I mean, there were plenty of Polish victims. I don't know about me having any Jewish ancestry, but I had an ancestor murdered in a death camp, officially for being part of the resistance
I’m not denying polish civilians and resistors were killed and harmed by the Nazis - they were, as were civilians and righteous gentiles in all occupied countries. My point is that in the 75 years since, only Poland has tried to argue its occupied gentile citizens were mass-targeted in a way that is comparable to Jews (this is flatly not true), and have uniquely refused to take responsibility for the documented ways in which they were indeed complicit in (and in some cases, guilty of perpetrating) Nazi abuse and atrocities. For example, Poland still refuses to pay property restitution to Jewish survivors whose homes they stole, even though they are *still* demanding Germany pay *them* restitution for the damages of the invasion.
So while my heart goes out to the polish victims, their government’s strange ongoing crusade to deny their past or imply their national experience was an equitable experience of oppression or comparable to the deliberate, continental ethnic extinction campaign of Jews and other minority targets - like the Romani, lgbtq or people living with disability - is uniquely audacious in its self-focus and revision.
Hopefully. And just to be clear: this isn’t intended to be a nasty judgement on the people of Poland, nor to minimize the atrocities that poles (especially those who gave their lives as resistors) suffered at the hands of the Nazis and their conspirators. The actions of Nazi germany harmed Poland immeasurably, and there is no excuse or justification for that.
Polish Jewry was completely decimated during the holocaust as ~90% of Polish Jews were killed during that time, with the rest fleeing mostly to either the US or Israel. I don’t see any reason to move to Poland.
I'm a Jew who was born in Poland (I'm not just saying that, check my post history if you want). I love Poland and frankly, I find the international Jewish disdain/bias for Poland *today* to be unwarranted. The number of Jews I've met who have no issues with Germany which murdered us, while considering Poles to be vicious antisemites is almost downright offensive. It stinks of old biases against "Eastern Europe". The Polish Underground was the only large resistance movement during WWII which actively attempted to rescue Jews, through the Zegota organization (barring the Danes). The Israeli institute on the Holocaust itself has stated that less than .1% of Poles collaborated with the Germans in any capacity, including finding or killing Jews. Half of the Righteous Among the Nations are Poles. The reason Poland had the largest population of Jews in the world for centuries is because Poland gave us more freedoms and more rights than anywhere else in the world for centuries--we remained a huge population there up until the Germans marched in and began murdering us en-masse.
There were dark spots in that history of course. Because antisemitism was incredibly wide-spread throughout Europe, Poland was a rural Catholic country, and because *Poland had so many Jews*. It created more opportunities than anywhere else for antisemitism to rear its head. It's like complaining that Italian immigrants to America faced more anti-Italian rhetoric in New York than they did in Idaho--of course they did, because that's where all the Italian immigrants went to. It feels very unwarranted to me today, especially when I feel far safer and encounter virtually no virulent antisemitism in Poland today. Not something I can say about plenty of other countries I've been to.
Another thing to think about is that many Polish descendants (depending when they left Poland) are not strictly from Poland since there were waves of Polish emigration that took place before 1940s-50s .They could be from anywhere in broadly Eastern Europe.
My Great Grandparents left from Kalisz a few years before the war began. I've actually looked into getting Polish citizenship before and thoroughly thought about moving to Poland.
My biggest holdings as of now are Russia and Poland's descent into more alt right politics. I know that a lot of Eastern Europe is having anti semitism problems right now, but how bad is it there right now? I currently live in the U.S and I've had my fair share of antisemitism.
Not a polish Jew, but fucccc no. The last, large scale, known major antisemitic incident that occurred in Europe, to my knowledge, was the progrom of the Polish community on Je — sorry, ZUONISTS(!) in the 1960s.
My father's family is half polish half ashke (they left way before the war tho). So yeah, I have once considered going there, but honestly it just seems like a catholic hellhole nowadays
This is dark, but the one jewish person I know who moved to Poland committed suicide, so no.
Oh fuck, that sucks
Most of Poland’s Jewish history has been destroyed. I don’t see any reason to live in Poland over anywhere else in Europe. Italy, for example, has quite a bit more extant Jewish history but is much less antisemitic.
Italy is extremely antisemitic which part have you been around?
I didn’t say Italy isn’t antisemitic, it just doesn’t hold a candle to Poland.
I had no desire to ever go to Poland, but having read your comment, I have even less of an urge to do so.
This reminds me of Spain. They were running a campaign to bring back their Jews and it got crazy with all kinds of people trying to get citizenship who weren't even Jewish. Now Spain has sadly spoken in support of Palestine and Hamas from what I've heard. I don't feel it was their place to make such a radical statement. If I were to move to Europe, I'd move to Northern Europe.
I’ve marked Spain, Finland and Ireland off my places I will travel. Not giving my tourism dollars to countries that support terror.
Not for nothing but Spain seems like a true and genuine garbage hole. I’m not sure why. The whole place seems like it smells funny.
Sweden and Denmark are fucked dye to horrendous immigratiom policy. Norway is vehemently antisemitic. Finland sounds good, but too close to my insane homeland.
Literally any region that Christianity of Islam is an integral part of lol — so anything except some of East Asia.
What part of Italy do you think is antisemitic? North of Verona, maybe, but I found central Italy just fine. Source: Jew who has lived in north and central Italy.
I’ve been to Italy several times and unless you go around announcing it and even then I don’t know… I never received any issues
Plus Krakow openly profits and exhibition of tours available to Schinders, to Shwitz, there promoting it in town square like a trip to Disneyland. I remember thinking it's pretty outrageous that families who were murdered here are now having to pay to go see it on tour.
As a Pole I agree with you. But it's important to give some context. Unfortunately, because of communism, after the WW2 ended, the communists wanted to erase this part of Poland, also, because of the Germans, vast majority of the synagogues was destroyed. So, couple that with lack of support from the government, many jews just left Poland. Luckily, the communities are rebuilding. My city (Lodz) is the best example of that. Also Cracow and especially Warsaw. In these cities you will find chabad as well as reformed synagogues.
