Jews visiting Poland

Submitted by Leon Kushner (Canada), Mar 29, 2014 at 11:45

Dear Mr. Pipes,

I am a son of holocaust survivors. Both of my parents were Jewish Poles. My mother was born in a beautiful resort town called Zakopane in the Tatra mountains (aka Polish Alps). My mother was a teen during the war. She spent the war working as a slave in a Siberian gulag. She did not look 'Jewish'. She had blond hair, blue eyes and a small nose. After the war she took the train back to Zakopane to look for any survivors. On the train she found herself sitting amidst a few Poles who were in animated coversation about how Hitler failed to finish the job of killing all of the Jews. My poor mother, after surviving the war building roads in the frozen tundra in torn shoes while subsisting on rotten potatoes, had to endure this?! Had those Poles thought that my mom was Jewish, she would have been raped and murdered on the spot. Since hearing that story and numerous others like it, I refuse to step 1 foot in that traphe country until the racist, anti-Semitism there dwindles down to a puddle (as if that will ever happen).

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