Young Israels not shown Poland's Jewish community

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Jan 26, 10, 15:26 #1

Ha'aretz:
Cultural org. official: Jewish community once again alive and kicking in Poland
...Poland is not a cemetery and Polish Jews are not all dead, the head of the cultural institution of Polish Jewry said yesterday, on the eve of International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Artur Hofman urged Israel to send its youths "to see the community as well - not only death camps." "Israel's Education Ministry annually sends thousands of students to Poland, but they're never taken to see our community," Hofman said at the office of his organization, the Social Cultural Association of Jews in Poland.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1145181.html

HarryThreads: 62 Posts: 8,508 Joined: May 2, 07 ♂ [Suspended]	Jan 26, 10, 15:32 #2
Polonius3: "Israel's Education Ministry annually sends thousands of students to Poland, but they're never taken to see our community," If that is true, who are the groups of teenagers I see gathering outside the Yiddish theatre in Warsaw? And why are they always speaking Hebrew when I see them walk past me when I'm having a smoke outside?

Polonius3Threads: 1,005 Posts: 4,834 Joined: Apr 11, 08 ♂	Jan 26, 10, 15:35 #3
Just shows to go how extensive and variegated reality -- any reality -- is. Usually we address only a small sliver thereof and often regard it as the total experience.

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Jan 28, 10, 10:20 #4

I understand the frustration of the Polish Jewish community – no one wants to be thought of as irrelevant. But the truth is that as a Jewish community they don't amount to more than a typical apartment building in Tel Aviv. They are as significant as, say, the Jewish community of Helsinki. So it's not surprising that visitors from Israel don't take much notice.
When I was in Warsaw I found them by chance when I visited the Nozyk synagogue. I was very happy to find fellow Jews to pray with, but I couldn't understand why they would want to live in Warsaw when they could live in Israel. When I hinted this to one of them, she was of course offended.

What does impress me very much though is the gradual awakening of Jews who's Jewishness was hidden. People whose parents were hidden by Poles and assimilated and who are little by little rejoining the Jewish flock.

Polonius3:

Poland is not a cemetery

But when you travel to Poland to see your grandparents' world, there's really nothing left of it but cemeteries, so that's where we go.

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Jan 28, 10, 23:43 #5

Polonius3:

Artur Hofman urged Israel to send its youths "to see the community as well - not only death camps."

Yes, they just take them to Oswiecim.

Interestingly, I was in the public library in Philadelphia the other week, and I was looking at the travel books, you know, they have them for almost every country, most are published by Fodor...I look at the Fodor's 'Guide to Poland'...What do I read in the very introduction to the book?...'By far, the most moving sight of any in Poland is the 'death camp' in Auschwitz...It has more emotional impact then any other place or historical sight in Poland, natural or man made'...Yes, this is what it said.

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