Melissa, so good to see you writing for Future of Jewish !! For those who know of your extremely well researched articles and excellent writing this is another work on a topic most know little or nothing about, but so relevant to Jews today. Yesher Koach! Gmar Chasima Tova to you and to your family.
Melissa, that was most informative, thank you. The displacement and emigration of European Jews post WW2 is well known and well documented, but as your article reveals, a post Six Day War 1967 eviction & displacement is less discussed.
This is my also story. When Israel won the six-day war in 1967 and the young Jews of Poland openly celebrated for the first time ever, the Communist Party was infuriated. Poland was ruled by Russia. Soviet tanks were found in the desert. Israel defeated not only Egypt but also Russia. The Polish party took 'this Jewish pride' and went on offensive, that in Poland, a 'Zionist conspiracy' was growing against the government. Mass media and the secret police used the words Jews and Zionists interchangeably. Civil rights demonstrations held by students and 'intellectuals' the government, turned into propaganda. An Antisemitic undertone followed, and Jews were singled out. The targeting of Jewish students, professors, and professionals followed. The result was that most Polish Jews lost their jobs and about 40,000 were forced out of Poland. Of the over 3 million Jews who lived in Poland before the war, about 100,000 Jews remained at the end of World War II. By 1958, 50,000 left, to Israel and other parts of the world, the rest like my parents chose to stay, and ten years later they were being forced to leave once again. By the time communism fell in Poland in 1989, only 5,000–10,000 Jews remained in the country. Most of them were the old or those who concealed their Jewish identity.
My grandmother’s relatives left Poland in 1967 or 1968 and settled in Israel. I knew of the communist government’s purges of Jews. They were the casualties. That part of my family today live in Israel.
Today I live in DC. Our next mayor is a member of the Democratic Socialists. I expect history to repeat itself…again.
I appreciate your optimism and I wish I could share it. For years, I struggled with the age-old question of why G_d, who we praise and serve, would let so many of us be sacrificed in purges and massacres perpetrated on us time after time. I can to the conclusion that as people of the covenant, we will continue collectively as Jews, but individually, well, that's another story. I believe we must speak out vociferously against the dangers to us, to the nation as a whole, presented by the Democratic Socialists. Mamdani's Democratic Socialist mask hides his true intent, that of taking over our democratic institutions and imposing Islamic rule. The Rebbe wanted us to shed light on darkness. I infer that to mean, in part, educating others, especially our fellow Jews, as to the dangerous transformation taking place in the West today.
Yep, it's "deja vu all over again" (in the immortal quote attributed to Yogi Berra). Now "Zionists" are being attacked and vilified. What do you have to do to be, or at least, be presumed to be a Zionist? Simple: just be Jewish.
Thanks for writing this timely reminder. Like some today, the Soviets also said they were "anti-Zionist but not antisemitic " in 1918, according to Dara Horn and others. Theirs seems to have been the first such campaign.
The communist world under the Warsaw Pact along with the Soviets was embarrassed by the 1967 Israeli destruction of the Russian equipment and training that went with it so I'm not surprised that Polish Jews were targeted. Wonder if in the Warsaw Pact there were other countries doing as Poland did.
I visited Poland for a few weeks in 2018. Knowing a little of its history, after a little while, a sense of foreboding began. It is a monoculture and the more I noticed that, the more it dawned on me it’s deliberate, manufactured.
I never made it to Jedwabne but in recent times, I hear there are new plaques and stones not so far from the memorial of the murdered Jews of that town, that profess to deny even now, that this massacre took place and that the Jewish residents were merely “communist infiltrators” or some such.
They replaced a vibrant, industrious, loyal, and patriotic community with a community whose goal is the destruction of their way of life. Only G-d knows the plan because I surely cannot figure it out.
Melissa, so good to see you writing for Future of Jewish !! For those who know of your extremely well researched articles and excellent writing this is another work on a topic most know little or nothing about, but so relevant to Jews today. Yesher Koach! Gmar Chasima Tova to you and to your family.
Melissa, that was most informative, thank you. The displacement and emigration of European Jews post WW2 is well known and well documented, but as your article reveals, a post Six Day War 1967 eviction & displacement is less discussed.
