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New Publications from 2003

2001 - 2002 - 2003 - 2004 - 2005 - 2006

30.12.2003r.

Emile Shoufani

His second revolutionary achievement was, turning the school into an institution of different religions, sexes and cultures: "St. Joseph's is not a Christian school that accepts Moslems and Druze but a school, where Christians, Moslems and Druze live together."
FROM THE WEB EDITOR:

I don't know the author of this text, nor where I got it from, but it is certainly worth publishing and will of interest to our readers

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30.12.2003r.

Sent: Friday, December 12, 2003 3:24 PM
by e-mail from Joseph Meshofer

Subject: Bulgaria and Jews
A Lost Piece of Jewish History

He was born in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia in 1938. After W.W.II, when he was 10, his family immigrated to Jaffa, Israel. He did his military service in Air Force intelligence and paratroopers, and became a journalist and writer of books (including David Ben Gurion's biography), as well as a public servant. - Part of the year he spends in the United States, where he is a professor at Emory University and a very busy speaker.

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30.12.2003r.

...And I Still See Their Faces

Images of Polish Jews
"What was written long ago comes true: "The light of remembrance brings life back." Today it is we who are responsible for keeping this light shining."
Golda Tencer"

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02.12.2003r.

JUDAICA FOUNDATION
CENTER FOR JEWISH CULTURE
PROGRAM - DECEMBER 2003

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02.12.2003r.

The Jewish Cemetery in Ozarow

Return to Ozarow-Mending a Broken Link

Received from nweinberg@adelphia.net

November 26, 2003

One man's search to discover his roots leads to an extraordinary effort to honor the memory of a lost people and culture in Poland. Norman Weinberg and Jewish descendants of the pre-war shtetl known as Ozarow, unite to restore the Jewish cemetery that had been desecrated by the Nazis and neglected for over six decades.

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02.12.2003r.

Around the Jewish World
Non-Jews in Krakow help confer
new status on city´s Jewish history

Carolyn Slutsky

ITA, November 9, 2003

KRAKOW, Poland, Nov. 9 (JTA) - Krakow used to be a mecca for Poland´s Jews, a center of cosmopolitanism and Jewish life in what was Europe´s most heavily Jewish country. Now that there are few Jews left in Poland, Krakow still holds some Jewish allure, but for a very different group: With only about 200 Jews left in the city, Krakow has become a center for non-Jewish Poles interested in Judaism and Jewish life.

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28.11.2003r.

Order of White Eagle for Irena Sendler

Photo, Rzeczpospolita Online,

10 November 2003

President Aleksander Kwasniewski awards Irena Sendler, 93, with Poland's highest distinction, the Order of White Eagle for valor and great courage. "We are very proud to have among us Irena Sendler who during WWII saved 2,500 Jewish children from the Warsaw ghetto. Thanks to people like her we believe that good can triumph, that a fragile woman is capable of defeating the greatest tyrants" - Kwasniewski said at a ceremony in Warsaw, Poland.

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28.11.2003r.

Non-Jews in Krakow help confer new status on city's Jewish history

Carolyn Slutsky

JTA. November 9

KRAKOW, Poland, Nov. 9 (JTA) - Krakow used to be a mecca for Poland's Jews, a center of cosmopolitanism and Jewish life in what was Europe's most heavily Jewish country.

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17.11.2003r.

Schindler plaque unveiled in Poland

Associated Press

Posted on Tuesday, 26 October 2003

WARSAW, Poland - Members of the Krakow Jewish community and U.S. college students unveiled a plaque Monday honoring German industrialist Oscar Schindler, whose campaign to save 1,200 Jews from the Holocaust was chronicled by the 1993 movie "Schindler's List."

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17.11.2003r.

THE DEATH OF RAFAEL (FELEK) SCHARF

WWW.FORUM-ZNAK.ORG.PL

October 2003

On September 16th, 2003 in London died Rafael (Felek) Scharf - a Krakow Jew, a grand friend of Poland, one of the founders of the Oxford Institute for Polish-Jewish Studies, the co-creator of the Judaica Foundation - The Center for Jewish Culture in Krakow.

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17.11.2003r.

PAJA - YOUTH ACTION

WWW.FORUM-ZNAK.ORG.PL

October 2003

PAJA, the Polish/American/Jewish Alliance for Youth Action, was formed in America in the year 2000 by a group of Polish & Americans troubled by the continued existence of prejudice & intolerance among ethnic groups & specifically their effects on Polish/Jewish relations.

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17.11.2003r.