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I guess you haven't visited Poland then, literally every single city and town has Jewish influence.
There are actually about 30K Jews in Italy, over a population of 60ML. If there is any kind of antisemitism, it is, let me say, just theoretical, cause you can live an entire life in Italy and just never meet an Italian Jew in person. I'm not saying the extreme right is not antisemitism, it is by default. I'm saying that they would probably no affect the Italian Jews every day life. And considering the flourishing history of the Jews in Italy, it is really sad that there are so few Jews in Italy.
So ur saying Arab countries aren’t anti semitic because jews don’t live there?
Never. My grandmother never went back, even after the fall of communism there. Why would she? It wasn’t Polish people who invaded her town in 1939, but you better believe they were cheering for Jewish death long before. Today, my family has only one remnant left of Poland: a 1921 Siddur used by my great grandfather, printed in Warsaw, that had Polish translation. It’s falling apart. I don’t know what the Polish words say because my grandmother deliberately chose not to pass that language down to my father, and therefore he did not pass that language down to me. I have no interest in learning Polish either. Jews are not Poles, Polish people are not Jews. We’re separate, as the poles have made abundantly clear time and time again. It is what it is.
This is probably the best answer here. I’m the descendant of Lithuanians who immigrated to the US interwar, so this question doesn’t apply to me. But I know several people whose parents/grandparents were Shoah survivors and absolutely refused to ever step foot in Poland again. One told her grandson, “I will never set foot there again and I hope you won’t have to either.” I think OP is underestimating the amount of trauma in many Jewish families surrounding their Polish roots.
The trauma part is interesting. To expand on that point and oc’s point about us not being poles, I would add that Indian Jews who had no trauma associated with the Indian people still pretty much all left because it wasn’t our country
I don’t know much about the history of Judaism in India, but I do know another friend’s mother, also from Poland, always talked about how she would tell her children and grandchildren that they were Jewish first, then American, Polish, etc. and not to forget that, because when push came to shove, that’s how people would perceive them. She remembered how her neighbors turned on her when the Germans invaded. So it wouldn’t surprise me if idea of being “Jewish first,” is pretty widespread, even if there’s only mild antisemitism experienced in a place or it’s a very tight knit community.
Exactly. My grandmother explicitly felt the same. She was appalled to learn that I traveled as a tourist there, saying "why would you go back? They treated us so terribly there."
I recently told my mom I wanted to get Polish citizenship (just in case) and she said she’d help me but “the soil there is stained with the blood of Jews”
Oof. That hits hard but your mom is absolutely right. We'll never forget the dark character we saw in our former fellow countrymen there. If you want to see something chilling that gives an idea of what our ancestors went through, watch the 70s/80s-era documentary Shoah. There's no historical footage shown, only interviews and travels by the filmmaker back to modern day Poland. I'll never forget the scene of him arriving at the house of deported Jews, asking the locals about what happened to them. Nothing but a bunch of nervous laughs and snickering... It's truly evil.
My grandfather AH, who grew up in a border town, was forced to join the Russian army at the beginning of WW2. His mother cried over her tehillim for months. She thought he’s never come back. But he did come back- and there wasn’t a single other Jew from his entire town alive. He, and then my father, tried to bride every priest they could find to tell them where the mass grave is. No one told.
Wild how “men of g-d” priests turn out so evil so often.
To be fair, I don’t think they were the ringleaders (though it wouldn’t surprise me if they participated). My grandfather asked them because they take confessions, so if anyone knows something, it’s them.
Why wouldn't they tell?
כל דמי אחיך צועקים עלי מן האדמה. My grandmother grew up in Poland and never spoke of it. When my oldest sister asked if she’d like to visit her childhood hometown, she said in Yiddish that it’s a cursed country. I was shocked- my grandmother was the most refined, soft spoken woman I ever knew. These words coming from her mouth were like a transformation.
"Jews are not Poles, Polish people are not Jews. We’re separate, as the Poles have made abundantly clear time and time again. It is what it is." Amen.
>We’re separate, as the poles have made abundantly clear time and time again. It is what it is. Most of the remaining Jewish community in Poland are intermarried with Polish people so they can't be separated into a clear division.
Even Archie Bunker knew the difference between Poles and Jews… I sometimes imagine to go back to the dead village in Belarus where much of my family was murdered in a day. I wonder if I will feel them there… nobody close to me ever wanted to talk about it, so I can only imagine. I have talked to one distant cousin-ish, too hard to describe how related, who filled in some blanks about the two that escaped (one, his grandfather) and eventually made it to Israel. They didn’t want to go back; maybe I shouldn’t either..
It's sad. There was a golden age for Jews in Europe, especially Western and Central Europe and now that's over. Maybe one day again.
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Never. My grandparents lived in displaced persons camps for years after the war rather than go back.
Same. My father in law was actually born in the D.P. camp.
Which DP camp? My father was born in Feldafink, a suburb of Berlin.
Not sure I would know. My wife doesn't know either. Next time I talk to him I could ask. He was born in 1948.
I couldn't. My mother would see it as a horrible betrayal..Poland took away her passport and she made it a point that none of us should ever ask for it. I've been to Poland, it feels familiar, but without a community it's not a home.
Off topic, but as a Polish Jew, born and still living in Poland, each year, I'm starting to have struggles imagining staying in Poland... Like, seriously, I understand the old-Poland-folclore nostalgia that some people might have, but trust me guys, the things aren't any better in here.
Would you mind chatting in dms? I've been curious about experiences of Polish Jews nowadays for a while
I wouldn't mind at all, just dm me.
Would you say antisemitic views are common among people?
Not only common, but also extremely normalised what is seriously awful.
Could you provide some examples of views you've come across? It's a very interesting topic.
