I'm not talking about myself.....though 'thanks' to Hitler's efforts to get all Germans to list their ancestors several generations back, in case a Salomon or a Rebekkah popped up, I know I am one (and do I care? No, I do not).
Had an interested chat last night with my devoted reader Anne (you know who you are) about anti-semitism in Lithuania, and other anti-isms brought west by the population of the former 'East'. The levels of awareness of prejudice, even among very educated people, are quite appallingly low.
So it was with a bit of interest that at lunchtime I happened across a TV programme about Jerzy Czarnecki, a Galician Jew who fled Galicia during the war, Poland after the war, and after a long time ended up in Switzerland of which he is now a citizen (and possibly a professor for something). He survived thanks to false papers, and sympathetic Germans and Poles - yes, there are some.
In this programme he travelled back to his home village, Mosty Wielky near Lviv/Lvov/Lemberg and had a lot of conversations with a lot of people, who all appeared to be quite moved by what they talked about (though not half as much as he was). I was a bit astonished when the current owner of his family's former house welcomed him quite so effusively, given that there might have been a danger of him wanting the place back. But perhaps a TV camera helps. Given my experiences, though, of Eastern Europeans (I am sorry to say), I did wonder just how many of his interlocutors were genuinely feeling empathy with his situation, or whether, after he departed, they would say 'Good, there's another Yid gone'? (Freely adapting what protestant colleagues of mine in Scotland would say every time there was a funeral at the catholic church across the road....)
Had an interested chat last night with my devoted reader Anne (you know who you are) about anti-semitism in Lithuania, and other anti-isms brought west by the population of the former 'East'. The levels of awareness of prejudice, even among very educated people, are quite appallingly low.
So it was with a bit of interest that at lunchtime I happened across a TV programme about Jerzy Czarnecki, a Galician Jew who fled Galicia during the war, Poland after the war, and after a long time ended up in Switzerland of which he is now a citizen (and possibly a professor for something). He survived thanks to false papers, and sympathetic Germans and Poles - yes, there are some.
In this programme he travelled back to his home village, Mosty Wielky near Lviv/Lvov/Lemberg and had a lot of conversations with a lot of people, who all appeared to be quite moved by what they talked about (though not half as much as he was). I was a bit astonished when the current owner of his family's former house welcomed him quite so effusively, given that there might have been a danger of him wanting the place back. But perhaps a TV camera helps. Given my experiences, though, of Eastern Europeans (I am sorry to say), I did wonder just how many of his interlocutors were genuinely feeling empathy with his situation, or whether, after he departed, they would say 'Good, there's another Yid gone'? (Freely adapting what protestant colleagues of mine in Scotland would say every time there was a funeral at the catholic church across the road....)
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