ON THE JEWISH CEMETERY IN ŁOSICE

by Rafał Zubkowicz, Sarnaki,

Siedlce Life, October 2003,

translated by Jadwiga Budzinski, Winnipeg.

FROM THE WEB EDITOR

Readers whose ancestors died in Poland and who are interested in the restoration of Jewish cemeteries may read our text on this topic published in February 2003 in NEW PUBLICATIONS under the title: 'RESTORATION OF JEWISH CEMETERIES IN POLAND - Exchange of letters compiled by Irena Bellert' (with some relevant attachments). Just click on the arrow to go down a number of pages and you will find this text. The article below describes some of the results achieved in the restoration of the cemetery in Łosice

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27.10.2003r.

And I still See Their Faces
I ciągle widzę ich twarze

AMERICAN - POLISH - ISRAELI
“SHALOM FOUNDATION”

Pl. Grzybowski 12/16, Warszawa, Poland
Tel. 620 30 36 Fax 620-95-59

In 1994 Foundation made an appeal asking the public to send photographs of Polish Jews. I remember the day I spoke about that project for the first time, showing a few pictures from my mother's family album. Many people did not believe that 50 years after the Holocaust anybody would response to our appeal. To date, over eight thousand photos have been collected.

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27.10.2003r.

And I Still See Their Faces
Images of Polish Jews
To my brothers the Polish Jews

I am an actress of the Jewish theatre. I was born after the War. However, the echo of the Holocaust accompanied my childhood. 452 Jankiel and Golda Tencer, Wisniowa Góra, 1955.

It would return in the cry of my father in the middle of the night who, in his dream, once again saw all that he had to go through in the Ghetto, in the death camp.

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27.10.2003r.

News of the Day from the Irena Sendler Project

24 October 2003

The Karski Award for Valor and Courage celebration at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. was outstanding. (we'll have pictures soon on the web site) Here's why.....

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27.10.2003r.

Sendler's Children
The Polish Voice,

25 September 2003

By Marcin Mierzejewski

The Talmud says that, "He who saves a single life, saves the world entire." The Polish Underground unit headed by Irena Sendler saved 2,500 children from the Warsaw ghetto. Today, they call themselves "Sendler's children," and want the 93-year-old Pole to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

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The Republic of the Bielski Brothers

FORUM-znak.org.pl

August 2003

On the borderland of the second People's Republic, at the heart of the Nalibocka forest, between the Niemen and Berezyna rivers, partisan-Jews created the headquarters that was virtually a small town - with craftsman shops, a hospital and a synagogue. Over 1200 of them survived the war.

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'ONE SHOULD NOT PITY THE GERMANS'

Interview of Marek Edelman, the last surviving leader of the Warsaw ghetto uprising published in Tygodnik Powszechny n°33, p 3, August 17th 2003, Poland.

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What Warsaw Remembers

MATTHEW KAMINSKI

Wall Street Journal Europe

WARSAW -- Each August, Warsaw remembers the hot month in 1944 when the Polish underground army rose up against the Germans.

Mr. Kaminski is an editorial page writer for The Wall Street Journal Europe

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Poles Give Warm Welcome to the Exiled Jews of '68

By RUKHL SCHAECHTER

FORWARD, New York, 1 August 2003

In 1963, the same year that Beatle-mania was spreading across Europe, three Jewish students in the Polish city of Szczecin (sh'CHE-chin) started a rock band called The Successors. As the Polish youth began tearing at the seams of the restrictive Communist government, they became more and more attracted to the rock and roll songs written by The Successors. Rock music, after all, was equated with decadent capitalism by the Communist authorities, and so was the perfect vehicle for young people to express their dissatisfaction. In 1967, the group won first prize in a state-run contest for a song opposing the war in Vietnam. By 1968, the song had become a hit song on the Polish radio.

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Pole to be honoured for sheltering Jews from Gestapo

Peggy Curran

The Gazette, August 5, 2003
CREDIT: COURTESY OF KREPEC FAMILY
A 1994 photo of Tadeusz Krepec in Montreal.

As a teenager in Nazi-occupied Poland, Tadeusz Krepec would sneak out at night to steal guns and grenades from a German Panzer division stationed nearby, then bury them for use by the Polish Underground.

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Rabbi Weiss Says No to the Monument in Belzec

www.FORUM-znak,org.pl

Rabbi Avi Weiss arrived to Poland in order to protest against the memorial-monument located the former concentration camp in Belzec. "The American Jewish Committee and the Polish government bear full responsibility for the desacralization of the place where the remains of Jews lie," stated the rabbi on Wednesday during a press conference in Warsaw.

