Tagged poland

WARSAW, Poland (JTA) — The main Jewish umbrella group in Poland has elected its first woman leader. Monika Krawczyk was chosen as the board chairman of the Union of Jewish Religious Communities in Poland, which deals with restitution matters, among other issues. “I think it is a great honor… Read more »

This summer my son Boaz and I traveled to Poland for the great pleasure and privilege of participating in the Ride for the Living, a 55-mile bicycle ride from Auschwitz-Birkenau to the Jewish Community Center of Krakow, Poland, from the scene of the greatest destruction of our people to… Read more »

  (JTA) — Three years ago, Shaul de Malach had no problem joining fellow educators from his country on a trip to former Nazi death camps in Poland. Like tens of thousands of Israelis and Jews in the Diaspora who go on commemorative missions each year, de Malach “didn’t… Read more »

(JTA) — The row between Poland and Israel about the Holocaust reached new heights this week after Poland’s prime minister said that the genocide had not only Polish, Ukrainian and German perpetrators, but Jewish ones as well. Addressing a new law that criminalizes blaming Poland for Nazi crimes, Mateusz Morawiecki said… Read more »

KRAKOW, Poland (JTA) — Michal Zielinski, a 47-year-old from this city, grew up unaware of his Jewish roots. Thirty years after discovering that his paternal family is Jewish, following the death of his grandmother, Zielinski and his wife, Elizabeth are active members of the Jewish Community Center of Krakow,… Read more »

KRAKOW, Poland (JTA) – For the sixth year in a row, the seven synagogues in Krakow’s historic Jewish district, Kazimierz, opened their doors for [email protected] – or the Night of the Synagogues, a one-night mini-festival aimed at bolstering Jewish pride and promoting Jewish awareness among the public. Each synagogue –… Read more »

Agata Kulesza, left, and Agata Trzebuchowska co-star in the Polish film "Ida," an Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language Film about an aunt and niece looking for family lost in the Holocaust. (Opus Film)

LOS ANGELES (JTA) — For the past few decades, Holocaust films have been common — and often victorious — fare at the Academy Awards. But this year, the Polish nominee in the Foreign Language Film category ventures into the less frequently explored territory of the Holocaust’s aftermath. “Ida,” writer-director… Read more »

(JTA) — After a Polish court tossed out a government regulation permitting kosher slaughter in 2012, Poland’s $500 million ritual slaughter industry was expected to be brought to its knees. Evidence shows, however, that not only was kosher slaughter still being performed in Poland as recently as this month,… Read more »

Polish Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich, left, and Rabbi Menachem Margolin of the Chabad-affiliated Rabbinical Centre of Europe have been at odds publicly over Schudrich's handling of the kosher slaughter case in Poland. (Creative Commons/Facebook)

(JTA) — A few weeks before Poland’s parliament voted last month on whether to overturn a ban on ritual slaughter, Rabbi Menachem Margolin was scheduled to meet the Polish president in an effort to find a solution to the problem. The ban had been imposed in January, when a Polish… Read more »

PRAGUE (JTA) — In 1988, Yehuda Evron received a memorable letter from Lech Walesa, the first post-communist president of Poland, on the eve of the country’s transition to democracy. “He wrote that within a few months we would get my wife’s property back,” recalled Evron, now 80. His wife… Read more »

Israeli author Adina Bar-El, left, with Tucsonan Bill Kugelman (Phyllis Braun/AJP)

Adina Bar-El, Ph.D., a children’s book author from Hof Ashkelon, Israel, came to Tucson last week to talk about the power of stories — and ended up discovering tales of her own family’s past. On Friday, Nov. 9, Tucsonan Bill Kugelman attended Bar-El’s Heartbeat of Israel breakfast talk at… Read more »

Tucsonan Bill Kugelman, a Holocaust survivor from Poland, talks with Polish students Michal Kochanowski, Maciej Baranowski and Milena Adelt at the Tucson Jewish Community Center on Oct. 9. (Sharon Glassberg/JFSA)

Polish high school teacher Barbara (Basia) Matusiak wears a Star of David around her neck, although she isn’t Jewish. Matusiak was part of a non-Jewish Polish group that included 10 teens, two teachers and the principal of High School 15 in Lodz, Poland, who visited Tucson from Oct. 4… Read more »

Tucsonan Bill Kugelman and teens from the Western region of the United States lead the March of the Living from Auschwitz to Birkenau in Poland on April 19. (Courtesy CJE)

Holocaust survivor Bill Kugelman has been to Birkenau before, once on a previous March of the Living trip in 2006, and as a prisoner of the Nazis. From 1939 to 1945, Kugelman, 88, spent three and a half years in concentration camps, including Birkenau, and two and a half… Read more »

Pawel Bramson, left, at the Jewish cemetary in Warsaw. (Kuba Wyszynski)

WARSAW (JTA) — Fifteen years ago, Pawel Bramson was a skinhead shouting anti-Semitic and racist slogans during soccer matches. He hated Jews and blacks – simply, he says, because you need someone to blame for what’s wrong in the world. These days he keeps kosher, wears the long beard… Read more »

The “Seeking Kin” column aims to help reunite long-lost friends and relatives. KIBBUTZ YAD MORDECHAI, Israel (JTA) — In a far-off corner of this quiet farm a handful of miles from the Gaza Strip as the rocket flies, down a dirt road that peels off from an old Arab… Read more »

ROME (JTA) — Auschwitz,  the most notorious camp in the Nazi killing machine, may soon claim success in its campaign to preserve the legacy of the Holocaust. The foundation supporting the site in southern Poland has attracted tens of millions of dollars from donor countries, and the camp’s barracks… Read more »

A DJ samples Jewish music from the Bimah as, at about 1 a.m., crowds visit an exhibit in the Old Synagogue on the Night of the synagogues. (Ruth Ellen Gruber)

KRAKOW, Poland (JTA) — Jews in Krakow have a new slogan — “Never Better.” The catchphrase is deliberately provocative, a blatant rejoinder to “Never Again,” the slogan long associated with Holocaust memory and the fight against anti-Semitic prejudice. It may be counterintuitive, acknowledges Jonathan Ornstein, the American-born director of… Read more »

Cantor Ivor Lichterman of Congregation Anshei Israel, right, and his brother, Cantor Joel Lichterman of Denver, Colo., sing at the Nozyk Synagogue in Warsaw, where their father was the last prewar cantor, in this still from “100 Voices: A Journey Home.”

A documentary based on the historic visit of 100 cantors to Poland last year, “100 Voices: A Journey Home,” will be shown at three movie theatres in Tucson, for one night only, on Tuesday, Sept. 21. The film explores the rich history of Jewish culture in Poland, which is… Read more »

The factory in which Oskar Schindler used Jewish slave labor during World War II has been turned into a Holocaust museum. (Patti McCracken/JTA Photo Service)

KRAKOW, Poland (JTA) — In January 1994, an American tourist stepped out of a taxi into a cold, drizzling rain and entered the Jarden Jewish Bookshop at the far end of the square in the Jewish quarter of Krakow. On the counter he splayed a weeks-old copy of The… Read more »

BIELSKO-BIALA, Poland (JTA) -- Outside the elegant theater in the city of Bielsko Biala in southern Poland, a billboard advertises an upcoming play. Stark letters spell out the title: "Zyd" -- Jew. The lettering looks almost menacing, like scrawled graffiti, and I am a little taken aback. But then… Read more »