Monday, August 6, 2007
Poland: Jewish cemetery desecrated
Vandals spray painted swastikas and other Nazi symbols on about 100 gravestones at a large Jewish cemetery in Poland, police said Monday.
Visitors to the cemetery in the southern city of Czestochowa discovered the damage on Sunday and police have not yet found the culprits, said Silesia regional police spokesman Andrzej Gaska.
"This is one of the biggest acts of destruction in years," said Jan Gebert, spokesman for the Jewish community in Warsaw. "In fact, I can't think of any other cases in Europe that have been this big." ...
...This country was home to about 3.5 million Jews - Europe's largest Jewish community - until the Holocaust, when most were killed by Nazi Germany. Today there are an estimated 30,000 Jews in Poland.
And yet, if the remnant were to leave and move to Israel, they'd be blamed for that.
I don't know how many Jews are left in Poland today. But I think it may be fewer than 30,000. An article I found in the International Herald Tribune estimated about 15,000 [http://www.iht.com/articles/1997/12/09/edari.t.php].
But that was 10 years ago. An estimate I saw in the Jerusalem Post said there were only 10,000 in the early 1990s [http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?apage=1&cid=1150885904959&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull]
The count may be complicated by the appearance a philo-semitic trend among young people who claim some Jewish and want to explore their roots.