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New Publications
FROM THE EDITOR
It is with great sadness that I must inform our readers of the death, on July 28, of our much loved friend Barbara Berger. She died serenely because she had come to terms with the certain outcome of the leukemia that took her away from her loving and beloved husband Professor Paul Pupier and her devoted only sister Danuta Berger, who - despite having twice donated bone marrow - was unable to save Barbara's life.
Barbara was one of the founders of our POLISH- JEWISH- HERITAGE FOUNDATION, over which she presided for several terms. We owe Barbara a great deal and we express our gratitude for her tremendous contribution. On behalf of all our members I wish to express our deepest regrets at her premature passing.
Irena Bellert
03.11.2008r.
My name is Tosia Szechter Schneider, I was born in a beautiful little resort town on the Dniester river-Zaleszczyki. The memories of my happy childhood are overshadowed by the horror of the Holocaust.
(more)
03.11.2008r.
6th Warsaw Jewish Film Festival` 08, Nov. 4-9
This year the 6. edition of the Warsaw Jewish Film Festival, organized in Poland since 2003, focuses on films starring late Gustaw Holoubek which feature the actor's unforgettable and remarkable roles.
The Festival will be held in Warsaw, in KINOTEKA and the screening room of SGH (Warsaw School of Economics), between November 4 and 9, 2008.
(more)
03.11.2008r.
Catholic Poles saving country's crumbling Jewish cemeteries
By The Associated Press
Tags: Jewish World, Poland
ZDUNSKA WOLA, Poland - About 30 Roman Catholic Poles have taken it upon themselves to preserve what they see as a unique and important aspect of their nation's history - the crooked and crumbling markers in Poland's neglected Jewish cemeteries.
(more)
03.11.2008r.
http://www.stjoenj.net/lazowski/lazowski.html
He duped Nazis, saved thousands
Because Eugene Lazowski was a doctor, he believed he should not kill. He
would not even shoulder a rifle.
But he also could not stand by while other good and innocent people were
killed.
And so when the Nazis overran Poland in World War II, Lazowski yearned to
find a way to fight back, to protect human life, and he seized upon a
paradoxical instrument of salvation--the German army's profound fear of
disease. While German industrialist Oskar Schindler, whose heroic story was
told in the movie "Schindler's List," employed bribes and influence to
protect as many as 1,000 Jews who worked in his factory, Lazowski slyly used
medical science to save the lives of thousands of Jews and other Poles in 12
Polish villages. He and a fellow physician, Stanislaw Matulewicz, faked a
typhus epidemic that forced the German army to quarantine the villages.
(more)
03.11.2008r.
It was with feelings of apprehension that we planned our 2008 trip to Europe, which in part was a search for my past. It all started with my book 'Light from the Shadow'. For a long time I have felt that I would like my book to reach my city Zaleszczyki ,and to be read by young people there. As I no longer knew anyone in Zaleszczyki , I addressed the envelope with my book to the City Hall. After a few months, I received a letter from Wasyl Olijnyk, the Director of the Regional Museum.
(more)
03.11.2008r.
GUESTS FROM FAR AWAY: A COLOURFUL RECOLLECTION
From the July 7th, 2008 edition of Klos
Translated from the Ukrainian by Mila Sandberg Mesner
It all started with the book Light from the Shadows, a gift to the Mayor of our town Zaleszczyki. The author Mila Sandberg Mesner was born in Zaleszczyki, and now lives in Montreal, Canada. The book was published in English, in Montreal in 2005. This edition includes 130 pages, and 16 photographs. In this book Mila shares her recollections of her beloved city Zaleszczyki, memories of her family, and memories of the horror of the German occupation in the ghetto in Kolomea.
(more)
03.11.2008r.
PREMEDITATED MURDER OF 25 POLISH PROFESSORS, AND IN ADDITION THEIR FAMILIES AND GUESTS, ON JULY 4, 1941 IN LWÓW, POLAND
Waclaw Szybalski (edited English version and partially translated polish version of Zygmunt Albert's Polish book "Kazn Profesorow Lwowskich")
(more)
03.11.2008r.
The Baudouin Orphanage
Shmuel Ben Eliezer
Posted Aug 27 2008
On Thursday August 21 an unusual ceremony took place at the Baudouin Orphanage in Warsaw, Poland. This orphanage saved more than 150 Jewish children during WW II. At a time that the staff was barely able to keep non-Jewish children alive (lack of food, medicines, etc), they continued to take in Jewish children even while risking their own lives and the lives of the other children. Miraculously, they were never caught by the Nazis. This orphanage has been is existence for more than 200 years and is struggling with its present financial situation.
(more)
15.05.2008r.
www.independent.co.uk/
Eva Hoffman was a budding pianist before her family had to leave Poland for Canada. Fifty years on, she tells Matthew J Reisz how recitals and romance fill her new book
(more)
15.05.2008r.
Not just for Jews: Companies show
support for Polish Jewish museum
By Dinah A. Spritzer
June 25, 2006
PRAGUE, June 25 (JTA) - Anyone who thinks the planned $58 million Museum of the History of Polish Jews doesn't have the support of general Polish society might have to reconsider.
(more)
14.05.2008r.
Trial of Jewish Heritage opened in Poland
thenews.pl
20.06.2008
The Trial of Jewish Heritage Places connected with the history of
Polish Jews from the north-western city of Bialystok has been opened
today.
