News / "A merciful heart can share its bread with the hungry and welcome refugees and migrants" Pope Francis [89]

However, Benedict had made sever missteps in his early life aka joining the Hitler Youth (either under duress or not), whereas luckily for the Vatican, Francis hasn't been burdened by such weighty baggage:-)

Life / Being a Jew in modern-day Poland; Israeli Jew who is of Polish descent [279]

??? Translation into English, Iwonko:-)

Not surprised you haven't answered my private Polish-language posts to you; you might be forced to make sense in your own languageLOL

Look at history and you'll see that no group chooses to be victims; sometimes though, it just happens sadly to work out that way.

While I've never lived for long in Poland, (enjoyable as my stay was!), I'd surely be conscious of my Jewishness every minute of my time there.

Imagine for instance, an African-American returning South, to say, Mississippi, Georgia, or Alabama and trying to integrate again; they'd be conscious of their skin color all the time, don't tell me!!!

Life / Being a Jew in modern-day Poland; Israeli Jew who is of Polish descent [279]

I'm as Jewish as the next Jew or do I have to "prove" I've been circumcised or leave a sperm sample too?

Maybe I doubt you're a Polish Catholic, how about that? Maybe you're a renegade Jew and you're just faking!! ANd maybe you really know perfect English.

lol

Life / Being a Jew in modern-day Poland; Israeli Jew who is of Polish descent [279]

As you have no question which requires such an answer, I scarcely see the point in continuing in the present vein.

You STILL haven't addressed the problem of church-sanctioned anti-Jewish hostility throughout the centuries! Are you honestly going to have intelligent people believe that it was/is the JEWS' fault???

Life / Being a Jew in modern-day Poland; Israeli Jew who is of Polish descent [279]

Who's crying? I'm just imploring for more mature discussion of which I hope you and your partner in crime are both infinitely capable!

lol

Now that's the pot calling the kettle black:-) I'm hardly the one to use teenage vulgarity when correctly-written English would suffice!
What's the matter, Grzegorz? Aren't you capable or do you prefer vulgarity.

The point I was making the the obvious point that the Catholic Church fomented anti-Semitism, in Poland as elsewhere throughout Europe.
If you choose to "spit out" the unpleasant, anti-Semitic part of Catholicism, go right ahead. It doesn't mean I have to bury my head in the sand as well:-)

Tough to breath down there, manLOL

Life / Being a Jew in modern-day Poland; Israeli Jew who is of Polish descent [279]

@Grzegorz and Ironside, I'm not impressed by your sophomoric, teen "American"-sounding vulgarities!!!\

If you're not willing to post on a high level of communicative debate, you shouldn't be allowed to post, period.

(Mods, duly make a note of that!)

:-)

Genealogy / Do I look Polish? (my picture) [378]

Gosh, with intermarriage, mixed-marriage etc., it's darn tough to nail it every time, "YOU look Polish!" While the photos seem to indicate perhaps Central or Eastern European extraction, there has been so much cross-pollination of races and peoples throughout Europe, it's not at all easy for me to say!

Sorry for waffling:-)

Life / Being a Jew in modern-day Poland; Israeli Jew who is of Polish descent [279]

Those who ignore the past, will be condemned to repeat it, Ironside! Santayana was quite right in his simple and oft-quoted statement. Those who ignore the truth will sooner rather than later be forced by circumstances to fess up to it:-) You choose not to admit the truth until it confronts you. Well, it's already confronted you....in Oświęcim, Belżec, Majdanek, Treblinka, and Sobibór. How much more evidence do you need?

Six-million or more murdered was hardly an act of "love" now, was it?

Life / Being a Jew in modern-day Poland; Israeli Jew who is of Polish descent [279]

True, but they can't hurt either:-)

Life / Being a Jew in modern-day Poland; Israeli Jew who is of Polish descent [279]

Hear, hear Dolno! Right on, boy, good speech. Let's continue to pray for enlightenment:-)

Genealogy / The typical Polish look, or all Eastern Europeans [676]

In the end, I've yet to find ONE "typically" Polish look, rather, an admixture of various neighboring influences, i.e. more "Germanic" nearing the former Silesian/German border, more stock "Slavic" tending towards Ukraine etc...

