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To: Jewbacca
no worries. since I moved to poland two years ago, well to Warsaw itself (pass by the erstwhile ghetto every day to office), I am struck by the memories of the war. On every street corner there is a sign or a memorial saying "here on xx day of 1943/44 yy number of poles were killed by nazis" -- and the memorial in the ghetto areas where sadly nothing, not even walls remain.

but to really understand the impact the war had, one needs to go to the countryside -- I've been to small villages in the mountains where you go in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of a forest and you'll see this marker

History is divided into "before the war"and "after the war". Jews are remembered as a part of the body of Poland -- Poles who were Jews and you can see little signs of how it has changed the lives of this nation forever.

I can't imagine it -- 20% of your people wiped out, and one entire community erased. Because most Jews here were not in the ghetto, they were your tailor, your barber, your friend, the shopkeeper etc. integrated or hasidic, they were a part of the landscape. And then, erased, wiped out

Shocking.

On reading history - before the partitions of Poland in the late 1700s, nearly 60% of world jewry were in the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth. It was the Israel of that time.

And today, a handful. A vibrant color in the cloak that was Poland was ripped away and though the hole is stitched together the tear still shows...

11 posted on 08/31/2012 8:06:55 AM PDT by Cronos (**Marriage is about commitment, cohabitation is about convenience.**)
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To: Cronos
Bump. What an informative, sensitive and beautifully written post. Just remarkable.
12 posted on 08/31/2012 9:21:01 PM PDT by Republic (Keep uhbama desperate - seems to force slips of honesty from his angry interior)
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