(more)
14.05.2008r.
From Lucyna Artymiuk
June 30 2008
I am just finishing reading a most interesting book -
Jews in Eastern Poland and the USSR 1939-46 ed Norman Davies and Antony Polonsky
published in 1991
series of articles by various academics
(more)
14.05.2008r.
Ha'aretz, May 23, 2008
Whoever controls the past
By Laurence Weinbaum
It was Orwell who observed that whoever controls the past controls the
future, and whoever controls the present controls the past. That is why
contemporary politics in Poland, a great repository of Jewish history, are
of such interest and importance to Jewish historians. In recent months, a
heated debate among Polish intellectuals and politicians was triggered by
the publication of the Polish edition of Jan Gross' provocative best-seller,
"Fear."
(more)
24.05.2008r.
FROM THE WEB EDITOR:
On behalf of the Polish-Jewish Heritage Foundation
May 13th 2008
Irena Sendler, a person admired by all of us, passed away on the 12th of May 2008 in Warsaw Poland at the age of 98.
Her heroic efforts to smuggle out and safely place in hiding 2500 Jewish children from the Warsaw ghetto led to her arrest.
She was tortured and condemned to death by the Nazis.
Members of the Zegota underground managed to secure her release.
Despite her brush with death her courage allowed her to continue helping those in need. Yad Vashem recognised Irena Sendler as Righteous Among Nations in 1965. She received the Order of the White Eagle, Poland's highest civilian decoration.
For her selfless courage, she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. May her shining example continue to inspire us.
(more)
24.05.2008r.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUKL1511954920080515?sp=true
Poland buries saviour of Warsaw Ghetto children.
May 15, 2008
WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland's World War Two resistance heroine Irena Sendler, who saved thousands of Jewish children from the Nazi gas chambers, was buried on Thursday to the accompaniment of Roman Catholic and Jewish prayers.
Sendler, who died on Monday aged 98, was once nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for her wartime achievement of smuggling an estimated 2,500 children out of the Warsaw Ghetto.
(more)
24.05.2008r.
Dear Bellert Irena,
Irena Sendler passed away this week. Sendler, who lived until the age of 98, was a unique and heroic person.
Sendler rescued hundreds of children from the Warsaw Ghetto. Using her position as a social worker, she regularly entered the ghetto, smuggled the children and then placed them with Polish families and institutions.
In 1943 Sendler, who led the children' section of the Zegota organization which helped Jews during the war, was arrested and tortured by the Gestapo. She only escaped execution when Zegota managed to bribe some Gestapo officials, and she was released after withstanding severe interrogations, but she did not betray the names of her rescue confidants.
(more)
24.05.2008r.
May She Rest in Peace.
From Life in a Jar "News Week".
May 15, 2008.
In memory of Irena Sendler.
She was buried today at St. Boromeusz Church at Powazki Cemetery. Her funeral was at noon, Warsaw time.
Comments from the funeral:
"Professor Michael Glowinski (a child saved by Irena) made a fantastic speech at the cemetery, and Rabbi Schudrich sang a psalm, so it was really something beautiful, and somehow comforting. I don't have any more tears to cry."
"Michael said it ALL." He spoke such special words."
(more)
24.05.2008r.
Irena Sendler, Lifeline to Young Jews, Is Dead at 98
By DENNIS HEVESI
Published: May 13, 2008
Irena Sendler, a Roman Catholic who created a network of rescuers in Poland, who smuggled about 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw ghetto in World War II, some of them in coffins, died Monday in Warsaw. She was 98.
(more)
29.04.2008r.
Peres Marks Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
By GREER FAY CASHMAN
WARSAW, Poland
April 19, 2008
The throngs of Jews and non-Jews from Poland, Israel and as far away as Australia who gathered in and around Poland's Warsaw Ghetto Square on Tuesday proved that time has not diminished respect for heroism and the refusal to bow to a bestial enemy.
(more)
28.04.2008r.
April 11, 2008
by Vera von Kreutzbruck
- Germany -
Andrzej Wajda was 13 years old when World War II broke out. Together with his mother he lived most of his life in the vain hope that his father might have survived the war: his father's name had never appeared on any official list of Polish soldiers killed in combat. The truth, discovered years later, was that Captain Wajda had been shot cold-bloodedly by the Soviet secret police in a prison in the western Soviet Union. Andrzej and around 22,000 other people had waited for their loved ones in vain.
(more)
28.04.2008r.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7347856.stm
Poland remembers Ghetto uprising
Israel's President Shimon Peres and President Lech Kaczynski of Poland, 14
April 2008
The Polish and Israeli presidents visited Treblinka on Monday
Poland is holding events to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the Warsaw
Ghetto uprising.
(more)
28.04.2008r.
Jewish visibility
Greer Fay Cashman ,
THE JERUSALEM POST,
March 17, 2008
http://www.jpost.com/
The good news is that observant Jews who go to Poland on business, as tourists or to trace their family roots no longer have to fill their suitcases with cans of tuna and packets of powdered soup.
The bad news is that while Jewish life has resurrected itself in Poland and one can walk through the streets in Hassidic garb without attracting undue attention, anti-Semitism still exists.