Life / Being a Jew in modern-day Poland; Israeli Jew who is of Polish descent [279]

Are your trolling too, perchance? You merely reiterate the nonsense of "Jewish parasites" feeding off the unwitting gentile. That's so much malarky, I'm scarcely going to defend it:-)

Life / Being a Jew in modern-day Poland; Israeli Jew who is of Polish descent [279]

@Wish all Poles felt as you, Crow:-)

@Dolno, now you're finally talking sense, and good sense at that! Spot on, pal:-) Education is the key in so many areas. In ignorance isn't actually bliss, but a false paradise!

@Ironside,
With your nasty anti-Jewish vitriol, not so sure you understand the Christian spirit either, except nominally aka Say a few Hail Mary's and call it a (Sun-)dayLOL You, like many other Christians remind me more of "Sunday Christian", a hypocrite three-hundred-sixty FOUR days out of the year, except for Christmas (which celebrates Jesus' birth, who was a Jew!).

Life / Being a Jew in modern-day Poland; Israeli Jew who is of Polish descent [279]

The long of it is that only when Pope John Paul aka Karol Wojtyła publically "apologized" for more than a millennium of Catholic anti-Semitism and indeed Church-sponsored hostility towards Jews simply for being Jews (read "different") was there any movement in a direction roughly amounting to conciliation between the two groups.

Jews were all too willing to build bridges, however, conversion to Christianity was and always will be something quite apart; it's fine to be a conciliator, so long as you don't become a doormat upon which others feel it is their G-d-given right to trample freely:-)

Life / Being a Jew in modern-day Poland; Israeli Jew who is of Polish descent [279]

The "future", as with Millenial types in Scandinavia, Germany and other Northern European countries, tend indeed more towards the exotic, scarcely European-looking New York Jewish intellectuals, but rather, African-Americans, Asians and Hispanics. Adventurous, empowered, educated, and multilingual younger Polish women usually prefer brown-skinned hubbies to procreate "future" brown-skinned babies to catapulty stodgy old-world Europe (finally!!!) into the 21st century:-)

The LAST thing they'd want is to be mired in a Chopin-loving, hand-kissing, fossilized existence of a museum-like and outdated (HORRORS!!!) "European" identityLOL

Life / Being a Jew in modern-day Poland; Israeli Jew who is of Polish descent [279]

While you're probably right in what you say, I contend that modern-day Poles, much as with contemporary Germans, Austrians, Ukrainians, Balts and others, are merely on "good behavior", having gotten their arses reamed back in WWII. Most older gentile Europeans whom I've met and spoken to at length are in my estimation "de-fanged" anti-Semites, scarcely raving racists, but ever so suspicious of whom they perceive as outsiders!

I too hope to extend the proverbial olive branch to a stranger, on the other hand, there's an old saying in English: "A leopard doesn't change its spots!" People change their surface behavior, rarely (if ever) their basic character:-)

@Ironside, it is namely YOU who are trolling, sir, not I! How many times have I posted about my wonderful, if all too short, sojourn to Szczecin?? At least ten, counting now. As to the rest of the claptrap you've posted, I wouldn't dignify the half of it with a reply:-)

Life / Being a Jew in modern-day Poland; Israeli Jew who is of Polish descent [279]

When last in Poland, round about '95, I received odd glances from people when I began speaking Polish. While naturally, I was doing THEM the favor in this case, there seemed a perceptible chill in the air.

When we went back to the hotel, my buddy Boguś confessed that they were a little floored because they didn't expect an American-born Jew with NO Polish background to speak even basic Polish. He continued that they suspected I was Jewish.

"How did they know"?, I inquired. "Oh, don't worry Marku! They know, believe me!
:-)

Life / Being a Jew in modern-day Poland; Israeli Jew who is of Polish descent [279]

Bury your poor little head further in the sand and sooner or later you won't be able to breathe at all:-)

We didn't create this stinking brew called "humanity", but at least come clean as to its foibles, dolnośląsk!

There are none so deaf as those who will not hear and none so blind as those who will not see!

@MODS, just bear in mind apropos my earlier post: CONTEXT, CONTEXT, CONTEXT!!!
:-)

Life / Being a Jew in modern-day Poland; Israeli Jew who is of Polish descent [279]

You're indeed an incurable optimist, dolno! In ignorance there must be bliss, i.e. what you don't know or care to know, can't hurt you, is that right? Seems friend, you're not only an incurable optimist, but an incurable IGNORAMUS as wellLOL

Incredible:-)

Life / Being a Jew in modern-day Poland; Israeli Jew who is of Polish descent [279]

While I can't recall chapter and verse, I recollect reading in the New Testament something along the lines of "Anyone, be he heathen or Jew, can still enter the Kingdom of Heaven so long as he takes Christ into his heart."

