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Since I could ‘pass,’ as they say, I was usually a witness to anti-Semitism rather than its victim. I was not taken for a Jew but for a confidant, one to whom they could turn and say how disgusting those Jews are.
I remember that once, when I was in Zakopane [100 km south from Cracow, a famous health and tourist resort in the Tatra Mountains] I wanted to go into the Fuks pastry shop at Krupowki [Zakopane’s main street]. I was 16 then. A student picket stopped me in front of the door [Polish anti-Semitic students would stop non-Jews before entering Jewish stores; that was one of the anti-Semitic operations in the 1930s, known as: ‘don’t buy from the Jew’]. They blocked my way and said, ‘What is this, you’re buying from a Jew?’ To which I said, ‘Yes, because I’m Jewish, too.’ They stepped aside and I walked in. At the time I thought nothing of the event; it was no more than an adventure to me.
I remember that once, when I was in Zakopane [100 km south from Cracow, a famous health and tourist resort in the Tatra Mountains] I wanted to go into the Fuks pastry shop at Krupowki [Zakopane’s main street]. I was 16 then. A student picket stopped me in front of the door [Polish anti-Semitic students would stop non-Jews before entering Jewish stores; that was one of the anti-Semitic operations in the 1930s, known as: ‘don’t buy from the Jew’]. They blocked my way and said, ‘What is this, you’re buying from a Jew?’ To which I said, ‘Yes, because I’m Jewish, too.’ They stepped aside and I walked in. At the time I thought nothing of the event; it was no more than an adventure to me.
Period
Location
Zakopane
Poland
Interview
Noemi Korsan-Ekert