(more)
28.04.2008r.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/975283.html
Israeli and Polish presidents honor Warsaw Ghetto fighters
By Lily Galili
WARSAW - The powerful, muscle-bound figures on the monument designed by Nathan Rappaport in memory of the Warsaw Ghetto fighters emphasized the emptiness of the square that was once a lively Jewish area, and later a killing ground. None of its inhabitants resembled the strong people on the sculpture. They were heroes of a different ilk.
(more)
28.04.2008r.
http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/breaking/108003.html
Israel, Poland upgrade ties
Published: 04/10/2008
Israel and Poland are upgrading ties.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert hosted his Polish counterpart, Donald Tusk, this week for talks on improving bilateral relations.
(more)
28.04.2008r.
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,3269147,00.html
Poland Marks 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
The commemorative ceremonies started at the former Nazi death camp Treblinka
Poles, Israelis and survivors commemorated the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in the Polish capital on Tuesday, April 15. The insurrection against German occupiers was "a victory over human bestiality," Israel's president said.
(more)
21.03.2008r.
Post-'68 Polish Israelis eligible to become poles again
By MATTHEW WAGNER
March 15, 2008
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite
Beginning this week, Jews who left Poland for Israel in the wake of the March 1968 "anti-Zionist" disturbances will be allowed to reclaim their Polish citizenship.
Polish Minister of Internal Affairs and Administration Grzegorz Schetyna announced Monday that all Poles who were forced to leave Poland after 1968 would have their citizenship recognized automatically.
(more)
21.03.2008r.
Books: Wartime memoir a lesson in finding family treasures
http://www.jewishjournal.com/home/preview.php?id=19016
Michael Berenbaum
"Every Day Lasts A Year: A Jewish Family's Correspondence From Poland," edited by Christopher R. Browing, Richard S. Hollander and Nechama Tec (Cambridge University Press, $28).
Over the past several years, a new genre of original Jewish documentation has emerged in closets and attics of Holocaust survivors. The documentation has all the authority of the diaries and notes that were written in situ, within the ghettos, within hiding, even within concentration camps and elsewhere during the Holocaust.
(more)
21.03.2008r.
Death in the Forest
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i27/27b02101.htm
March 15, 2008
Katyn, a name that haunts Poland, may gain greater familiarity in the
West. A new book from Yale University Press and a new, Oscar-
nominated film from director Andrzej Wajda offer different takes on
the Stalinist mass murder of Polish prisoners of war in the spring of
1940 and its 50-year cover-up.
(more)
21.03.2008r.
History: March '68 memorial
From Warsaw Business Journal
by Adam Zdrodowski
http://www.wbj.pl/?command=article&id=40342&type=wbj
President Lech Kaczyński has honored participants of the March 1968 demonstrations. Commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the so-called "March 1968" events officially started in Poland last week. On March 6, President Lech Kaczyński recognized 45 participants of student and intellectual protests against Poland's communist government.
(more)
21.03.2008r.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3514753,00.html
Sixty-five years after half a million Jews suffered in ghetto, every visitor to Polish capital to be reminded of their fate
Itamar Eichner
Sixty-five years ago it was a place of sorrow and suffering, where hundreds of thousands of Jews lost their lives. But residents or tourists walking in the heart of Warsaw's business district cannot imagine that at the same place, so many years back, 400,000 people were sentenced to death.
(more)
21.03.2008r.
Radio Online - Radio Polonia
Polish-Jewish relations
Report by Michal Kubicki
March 12, 2006
During a recent visit to the United States, Polish president Lech Kaczynski met with representatives of the American Jewish Committee. Since the fall of communism in Poland in 1989, Polish authorities have made efforts towards improving ties with Jewish communities in Israel and the rest of the world.
(more)
29.02.2008r.
Waking a Polish Demon
The article originally appeared in German in the Frankfurter Rundschau on
January 18, 2008.
http://www.signandsight.com/features/1642.html
21 January 2008
Jan Tomasz Gross has taken on the difficult task of removing blind spots
in Polish history. His new book "Fear" has sparked an emotional debate in
the country of his birth, where anti-Semitism is not a popular subject.
By Jakub Kloc-Konkolowicz
(more)
29.02.2008r.
Israel's chief rabbi in Poland to revive first post-Holocaust
rabbinical group
22/Feb/2008
WARSAW (AFP-EJP)---Israel's chief Ashkenazi rabbi Yona Metzger
has arrived in Poland to formally revive the rabbinical
association in the country, a highly symbolic step in what
before the Holocaust was Europe's Jewish heartland.
(more)
29.02.2008r.
Apology for the mistake concerning Krakow !
Dr. Paulsson:
I am writing you in reference to your very well-conceived letters concerning
the piece we ran in the February issue of Town & Country by Susan Crandell.We have received numerous letters echoing your complaints about our
misstatement of fact, and we deeply regret the error. We do fact-check all
of our stories, but unfortunately, the point about the residents of Krakow
collaborating with the Nazis was not confirmed with an independent source, and we simply got our facts wrong. As a woman of Polish descent, I am even more remorseful for having made this error.
(more)
29.02.2008r.
Who Will Write Our History?
