Neo-Nazi Couple Embraces Jewish Roots
This is not your typical childhood romance. Ola and Pawel, both 33, met when they were 12 years old and were deeply entrenched in Poland’s neo-Nazi scene when they married six years later. Then Ola made a shocking discovery: She and Pawel had Jewish roots.
“I didn’t expect to find out that I had a Jewish husband,” she said in a documentary on CNN International’s World’s Untold Stories. “I didn’t know how to tell him. I loved him even if he was a punk or skinhead, if he beat people up or not. It was a time in Poland when this movement was very intense.”
Anti-semitism flourished in Poland in the 1980s, when Pawel and Ola came of age. But after Ola dug through documents at the Jewish Historical Institute, she uncovered the news that forever altered their white supremacist mentality.
“It is difficult to describe how I felt when I found out I was Jewish,” Pawel told CNN. “My first thought was, ‘What am I going to tell people? What am I going to tell the boys? Should I admit it or not?’”
Ultimately he did admit it, with the help of Chief Rabbi of Poland Michael Schudrich. These days, Pawel and Ola are practicing Orthodox Jews and active members of Warsaw’s Jewish community. Pawel is studying to work in a kosher slaughterhouse and Ola works in the synagogue’s kitchen as a kosher supervisor.
“I feel sorry for those that I beat up,” Pawl told CNN, “but I don’t hold a grudge against myself. The people who I hurt can hold a grudge against me.”
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
