Antisemitism in Poland

Today we visited two organizations and learned the ways they worked to stop anti-semtism and other hate around Poland.

The first organization aimed to stop it at it's roots, to educate people about Poland's Jewish past. They were called "Dialogue Among Nations" and go schools to teach young people about the Jewish neighborhoods that existed in their town before the war. I think today was the first day I started to fathom how much of Poland's past was wiped out by the holocaust. Jews were such a huge part of Poland's history and Poland itself. And in such a short amount of time, they were gone. Today, we need programs like this to teach kids there even was a Jewish past. I loved the program; I think it's so helpful and has the potential to really change Poland's collective memory.

Next, we visited Heijt Stop: a program which tracked anti-semitic and other hate graffiti and either remove it, urge other's to remove it, or notify the police. They were extremely insightful to where these traces of anti-Semitism come from in Europe. They seem to be so deeply rooted. The reasons ranged from the idea that Jews killed Jesus to sports rivalries.

Today was the first day I thought Poland should tell it's history without such a victimized narrative. I think guilt could be productive. It's hard to hear about anti-semetism only days after visiting a concentration camp. We walked through where the concentration camp used to be the day before, it is so eerie. My naivety cannot let me fathom how it's possible to see what the holocaust was, what happened in these camps and be capable of anti-semitism.

Next, perhaps my favorite part of the day, we took place part in Warsaw's Memory March. Here we walked from where the 6,000 jews a day got deported to Treblinka to where they discovered the capsules hidden under ground where they found buried documents and personal accounts of the ghetto: made for the future, so we can learn from it. Here, members of the Jewish institute read the personal accounts out loud. It felt eerie to hear the words, to think of what they meant.

It felt amazing to be part of the memory of the nation, and it was empowering just being there.