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Insurgent`s Polish Radio broadcast on the liberation of Jews by the Home Army (Armia Krajowa) from Gesiowka (Koncentrationslager Warschau at Gesia Street). Warsaw, 18 August 1944

POLES - JEWS 1939-1945
Selection of Documents
Edited by Andrzej Krzysztof Kunert
Foreword by Wladyslaw Bartoszewski
RYTM, Warszawa 2001

5 August , 1944, Warsaw. On the fifth day of the Warsaw Uprising soldiers of the Home Army (AK battalion "Zoska") set free 348 Greek, Hungarian, Romanian, French, Belgian. Dutch and Polish Jews.

On the photo a group of over twenty rescued Jews
- Wladyslaw Bartoszewski`s collection

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News from FORUM-znak-org.pl

Zydzi Polacy Chrzescijanie
The Celebration of the Anniversary in Rzeszow 10 July 2003

Rzeszow on July 7th, 2003 at 6 PM started the 1st march to commemorate the liquidation of the Jewish Ghetto. The liquidation was synonymous with the extermination of all Jews from that region.

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My Preamble

Stefan Wilkanowicz

www.Forum-znak.org.pl, 23 June 2003

Observing the project of writing a Preamble to the future Constitution of the European Union has convinced me that such a document must be based on honorable and hard truth, rather than on selective memory and meaningless generalities. This is why I have written my own Preamble, for myself and for those of a similar mindset. I plan on following these tenets regardless of the decisions that will be made by our respectable lawmakers.

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The summer tour presentation of the theatre play "Life in a Jar" organized by the "Irena Sendler Project"

July 2003
From the Editor:

At the end of July, Prof. Norman Conard with his Uniontown students in Kansas - the founding members of the "Irena Sendler Project" - made a tour presenting their theatre play "Life in a Jar" in several places from Detroit to New York City. Below you will find some excerpts from the letters they received after their trip that was a great success.

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Irene Opdyke
Wrote of aiding Jews in World War II

By Adam Bernstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 21, 2003; Page B06

Irene Gut Opdyke, 85, an acclaimed memoirist who wrote of becoming the mistress of a German officer during World War II to save 12 Jews she hid in his villa, died May 17 at a nursing facility in Fullerton, Calif., near her home in Yorba Linda. She had liver disease.

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Europe warned on Anti-Semitism

BBC News

19 June 2003

The United States has said Europe must do more to tackle a resurgence of anti-Semitism around the world.

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ANTI-SEMITISM WITHOUT JEWS

Presentation at the conference on the "New Anti-emitism" organized by the Anne Frank Stichting,

Amsterdam, April 8, 2003

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

More than a dozen years ago, when I was carrying out research for a Jewish travel guide to eastern and central Europe, I visited the remote Polish farming village of Krynki, on the border of what was then still the Soviet Union and is today Belarus.

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Arabs and Jews in Auschwitz

Stefan Wilkanowicz

17.05.2003/SW/TL www.forum-znak.org.pl

Stefan Wilkanowicz, the editor-in-chief of our FORUM, interviewed the archimandrite Emile Shoufani, the melchite provost of Nazareth...

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The Friendship of a Bund-member and a Zionist

Joanna Szczesna

Gazeta Wyborcza, April 26-27, 2003

English translation in FORUM, www.forum-znak.org.pl

Icchak Cukierman and Marek Edelman always differed fundamentally. They lived right next door and must have known each other by sight, however they each had their own business to attend to and did not pay much attention to each other. The threat of the extermination of the Warsaw ghetto joined them together...

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Spotlight will dim for "Life in a Jar" cast
BY STAN FINGER

The Wichita Eagle 18 May 2003

... For more than three years now, Uniontown students Sabrina Coons, Elizabeth Cambers and Megan Stewart have been performing the short play, which depicts Irena Sendler's courage in leading the rescue of 2,500 children from the Nazi-held Warsaw ghetto in Poland during World War II...

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Young People and the Holocaust

An Interview with Helen Birenbaum,

Forum, 28 May 2001

... All of a sudden, I felt the whole enormity of that horror, that longing for life and the impossibility of life as I faced their laughter and uproariousness. I thought that the other thing had been so enormous -- why should I be afraid of them? Who are they now? I started talking to the ones sitting in the first rows....