Emanuel Ringelblum, The Warsaw Ghetto, And The Oyneg Shabes Archive
By: Shmuel Ben Eliezer
http://www.jewishpress.com
Over the past 12 years that I have been writing this column I discussed the Ringelblum Archives numerous times. The first article was when I saw the archives and the efforts to preserve them. I also wrote about them when a portion went on exhibit in New York, as well as when there was a renewed search for the remaining missing parts on the grounds of the Chinese Embassy in Warsaw.
(more)
29.02.2008r.
Polish Center For Holocaust Research (Conclusion)
By: Shmuel Ben Eliezer
In order to emphasize the magnitude of the Holocaust and genocide, Director of the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology: Polish Academy of Sciences, Professor Henryk Domanski, created the Polish Center for Holocaust Research, on July 2 2003.
(more)
29.02.2008r.
American Jewish Congress
Praises Polish Foreign Minister
for Clear Stance on Anti-Semitism
February 5, 2008
New York - The American Jewish Committee praised
the newly-appointed Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski for
instructing Polish diplomats around the world to avoid any contact
with Jan Kobylanski, leader of the South American Polonia
organization, USOPAL.
(more)
15.02.2008r.
http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=303
February 4, 2008
Bookstores in Poland are restocking copies of a book on Polish anti-Semitism after World War II as a prosecutor investigates whether it violates a law prohibiting ``slander against the nation.''
The book, ``Fear. Anti-Semitism in Poland After Auschwitz'' by Princeton University professor Jan Tomasz Gross, sold out days after the first 25,000 volumes were published. A second print run of 20,000 is being sent to bookstores from today.
(more)
15.02.2008r.
Secular Organizations In Poland
http://www.jewishpress.com/print.do/29764/Secular Organizations_In_Poland.html
by ": Shmuel Ben Eliezer
February 6, 2008
I am often asked what Jewish life in Poland is really like. Because I am a practicing religious Jew, I have been told that my writing is often biased towards the religious community and that I ignore the secular Jews who today are the majority in Poland.
(more)
15.02.2008r.
From Economist.com
Russia revives a vicious lie
Feb 7th 2008
IMAGINE Nazi rule in Germany surviving for decades, with Hitler undefeated in war and succeeded on his death in the early 1950s by a series of lacklustre party hacks who more or less disowned his "excesses". Imagine then a "reform Nazi" (call him Michael Gorbach) coming to power in the 1980s and dismantling the National Socialist system, only to fall from power as the Third Reich collapsed in political and economic chaos.
(more)
30.01.2008r.
SIEC INFO
Jan Tomasz Gross interview, PolAm Dems, John Guzlowski on NPR, The Defense
Shield 1/21/08
Waldemar Piasecki interview with Jan Tomasz Gross, the author of Fear
An Appeal by Polish American democratic leaders. Ambassador Nicholas Rey and Marilyn Piurek co-chair of DNC ethnic committee
Therapy with "Fear" [from Tygodnik Przegląd]
Waldemar Piasecki
Associate me with thinking of Jan Karski, whose truths also aroused
pseudo-patriotic fury among many know-it-alls about Poland, observes Jan
Tomasz Gross in an interview with Waldemar Piasecki.
(more)
30.01.2008r.
"A Scholar's Legal Peril in Poland"
"Princeton Historian Could Face Criminal Charges Over Book"
By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Foreign Service
Amazon site
Friday, January 18, 2008; A14
WARSAW -- Polish prosecutors are considering taking the unusual step
of filing criminal charges against an Ivy League professor for
allegedly "slandering the Polish nation" in a book that describes how
Poles victimized Jewish survivors of the Holocaust in the aftermath of
World War II.
(more)
30.01.2008r.
Unburied dead
Poland's historical epic in the limelight
The Economist
Jan 24th 2008
A CRIME and a lie are the twin strands in the shameful tragedy of
Katyn: the massacre of 20,000 Polish officers by the Soviet secret
police, and the cover-up that followed. Now Andrzej Wajda, Poland's
leading film maker, has made his last film (he is 81) about what he
calls the "unhealed wound" in his country's history.
(more)
30.01.2008r.
Katyn
a film directed by Andrzej Wajda, written by Andrzej Mularczyk and Andrzej Wajda
(more)
12.2007r.
FROM THE EDITOR:
My best wishes for the Chanukah, X-mass and a very happy New Year 2008!
I will be in Miami until February. Then I will start again republishing recent articles of interest to members and friends of Polish-Jewish-Heritage Foundation.
19.12.2007r.
JEWS AND BUFFALOES
Victims of Nazi Pseudo-science
FRANK FOX
Zwoje Copyright C 1997-2007
Nazi plunder of Warsaw Zoo
It was September 1939. Screams of dying and wounded animals mingled with whistling projectiles and explosions as Warsaw's Zoological Garden, located near the capital's air defences, came under heavy German bombardment. Polar bears ran loose, their white furs streaked with blood. Kasia the elephant died struck by a shell, while her two-year old daughter Tuzinka (only the twelfth known elephant to have been born in a zoo up to that time) trumpeted her distress.
(more)
19.12.2007r.
AP Interview: Filmmaker Andrzej Wajda recalls tragic,
entwined fate of father and country
The Associated Press
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=8801369
WARSAW, Poland: In the chilling final scene of "Katyn," the new film from Oscar-winning director Andrzej Wajda, Soviet secret police execute one Polish army officer after another in a dank cellar, washing away the blood with buckets of water.