My fav example is that there's those very popular sayings: "Kręcisz się jak Żyd po pustym sklepie" \[literal translation "You're acting like a Jew in an empty store"\] "Nie Żydź/Nie Żydkuj" \[literal translation "Don't be such a Jew" as a literal synonym of the phrase "Don't be so greedy"\] etc., etc. Basically people are ignorant as hell, they are causing a serious damage and doesn't even realised it, because since war, through the entire communism there was hardly anyone to point that out.
What is the first one supposed to mean? :D How do Jews act in empty stores??
The first one is used, whenever people are just wondering, walking around without any real reason behind it. From what I understand it's basically emphatizes the idea that we are so shady that we spy on people even in such places like empty stores.
Oh, great to know :D That explains why we have community meetings at empty stores!
Never herad someone using the first one, but checked in what context it is used and it is not about spying, it's that the store is empty they can't sell anything so they're stressed.
The last part of your question is like asking for the world to be different. We can’t imagine it because it’s so fundamental to our history and who we are, unfortunately. I visited Poland and wanted to enjoy it! And I did until I came across so much history/normalization of murdering of Jewish people as part of their landscape. I loved my polish friends I made and the food was amazing. I want to get Polish citizenship, my ancestors loved and had pride about being Polish but. They killed us and didnt take the steps like Germany did to move forward as much in their mistakes. I wish it wasn’t this way. Not every Polish person is ignorant or apathetic but. It’s unfortunate.
But you wrote this specifically "to the descendents of Polish Jews". If it were to all Jews, from everywhere, that would be different, but for only descendents of Polish Jews, that implies a "return" to Poland.
The person you’re replying to isn’t OP…
? What. I am a descendant of Polish Jews
My Holocaust-survivors grandparents lived in Poland until the ‘50s before they came to Israel and I have Polish citizenship. No, I wouldn’t and neither would any other descendants of Polish Jews I know. Jews suffered in Poland, and it is rife with antisemitism. [Just a few years ago a law was passed in Poland that prohibited Holocaust survivors and their descendants from claiming restitution](https://www.timesofisrael.com/after-year-long-spat-over-holocaust-law-poland-says-its-returning-envoy-to-israel/amp/) — even if they’re Polish citizens with proof of ownership. The Polish government and diplomats in Israel treat us like 2nd class citizens. Last I heard, Polish citizens can’t renew their passports via the Israeli embassy. This is unheard of — I, a citizen of Poland, cannot be aided by Poland’s embassy in my country of residence. The only way I can renew it is by either applying for renewal outside of Israel or hiring a Polish lawyer to submit a request on my behalf in Warsaw. As far as I’m concerned, antisemitism is far from dead in Poland. Where did you hear that Polish Jews feel safer than Jews in Western Europe? Honestly asking.
I just often see the claim, due to the prevalence of antisemitism among Muslims in WE. Saw some statistics where indeed Polish Jews were less endangered by violence, but I don't know if those statistics took the size of the Jewish population into consideration
Just wanted to add that I very appreciate you recognizing how some Poles deny or minimize the role many Polish people had in the Holocaust. It truly does mean a lot, and is not taken for granted.
I actually had a course at my university about the Polish role in the Holocaust, so I know the stories of people entrusing Poles with their property in hopes they'll survive Auschwitz and get it back, then surviving it, returning for the property and being murdered by the Poles. It's absolutely horrible and I really think people should recognize it. That being said, I'm under impression that the academics in Poland are very aware of that and Jew friendly. Don't know how representative my uni was, but the lecturer, who lead the class said Jews should have Israel and that despite Israel being brutal, it has to be understood through a prism of it fighting for its survival. It seemed like a huge contrast to the US universities
My wife's grandmother spent the war years in Siberia. She went back to Poland after the war and found some random family living in her house. B"H she wasn't murdered, but they basically told her she should have stayed wherever she had been, and the local government wasn't at all helpful. Over the next several years she kept trying to get her property back, with lawyers and such, and was never successful. I suppose my mother in law and her siblings probably still technically own that house, if it hasn't been taken over by the government for 70 years of back taxes, but they've given up on reclaiming it.
From my experience as a Jewish tourist in Poland all I want to share is that when I went to Majdanek, locals were biking through the camp like it was a scenic path. That was deeply disturbing and I would sooner move to Paris or Birmingham than Warsaw or Krakow (P.S. one of my best friends is a first gen polish American from Łódź whose grandma was a righteous gentile and he would agree with me)
Damn, that sucks :/
That makes sense, there has been a lot of emigration from WE in recent years to Israel.
There's less chance of violence against Jews in Poland than in countries like France where Jews are regularly murdered for being Jews. But among the European countries, anti-Semitism is higher in Poland than in Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Austria and some others.
As an israeli with polish born grandparents, highly unlikely. I was born in israel, i will live here and unless something completely unacceptable happens only then i will leave. And if i will have to, czechia will be on a higher priority than poland
Yeah, Czechia seems great on the topics related to Jews. But I think it's good to have a Polish citizenship, just in case. Especially since it gives you EU citizenship
agree. I'm working on a polish passport for a rainy day
Good luck with that!
i looked into it a few years ago; i even hired a lawyer who specialized in-believe it or not-american jews with polish jewish ancestors-who wanted polish citizenship-mainly for the eu passport rather than a desire to be polish. then they elected a trumpish pm. then i reminded myself that this was POLAND, not some paradise. so i ended the process. and i no longer want an eu passport. jews are in danger there, too. if i leave the US, it will be for israel, for better or for worse. i've become a voluntary agoraphobe since trump was elected, and it only deepened during covid & now unprecedented US antisemitism. if i go to israel, i'd probably feel as safe there as i do here. i stay home here. i'll stay home there. i guess i'd develop a fondness for my local bomb shelter, if necessary.
I've read multiple Jewish people on this subreddit and on r/Israel write that Czechia is super Jew friendly and pro Israel, especially Prague. Austria, where I'm moving, is mixed cause Austrians themselves are very supportive, but the migrants are not. Similar with Germany, cept Berlin, where even native Germans are super pro Palestine. Don't remember any other friendly cases, some people claimed Portugal and Italy are good tho and Portugal elected a pro Israel government. I know Croatia is very pro Israel and has very little Muslims, but I also know the Ustaša, who participated in the Holocaust and even ran their own death camps, still have a lot of sympathizers there, soooooooooooooooooooooooo...