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Marek Edelman: a Physician, Social Activist, Commander

Life is most Important

JACEK KUROŃ

Tygodnik Powszechny No. 46 of 14 November 1999
Translated from Polish by Hanna Husak

From the Web editor

I've just received an interesting opinion about Marek Edelman. Although it was published four years ago, I'm sure many readers will be interested in this article, as it has not been widely known .

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Still Standing Guard

The Warsaw Voice
17 April 2003

Marek Edelman, the last surviving leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, talks to Jerzy Sławomir Mac.

When the uprising started April 19, 1943, only one-10th of the initial 40,000 residents were still living in the ghetto. Only 200 had weapons. Why did you fight?

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ANTI-SEMITISM WITHOUT JEWS

Presentation at the conference on the "New Anti-Semitism" organized by the Anne Frank Stichting, Amsterdam, April 8, 2003 by Ruth Ellen Gruber

http://www.annefrank.nl/ned/news/news.html

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The Last Letter from Szmul Zygielbojm, The Bund Representative With the Polish National Council in Exile

May 11, 1943

To His Excellency, The President of the Republic of Poland, Wladyslaw Raczkiewicz Prime Minister, General Wladyslaw Sikorski Mr. President, Mr. Prime Minister,

I am taking the liberty of addressing to you, Sirs, these my last words, and through you to the Polish Government and the people of Poland, and to the governments and people of the Allies, and to the conscience of the whole world:

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Jews had will to resist Nazis

Irwin Block

The Gazette,
April 17, 2003

During celebrations of Passover, a Jewish fighter recalls the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of April 19, 1943, and the several hundred young and idealistic men and women who rose up against the German army When Boruch Spiegel thinks back to those days 60 years ago, he feels tremendous pride, but also enormous pain.
Spiegel is one of about 10 Jews still living of the several hundred, with a few small weapons and a powerful will to resist, staged the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of April 19, 1943.

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On Warsaw Ghetto Anniversary,
A Pole Calls for Understanding
By WLADYSLAW BARTOSZEWSKI

NPAJAC, The Forward - April 18, 2003

The proud and beautiful city of New York is known worldwide as one of the most important centers of the Jewish Diaspora. In fact, nowadays it is true to say that it is the most important city in the entire world. But as a Pole who lives and was born in Poland's capital city, Warsaw, I can never forget that it was from Warsaw and other Polish cities, and from countless shtetls, that during the 1900s Polish Jews left for New York, for the freedom of America, in search of a better future for themselves and their children.

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Antyk - The anti-Semitic Bookstore
Comments on Zuzanna Radzik’s text in

Tygodnik Powszechny , 30 March 2003
FORUM, April 2003
www.forum-znak.org.pl

The "Patriotic Bookstore Antyk" is located in the basement of the Warsaw Church of All Saints. The books sold there are damaging to the Church and Poland. Efforts have been already undertaken to liquidate the bookstore (all were unsuccessful so far). Zuzanna Radzik, a freshman of theology at the Papal Theological Department "Bobolanum", talks in "Tygodnik Powszechny" about her efforts to close the bookstore.

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THE 60TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE WARSAW GHETTO UPRISING

A COMMEMORATIVE EVENING

Sunday, April 27, 2003 at 6:30 pm

University of Toronto, Trinity College, George Ignatieff Theatre,

Program of the Evening

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The Children of Ms Sendler
Aleksandra Zawłocka

WPROST; 16 February 2003

The society Children of the Holocaust announced an initiative to award Irena Sendlerowa a Nobel Prize.

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THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
Back to regular view
Holocaust film faces invective borne of anti-Catholic bias
BY ANDREW GREELEY

February 28, 2003
www.suntimes.com

In a just world, Roman Polanski's film ''The Pianist'' should win the Academy award instead of the likely winners--''Chicago,'' a trashy, raunchy insult to my native city, or ''The Hours,'' which has great acting and soapy sentimentality.

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Center for Jewish Culture
Cracow, Poland Program for March 2003

www.forum-znak.org.pl

Center for Jewish Culture, Meiselsa 17

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Washington Post

Zbigniew Brzezinski

February 19, 2003; Page A29

A little more than a year ago, America was basking in international solidarity generated by the crime of Sept. 11, 2001, and in worldwide admiration for its spectacularly effective military termination of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. A year later, there is perhaps just one country in the world whose public opinion unambiguously supports the prospective U.S. war against Iraq.

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A small flag of protest Some Jews muster against pending war on Iraq by Paula Amann and Rachel Pomerance

Washington Jewish Week - Online - December, 2002

With other women from the ad hoc interfaith group, Code Pink: Women for Peace, this Jewish activist keeps a three-hour vigil in front of the White House. Keyes and her friends oppose plans for a pending U.S. pre-emptive strike on Iraq.

