Posts by Gene Sokolowski
Jewish Culture Festival in Kraków
The annual Jewish Culture Festival in Kraków – a positive example of present-day Polish-Jewish relations Photo caption: Sounding of the Shofar, a ram’s-horn trumpet used by ancient Jews in religious ceremonies and as a battle signal, now sounded at Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Source: Jewish Festival Poland website. The annual Jewish Culture Festival in…
Read MoreAnimated History of Poland
(For high school students, teachers, and adults) This short video begins with Poland’s Christianization in 966 A.D. and then takes you through the Middle Ages, Early Modern Ages, the Modern Age, and the 20th Century. Like other European countries, Poland is shown growing as a political, economic, and military power; however, as will be seen,…
Read MoreIPNtv: Unconquered: Trying Times
(For high school students, teachers, and adults) This short video is a moving account of the Poles’ struggle for independence during its interwar period, 1918–1939. It should be remembered that Poland disappeared from the map in 1795 after Russia, Prussia, and Austria-Hungary divided Poland between them and annexed their respective Polish territories. For the next…
Read MoreIPNtv: The Unconquered
(Excellent video for high-school students) This 4-and-a-half-minute video is a compelling account of Poland’s fight against the occupying German and Soviet Russian forces. Produced by Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance (Polish initials – IPN), it presents important information and significant facts that are absent in popular literature, school curricula, and online news outlets. The video…
Read MoreThe Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles under German Occupation 1939-1945 by Richard Lukas
(For high school students, teachers, and parents) In recounting the human suffering of World War II, Hitler’s genocide of European Jews remains the dominant narrative in popular literature, academic writing, and public school curricula. By contrast, Hitler’s genocide of Poles remains largely unknown. As Richard Lukas points out, Hitler’s planned genocide of Poles was evident…
Read MoreYour Life Is Worth Mine: How Polish Nuns Saved Hundreds of Jewish Children in German-Occupied Poland, 1939-1945 by Ewa Kurek
(For high school students, teachers, and adults) Only in Poland did the Germans maintain a standing order that anyone aiding Jews would be executed together with immediate family. By defying the German death penalty, thousands of Poles saved Jewish lives. Among the most effective were the female Catholic religious orders. Without Vatican leadership, Polish nuns…
Read MoreOne Star Away by Imogene Salva
(For high school students, teachers, and adults) Imogene Salva re-constructs the emotional climate that surrounded the wartime ordeals of her mother, Józefa (Josephine) Nowicka, who was one of almost two million Polish citizens deported by Stalin to the depths of Soviet Russia, Siberia, and Central Asia. This is not an episode that is familiar to…
Read MoreJan Peczkis’s 1,300 book reviews will improve your understanding of Polish-Jewish relations
Jan Peczkis has developed a comprehensive database that contains his reviews of 1,300 books on many aspects of Polish-Jewish relations. These can be easily accessed through his website at https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org, Jan’s insightful analyses show why Polish-Jewish relations continue to be problematic, largely because of the many distortions that authors, most of whom are Jewish, have…
Read MoreIsrael and the U.S. insist that Poland must pay for Germany’s World War 2 Crimes
Congress’s JUST Act, “Justice For Uncompensated Survivors Todayâ€, was signed into law by President Trump in 2017. It requires the U.S. State Department to issue an annual report that names the European countries that are – and are not – paying Jews and their heirs for property seized by the Nazi Germans and subsequent communist…
Read MorePoles and Polish Jews: A long and complicated relationship
Outlined below is a brief summary of Polish-Jewish relations during consecutive periods of Polish history. Because it is a summary, it does not address all aspects of the more than one thousand years in which Poles and Polish Jews lived so closely together yet so far apart. For the most part, Polish Jews lived in…
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