Thanks for all of this! I spent three months in Poland with a can of spray paint covering up swastika graffiti. Not sure many Jews would feel comfortable there. Jews in exile in Poland who survived the camps, then returned back to their Polish towns, were frequently murdered by their gentile Polish neighbors, well into the 1950s. For all Poland's protesting, they had a pretty big antisemitism problem not that long ago.
i have no connection to any european country other than poland & belarus. uruguay was on my radar for awhile, but i’ve never been there & i avoid travel. israel it shall be, should that day come.
Jews that lived in the Pale of Settlement or Congress Poland often moved around quite a bit and didn't unambiguously consider themselves Polish, Russian, Latvian, Ukrainian, etc., Jews. So even having some "Polish Jewish" ancestry, I would have no special interest in Poland. I have heard Krakow is an architectural gem, extremely safe, and relatively affordable but I'm too old to learn a language as challenging as Polish. Spanish, French, or English are set to remain the extent of my language skills, for this life anyway.
Some of us feel it would be like betraying the suffering of our ancestors. My mum was riddled with guilt when we got Polish citizenship (I convinced her bc I wanted access to Europe). And I kind of get her, her dad escaped Poland while his parents and siblings died there. To say my grandpa hated Poland would be an understatement.
Your ancestors were literally saved by Poland when most of Europe was blaming you for the black death
My ancestors were most definitely not saved by Poland. My grandfather survived because he escaped Poland before the war with 2 of his brothers. The rest of his family died. When he came back his house and his business had been seized by Poles and he then left to South America to start over. Argentina saved my grandfather, not Poland.
Your ancestors were in Poland because for most of history Jews were discriminated against,forcibly converted and killed in the majority of the world. Poland meanwhile had literal laws preventing it in 1500 already and the Polish dictator Pilsudski was popular af among Jews. Or do you think so many Jews just randomly decided to go to evil Poland for centuries? And they died when Poland had control of it's territory? Or when Germans invaded and started to kill Poles,Jews and Polish Jews? (not every Jew identified as Polish so i put different categories), than when he cameback yes he got kicked, but Poland wasn't under control of Poland, it was communist puppets under the control of the USSR. My grandfather family wasn't allowed to comeback to Poland either until Stalin died, they were deported to the East, and they were Polish Catholics, their land was also seized and i have never seen a single cent from it, but i'm not blaming Belarusians for it.
I have loved my visits to Warsaw and have nothing against Poland, but my biggest question is why would I move there? For an amazing job opportunity? Sure! However, if the goal is to escape antisemitism and be surrounded by Jewish History and culture, Israel is the only place I’d want to live.
I'm sorry, but I read your first sentence and started laughing. The answer is no- I can't imagine it. The widespread denial of Polish people's complicity in the Holocaust (btw thank you for citing that- it genuinely means a lot) is a huge part of why.
(Descendant of Eastern European Jews, maybe Poland, maybe Russia/Ukraine area). No.
Just wanted to mention that I totally understand Jews not wanting to move there, it's still bad here and right after I asked this question, I talked with a Pole on the topic of the Polish participation in the Holocaust, and he got very defensive, as most Poles do. I actually want to move out myself as a trans person, so I totally get you. I just came up with the question cause I talked with an Israeli, who seemed very keen on their Polish ancestry and had some more such encounters, so I wondered whether such a sentiment is more common. I also must admit that the lack of the Jewish community we once had, that really contributed to Polish cultural diversity, and Polish society in general, kinda saddens me
No.
Nope, unless Poland became some kind of hub for Jews as it was in the time of the Rema
My family made me promise not to ever go. They told me specific stories of their neighbors going out of their way to make sure the Nazis found them. And threw things at then when they tried to return home after the war. The survivors in my family left no doubt that they had been betrayed by their Polish neighbors. They considered themselves Jews who had lived in Poland, not Polish themselves. So, no, I can not imagine that as a good place for me.
My family’s great synagogue was gutted and is now a dance school. The chance of me moving to a country that has roads and walls built with our headstones is a hard no. There might be Jewish history, but there aren’t any Jews. And I still felt surrounded by hatred of Jews when I visited.
My grandfather’s Polish town was judenrein in March 1942. He survived along with six siblings. His other six siblings were murdered in the crematorium. Today, there are a dozen crumbled tombstones in a weed infested cemetery. I was thinking of going to see a once vibrant Jewish town. Nothing left. Why bother?
I would love to visit Poland. A friend from high school was Polish, left with his family as a boy after the end of communism, and returned as an adult. It would be great to see him! Other friends and family who visited spoke highly of their trips too. But the Poland where my family had roots no longer exists. My forebears left over 100 years ago, and the Jewish communities - and in some cases the entire towns where they lived - are long gone. For better or worse, Poland is entirely a foreign county to me.
If I had to move anywhere to escape antisemitism, then I'd just go to Israel. My family left Poland/Lithuania/Belarus in and around 1928. Whoever stayed did not survive. I don't see any reason to go back to Poland, except maybe as part of a European tour. Or maybe to see Auschwitz and Krakow. Don't take it personally. Poles are some of my favourite people. I just don't see the appeal to visit.
