Poland

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken (C) greets Foreign Minister Yair Lapid ahead of their meeting in Rome, on June 27, 2021. (Andrew Harnik/Pool/AFP)

July 22, 2021, 10:53 pm

Report: At Israel’s behest, US pressing Poland on Holocaust restitution law

State Department source tells Israeli newspaper Washington is urging Warsaw to amend bill that would effectively block claims to seized property

By TOI staff

Marchers at a rally in Glogow, Poland, July 18, 2021. (Screenshot from YouTube via JTA)

July 22, 2021, 12:50 pm

Polish anti-vaccine protesters chant Jews are to blame for the COVID-19 pandemic

Some marchers though city of Glogow declare that ‘Jews rule the world’ and Holocaust restitution claims will take away their homes

By Katarzyna Markusz

Shoshana Greenberg, 74, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, poses for a picture holding a portrait of her parents Regina and Israel, at her home in Israeli city of Tel Aviv on July 18, 2021. (MENAHEM KAHANA / AFP)

July 20, 2021, 3:40 pm

Ghosts of Poland’s past haunt Holocaust restitution spat

‘I feel like I lost a part of my body,’ survivor’s daughter says of planned legislation that would thwart claims for Jewish-owned property seized by Nazis

By Dario Thuburn

A Polish nationalist holds a sign reading "We demand the truth about Jedwabne," at the site of a Holocaust pogrom in Jedwabne, Poland, on July 10, 2021. (Krzysztof Bielawski)

July 15, 2021, 9:36 pm

Polish nationalists disrupt commemoration for Jewish pogrom victims

Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich says protests at memorial for Jedwabne pogrom point to a ‘very serious issue’ involving Polish government’s stance on Holocaust memory

By Katarzyna Markusz

In this Thursday, June 21, 2018 file photo, Britain's Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson lays a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier with his Polish counterpart Jacek Czaputowicz in Warsaw, Poland. Poland is reviving plans to reconstruct a historic Warsaw palace where the German Enigma machine codes were first cracked in 1932 and which Nazi German occupying forces blew up in 1944, it was announced Wednesday, July 7, 2021. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski, file)

July 8, 2021, 12:46 am

Poland to rebuild historic palace where Nazi Enigma machine first cracked

Reconstruction of Saski Palace, blown up by Nazis when they leveled Warsaw, has been planned for years to symbolize city’s rebirth

By MONIKA SCISLOWSKA

Israel's charges d'affaires in Poland, Tal Ben-Ari Yaalon (courtesy Foreign Ministry)

July 7, 2021, 2:25 pm

Israeli envoy to Polish senate amid Holocaust row: Restitution law harms rights

Charge d’affaires says proposed bill is bad for Jews and others; critics say it could block Jewish heirs from claiming property left during Holocaust

By Lazar Berman

Ruth Behar's grandmother Esther (third from left in front row, in white dress) with her family in Agramonte, Cuba, c. 1936. (Courtesy)

July 1, 2021, 3:00 am

Based on grandmother’s heroic tale, author shows 1930s Cuba as haven for Jews

Ruth Behar mines family lore for ‘Letters From Cuba,’ a book for readers ages 8-12 about a pre-teen Polish-Jewish girl’s solo journey to life in remote sugar plantation town

By Renee Ghert-Zand

Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Paweł Jabłoński speaks to The Associated in Warsaw, Poland, September 8, 2020. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)

June 28, 2021, 7:05 pm

Poland says it’s hoping Israel will come around on Holocaust legislation

After Israeli envoy to Warsaw is summoned, Polish deputy FM assails Jewish state’s ‘inappropriate’ criticism of law barring restitution claims

By Dario Thuburn

Polish Ambassador to Israel Marek Magierowski in Jerusalem on October 11, 2018. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

June 27, 2021, 5:41 pm

Israel, Poland summon each other’s envoys over Holocaust restitution law spat

Foreign Ministry official tells Polish envoy not too late to walk back legislation; Lapid: ‘We’re not interested in Polish money. We are fighting for the pride of our people’

By Amy Spiro

A man crosses the rails at the former Nazi German death camp of Birkenau in Oswiecim, Poland, July 29, 2016. (AP/Alik Keplicz)

June 17, 2021, 7:14 pm

New human remains found near Auschwitz likely of German POWs, experts say

A dozen skulls and several bones turned up near river where German prisoners held by Soviets after World War II were buried

By AP

Polish artist Wilhelm Sasnal poses in front of one of his art works on display in a new exhibition at the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, in Warsaw, Poland, on June 15, 2021. (Czarek Sokolowski/AP)

June 17, 2021, 6:38 pm

Top Polish artist confronts country’s Holocaust past in Jewish museum exhibit

Wilhem Sasnal says works needed because parts of Poland’s society refuse to acknowledge that, though occupied by Nazis, there were also Poles who joined in the crimes

By Vanessa Gera

Customers at a Krakow market buy figurines of Hasidic Orthodox men. (Jason Francisco via JTA)

June 11, 2021, 5:22 pm

Krakow official: Good luck figurines of Jews are antisemitic, shouldn’t be sold

Statement follows campaign by Polish Jews to stop the sale of models; some locals treat figures as charms for increasing revenues, typically depicting Orthodox Jews counting money

By Cnaan Liphshiz

Author Isaac Bashevis Singer poses for a portrait outside the S. Rabinowitz Hebrew Book Store on New York's Lower East Side in 1968. (David Attie/Getty Images/ via JTA/ SUE)

June 9, 2021, 10:25 pm

How Wikipedia warriors made ‘Polish writer’ Isaac Bashevis Singer Jewish again

It takes a global village to unerase the great Yiddish-language writer’s religious/ethnic identity on the ‘democratized’ online encyclopedia

By Asaf Shalev

Poland's lawmakers after voting – some in parliament, some remotely – in Warsaw, Poland, on May 4, 2021. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)

May 13, 2021, 1:44 am

Poland gives money to group led by student who made antisemitic remarks

Website run by Konrad Smuniewski, who was suspended from University of Warsaw for hate speech, to get $50,000 grant from government

By Katarzyna Markusz

Beata Szydło, then the prime minister of Poland, speaks to reporters in Warsaw, July 31, 2016. (Kancelaria Premiera via JTA)

May 1, 2021, 6:34 am

Auschwitz inmates’ families oppose ex-PM on museum council

Relatives say former Polish PM Beata Szydlo has tolerated ‘openly fascist’ groups and supported attempts to stifle research into the Holocaust

By AP