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Fast Forward Former Polish President Says He Regrets He is Not Jewish
WARSAW, Poland (JTA) — Former Polish President Lech Walesa wrote on his Facebook page that he regrets he is not Jewish and that there are no Jewish members of his family. He noted in the April 26th Facebook post that if he were younger he would “fix this mistake.” Lech Walesa in Poland is known…
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Fast Forward Polish Clergy Mark 70th anniversary of Pogrom as Complicity Debate Rages
— Polish clergy and researchers will hold a seminar in Kielce about a historically significant pogrom in which locals killed Holocaust survivors in that city 70 years ago. Occurring amid an acrimonious debate in Poland on local complicity in the Holocaust and the attention it merits, the conference planned for July in Kielce, 110 miles south of Warsaw,…
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Opinion How Poland Is Targeting Holocaust Scholar Jan T. Gross for the Sin of Remembering
The anti-Semitic bloodbath that consumed the small Polish town of Jedwabne on July 10, 1941 might have been forgotten to history were it not for the scholarship of the Polish-American historian Jan T. Gross. Now, it would seem, Poland’s new government wishes Gross himself could be forgotten. In his short study, “Neighbors,” published in 2001,…
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Fast Forward Polish Fake Rabbi Disappears After Being Exposed as Catholic
A man who for several years served as a rabbi for a Polish Jewish community has pulled a disappearing act after it was revealed that he is actually a Catholic former chef. The man, who went by the names Jacoob Ben Nistell and Yaakav, claimed to be from Haifa and worked as the rabbi for…
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Fast Forward Fake Polish ‘Rabbi’ Doesn’t Know From Jewish
A local journalist in a western Poland city discovered that the local rabbi is not a rabbi, never lived in Israel, is not familiar with Jewish customs, and does not speak or understand Hebrew. Jacoob Ben Nistell, aka Yaakav – he used different forms of this name, claimed he was from Haifa. Members of the…
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Fast Forward Pope Francis Will Visit Auschwitz in July
ROME — Pope Francis will visit Auschwitz during a trip to Poland in late July. According to a schedule released over the weekend, the pontiff will visit the former Nazi death camp on July 29 during a five-day visit to Poland to mark the Catholic Church’s World Youth Day. Main Youth Day events are to…
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Fast Forward Poland Pulls Plug on Probe Into Wartime Massacre of 70 Jews
The Institute of National Remembrance in Bialystok discontinued the investigation into the murder of at least 70 Jewish citizens in Wasosz in northeastern Poland in 1941. Prosecutors have not identified and additional perpetrators besides the two Polish men already sentenced for the act shortly after World War II. The murder in Wasosz occurred in July…
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Fast Forward Poland Ceremony Honors Jews Who Fled Anti-Semitic Push of 1968
A ceremony at a Warsaw train station commemorated the 20,000 Jews who were forced to leave Poland following the anti-Semitic campaign of March 1968. Golda Tencer, director of the Jewish Theatre in Warsaw, who organized Tuesday’s event at the Gdansk Station, said at the ceremony that the crisis in 1968 was her personal tragedy. “A…
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