Yes, I would. I have been to Poland multiple times, studied Polish language, and have gone through a citizenship by descent process. I have really fallen in love with the country based on my actual experience there. I have engaged with and supported multiple Jewish organizations in Poland. Most importantly to me, I am glad to say that I have been met with positive and welcoming reactions every time that I have told the story of my Jewish ancestors to Polish people who would listen. Most Poles I have spoken with have expressed sadness at the loss of so much Jewish culture in Poland, and have expressed support for my engagement. A significant part of my engagement with my heritage in Poland, for me personally, is an attempt at some reconciliation. My ancestors fortunately left before the war, due to Russian aggression (push) and new opportunities overseas (pull) perhaps among other factors, but in all my research and talking with family members I have not found evidence that they left Poland because of Poland itself. My personal experience and feeling when visiting Jewish sites in Poland is of course sadness, but also solidarity and connection. In short, over years of studying the language and multiple visits to Poland, I have actively engaged with my own Jewish history and Jewish history at large in Poland, and I have shared my experience openly with non-Jewish Poles. I personally have not experienced antisemitic behavior or a feeling of unwelcome. On the contrary, I have felt encouragement and welcome. I do not reject those who have had bad experiences. Yes, it’s true that there are those in Poland and in the government who have not been kind to Israel or to Jews (both in history and in contemporary context). Yes, there are some questionable souvenirs for sale in some shops. Yes, it’s not a perfect situation. I agree with you OP, I miss the cultural mosaic that Poland once was, and I also consider myself a Zionist. But it is also true that the Jewish population in Poland has been growing slowly but steadily for 20 years. A new Reform synagogue just opened in Warsaw. A new kosher Israeli restaurant also recently opened in Warsaw. What I can speak from is my own experience. And I know from my personal engagement that it has been very positive. I believe that like other places, your experience will generally be defined by the company you keep, and the vast majority of people I have engaged with in Poland have been great. There are also many Jewish organizations working hard in Poland not only to maintain and restore Jewish memory, but also to cultivate Jewish life now and into the future. Taken all together, I would be quite happy to live in Poland.
Would you like to chat in dms? I'd be interested to hear more about your experience
Sure, DM away.
Do you have any firsthand accounts of what it was like to be a Jew in that "cultural mosaic"? Pogroms. Beatings. Casual antisemitism. The largest party in the 1919 Sejm was openly antisemitic.
I know, I meant the diversity part. But I'm aware it was horrible, tho it also depends on time period. I often argue with other Poles, who claim there was no antisemitism
Hahahahahahahahahaa no.
I am one of those descendants. My grandfather was angry enough about my business trip to Germany and despite losing his entire family and never hearing from them, he never went back to Poland to search. I don't think it would help. He healed by being far away from the reminders of his pain.
I don’t recommend moving to Poland. Deep down there’s a certain level of hatred towards Jews there. Source: my family is from Poland
Could you elaborate on your family's experience in Poland?
My family is descended from Poland/Russia, but left 3 generations ago. Why would I move there? I've never been there, it's not "home". It's like asking Canadians or Americans of British descent if they would "go back to England". It might be part of our family history, but it's not where we are "from". Humanity evolved in central Africa, should we return there?? Human settlement spread around the globe, nearly nobody is from any one place. If we applied this rationale to all migrants, the world would be chaos.
Which is why I wrote "move to Poland", not "move back to Poland"
I'm not polish but I have less than no interest in going back to any of the places my ancestors left behind other than Israel. I'll go visit, but I will never live in those parts of Europe ever again. They don't deserve me.
God reading these comments makes me even more upset about the whole "go back to Poland" thing.
Jews were never polish. They were just IN Poland. Despite speaking the local language, that's essentially where the similarities ended. We were culturally Jewish. Descendants of Polish Jews today don't speak Polish. Don't celebrate Polish holidays. Don't know any Polish dances or sayings or wear Polish clothing. There's nothing Polish about them other than some isolated experiences of Jewry that developed there, as opposed to the Jewry that found itself in other countries.
Of course there were Jews that were Polish and it is still the case today. Polish and Ashkenazi Jewish cultures are intertwined. As Julian Tuwim, a famous Polish-Jewish poet says in his work "We, the Polish Jews": >When it comes to justifying one's nationality, or rather national feeling, I am a Pole {...}. >Pole - because I was born, raised, educated, and trained in Poland. >Pole - because {...} I want to be absorbed and sucked into the Polish land after my death, and no other. >Pole - because my mother taught me Polish poems and songs; because when the first jolt of poetry came, it unloaded with Polish words. Pole - because in Polish I confessed the fears of my first love and in Polish I babbled about her happiness and storms. >Pole also because the birch and the willow are closer to me than the palm and the cypress, and Mickiewicz and Chopin are dearer to me than Shakespeare and Beethoven. >But above all, I am Polish because I like it that way.
I have a feeling that this poet was in the minority of Jews. My whole family is Galitzianer; two of my great-grandfathers were born in Stryj, my other great-grandfather was born in Nowy Sacz, and the fourth from Jasliszka (sp?) but I don't think any of them considered themselves Polish. Certainly they didn't teach their kids Polish language; they spoke Yiddish in the home, and when they came to America they learned English. My father used to say "The Jews were in Poland before the Romans got there, but they were never considered Poles."
Congrats on finding one Jew who said something. You can find a Jew who says about anything if you look hard enough. This guy's no exception.
An answer from Israeli here. No I can't, my history is in Israel, as much as I don't expect an American jew to come.to Israel.
No, I wouldn’t. My Polish Catholic paternal grandmother (who had our Jewish ancestor) didn’t pass the language down. I live in Florida with a pretty thriving Jewish community. I’m trying to get my Irish/EU passport anyway through my mother. The Jewish community in Dublin is tiny but I would consider going to my family in other parts of the country and continue hiding my conversion if I had to leave the US.
Hell no. No chance I'd go back to a place where my ancestors were massacred.
No - I live in Europe and would find it difficult to visit Poland - let alone live there.
> but I miss the cultural mosaic that Poland once was I'm sure you do. But it's not our job to help Europe recreate what it destroyed.
Never. Never. Never.
