'Hidden Jews of Poland' learn about Judaism in Israel
U.S. non-profit organization Shavei Israel brings Poles with Jewish heritage who were raised as Catholics to Israel seminar aimed at strengthening ties.
By Haaretz ServiceA group of young Poles who recently discovered their Jewish roots arrived this week in Israel to participate in an educational seminar aimed at strengthening their ties to the country.
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Polish group on seminar in Jerusalem, August 2010. |
| Photo by: Shavei Israel |
In recent years, there has been a rise in the amount of Poles discovering their undisclosed Jewish roots, and they have become known as the "Hidden Jews of Poland", many of whom have begun to return to Judaism.
The special three-week educational seminar held entirely in Polish, was organized by non-profit organization Shavei Israel, founded in the U.S. by Michael Freund, a former American resident who now lives in Israel, with the aim of strengthening the ties between the Jewish people, Israel and the descendants of Jews around the world.
The polish youth, most of who are now in their 20s, were raised as Catholics primarily in Krakow, Katowice, Warsaw, Tychy, Gdansk and Cieszyn.
For many of them, this is their first trip to Israel, and they will receive a thorough tour, starting ain Jerusalem, where the seminar is based, and heading to Lake Kinneret in the northern Galilee, and to the Negev in the south.
According to Shavei Israel, over 4,000 Jews living in Poland have registered with the organization, yet experts have estimated that there could be tens of thousands of Polish people living as Christians who either hide their Jewish identities, or are completely unaware of their Jewish heritage.
"Since the fall of the Iron Curtain, an increasing number of Polish youth have begun to rediscover their families' Jewish heritage, which was often hidden out of fear of persecution by the Nazis and the Communists,” Michael Freund, Founder and Chairman of the Shavei Israel said in a statement. “Many are seeking to reconnect with their Jewish roots and with the State of Israel, so we organized this special seminar for them in order to facilitate this process. For us, this is an exciting and historical task.”
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in some 1-2 years there will be the next census in Poland. The difference from previous is, you can write 2 nationalities (Jews are recognized by law as the National minority). People with mixed identity will no longer have to choose between declaring Polish and Jewish. Btw, you are always invited to visit the Forum of Polish Jews fzp.net.pl, which has an associated discussion forum forumfzp.net - thanks to google translator, you can find out what we talk about :)
Mark, don't dig to deep into your past,you too may find that you may be of jewish descent.
I realize that many Jews who made alliyal to Israel soon felt betrayed by zionism and had the wisdom to return to Europe prefering to live again in Germany, Poland and other country's Israel would not care to have mentioned but of course this does leave the IDF somewhat short in numbers especially when your wealthy israelis tend to send their kids overseas so that they do not get killed so again here we go with the zionists doing what they do best and getting other peoples children to go to Israel to join the idf and do their fighting. Just a word of warning to these children and their parents. If you think that the good old rebs will allow your children to be buried in the Military Cemetary on Mt. Herzl, think again, once they have died for Israel, you will be looking around for a place that will allow them a place to be buried outside a Jewish burial ground. I would advise you to keep your children at home. Israel does not care a bit about them.
As stated in the heading Hitler was to kill Poles. You can read the text of his speech at whatisknown.com and how he intended to occupy Poland with Germans and wipe out ALL Russians.
the entire concept of a 'hidden jew' is stupid. these people aren't jewish. shall we say that the entire population of the british isles are 'hidden pagans' out of the same respect?
Before WW2, 3.5 million Jews lived in Poland,,,immediately after the war, about 200,000 traumatised survivors returned to try & rebuild their lives & unsuccesfully reclaim possessions & property. However, this was not the tranquil & stress free return that German Jews experienced immediately after the war. Many Jews were slaughtered for trying to reclaim what was previously theirs (eg. Kielce pogrom of 1946) & many righteous Poles who had hidden Jews in the war were also attacked & slaughtered because of their assumed wealth,,,then the Communist sponsored anti semitism of 1956 & 1968 led to most remaining Jews leaving the country,,,,it is a fascinating & heart wrenching story & no surprise to me that more Jews are ''coming out of the closet'.'
Jews were accepted and prospered in Poland for centuries. However when Austria, Russia and Germany partitioned Poland in the 1700's, the occupiers developed and exploited a fear of Jews to help sustain their occupation. Not only have there been Jews that became Catholic for various reasons, there was significant inter-marriage between Catholic and Jewish Poles. Many of us Poles have Jewish blood, a Jewish heritage, but also a Catholic heritage with a foundation of both Jewish and Catholic values. It is the tenets of our faiths today and how we apply them in our lives that are more important than any identity with land. Surely there is no need to repeat history and how governments have exploited fears and prejudices to advance the quest for more land and supposed security.
"lurking" in the streets, people who parents and grandparents hid behind non-Jewish identities in order to survive. Surivive they did, only to be faced with a more begnine enemy, that let me, on condition that they conceal there Jewish past. As in Hispanic world where the days of denying the the past of their forefathers, these "infants that were kidnapped" by the Gentiles, too will return to their people. Trouble is that here, where the infrastructure has a habit of denying its Jewish roots in so many insidious ways, these new Halachic converts to Judaism will make it harder for the so-called Secularists to be an "am khofshi b'artzenu".
As we saw with the Russian immigrants, many were not actually Jewish. Dpesn't that put the race bit of Jewishness at risk. Perhaps it is only a religion after all?
Ya see, for at least five hundred years Poland was likely the largest single kingdom on the European continent and most of the Jews of "Europe" lived there from the mid 14th century until the Kingdom was partitioned in the last half of the 18th century. Other than being "partners by default", there was a Shabbetaian sect called the Frankists who converted to Catholicism, maintaining their own "Jewish" identity. Other than that, in the late 19th century some Polish Jews started "acculturating" which for some meant becoming Catholic. The Russian Jews of which you speak are are recent phenomenon, the result of an attempt to get out from under the economic situation in the Former Soviet Union.
of western civilization and from which Abramic religions are derived. there is no proselytizing in Judaism, you are born into it, however if you want to be a member of the tribe, you can convert, up to you, no one will knock on your door.