{"id":130748,"date":"2026-05-21T17:05:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T15:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=130748"},"modified":"2026-05-21T06:22:49","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T04:22:49","slug":"24-05-121","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=130748","title":{"rendered":"Debating Palestinian cause on the grounds of the Lodz Ghetto"},"content":{"rendered":"<hr>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.timesofisrael.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"center alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/www.reunion68.com\/Biuletyn\/img\/times.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"35%\"><\/a><span style=\"text-decoration: underline; color: #000080;\"><span><strong><a style=\"color: #000080; text-decoration: underline;\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.timesofisrael.com\/debating-palestinian-cause-on-the-grounds-of-the-lodz-ghetto\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Debating Palestinian cause on the grounds of the Lodz Ghetto<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>Lilka Elbaum<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<hr style=\"height: 15px; background: #d0e6fa; width: 100%;\">\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/static-cdn.toi-media.com\/blogs\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Photo-credit-Centrum-Dialogu-FB-640x400.jpg\" width=\"100%\"><span style=\"color: #808080;\"><em>Photo Credit, Centrum Dialogue, May 10, 2026<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Acts of antisemitism and anti-Israel rhetoric are especially painful when they occur in places where hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered during the Holocaust. Lodz, Poland, is such a place. Before the Holocaust, Lodz was home to the world\u2019s third-largest Jewish community and later became the site of the second-largest ghetto in Nazi-occupied Europe. Of a prewar Jewish population of over 230,000, only about 7,000 survived. The city itself remains almost intact, with much of its Jewish heritage still visible\u2014Jews were instrumental in building and owning Lodz\u2019s textile industrial base.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Today, only about 75 to 100 Jews still live in Lodz. Until the Gaza War, the community remained relatively safe, though antisemitism was always present. Jewish contributions to the city\u2019s history, and the tragedy that befell its people, were widely commemorated.&nbsp;<a style=\"color: #000080;\" title=\"https:\/\/www.centrumdialogu.com\/en\/\" href=\"https:\/\/www.centrumdialogu.com\/en\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" data-outlook-id=\"17acca2d-b4be-4462-ba90-6768e873da3a\">The Center for Dialogue,<\/a>&nbsp;located in the heart of the former Jewish Ghetto and housed in a modern building financed by an Israeli entrepreneur, led, and hosted many of these commemorations. Until recently, 75% of the Center\u2019s activities\u2014funded by municipal and federal governments\u2014were dedicated to preserving Jewish heritage.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">That drastically changed on May 10, 2026, when the Center became the site of an event addressing the \u201cPalestinian Question.\u201d The event featured a dialogue between local academics and Omar Faris, the 73-year-old president of a Polish Palestinian association, and its main guest. The discussion was laced with antisemitic tropes, slandered Israel and its Prime Minister, and did not allow questions from the two Jewish community members present. All of this happened in a building constructed with Jewish donations, on the sacred ground of the former Jewish Ghetto.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">In Europe\u2019s largest Catholic country, where masses pray to a Jew, there is now little commemoration, sentiment, or compassion for the greatest tragedy to befall the Jewish people. It is not just the uninformed and the ignorant, but also the academic elites of a nation from which nearly 80% of global Jewry traces their roots, who now seek to sever this centuries-old connection, choosing instead to champion the cause of a group numbering only about 1,000\u20132,000 among them. Perhaps a shift driven by a need to embrace popular narratives and align with prevailing political sentiments, at the expense of historical truth and memory, they no longer regard as their own.<\/span><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/static-cdn.toi-media.com\/blogs\/uploads\/users\/lilka1779201426-200x200.png\" width=\"10%\"><span style=\"color: #808080;\"><em><strong>Lilka Elbaum<\/strong> is a child of survivors from Poland. Born after the war in Lodz where she lived until 1968. She emigrated to Montreal and then United States (Boston). She works at Boston University doing Holocaust related research. In addition, she manages the World Federation of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Descendants annual conferences.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<hr style=\"height: 15px; background: #d0e6fa; width: 100%;\">\n<div id=\"content\" class=\"content-alignment\">\n<div id=\"watch-description\" class=\"yt-uix-button-panel\">\n<div id=\"watch-description-text\" style=\"text-align: center;\">\n<p><em>Zawarto\u015b\u0107 publikowanych artyku\u0142\u00f3w i materia\u0142\u00f3w nie reprezentuje pogl\u0105d\u00f3w ani opinii Reunion&#8217;68,<\/em><em><br \/>\nani te\u017c webmastera Blogu Reunion&#8217;68, chyba ze jest to wyra\u017anie zaznaczone.<br \/>\nTwoje uwagi, linki, w\u0142asne artyku\u0142y lub wiadomo\u015bci prze\u015blij na adres:<br \/>\n<\/em><span style=\"color: #000080;\"><strong><em><a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"mailto:webmaster@reunion68.com\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">webmaster@reunion68.com<\/span><\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<hr style=\"width: 100%;\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Debating Palestinian cause on the grounds of the Lodz Ghetto Lilka Elbaum Photo Credit, Centrum Dialogue, May 10, 2026 Acts of antisemitism and anti-Israel rhetoric are especially painful when they occur in places where hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered during the Holocaust. Lodz, Poland, is such a place. Before the Holocaust, Lodz was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[33,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130748"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=130748"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130748\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":130755,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130748\/revisions\/130755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=130748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=130748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=130748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}