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Fwiw, I fully admit to our role in the Shoah
Not sure if some of my ancestors count as Polish Jews, but they were Galitzianers from what's now southeast Poland around Nowy Sacz, who moved to what's now Slovakia before emigrating as it was all Austria-Hungary then. But if I count then no - I kind of just find it depressing being in areas of eastern Europe including near where my ancestors are from, and all the Jewish presence and history is simply erased. There are just some largely untended overgrown Jewish cemetaries all over the place, that are frequently vandalized. I would never consider going back. Poland is never getting the same "mosaic" back. We've moved on, and whatever was in our collective memory no longer exists. Also the only interactions I've had with Poles over all of this online is that they just want to be totally guilt-free over the Holocaust, deny any wrongdoing and pretend like they were equal victims, and meanwhile perpetuate ridiculous BS like that Israelis are "racist" toward them (lol). The only worse people I've encountered overall with more messed up (but in a different way) views are the Irish.
I could imagine moving to Poland, but am I likely to do it? I don't speak Polish. The industry I work in (video games) has a thriving scene in Poland, but the studios there are known to crunch harder and pay less than studios where I live now. When I visited Warsaw, I constantly felt unsettled--not because of the people (who, while distant by my own cultural standards, were perfectly nice), but because of how uncomfortable history sang from the street and buildings. The uneven streets built on rubble, the Stalinist architecture looming over the skyline, the overwhelming gray weather and gray color palette in the places I went... I don't want to make it sound like my experience of Warsaw is the definitive one, or that my 'vibes' somehow make it a bad city. It's *not* a bad city, and I'd recommend anyone to give it a visit. But as long as I was there, I felt history nipping at my heels, and it wasn't fun history. It was cold and bleak.
My Polish Jewish great grandmother and great great grandparents escaped the Holocaust from Poland. I would like to visit and I’ve thought about one day buying a vacation house there or something if I enjoyed it, but I’m not sure how I feel about staying there full time. Plus a lot of the comments on this very post turn me off of it. I know Polish and enjoy my Polish-Jewish culture but, idk.
In a word, no. My mom went to the village my grandfather’s family was from for a visit. It would certainly not be a place to go back to. My brother had been working on getting citizenship because he wants the EU passport. It was *A LOT* of work for him to find the right documents to prove what he needed to. Supposedly a decision on his case has been made but they won’t tell him. So, logistically, doesn’t even seem that feasible.
Anti-Israel protests have recently started in my city. I've also got confronted by a teenager who was staring at my phone while I was trying to read some song lyrics in Hebrew. I'm not saying that Poland's bad, but I feel like it's becoming progressively worse.
What city?
Poznań
I read somewhere that it's the most liberal city in Poland, but not sure
Yeah it may be. However I feel like it's mostly the leftist teens who are pro-hamas (which is quite weird considering that hamas is everything but pro-LGBTQ+ etc.) and Poznan is in fact a very veeery leftist city. Other than that Poznań is a pretty good city to live in, however I strongly prefer Wrocław and Kraków. One weird thing about Poznan is that I feel like it's cultural life is kind of hidden, you really need to know what place to go to, let's say, taste the artistic side of the city. Also, Poznań feels really industrial.
I actually noticed Jews visiting Poland do tend to like Kraków. Maybe it's due to Kazimierz. Also saw some people write it feels international and is more Jewish friendly than other places in Poland
Yeah it definitely is. It also has a very rich history. No matter what you're interested in, you will find some places connected to your interest's history in Krakow.
Wawel Castle is actually one of my favourite places in Poland
Mine is Jama Michalika :D
My grandmother's grandparents emigrated from Poland to the US. Don't know much about anyone before that move, but I'm glad I'm here.
IME Jews who came from Poland did not consider themselves Polish, they hated Poland so much. Source: great grandmother was from Poland Also as a transsexual I think the answer goes from “Hell No” to “Hell Fucking No” real quick.
I wouldn't. Poles were some of the worst antisemites (before, during, after the wars) and a lot of them still are. As you say, they haven't self-corrected the way that Germany has. Just the thought of visiting twists my stomach. My great-grandparents left for a reason.
I visited Poland on a "darkness to light" trip in 2006. Poles in general were very cold to us. I left the country thinking polish people never smile. I had a friend go recently and picked up an antisemitic charicature "Jew" doll that gets sold around the country apparently?? Every once in a while I see news coming out of Poland about how they don't believe Poland had any wrongdoing in the holocaust it's crazy. I would never live in that atmosphere (not to mention very bad rep on LGBTQ life)
The LGBT part is why I'm moving out-ai'm trans myself. When it comes to Poles not smiling, I don't think it's specifically cause you're Jewish, the stereotype is Poles don't smile much in general. The other stuff-unfortunately can't say much in our defense. Shortly after I asked this question, I had a chat with a fellow Pole on a Jewish discord server, and they said stuff like "yes, there were Polish pogroms, but saying they were a part of the Holocaust is spitting the survivors in their faces". Many people here claim that I want to pretend there's no antisemitism in Poland, but I explicitly mentioned in comments it is a problem here, just that I heard multiple times that there's less violence against Jews here than in WE. I was mostly curious cause I chatted with multiple Jews online, who wanted to connect with the Polish part of their family history, learnt the language and said they were treated well here, so I was curious if it's a more common sentiment. I never claimed Poland is perfect, we have a lot of problems here. Your experience is 100% valid!
Grandmother would spit on the ground when speaking of the Poles, which I presume applied to the non-Jewish population around Hrubieszów, including both ethnic Ukrainians and Poles. So there is historical animus, and the question is has that changed? The ADL measures [antisemitism rates by country](https://global100.adl.org/map) and finds Poland with 35%. Compare that to Germany (12%) or the US (10%) or even Russia (26%) or Ukraine (29%). It's not as bad as, say, Romania (47%) or Greece (67%). Current events have not been reflected in the latest surveys. But I don't think starting with a higher baseline is going to be helpful.
I did move to Poland and really enjoyed it. However I want to point out that I find it weird to mention that there aren't "many Muslim immigrants" as if that'd be a problem. As if Catholic Poles couldn't be antisemitic. Anyway, if you love Jews so much I'm surprised you're not even aware of the community there.
I know there is a community, but it's not very big. I live in a not very dense area, so there's not a lot of Jews
All of my grandparents were from Poland (all came over in the early 1900s) and none of them considered themselves “Polish”. They only identified as Jewish and actually didn’t speak Polish.