The implication here is that if one is not a Christian, one is therefore condemned to an afterlife of everlasting damnation amid the hellfires of Satan, ergo, to be a valid/valuable human being, is to be or become a Christian:-)

Dolno, you and Iwonka should try to stay awake during service or you guys'll miss all the important stuff!!
lol

@Iwonka, as long as there are folks out there who yell epithets such as "Dirty Jew!", "Filthy kike!" etc., it's time to take off the rose-colored glasses there, sweetie pie and take a look at the real world around you!

Life / Being a Jew in modern-day Poland; Israeli Jew who is of Polish descent [279]

Ahemm, do you honestly believe the good gentile folk of Europe awoke one fine morning and decided to become (often vicious and bloodthirsty) anti-Semites just for the kick of it, burning Jews at the stake, burning them out of their homes (as in 13th cent. Lincolnshire in England) and trying to excise them from Christian society??!

Maybe y'all DID go to church on Sunday and sit through the sermons, readings and lessons, but perhaps you were ASLEEP through it all:-)

Life / Being a Jew in modern-day Poland; Israeli Jew who is of Polish descent [279]

Iwonko,

The Catholic Church had been spreading lies for centuries concerning the Jews as "Christ killers"! This was of course the primary, if not the very foundation, of anti-Semitism worldwide, at least among Christians:-) It was ironically one of your own, that veritable patron saint of a pope, the late Karol Wojtyła, who finally (and long overdue, I might add!) exonerated the Jews by saying that the Jews did not murder Christ.

When unknowing people innocently inquire "Why was there anti-Semitism?" The answer lies therein. That the Jews were later demonized as harbingers of evil, conspirators bent on world domination ad nauseum, all stems from that mistaken notion that the Jews killed Christ.

The Church then, in cooperation with local aristocracy, made life unbearable for the Jews, preventing them from owning property, joining the army, professional guilds etc..., thus ostracizing them from the society which was forced to take them in in the first place. Herein lies the tragic irony of the Jews throughout history.

Life / Being a Jew in modern-day Poland; Israeli Jew who is of Polish descent [279]

Neither were you, Grzegorz, which is what makes your comments so meaningless!! You obviously are aware as well that the Catholic Church purposely fomented anti-Semitism through its propagation of the lie that the JEWS, rather than the Romans, crucified Christ:-)

Anything else you'd care to know, smarty?
lol

UK, Ireland / Time for Polish Leaving England [15]

Outside the States, perhaps Australia or Canada would seem to me to be the safest "havens" for sufficiently English-speaking Poles, fed up with post-Brexit Britain:-)

Germany?? Once more, sheer madness, unless one's either well-off, already has a firm job offer with a fixed salary, has been called in as a super specialist aka gov't translator, I T specialist or someone with a special skill set, and/or speaks HONESTLY fluent German! Apart from that, it's a waste of time, yours as well as theirs!

UK, Ireland / Time for Polish Leaving England [15]

Not so sure about that, jon! Normally, I'd agree, but after reading about the strong Brexit response as well as PM May's critical immigration stance, Panna Misiuk may not be far from wrong:-)

Certainly hopping over to Germany right now, would to my mind be going from the frying pan right into the fire!!

UK, Ireland / Time for Polish Leaving England [15]

Spot on!

UK, Ireland / Time for Polish Leaving England [15]

Germans dislike foreigners on the whole even worse than the English:-)

Life / Being a Jew in modern-day Poland; Israeli Jew who is of Polish descent [279]

You know the US vulgar slang, but scarcely the higher level of English required in order to debate with a native English speaker!

I stand by the facts, not opinions.

Life / Being a Jew in modern-day Poland; Israeli Jew who is of Polish descent [279]

Apparently once again, we've a sever failure to communicate, the fault of which lies either with your English (more than likely), or merely the fact that I'm attempting to discuss matters rationally:-)

Life / Being a Jew in modern-day Poland; Israeli Jew who is of Polish descent [279]

"No, I don't understand."

Then clearly you don't understand much, my friend! Let's put your name next to the rest of the Polish "Lumpenproletariat" who'd start the pogroms all over again if it meant a few more złoty in their pockets or bread on the table.

You give Poles a bad name. Luckily, I and other enlightened European Jews can manage to look beyond such prejudice and content ourselves with the illusion that it's only a handfull, a minority of wrong-thinking people in Poland or elsewhere who really blame the victim entirely for what happened instead of perhaps looking for the root causes of modern anti-Semitism aka THE CHURCH!!!