This is my also story. When Israel won the six-day war in 1967 and the young Jews of Poland openly celebrated for the first time ever, the Communist Party was infuriated. Poland was ruled by Russia. Soviet tanks were found in the desert. Israel defeated not only Egypt but also Russia. The Polish party took 'this Jewish pride' and went on offensive, that in Poland, a 'Zionist conspiracy' was growing against the government. Mass media and the secret police used the words Jews and Zionists interchangeably. Civil rights demonstrations held by students and 'intellectuals' the government, turned into propaganda. An Antisemitic undertone followed, and Jews were singled out. The targeting of Jewish students, professors, and professionals followed. The result was that most Polish Jews lost their jobs and about 40,000 were forced out of Poland. Of the over 3 million Jews who lived in Poland before the war, about 100,000 Jews remained at the end of World War II. By 1958, 50,000 left, to Israel and other parts of the world, the rest like my parents chose to stay, and ten years later they were being forced to leave once again. By the time communism fell in Poland in 1989, only 5,000–10,000 Jews remained in the country. Most of them were the old or those who concealed their Jewish identity.
Suzanna was there. This is hers first hand account. Read about it and more
https://cup.columbia.edu/book/memory-is-our-home/9783838214825/
My grandmother’s relatives left Poland in 1967 or 1968 and settled in Israel. I knew of the communist government’s purges of Jews. They were the casualties. That part of my family today live in Israel.
Today I live in DC. Our next mayor is a member of the Democratic Socialists. I expect history to repeat itself…again.
Think Good & It Will Be Good ! The Rebbe
Expect history will be good for Jews and that the sins of the past will not be repeated!
I appreciate your optimism and I wish I could share it. For years, I struggled with the age-old question of why G_d, who we praise and serve, would let so many of us be sacrificed in purges and massacres perpetrated on us time after time. I can to the conclusion that as people of the covenant, we will continue collectively as Jews, but individually, well, that's another story. I believe we must speak out vociferously against the dangers to us, to the nation as a whole, presented by the Democratic Socialists. Mamdani's Democratic Socialist mask hides his true intent, that of taking over our democratic institutions and imposing Islamic rule. The Rebbe wanted us to shed light on darkness. I infer that to mean, in part, educating others, especially our fellow Jews, as to the dangerous transformation taking place in the West today.
Yep, it's "deja vu all over again" (in the immortal quote attributed to Yogi Berra). Now "Zionists" are being attacked and vilified. What do you have to do to be, or at least, be presumed to be a Zionist? Simple: just be Jewish.
Thanks for writing this timely reminder. Like some today, the Soviets also said they were "anti-Zionist but not antisemitic " in 1918, according to Dara Horn and others. Theirs seems to have been the first such campaign.
The communist world under the Warsaw Pact along with the Soviets was embarrassed by the 1967 Israeli destruction of the Russian equipment and training that went with it so I'm not surprised that Polish Jews were targeted. Wonder if in the Warsaw Pact there were other countries doing as Poland did.
I was there, 20 years old @ Warsaw Univ, stripped from cityzenship then Israeli
As the aftermath of March 1968, Poland, my home country, lost its most precious treasure -- its Jews...
By the way, Adam Michnik and Henryk Szlajfer are Jewish. Adam Mickiewicz, our greatest poet, may have also been Jewish by maternal line
I visited Poland for a few weeks in 2018. Knowing a little of its history, after a little while, a sense of foreboding began. It is a monoculture and the more I noticed that, the more it dawned on me it’s deliberate, manufactured.
I never made it to Jedwabne but in recent times, I hear there are new plaques and stones not so far from the memorial of the murdered Jews of that town, that profess to deny even now, that this massacre took place and that the Jewish residents were merely “communist infiltrators” or some such.
Poland…..
May Europe, both yesterday and today, be happy with its choices.
Europe - we are sad we killed 6 million Jews. Let's bring in 40 million Muslims.
They replaced a vibrant, industrious, loyal, and patriotic community with a community whose goal is the destruction of their way of life. Only G-d knows the plan because I surely cannot figure it out.
Excellent!!
What of this history is known by the children who are taken on those strange pilgrimages to concentrations camps in Poland and thence to Israel?