(more)
17.12.2007r.
Poland Puts Holocaust Survivor in Charge of Polish-German Relations
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2960568,00.html
Nov 21, 2007
Poland has announced that former Polish Foreign Minister Wladyslaw Bartoszewski will be a foreign policy advisor for Warsaw's complex relations with Germany, Russia and Israel, which have all come under strain recently.
(more)
17.12.2007r.
Poland's new PM picks Auschwitz survivor as foreign policy adviser
The Associated Press
Published: November 21, 2007
http://www.iht.com/articles/
WARSAW, Poland: Poland's new prime minister picked an 85-year-old Auschwitz survivor and former foreign minister as a foreign policy adviser Wednesday.
(more)
17.12.2007r.
by Andrea Crawford
http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/feature.html?id=614
In 1945, Jerzy Andrzejewski's novel of the Warsaw ghetto enraged Poles and Jews alike. How will it read to audiences today?
(more)
17.12.2007r.
Polish documentary recounts killing of Poles who helped Jews during Holocaust
http://canadianpress.google.com/article/
15 hours ago
WARSAW, Poland - A new documentary film that recounts the heroic efforts and violent deaths of Poles who helped Jews during the Holocaust premiered Wednesday, amid efforts by Poland to alter a lingering reputation for anti-Semitism.
(more)
17.12.2007r.
http://www.radio.cz/en/article/98191
[30-11-2007]
By John Beauchamp
In pre-war Poland - Jews were one of the largest minorities. And in the
southern city of Kraków they played a prominent role in everyday life with a thriving and dynamic culture. Eighty years after this golden era, the International Cultural Centre is hosting an exhibition that serves as a reminder of what everyday life in Jewish Kraków was really like
In pre-war Poland - Jews were one of the largest minorities.
(more)
17.12.2007r.
By Robert MacMillan
Nov 23, 2007
http://www.reuters.com/article/
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Golda Bushkanietz is not religious but when Irena Walulewicz helped save her from death at the hands of the Nazis, she thought an angel saved her.
(more)
17.12.2007r.
Friday, October 26, 2007
Last week I was in Poland. While there I kept stressing to the people with whom I was traveling that it is wrong to depict Poland as a place of unending anti-Semitism or to fall prey to the absurd but, nonetheless, oft-heard comment made by Jews who visit the place, "The Poles were worse than the Nazis."
(more)
17.12.2007r.
A hero brought to stage
Mary Vallis, National Post Published:
Monday, December 03, 2007
http://www.nationalpost.com/todayspaper/story.html?id=139968
Eight years ago, deep in the heart of the American Midwest, inside a Kansas classroom, four students needed a National History Day project and told their teacher they wanted to learn more about the Holocaust.
(more)
24.11.2007r.
Translated from the Polish
The New York Review of Books
Recently, the Polish government attempted to strip Bronisław Geremek of his seat in the European Parliament, to which he had been elected in 2004. The Parliament immediately voted to condemn the Polish government's action. One of Poland's most distinguished public figures, Geremek was a leader of Solidarity and a former political prisoner of the Communist regime. As foreign minister from 1997 to 2000, he was responsible for Poland's accession to NATO. The Polish government tried to have him dismissed because Geremek had refused to sign a declaration that he had not been a secret police agent during the Communist years.
(more)
24.11.2007r.
![[The New York Times]](../images/clip_image002_0061.gif)
Seeking witnesses of Holocaust
October 19, 2007
Father Desbois' subjects were mostly children and teenagers at the time, terrified witnesses to mass slaughter.
(more)
22.11.2007r.
In an Austrian labor camp, Rachel Mitzmacher and righteous gentile Wladyslaw Misiuna forged a lifetime friendship.
by Carolyn Slutsky
Staff Writer
http://www.thejewishweek.com/
It was in a warehouse used for breeding rabbits in Nazi-occupied Poland that the creation story of the Mitzmacher-Misiuna family friendship began.
(more)
22.11.2007r.
Democracy's kaleidoscope
The jumble of political parties in Poland and other nations just
fosters volatility.
By Timothy Garton Ash
The Los Angeles Times
October 25, 2007
Every so often, just when you're getting tired of it, you are
reminded what a wonderful thing democracy is. Last Sunday, young
Poles queued up patiently, not just in Warsaw and Wroclaw but in Dublin and London, to vote for a Poland in which they would have a
future.
(more)
22.11.2007r.
Fundamentally Freund: No sweeter revenge
Michael Freund
THE JEDRUSALEM POST
October 30, 2007
http://www.jpost.com/
Slowly but energetically, the circle of worshipers made its way around the interior of Krakow's Kupa synagogue, their voices rising ever more forcefully in song and prayer.
(more)
22.11.2007r.
Confronting the unimaginable
By Beverly Beckham, November 4, 2007
http://www.boston.com/
I thought that Auschwitz might explain it. That's why I went. To learn. To know.
(more)
22.11.2007r.
Berliner Katrin Himmler
Was Shocked at SS Ties;
Grandmother's Connections
By LAURA SANTINI
November 7, 2007; Page A1
BERLIN -- As a young girl, Katrin Himmler asked her grandmother about the man in a black suit in a photograph hanging on her living-room wall. Her grandmother didn't say much, but she cried.
