{"id":56990,"date":"2017-10-28T17:00:16","date_gmt":"2017-10-28T15:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=56990"},"modified":"2017-10-27T16:13:38","modified_gmt":"2017-10-27T14:13:38","slug":"01-05-24","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=56990","title":{"rendered":"The Israeli expatriates building a new link with Poland"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>The Israeli expatriates building a new link with Poland<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

Shira Rubin<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Hundreds of young, secular Israelis are emigrating to make Warsaw their new home<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tal Goldberg, Boaz Albert, and Uri Meiselman stand in front of the remains of the Warsaw Ghetto, a symbol of the last century in a city celebrating a Jewish resurgence Shira Rubin<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

When Israeli rock musician Uri Meizelman heard that Warsaw\u2019s municipality planned to demolish one of the last remains of the Warsaw Ghetto, he flew from Tel Aviv to Warsaw with a message: \u201cPreserve and remember!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

It was in this decrepit, brown brick building surrounded by grey, graffitied scaffolding where, seven decades ago, the Jewish-Polish poet Wladyslaw Szlengel chronicled the ghetto life before being killed by the Nazis.<\/span><\/p>\n

Meizelman, the drummer in the Israeli rock band El Hameshorer \u00ad\u2013\u00ad which held a Hebrew-language rock performance outside of the building in hopes of saving it \u2013 says that the timing is critical.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s impossible that people become apathetic to the past,\u201d said Meizelman. \u201cToday, you walk around Poland, and it\u2019s all shopping malls and chic restaurants, people are starting to forget.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Among them, he says, are Israelis, who as tourists and as residents have been flocking to the Polish capital in recent years, drawn by business, shopping, and real estate investment opportunities instead of an urge to reconnect with their Jewish past.<\/span><\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s relationship with this country has changed drastically in recent years. Once it had the connotation of the Holocaust and was known best as the site for the Israeli high school \u201cJourney to Poland\u201d field trip, in which Israeli teens visited Nazi concentration camps and learned about the extermination of 3 million Polish Jews. Today the Israeli-Polish relationship is increasingly about Poland\u2019s future rather than its past.<\/span><\/p>\n

Roughly 500 mostly young and secular Israelis live in Warsaw, and a few hundred live in smaller cities like Krakow. They are a percentage of the thousands more who hold Polish passports through a law that enables Jews with Polish-born parents or grandparents to obtain national citizenship.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to a 2012 study conducted for the Business Opportunities in Poland Conference, about 20,000 Israeli citizens hold a Polish passport, roughly half of whom applied for citizenship after Poland joined the EU in 2004.<\/span><\/p>\n

Among them is 22-year-old Dan Ozeri, who dances with the Polish National Ballet and says that his future could not be feasible in Israel, where budgets for the arts are being slashed under the right-wing ruling government.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to live in Israel, where my family is, where my life is, but it\u2019s impossible,\u201d says Ozeri at a caf\u00e9 in the centre of Warsaw. \u201cFor me, my future\u2019s in Europe.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

22-year-old Dan Ozeri, who dances with the Polish National Ballet Shira Rubin<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a common refrain among the diverse, middle class Israeli brain drain scattered over the continent, many of whom say they had no choice but abandon Israel\u2019s economic and political squeeze, as the price of living continues to skyrocket and the Palestinians conflict trudges on.<\/span><\/p>\n

In Poland, the influx of Israelis has coincided with a recent Jewish renaissance, in which synagogues, Jewish kindergartens, and Jewish Community Centres have opened their doors, and the Jewish community is celebrating its resurgence after near-annihilation during the Holocaust.<\/span><\/p>\n

But unlike neighbouring Germany, where tens of thousands of Israelis live and which has for years publicly apologised for the Holocaust, Poland\u2019s ruling far-right party has allowed \u2013 if not encouraged \u2013 the rise of antisemitic sentiment.<\/span><\/p>\n

Many, like Defence Minister Antoni Macierewicz, have argued that it was solely the Nazis (or the Russians, or other groups besides the Poles), who were responsible for the atrocities against the Jews, despite mainstream Holocaust research shows that Poles did, in fact, murder Jews in large numbers during and after the war.<\/span><\/p>\n

The parliament recently passed a law declaring that anyone referring to death camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland as \u201cPolish\u201d would be subject to three years in prison.<\/span><\/p>\n

Last summer, Bogdan Rzonca, a lawmaker for the anti-immigration conservative Law and Justice Party tweeted, \u201cI wonder why there are so many Jews among those performing abortions, despite the Holocaust\u201d \u2013 a sensitive topic in a majority Catholic country that fervently opposes abortion.<\/span><\/p>\n

Andros Tetreo, a 35-year-old Israeli working in Warsaw\u2019s financial district, has lived in the city with his Polish wife and daughter for the past five years, and says that he has never encountered antisemitism.<\/span><\/p>\n

If anything, in the relatively liberal metropolis of Warsaw, he says he\u2019s been struck by a philo-Semitism, by which Polish neighbours have expressed interest in learning about Judaism and Jewish culture.<\/span><\/p>\n

He has also been amazed as how \u201cclean, quiet the city is, how there are no wars, which is something Israelis have to get used to.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

When he first arrived to Warsaw, Tetreo crossed the street if he spotted a tractor, or cowered when hearing loud noises.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was the result of years living in Arad, in southern Israel, where rockets had landed from the Gaza Strip; and, later, from experiences with the Palestinian \u201clone wolf intifada,\u201d in which young Palestinians used vehicles and other nonconventional weapons to carry out attacks on Israeli streets.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIn Israel, I realized you can either get killed in some terror attack, but [also in times of peace] you pay an exorbitant amount of taxes to get really nothing in return. It\u2019s a rigged game,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a Zionist,\u201d Tetreo added. \u201cWhich is what makes this so hard.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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The Israeli expatriates building a new link with Poland Shira Rubin Hundreds of young, secular Israelis are emigrating to make Warsaw their new home Tal Goldberg, Boaz Albert, and Uri Meiselman stand in front of the remains of the Warsaw Ghetto, a symbol of the last century in a city celebrating a Jewish resurgence Shira […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56990"}],"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=56990"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56990\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57009,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56990\/revisions\/57009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}