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Polish Town Still Tries to Forget Its Dark Past

New York Times, February 8, 2003
By PETER S. GREEN

JEDWABNE, Poland - This is a small rural town in denial,
although the facts are now clear.

On July 10, 1941, shortly after the Nazis occupied this poor farming town in northeast Poland, hundreds of Jews from Jedwabne and surrounding hamlets were assembled in the town square, where some were brutally killed, while others
were beaten and finally forced to run down Cemetery Road to Bronislaw Sleszynski's thatch-roofed barn.

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Films Show Skewed Version of the Holocaust

Wall Street Journal. 9 Jabuary 2003
By THANE ROSENBAUM

Ever since Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's List", the Holocaust in film -- actually the Holocaust itself -- has never been the same.

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HISTORICAL SITES OF JEWISH WARSAW

Between Zydowska street and the Umschlag Platz
By Jacek Leociak

A short history of Jews in Warsaw
By Jan Jagielski

This Web site has an English and a Polish version

http://jewish.sites.warszawa.um.gov.pl/index.htm

Restoration of Jewish Cemeteries in Poland
Exchange of letters compiled by Irena Bellert
28 January 2003
From the Web editor

We wish to encourage readers who are concerned about the Restoration of Jewish cemeteries in Poland to write letters to editors@polish-jewish-heritage.org. As an example of what can be achieved by writing us your own letter, you will find below a file containing an exchange of letters between Viktor Lewin and myself, with some relevant attachments.

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'Discuss the undiscussable' Polish American Jewish Alliance works to open minds
by Paula Amann

News Editor
NPAJAC (www.npajac.org)

Stereotypes were shattering in a circle of folding chairs set around a high-ceilinged room at the Embassy of Poland.

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'My grandfather helped ghetto Jews'
World News BBC

24 January 2003

Roman Polanski's film The Pianist, which has just been released in the UK, recounts the plight of a Polish-Jewish pianist in Nazi-occupied Poland and his survival in a Warsaw ghetto. Here, BBC News Online's Ania Lichtarowicz tells the story of her grandfather who saved Jews in the ghetto in Krakow during World War II.

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From Poland to Israel 'Plus Minus' supplement

Rzeczpospolita, 28 12 2002

Jakub Kowalski FORUM : www.forum-znak.org.pl
(See more in Polish, Nowe Publikacje,
Polacy Zydzi wracaja do Izraela)

Sochnut conducts a campaign for Jews' return to Israel. Every year about ten Polish Jews invoke the Law of Return, leave for Israel and settle there. The migration in the opposite direction is of similar magnitude.

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Commemorate the Krakow Ghetto
The Christian Culture Foundation

FORUM, 5 December 2002
www.forum-znak.org.pl

Roman Polanski, awarded the 100,000 zlotys prize by the Foundation of Polish Culture, wishes to support the project of commemorating Krakow ghetto.

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Jewish Museum in Poland: More Than a Memorial

PETER S. GREEN

New York Times

January 9, 2003

WARSAW - Several times a week, the tour buses pull up to the monument to the 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising, spilling out dozens of Israeli students or military cadets for a brief ceremony to honor the Jewish victims of the Holocaust.

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From the CONNECTICUT POST (Bridgeport),

December 15, 2002

Fairfield man honored by Polish government
His Holocaust knowledge provides understanding

By PATTI WOODS
Correspondent

Sometimes it takes only a small event for a person to be called to action. For Fairfield resident Charles Chotkowski, it was a movie.

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Washington Jewish Week

Online Edition, December 2002

Polish rescuer-turned-diplomat honored
by Paula Amann

News Editor

On Tuesday, the Washington, D.C., museum marked six decades since the founding of Zegota, a Polish underground group that rescued some 4,000 Polish Jews, including 2,500 children.

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Three Women -Three Saved Lives

Reported by Irena Bellert, President of the Foundation

On October 24, 2002, the Polish-Jewish Heritage Foundation of Canada invited three Holocaust survivors from three continents: Elisabeth Ficowska, President of the Association of Holocaust Children from Warsaw, Elisabeth Zielinska-Mundlak from Caracas, and Renata Skotnicka-Zajdman from Montreal. We asked the Polish Institute of Arts and Science to co-sponsor our event and invite their members. Dr Witold Spirydowicz, Consul General of the Polish Republic in Montreal, was asked to let us organize this event under his auspices in the consulate.

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