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The situation in Poland was not very good for the Jews at first, there was the Kielce pogrom [33] right in 1946, and later the events of 1968 [34].
Why, it's horrible that a supposedly socialist country makes up some myths about a fifth column and so on [In his speech on 12th June 1968 Wladyslaw Gomulka, head of the Polish Communist party, accused the persons of Jewish descent of pro-Israeli bias and stigmatized that attitude as a betrayal of the state, using the phrase 'the fifth column'; the term 'fifth column,' coined during the Spanish Civil War, was also being used to refer to the German saboteurs during the Hitler's invasion of Czechoslovakia and Poland]. And yet everyone, Jews and non-Jews, was working, creating, helping to build. How could one order the people of Jewish descent to leave the country? Is that the way it should be? So one shouldn't blame those who left. I never had the intention to leave.
I do have a grudge against the ones I knew in the Gora Kalwaria municipality. They had me come over to the office and declare if I was objective, if I was a good Pole. I told them, 'What's that supposed to mean, what do I declare? You know me very well, I have fought in the Polish army, I've been wounded, I've paid with blood, what do you want from me?' I didn't even say good bye, turned my back on them and left. I think it was sheer stupidity, what is this 'good Pole,' I live here, I'm a citizen, they know me, if they have anything against me, there are penalties, judges. Are all the Poles good?
Why, it's horrible that a supposedly socialist country makes up some myths about a fifth column and so on [In his speech on 12th June 1968 Wladyslaw Gomulka, head of the Polish Communist party, accused the persons of Jewish descent of pro-Israeli bias and stigmatized that attitude as a betrayal of the state, using the phrase 'the fifth column'; the term 'fifth column,' coined during the Spanish Civil War, was also being used to refer to the German saboteurs during the Hitler's invasion of Czechoslovakia and Poland]. And yet everyone, Jews and non-Jews, was working, creating, helping to build. How could one order the people of Jewish descent to leave the country? Is that the way it should be? So one shouldn't blame those who left. I never had the intention to leave.
I do have a grudge against the ones I knew in the Gora Kalwaria municipality. They had me come over to the office and declare if I was objective, if I was a good Pole. I told them, 'What's that supposed to mean, what do I declare? You know me very well, I have fought in the Polish army, I've been wounded, I've paid with blood, what do you want from me?' I didn't even say good bye, turned my back on them and left. I think it was sheer stupidity, what is this 'good Pole,' I live here, I'm a citizen, they know me, if they have anything against me, there are penalties, judges. Are all the Poles good?
Period
Year
1968
Interview
henryk prajs
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