Karol Sauerland on Polish anti-Semitism in 1968

Karol Sauerland recalls how the regime in Poland responded to student protests in 1968 by trying to whip up anti-Semitism. "Almost all Polish Jews who had survived the Holocaust and not emigrated straight after the war left the country ... during this period. They left from Gdansk station in Warsaw for Vienna, from where they went on to Israel, the United States or the Federal Republic of Germany. At the time this station was known as the 'transit point.' It was not the way to death, thank goodness, but hardly anyone would have decided to emigrate voluntarily. ... Personally I would compare that exodus of leading minds and of many talented young people (among them, by the way, Jan Tomasz Gross, who sparked off controversial debates with his book about Jedwabne and more recently with his study of post-war anti-Semitism in Poland) with the year 1933 in Germany. ... And hardly anyone who left Poland came back twenty-one years later, in 1989, to reclaim his lost post."

» to the homepage (external link, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung)
More from the press review on the subject » History, » Poland
All available articles from » Karol Sauerland

» To the complete press review of Friday, February 15, 2008