Travel / Information Needed About Holocaust Related Travel: Krakow, Lublin, Warsaw [25]


I new my grandfather pretty well but I was too young to ask too many questions. Too late now. My grandmother from Ukraine (Podolia) didn't speak much Hebrew, mostly Yiddish, so conversation was limited. Now I have a lot of questions I would have asked her.

Perception of poland in Israel: I have to say it's not the first topic on the agenda here. While most high school kids go on a trip to Poland in grade 11 or 12, theyr perspective is very limited because they are going to see historic poland from a jewish perspective not modern poland. As a modern country, poland is not more relevant to them than Portugal or Canada.

There's a Poland-Israel cultural event going on this year, but i don't know of anyone who actually knows about it.

Travel / Information Needed About Holocaust Related Travel: Krakow, Lublin, Warsaw [25]

Yes I've been there. It was an intense experience. So intense that i end up spending time on this Polish forum.

My grandfather was from Poland. He came to Tel Aviv in the 1930s. My mother's family left Ukraine for Jerusalem in the 1920s.

Life / Polish Weekend Paradise - The Shopping Malls [6]


You know, of course, that Kazimierz isn't a Jewish neighborhood anymore. It's just where the jewish neighborhood used to be. There's no actual jewish community for it to benefit. More likely it is benefitting real estate developers. It's a shame that in many cities around the world, historical areas are scarred by modern shopping malls. But I guess people gotta shop. The best malls are the ones that try to incorporate the local architecture and blend in. In America they have no problem because there isn't so much historical architecture to begin with.

Travel / Information Needed About Holocaust Related Travel: Krakow, Lublin, Warsaw [25]

Don't expect to come to grips with your emotions and feelings. Expect to acquire new emotions and feelings.

Travel / Information Needed About Holocaust Related Travel: Krakow, Lublin, Warsaw [25]

Here's a bit of advice: If you focus only on the camps, your trip will be very depressing and you will be burnt out after a few days. If you're interested in the Poland that your Jewish ancestors emigrated from,I suggest that you see some remnants of the Jewish world that existed there before the war. Visit the towns your people came from and look for the Synagogue (if it's still there), visit the market squares and imagine what it was like back then. Visit the Jewish cemeteries and see monuments that are hundreds of years old. Ask old people you encounter to show you where the Jews used to live, ask where the ghetto was during the war (try to get a Polish speaker to travel with you). Not everyone will want to talk to you, but some people will be very open and interested to talk. Whether they like Jews or not, old people in poland are a living link with the Jews that once lived there. Everyone has a story to tell, if you can communicate with them. In Krakow visit the old Jewish neighborhood of Kazimierz. That's one of the only places in Poland where there is a functioning synagogue and it gives you a small taste of what once was there.

Also go to the camps (with a Jewish tour group and not on your own if possible) but balance that out with some less morbid places.

Genealogy / Last name Confusion "Judah" [13]

A Jew converting to catholicism would be doing so in order to assimilate so he would not be likely to keep such a Jewish sounding name like Judah. Actually, "Judah" is not a common family name among Jews, and is normally a personal name. You probably don't have Jewish ancestors. But don't worry, many people have succeeded in life despite that.

Food / Polish National Dish [54]

Thanks for the recipe. My sore throat from October is better now, but I'll remember it for next winter.

News / THOUSANDS OF YOUNG ISRAELIS FLOODING POLAND [93]


Let me enlighten you with the jewish point of view: What brought about the death camps was a pathological and evil hatred of Jews. The draping of Israeli flags is a blatant statement that means "We are still alive and we are still proud Jews".

Technically that message would have been more appropriate to express in Birkenau and not Auschwitz I, but that difference is a bit much to expect from high-school kids.


That would really surprise me. Israelis are known for loving India and its people. Going on a treck to india after army service is a very common thing among Israeli young people. If you saw hate it was probably your misinterpretation or maybe a reaction to something your students might have said.

In general, Israeli kids are under a very emotional overload when they visit Auschwitz or Maidanek. This can't be compared to what your students might be going through. For Israeli kids this is very personal.

News / THOUSANDS OF YOUNG ISRAELIS FLOODING POLAND [93]

I have an idea. Let's get the "thousands of young israelis flooding poland" to go to cracovia football games and cheer the home team! Then after the game we can have riots of Jews and Poles breaking beer bottles over each other's heads, just like the good old days.

