It's been a rough week for Israelis living in Poland. Right when it seemed that the two countries were about to overcome the most serious diplomatic contretemps since diplomatic relations were renewed three decades ago, which erupted over Poland's controversial Holocaust Law, the flames reignited. This time because Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was quoted inaccurately about the Poles collaborating with the Nazis during the Holocaust, and a very accurate quote by acting Foreign Minister Yisrael Katz, who on Sunday referenced a Yitzhak Shamir line about the Poles taking in anti-Semitism "with their mothers' milk."
A few hundred Israelis are currently living in Poland. Some returned to the country of their ancestors fully intending to make a life for themselves there. Others are here for work. Both this week, both found themselves torn between their two worlds: the Israeli reality, which hurls harsh accusations and slander at the Poles, and the Polish reality, in which things appear a little different.
"It's very difficult to talk to Israelis about things having to do with Poland," says Inbal Neumark, 30. She is the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors from Poland who moved here four years ago and works as a tour guide in Warsaw.
"The claims that in Poland they are trying to forbid people from talking about Poles who informed on, slaughtered, or killed Jews are simply incorrect. There is a lot of focus on the subject – fictional TV series that are even broadcast on state TV, books, articles, including series and publications that came out after the Holocaust Law crisis," Neumark says.
"None of that information reaches Israel, so Israelis aren't aware of how obsessive Poland is nowadays about World War II and the Holocaust, as part of it. There is a cultural divide, maybe because of the difficult local language. In Israel, there is no incentive to study [Polish], the Polish culture, or Polish history like there is about Germany."
Neumark stresses that unlike what Israelis tend to think, there has been extensive discourse in Poland about the pogroms the Poles perpetrated. She says that Poles are critical of how Poland behaved during the war. It is the subject of much focus in the country and outside of it, what has led to "overexposure" of those crimes – mainly outside of Poland – compared to similar crimes in other nations.
"This week, an absurd situation as created in which the prime ministers of Hungary and Slovakia – whose countries officially collaborated with the Nazis, came to Jerusalem and the prime minister of Poland – a country the Germans 'erased,' leaving it no sovereignty, stayed at home because of the new crisis. The Polish national myth says, 'We're the only ones in Europe who didn't collaborate with the Nazis,' and many people in Israel treat the Poles like the Germans' worst collaborators. It was clear that the difference between those two perceptions would lead to a major clash at some point and now it's happened," Neumark says.
Uri Walner, 37, came to Warsaw 15 years ago to study medicine. After the finished his studies he married a local girl and opened a restaurant and a chain of successful cafés.
"Israel is like Poland in the sense that there is a difference between what people in the street think and feel and the nonsense that politicians spout to scrape up one more vote here and there," Walner says.
"The only time I encountered anti-Semitism was in a club when a few scumbags who were drunk said to me, 'What are you doing here? Go back to your country.' But I've experienced things like that in the U.S., too. Aside from that, I manage a business that employs 40 workers and I'm the only Israeli and the only Jew. Everyone knows that the cafés are Israeli-owned. I sell Israeli products in them, the atmosphere is Israeli and I still haven't encountered anti-Semitism," he says.
"The opposite. People come because they know it's an Israeli business. The Israeli side doesn't want to hear that the Poles were also hurt in the war. The Polish Jews who were murdered were still Poles. And Polish [gentiles] were murdered in the German camps, too, although in a different scope. Israelis don't want to understand that and take in the fact that despite the terrible conditions of the [Nazi] occupation, the number of Righteous Among the Nations in Poland is much higher than the number in other countries whom Israelis have long since forgiven."
Walner is the grandson of Holocaust survivors from Poland and Romania. He says his Polish grandparents, who survived the Lodz Ghetto and Auschwitz, did not hold a grudge against the Poles.
"It was clear to them that there were good people and bad people. It was a war and everyone wanted to survive. Still, many Poles risked their lives and the lives of their families to save Jews. I met my wife, the mother of my two daughters, on a dating site. After we went out a few times, she told me that her mother's sister was married to a man who had been named a Righteous Among the Nations. The family of my company's manager saved Jews, too. A lot of Israelis refuse to acknowledge that for some reason and it's very convenient for politicians to throw around accusations without knowing what they're talking about. It's very frustrating for me," he says.
"There are a lot of people here who love Israel. Every time there's a military conflict between Israel and its neighbors, the Poles are the first to line up alongside Israel. There are a lot of people who work to forge connections between the two countries and then some unnecessary remark by a politician comes and ruins everything. It's untactful, the kind of thing that embarrasses me, as an Israeli," Walner says.
Dean Nadel, 30, admits that his roots are 100% Polish. His mother's parents fled Poland for Russia as soon as the war broke out and most of his father's family perished in the Holocaust. Our years ago, he moved to Poland to work as a digital marketing director for his company.
"When I came here, I thought of Poland as a place of the Holocaust and death. What was I doing here? Today I feel at home. There are so many things Israel and Poland have in common: the mentality, the culture, the food, the bureaucracy, even a lot of common word. There are a lot of Israelis who come to Poland as tourists and not on Holocaust-related tours. A lot of Poles travel to Israel," he says.
"When they teach history in Israel, they say that the Pole were collaborators and show only the negative side of the war. There is a need to get it into the [Israeli] school system and consciousness that the Poles aren't the point. They were victims of the occupation, too, and experienced the Nazi threat. I had a lot of hatred for the Polish people, who informed [on Jews] and helped the Germans.
"But you can't ignore that the Poles were under occupation, too, that Poles were murdered and Poles put themselves in danger to rescue Jews, even though we know that not all the Poles were innocent victims. No one denies that there were collaborators and Poles who wanted to take advantage of the circumstances.
"I was really angry when the crisis erupted again this week. The Poles hosted an important conference on the Iranian threat and it's not the time to talk about who did what during World War II," Nadel says.