The man in the picture was Ms. Himmler's grandfather Ernst, a brother of Nazi SS chief Heinrich Himmler. The little that Katrin's family did tell her about her grandfather, who disappeared during fierce fighting in Berlin in 1945, was that he was apolitical.
(more)
29.09.2007r.
Poet recounts Polish couple's heroism in WWII
By Brandon Griggs
The Salt Lake Tribune
09/08/2007
In Nazi-occupied Warsaw during World War II, two resourceful keepers
of the city's bombed-out zoo rescued Jews by smuggling them into
empty animal enclosures. At a time when handing a thirsty Jew a cup
of water was punishable by death, this brave Polish couple outwitted
the surrounding Germans and spared the lives of some 300 people.
(more)
29.09.2007r.
http://www.thejewishpress.com/
A Year In Poland
By: Shmuel Ben Eliezer
Date Posted: September 11, 2007
For many, Polish Jewry is a misnomer; they (even those that come to visit) think that there is no longer any Jewish life, that it was all killed in the Holocaust. In the past year, I have been privileged to see just how much life there is in Poland.
(more)
29.09.2007r.
Katyn - a film by Andrzej Wajda
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iAKMjctZbV4wXxF3-Hk4RTArypFA
Poland's acclaimed director Andrzej Wajda trained the bright light
of cinema on Wednesday on one of his country's darkest episodes:
that of the Soviet massacre of 22,500 Polish army officers and
civilians in 1940.
(more)
29.09.2007r.
Note on Place Names
Note on Transliteration
Part I Polish - Jewish Relations in North America
(more)
29.09.2007r.
Prisoners of undeclared war
http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20070912/78405407.htm
September 12, 2007
MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Maxim Krans) - When Russia was recognized as the de facto successor to the U.S.S.R. it inherited not only its property, nuclear arsenal and a huge foreign debt, but also the heavy, often unbearable, burden of historic responsibility for the policies and actions of former regimes.
(more)
29.09.2007r.
Video on Katyn from Russia Today
Polish leader honours massacred officers on Russia visit
9/17/07 http://www.russiatoday.ru/features/news/14259/video
MOSCOW (AFP) - Poland's Lech Kaczynski on Monday made his first
visit as president to Russia for highly charged commemorations for
22,500 Polish servicemen massacred by Soviet secret police in World
War II.
(more)
07.09.2007r.
http://www.polskieradio.pl/zagranica/dokument.aspx?iid=58175
Singer's Warsaw
06.09.2007
The 4th festival of Jewish Culture is in full swing in the Polish capital. It is yet another festival presenting the Jewish culture and tradition in Poland after the Krakow Jewish Festival held in summer. The Warsaw event is entitled- Singer's Warsaw.
(more)
07.09.2007r.
Po-Lin
September 06 , 2007
Day Of Remembrance In Lodz
By: Shmuel Ben Eliezer
http://www.thejewishpress.com/
Date Posted: September 5, 2007
A Day of Remembrance for the Jews of the Lodz Ghetto was recently held in the city. The mayor of Lodz, the Israel Ambassador to Poland and the Chief Rabbi of Poland led the march, of nearly 1,000, from the Jewish cemetery to the site of the Radegast Train Station where the Jews had been gathered before being sent to their deaths in Auschwitz.
(more)
07.09.2007r.
http://www.thenews.pl/archives/1128-Polands-Cardinal-Dziwisz-wants-Radio-Maryja-put-under-scrutiny.html
Poland's Cardinal Dziwisz wants Radio Maryja put under scrutiny
Created: Tuesday, September 4. 2007
Catholic weekly "Tygodnik Powszechny" has published a speech by Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz - a former assistant to John Paul II - in which he appeals to Polish bishops to take the controversial Catholic media Radio Maryja and Trwam TV under close scrutiny.
(more)
07.09.2007r.
Polish MEPs boycott UN conference
'We can call this conference anti-Israeli,'
Polish MEP* says
Yaakov Lappin
http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLayout/CdaArticlePrintPreview/1,2506,L-3438591,00.html
A conference of UN NGOs (non-governmental organizations) on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to be hosted at the European Parliament this month, will be boycotted by Polish Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) from across the political spectrum, who say that the conference is biased against Israel.
(more)
07.09.2007r.
From: Aragorn
To: czestochowajews-yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, August 08, 2007 8:21 AM
Subject: [czestochowajews] Cemetery Update
RECEIVED FROM Lucyna
...
This morning, Halina Wasilewicz (Chair of the Czewa TSKZ) and Prof Jerzy Mizgalski and I (on behalf of our World Society) composed a letter to the City President of Czestochowa, Dr Tadeusz Wrona, expressing our shock at the desecration of graves in our cemetery and the fear that one act of stupidity and vandalism such as this, could undo all the efforts of not only Sigmund Rolat and our World Society, but also that of Dr Wrona and the City of Czestochowa over the last decade - efforts, not only to protect the Jewish heritage of this city, but also the promotion of dialogue and understanding that has been built up over that decade between Jews and Catholics in this city.
(more)
07.09.2007r.