News / THOUSANDS OF YOUNG ISRAELIS FLOODING POLAND [93]

I had no idea about the football meaning. So your telling me that "Jew" is simply an insult to a team that used to be multi-ethnic. So I guess if i hated someone (not Polish) and I chose to call him a "Pole" as an insult, that would make sense. And of course no Pole would take offense at that.

News / THOUSANDS OF YOUNG ISRAELIS FLOODING POLAND [93]

Hey, my daughter and her Israeli high school class just came back from a trip to Poland. Sorry, but they didn't trash any hotel rooms or attack any Polish old people. They did have a very emotional experience going to camps and seeing the few remains of Jewish communities that no longer exist.

They ran into some friendly Poles and also some drunk Poles who yelled at them. They saw occasional grafitti of a star of david hanging from a gallows (I've seen that too.) One impression of Poles I heard from my daughter is that the girls are pretty but expressionless, not as lively as Israeli girls. The boys, she said, were cute. She is afterall a teenager.

Before they go on these trips they have many seminars to prepare them for it and they usually travel with a survivor who gives them a personal point of view. They are not indoctrinated to hate Poles but they do get the impression that most Poles were not sympathetic to the Jews during the holocaust. They are certainly aware that it was the germans who committed the mass murder, along with help from Ukrainians, Lithuanians and Latvians. They are also aware that Poles were under occupation and were not allies of the germans. I even told my daughter some of the Polish attitudes on this issue that I've learned from this forum. She can form her own conclusions.

The issue of "regaining" property in poland is not discussed at all in their program. As Israelis they are fully aware that they have a homeland and they would not dream of leaving Israel to live in their granfather's villages in Poland. You don't have to worry about thousands of young israelis flooding poland, since these trips are never longer than 10 days.

The purpose of these tours is to give high school kids some historical perspective and help them identify with their ancestors who lived in a very different environment than they do. By the end of the trip they are very glad to go back home.

History / Roman Dmowski- Polish Adolf Hitler? [219]

That hitler wanted to preserve the german volk is of course true. If all he did was encourage the breeding of blond kids, he would be no more sinister than a breeder of arabian horses. It's the other side of his program (exterminating the races he hated) that was the problem. Yet Warsaw8 says he wasn't a racist. If Hitler wasn't a racist then the word has no meaning at all.

News / Germany seeks extadition of Sobibor death camp guard. [65]


If he wasn't a jew then how did he end up being born in Israel to a jewish family? The same book that tells you that jews killed jesus tells you that he was descended from David and was the messiah promised by the jewish prophets, that he visited the jewish temple in jerusalem, that he celebrated Passover.

Not that I care, but you're making nonsense of your own religion. For my part it's possible he never lived at all and the whole story is a fabrication. But isn't it interesting that only part you believe is that the Jews killed him. What does that say about you?

History / Roman Dmowski- Polish Adolf Hitler? [219]


Ukrainians fought for the Nazis. They're certainly slavic. Hitler ignored his own race theories when it was convenient, because it was all insane nonsense to begin with. To see people like Warsaw8 being taken in by those ideas is pathetic and sad.


That is one of the funniest lines I've read on this forum. I guess Hitler's main activity was building folklore museums.

Travel / Best hotel in WARSAW, near the center? [14]

I stayed at Europejski. It's old and has character, and it's near everything.

What's the best hotel in Poland

Related:


what city? Most famous hotel in Poland is Victoria in Warsaw, but I am not sure that it is the best. There are many excellent hotels in different cities in Poland. Prime example of why we need wroclaw!

History / Irena Sendler, the "Female Schindler," Portrayed in CBS Movie [17]

Why the sarcasm? Do you think they have an agenda against Polish "righteous"? And even if that were true, so what? Yad Vashem is a museum, it's not the final arbiter of who was a hero in those times.

History / Irena Sendler, the "Female Schindler," Portrayed in CBS Movie [17]

I just found this page about her on the Yad Vashem site.

yadvashem.org/righteous_new/poland/sendler.html

She does have a tree planted in her honor there and I am sure that there will be a display about her now as well.

Yad Vashem is very slow in changing or adding exhibits. It doesn't reflect the importance of one person over another.

History / Irena Sendler, the "Female Schindler," Portrayed in CBS Movie [17]

I haven't been there lately, but i was at Auschwitz and Maidanek, which were much more chilling than any museum could possibly be. I agree with you that Schindler was no saint, while Sendler probably was. (Most people are complex and are neither all good or all bad).

The comparison is made with Schindler because that story is well known. Now that the movie about Sendler is coming out, I think she will be the yard stick.