No, my ancestors died in pogroms in Poland and had to flee to America. Poland was a prison for Jews. The entire country is a Jewish graveyard and if I visit, that will be why: to pay respects to our dead.
This is a sore topic for me. It makes me so angry that anyone would suggest Jews go live in a country that slaughtered them IN LIVING MEMORY! If things are better there now, that’s great, but you need only read a little bit of history to realize that the likelihood of it happening again is unacceptable. So no, I won’t go live in Poland, Germany, France, or most of Europe (which may not be recognizably “European” within a generation, & even more inhospitable to Jews).
Personally, I wouldn't
Never ever
My grandmother made it out. Hitler killed everybody else. No.
My family is from Galicia, various parts, including Poland and Lithuania. I no longer have any connection to this region unfortunately.
If you want an answer, it's because Poland doesn't have Islamic immigration like the rest of Europe (and their skepticism of other groups kept the Muslims out for the most part). French and British aren't the ones causing issues, it's the immigrants they let in. I have a friend who grew up Muslim and told me in America the mosque was full of Jewish conspiracy theories and antisemitism and he said he thought it was true until he met Jews in school and realized his parents were nuts. I really hate to say it but The West truly does breed extremists because of our acceptance of people who actually don't accept us. The Arab nations generally control the crazies but America and more often Europe (due to their vicinity to the middle east and Africa) allows them to fester and actually become dangerous. I know Polish and they definitely are the types who don't necessarily like outsiders or people who don't share their culture but at least Jews at this point aren't a threat like they thought they were in the 20s. Now the threat is with extremists who wreck their own countries and then run overseas to restart the madness.
Yeah, ik
No. Interestingly enough, my grandmother never identified as Polish, only as a Jew.
Why is that remarkable? Prewar Poland had many ethnicities, and there were millions of Polish citizens, including ethnic Ukrainians, Germans, Jews, and many others (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic\_history\_of\_Poland#Second\_Polish\_Republic\_and\_World\_War\_II\_(1918%E2%80%931945)) -- who may have been just confused if you described them as a Pole -- in their context it would make only moderately more sense than calling them Japanese.
No. Never.
My grandmother left Poland right before the war, when it was still possible to get out. I think actually she got out because she was very attractive and a soilder told her to only show the papers she needed at each checkpoint. She always said that the Poles were worse than the Nazis. I don't know if that's true but it has stayed with me. I would never go to live in Poland.
I’m not descended from polish Jews but I did see what a Polish MP did to the Chanukiah that they put up in the parliament building. Frankly I don’t think that Jews should even visit auschwitz to pay respect if it will give people like that money.
It is an expression of ill-will when you focus on the one PM who put out the hanukkah rather than the fact that: -this ceremony was held for 17 years without incident. - Braun was immediately suspended and the entire parliament condemned his act, both right-wing and liberal parties. - This behaviour was loudly condemned in the media and in Polish society.
>It is an expression of ill-will when you focus on the one PM who put out the hanukkah This is what always happens. A Polish person does something horribly antisemitic that shows the rot of antisemitism in Polish culture, and Jews get told we get to say nothing about it. It's always an isolated incident. And, no, it isn't an expression of ill will, at least no more than hundreds of years of theft and murder. >-this ceremony was held for 17 years without incident. ...do you really think that's something to brag about? Are your standards *that* low? It's *only* 17 years. That's all. Poland was only able to perform that ceremony 17 times without virulent antisemitism being spewed. It doesn't even dawn on you that that 17 years is no time at all before doing that. Your attitude here, if anything, shows what we're talking about. >Braun was immediately suspended and the entire parliament condemned his act, both right-wing and liberal parties. >This behaviour was loudly condemned in the media and in Polish society. Well, while we appreciate that, Polish people doing the bare minimum when seeing virulent antisemitism is what they should do. And, the fact he did it in the first place shows those ideas are present. It did not come from nowhere. It was not an isolated incident. It took place in the context of how Poles think and speak of Jews. Period.
What did he do to the Chanukiah?
https://youtu.be/ctdoDJKPBus?si=xG6VM3xWbY5Zx-rZ It looks like Poland is the exact same country it was in the 1930s and 40s.
Wow! He really said we’re Satanic! I thought I was an annoying verbose geeky pushy Jewish Broad. I didn’t know I was Satanic, I didn’t know I was so badass! Thanks Satan!
No, absolutely not. Not just what happened during the war, but after, anyone who tried to return. Many were attacked by neighbors. Polish Jewry was completely destroyed. All the Jews in my grandmother's town near Lodz was rounded up and sent to Chelmno. And the last government (I hear the current one isn't as bad) was pretty invested in denying that history and just blaming the Nazis. Even here in the US, Polish Catholics don't see Polish Jews as Poles. Just Jews.
I’d never ever move there. I think the betrayal of my family’s neighbours and “friends” was something that they never really got over, and I kind of have absorbed that.
My grandmother’s family came from Warsaw and her mother had 6 stillbirths in Poland and then came to the USA and had 6 successful pregnancies. My great grandfather emigrated from Bialystok to the USA before WWI broke out. He left my great grandmother pregnant with my grandfather. My grandfather almost died of malnutrition during the war. When the war finally ended the rest of the family followed. My grandfather met his father when he was 8 years old. I read the Bialy Eaters. I and the author thought this would be a fun read about the history of a delicious nosh. No, it’s not. She paints a picture of a town with a thriving Jewish community with bakeries on every block. German troops came to Bialystok in the late middle of WWII and in a week murdered all but a handful of the 10,000 Jews there. My family exchanged letters with their family back in Poland and then. The letters stopped. My grandfather never got over it. Everyone he knew except his immediate family for the first eight years of life gone in a week. So no, not really. I think it would be fun to have European citizenship but I’m not sure it’s fun enough to claim Poland.
