"We want to leave something for our kids," said Shoshana, who declined to give her last name. The member of kibbutz Ma'anit said she has been encouraging her parents to visit Poland for years, but to no avail. Bringing her parents to the embassy took a bit of convincing as well.
"I am embarrassed that I need to ask for something like this," said Shoshana's father, who also refused to give his name. The resident of Hadera said that he spent most of World War II in Russia and then moved to Israel afterwards. "I've never been back. I know them, and they were worse than the Germans," he said.
Those who have re-established ties with Poland think the discrimination still exists.
Hana Viesbrot, a 71-year-old native of Hrubishov, Poland, has visited Poland twice, but thinks the country is not eager to give Israelis citizenship. "They are afraid because they think people will want their homes back."
" But not everyone is lining up at the embassy. Yehudit Re'em, who attended elementary school in Poland, lives near the embassy and sees crowds outside the entrance every day, rain or shine. But she's never joined them.
"After all that has happened, I'm not interested," she said.
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Years ago, I watched a TV program about Poland and the Holocaust and one part of it discussed a Holocaust surviver. He was a Polish Jew who returned to his home in a medium size Polish town several months or maybe a year after his liberation. Anyway, all his immediate family was dead.
He stated that he went to the old family homeplace hoping to find some photos or just some little items that had belonged to to his parents and his sisters. He just wanted something to cling to from their lives together. He said that he had no intention of staying there as he already decided to make his way to the USA where he had some cousins. They had promised to help him start a new life.
When he arrived at his old homeplace, he said that he was run off like a mad dog and called vicious names! Not a shread of human kindness at all was shown to him, he said. He commented that he would never return to Poland ever again.
From the comments by some of the Iraelis in this article, they too may have experienced that sort of brutal treatment OR WORSE in Poland.
This is common story. After WW2 many Jewish survivors went back to try and reclaim their homes and apartments in Poland. But their homes now had Polish living in them who could not be budged. These Jews were mostly run off by the anti Semites of Poland. They went to Israel, America, Canada and elsewhere. But could not stay in Poland
I know one story first hand. The man is 102 now
During the Holocaust Poland’s Jewish population shrank from 2.25 to 2.5 million to around 100,000, around 95%. Post WWII, it shrank from around 100,000 to 8,000 today, another 90%+. It’s fair to say there are plenty of stories like Lion’s and the father in the article’s out there. IMO, it’s probably not productive to extrapolate those stories to today. Poland seems to be making efforts to remember their former Jewish heritage. And no, 1,200 citizenship requests per year doesn’t mean Jews are flocking back to Poland.