Am I right in saying that you take offense because, with so many Polish heroes, Hollywood decides to glorify a German hero whose original motives were selfish and corrupt? I can see that point. I also take offense when movies or books glorify the occasional "good german" because he was not as bad as Eichmann. I think that the glorification of Claus von Stauffenberg in the movie Valkyrie is offensive. So he tried to kill Hitler. Where was he since 1933 when the nazis started arresting Jews and opponents of hitler? He was a Nazi and if the war was going better for germany he would have been hitler's fan like everyone else.

History / UPA - Ukrainian Insurgent Army. How they killed poles in Volhynia (1943). [139]

Being no expert in I'll leave the historical details to you guys. But I think you should know our perception of that period. I don't imagine Chmielnicki was a hero to the Poles either.

As far as what's happening here, the answer is no. I do not deny a connection to my own country. And I do not condemn my friends and neighbors in the army who help defend me from palestinian rockets and bombs. I thank them.

History / UPA - Ukrainian Insurgent Army. How they killed poles in Volhynia (1943). [139]

I can't believe you're all fighting to claim Chmielnicki as your native son. In Jewish history he was considered a bloodthirsty butcher who massacred tens of thousands of Jews all over poland and ukraine. We curse his name. You'd both be better off denying any connection to him.

History / Irena Sendler, the "Female Schindler," Portrayed in CBS Movie [17]

What's your problem 1jola? In this movie the Polish woman is the hero. She saved Jews from the "so called holocaust" as you put it. But I guess if there wasn't a holocaust then Sendler didn't really save anyone. Is that why you're angry about the movie? I can't figure this out.

History / The movie Defiance is a big lie (heroes that saved Poland suppored communism) [102]

Wow! You really hate hollywood don't you. I never realized how much poland's reputation depended on the help of Hollywood. I thought it depended on Poland.

News / "We buy out Poland, Hungary, and Romania!" - the President of Israel [74]

I just saw the video of Shimon Peres. That's what got you hot under the collar? I listened to the original Hebrew and you can obviously hear him chuckling as he says "we bought this and we bought that". He's saying it "tongue in cheek" to emphasize the point that without natural resources Israel has companies that are involved in business ventures all around the world. And Dubai is "buying" manhattan and london and several other places too. That's called "investment and development" and it's good for poland. You should be happy. And don't worry, no one is making it part of Israel.

History / The movie Defiance is a big lie (heroes that saved Poland suppored communism) [102]

Well what the hell is racism if not hating a whole ethnic group? If I hated all Poles that would make me a racist. But I don't. So I'm not.

What do you have against "Pakis" by the way?

History / The movie Defiance is a big lie (heroes that saved Poland suppored communism) [102]


What are you if not racist? If you're not racist, the pope isn't catholic.

History / The movie Defiance is a big lie (heroes that saved Poland suppored communism) [102]

I personally try to be as ruthless as possible.

History / The movie Defiance is a big lie (heroes that saved Poland suppored communism) [102]

No kidding! You did business with the Bielskis? They had a trucking business in the US after the war.

History / The movie Defiance is a big lie (heroes that saved Poland suppored communism) [102]

Last night I finally saw the movie "Defiance". To tell you the truth, the movie didn't portray the Bielskis as saints. It was clearly shown that they were sometimes brutal. It also made it clear that being brutal was often the only way to survive, and that it wasn't their own personal survival that drove them but the responsibility for hundreds of non-combatants. The movie also shows the russians as a lot less than noble. The movie also showed a polish farmer helping jews and losing his life for it. There were other poles (or were they Belarussians?) that betrayed jews. These things clearly happened too. So I don't know what the complaining is about.

News / "We buy out Poland, Hungary, and Romania!" - the President of Israel [74]


What did he say?

History / The movie Defiance is a big lie (heroes that saved Poland suppored communism) [102]


I'll try to be fair and balanced here:

Because polish partisans had a different agenda. Their families were still in their villages and could give them support. The families of the Jews were mostly dead and so they had no support from anyone. Those families who were alive had to hide with the Jewish partisans in the forests. The Polish partisans did not want to risk their struggle and their lives by undertaking the protection of thousands of civilians who could not fight. The Jewish partisans protected old people and children in the forests. Also, Polish partisans would not accept armed Jews among them and stole their weapons. So for the sake of survival, Jewish partisans had to go it alone and they were opposed and sometimes betrayed by AK partisans. The Soviets usually supported the Jewish partisans and for the sake of survival jews accepted that support.

The only way Jews could survive in the forest was to make sure that the local Poles were too terrified to betray them.