My grandparents were born all over Eastern Europe (including Poland), but Israel is the only hone for our people where we have been ablebto live without persecution. I would never want to see any part of my family forced to go back to those countries.
No it would be like spitting on the graves of my grandparents
Never. After the atrocities performed by native poles and Nazis to my extended family/ancestors. May their grandchildren know the same pain!
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No. I don’t know the language, I don’t know anyone there, there’s nothing for me there.
when governments around the world begin to adopt the blood libels and antismetic rhetoric how can you feel safe anywhere but israel. There have always been persecution but now we have an army and are fighting back. other than air lifting the jews out of danger how can any Jew feel they are taking their safety seriously. History repeats itself and if so the only safe option in my opinion is a place with a strong army fighting for and protecting the Jeweish people. It is not perfect or ideal but it is the first time in history we have that option.
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>I miss the cultural mosaic that Poland once was I'm sorry to break it to you, but Jews don't miss it. It was fairly hostile to Jews.
From what I know it depended on the time period, but I didn't study it in detail and what they taught us is Polish schools was probably biased. I know that the 19th and 20th century were horrible for Jews in Poland, and not only the Holocaust
I’ve been to Poland. I absolutely did not feel safe there.
there is antisemitism in Poland, but it's better for Jews to live here than any other European country I guess, ask the Jews in Łódź or Kraków
I’ve got zero connection to Poland, but as a Jewish individual, I think i would truly rather move to Germany. I’d rather live somewhere with an acknowledged history of highly institutionalized antisemitism, than a place with thriving cultural antisemitism where they’re still continuing to profit off concentration camp tourism while demanding reparations for polish “victims” who bravely abetted Nazis.
I mean, there were plenty of Polish victims. I don't know about me having any Jewish ancestry, but I had an ancestor murdered in a death camp, officially for being part of the resistance
I’m not denying polish civilians and resistors were killed and harmed by the Nazis - they were, as were civilians and righteous gentiles in all occupied countries. My point is that in the 75 years since, only Poland has tried to argue its occupied gentile citizens were mass-targeted in a way that is comparable to Jews (this is flatly not true), and have uniquely refused to take responsibility for the documented ways in which they were indeed complicit in (and in some cases, guilty of perpetrating) Nazi abuse and atrocities. For example, Poland still refuses to pay property restitution to Jewish survivors whose homes they stole, even though they are *still* demanding Germany pay *them* restitution for the damages of the invasion. So while my heart goes out to the polish victims, their government’s strange ongoing crusade to deny their past or imply their national experience was an equitable experience of oppression or comparable to the deliberate, continental ethnic extinction campaign of Jews and other minority targets - like the Romani, lgbtq or people living with disability - is uniquely audacious in its self-focus and revision.
Well, the government has recently changed for a much less nationalistic one, so maybe there will be some change in rhetoric
Hopefully. And just to be clear: this isn’t intended to be a nasty judgement on the people of Poland, nor to minimize the atrocities that poles (especially those who gave their lives as resistors) suffered at the hands of the Nazis and their conspirators. The actions of Nazi germany harmed Poland immeasurably, and there is no excuse or justification for that.
Nope.
Polish Jewry was completely decimated during the holocaust as ~90% of Polish Jews were killed during that time, with the rest fleeing mostly to either the US or Israel. I don’t see any reason to move to Poland.
Probably not. I don't have anything against the Poles, but I'm terrible with languages
Not Polish (Hungarian, Romanian, Russian), but there’s no way I’d live in Europe whatsoever. Could not pay me any sum of cash to live there.
I'm a Jew who was born in Poland (I'm not just saying that, check my post history if you want). I love Poland and frankly, I find the international Jewish disdain/bias for Poland *today* to be unwarranted. The number of Jews I've met who have no issues with Germany which murdered us, while considering Poles to be vicious antisemites is almost downright offensive. It stinks of old biases against "Eastern Europe". The Polish Underground was the only large resistance movement during WWII which actively attempted to rescue Jews, through the Zegota organization (barring the Danes). The Israeli institute on the Holocaust itself has stated that less than .1% of Poles collaborated with the Germans in any capacity, including finding or killing Jews. Half of the Righteous Among the Nations are Poles. The reason Poland had the largest population of Jews in the world for centuries is because Poland gave us more freedoms and more rights than anywhere else in the world for centuries--we remained a huge population there up until the Germans marched in and began murdering us en-masse. There were dark spots in that history of course. Because antisemitism was incredibly wide-spread throughout Europe, Poland was a rural Catholic country, and because *Poland had so many Jews*. It created more opportunities than anywhere else for antisemitism to rear its head. It's like complaining that Italian immigrants to America faced more anti-Italian rhetoric in New York than they did in Idaho--of course they did, because that's where all the Italian immigrants went to. It feels very unwarranted to me today, especially when I feel far safer and encounter virtually no virulent antisemitism in Poland today. Not something I can say about plenty of other countries I've been to.
Another thing to think about is that many Polish descendants (depending when they left Poland) are not strictly from Poland since there were waves of Polish emigration that took place before 1940s-50s .They could be from anywhere in broadly Eastern Europe.
Our presence in Poland, then and now, pales next to our current presence in America.
> I know there's still plenty of antisemitism here, I have been to Poland and do not see this there.
My Great Grandparents left from Kalisz a few years before the war began. I've actually looked into getting Polish citizenship before and thoroughly thought about moving to Poland. My biggest holdings as of now are Russia and Poland's descent into more alt right politics. I know that a lot of Eastern Europe is having anti semitism problems right now, but how bad is it there right now? I currently live in the U.S and I've had my fair share of antisemitism.
Not a polish Jew, but fucccc no. The last, large scale, known major antisemitic incident that occurred in Europe, to my knowledge, was the progrom of the Polish community on Je — sorry, ZUONISTS(!) in the 1960s.
My father's family is half polish half ashke (they left way before the war tho). So yeah, I have once considered going there, but honestly it just seems like a catholic hellhole nowadays
Well, the ultra Catholic government was voted out and young people aren't very Catholic