Po-Lin
The Jewish Press
By: Shmuel Ben Eliezer
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
http://www.jewishpress.com/page.do/23265/Po-Lin.html
Vandals Desecrate Cemetery
Last week, Mr. Sigmund Rolat visited his birthplace in Poland, the city of Czestochowa. As he does on every trip, he took time out to pay his respects to the local Jewish cemetery. On this last trip, he made the horrible discovery that approximately 100 matzevot (gravestones) had been marked with anti-Semitic phrases and Nazi symbols. The markings included the letters SS, swastikas and the slogan "Jude Raus" ("Jews Out" written in German).
(more)
07.09.2007r.
Newly released secret police documents shed new light on 1944 Warsaw uprising
3 August 2007
http://www.expatica.com/actual/article.asp?subchannel_id=26&story_id=42569
WARSAW (AFP) - Russian and Polish authorities on Thursday published a hefty volume of documents, many of them never declassified before, which shed new light on the ill-fated 1944 Warsaw uprising against the Nazis.
(more)
17.07.2007r.
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/11533/Auschwitz+horror+camp+is+renamed
Thursday June 28,2007
THE notorious Auschwitz concentration camp is to be renamed, after a campaign to make it clear that the death centre was established and run by Germans, not by Poles.
The Polish government announced yesterday that Unesco " the UN's cultural arm " has accepted its request for a change of name.
(more)
17.07.2007r.
Not just for Jews: Companies show
support for Polish Jewish museum
By Dinah A. Spritzer
June 25, 2006
PRAGUE, June 25 (JTA) - Anyone who thinks the planned $58 million Museum of the History of Polish Jews doesn't have the support of general Polish society might have to reconsider.
(more)
17.07.2007r.
Two Jewish Museums to be Built - in Poland and Alaska
7 Tammuz 5767, 23 June 07 04:48
by Hillel Fendel
(IsraelNN.com) Plans are underway to eternalize the history and
contributions of Jewry in both Poland and Alaska. Half the
world's Jews trace their ancestry to Poland; somewhat fewer hail
from Alaska.
(more)
17.07.2007r.
Museum Groundbreaking Raises Hopes
JTA Wire Service
Dinah A. Spritzer
JUNE 23, 2007
Prague
http://www.jewishtimes.com/News/6688.stm
The June 26 groundbreaking at the site in Warsaw where the Museum of the History of Polish Jews is scheduled to open in 2009 will feature a speech by newly elected Israeli President Shimon Peres. Peres, a native of Poland, was one of the early supporters of the $65 million museum, where visitors in eight galleries will be able to explore the 1,000-year history of Polish Jewry.
(more)
17.07.2007r.
http://www.nybooks.com/artics/20331
Recently, the Polish government attempted to strip Bronisław Geremek of his seat in the European Parliament, to which he had been elected in 2004. The Parliament immediately voted to condemn the Polish government's action. One of Poland's most distinguished public figures, Geremek was a leader of Solidarity and a former political prisoner of the Communist regime. As foreign minister from 1997 to 2000, he was responsible for Poland's accession to NATO. The Polish government tried to have him dismissed because Geremek had refused to sign a declaration that he had not been a secret police agent during the Communist years.
(more)
17.07.2007r.
Po-Lin
By: Shmuel Ben Eliezer
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
http://www.jewishpress.com/page.do/21838/Po-Lin.html
Summer Travel to Poland (Part II)
When traveling, it is best to do a little homework first ; the more you know and prepare for a trip the more you will get out of it.
(more)
17.07.2007r.
Tickets Please
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3406901,00.html
09:45 , 05.31.07
Concentration camps may charge for entry ticket
Some of most notorious Nazi death camps, now run as museums, could soon demand entrance fee from visitors to help to finance educational facilities, The Times reports. 'These are graveyards; you do not pay to mourn the dead,' says spokesman for Central Board of Jews in Germany
Ynet
(more)
17.07.2007r.
Author: Adam Michnik (editor-in-chief of Gazeta Wyborcza daily, former leader of anti-communist opposition, human rights activist,)
Source: dialog.org. (Lecture given in July 1995 in Krakow, on a conference entitled "Polish remembrance - Jewish remembrance", first published in Tygodnik Powszechny of 16th July 1995)
Translation: MoPoPressReview (beta version)
* * *
The problem of Jewish remembrance of Poland is anti-Semitism. But the problem of Polish remembrance, is that Poles often encounter hostility from Jews.
My roots
(more)
10.06.2007r.
The tolerance must be mutual
By Wladyslaw Bartoszewski
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/
June 1 2007
I am a Polish Catholic from Warsaw, now visiting Israel for the 15th time. I belong to an older generation of Poles, but have continued to write, engage in historical research, and take an active part in public and political life. In Israel, this generation includes personalities like Prof. Israel Gutman, of Yad Vashem, in Jerusalem, and Vice Prime Minister Shimon Peres, highly respected in Poland since winning the Nobel Peace Prize.
(more)
10.06.2007r.
Groundbreaking for Museum of Jewish History of Polish Jews
By: Shmuel Ben Eliezer
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
Po-Lin
tp://www.jewishpress.com/page.do/21517/Po-Lin.html
It has been more than 10 years since its conception, but finally the long-awaited groundbreaking ceremony for the Museum of Jewish History of Polish Jews has been set for June 26, 2007.
(more)
10.06.2007r.
Moving diary of 'Polish Anne Frank' unveiled
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/wn_report/2007/06/05/2007-06- 05 moving diary of polish anne frank unveil.html
BY ARON HELLER
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Tuesday, June 5th 2007
Stanislawa Sapinska of Poland, center, is accompanied through the Hall of Names at Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial during a ceremony marking the diary's publication.
(more)
10.06.2007r.
The Holocaust is ours
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/866556.html
By Israel Gutman
Several days ago, on May 25, Haaretz published an article by Yitzhak
Laor entitled "The east is ours." In the piece, Laor discussed the
frescoes of writer and artist Bruno Schulz, which were brought to
Yad Vashem, in Israel. Laor complains, "The truth is that Hebrew
readers knew nothing about Schulz until 1979," the year
when "Cinnamon Shops," a book of his stories, was published in
Hebrew.
(more)
10.06.2007r.
Kansas students' tribute to Shoah heroine comes to Montreal
By JANICE ARNOLD
Staff Reporter
http://www.cjnews.com/viewarticle.asp?id=11767
Renata Zajdman of Montreal, a child survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto shares Irena Sendler's story with high shool students from Uniontown Kansas
(more)
10.06.2007r.
Life in a Jar in Montreal
A letter from Norman Conard
After the trip to Montreal
25 May 2007
Montreal, you were wonderful. We just returned from a powerful set of presentations in Montreal, Canada. We salute Herman Gruenwald and the Eva and Herman Gruenwald Holocaust Education Fund for bringing us to Canada. Also, we thank Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom for making this trip possible.
We presented at the Polish Consulate in Montreal, to the Polish Jewish Heritage Foundation. Thanks to the foundation president, Ilona Gruda for her kindness and the dinner. Also, thanks to the Polish Ambassador to Canada and the other embassy and consulate officials who visited our presentations.
(more)
10.06.2007r.
The Family Who Died for Sheltering Jews
Zenit News Agency
March 23, 2007
ROME, MARCH 23, 2007 (Zenit.org).- For harboring Jews, the nine members of the Ulma family were executed by firing squad in 1944 in their German-occupied Polish village.
(more)
10.06.2007r.
Museum of the History of Polish Jews
North American Council
Update
June 8 2007
Dear Friends,
As you already know, the much anticipated groundbreaking ceremony for the Museum of the History of Polish Jews will take place in Warsaw on June 26. For this MHPJ North American Council update, we'd like to share with you some of the events surrounding this historic occasion.
(more)
02.06.2007r.
Life in a Jar in Montreal
A letter from Norman Conard
After the trip to Montreal
25 May 2007
Montreal, you were wonderful. We just returned from a powerful set of presentations in Montreal, Canada. We salute Herman Gruenwald and the Eva and Herman Gruenwald Holocaust Education Fund for bringing us to Canada. Also, we thank Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom for making this trip possible.
(more)
31.05.2007r.
Canadian Premiere
New Flyer Irena Sendler story.pdf
(more)
02.05.2007r.
American Leads a New Generation of Polish Jews
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/25/AR2007032501007.html
By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, March 26, 2007; A01
WARSAW -- The anti-Semitic hooligan picked on the wrong guy when he yelled a slur, hurled a punch and fired pepper spray at a Jew walking near a synagogue here last May.
(more)
02.05.2007r.
Po-Lin
Sigmund Rolat And Wayne Zuckerman Honored At YU Museum
http://www.jewishpress.com/page.do/21196/Po-Lin.html
By: Shmuel Ben Eliezer
Monday, April 2, 2007
Sigmund Rolat And Wayne Zuckerman Honored At YU Museum
The exhibit "And I Still See Their Faces," at the Yeshiva University Museum in the Jewish History Center in N.Y., was the site of a gala reception honoring two of Polish Jewry's greatest friends, Mr. Sigmund Rolat and Wayne Zuckerman.
(more)
02.05.2007r.
'Faces' are traces of a decimated culture
Friday, March 23, 2007
PHOTOGRAPHY
And I Still See Their Faces: The Vanished World of Polish Jews
Where: Yeshiva University Museum, 15 W. 16th St., New York
When: 11 a.m.- 5 p.m. Sundays and Tuesdays-Thursdays through June 24
How much: $8; $6 seniors, students and children ages 5-17. Price includes admission to other exhibits in the Center for Jewish History, where the museum is located. Call (212) 294-8330 or go to www.yumuseum.org.
For the exhibit catalog, go to www.shalom.org.pl.
(more)
02.05.2007r.
An Archive With Tales To Tell
By Anne Applebaum
Tuesday, March 6, 2007; A19 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/05/AR2007030501186.html
Anyone who has ever had the good luck to work in old archives knows how surprising they can be. A thick and unappetizing file might, with patience,
yield a wealth of interesting detail; a pile of yellowed papers can contain
the solution to an old riddle. Recently, an amateur archivist stumbled
across the letters of Otto Frank, Anne Frank's father, in a collection of
documents that had been gathering dust in the YIVO Institute for Jewish
Research for 30 years -- proving that there was still more to learn, even
about the most famous of all Holocaust victims, even in the middle of New
York City.
(more)
02.05.2007r.
For these students, restoring Jewish cemeteries in Poland means history is alive
By Tamar Rotem
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/839602.html
Twelfth grader Eliana Kessler has gotten used to the surprised reactions she gets when she tells people that her pre-army service trip will be a visit to Jewish cemeteries in Poland. It will be the second time that Kessl | 
