In 1968, the Polish Communist party declared thousands of Jews enemies of the state and forced them to leave Poland. Fifty years later, historians and witnesses warn of a revival of Polish anti-Semitism.
Warsaw, March 8, 1968: Student protests against state censorship and repression of critical voices led to anti-Semitic purgesImage: picture-alliance/dpa/T.Zagodzinksi
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Poland commemorates 50th anniversary of 1968 anti-Semitic purge
Fifty years after student protests in Poland, Polish President Andrzej Duda apologizes.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/T.Zagodzinksi
A plea for forgiveness
The communists used the student protests to purge 12,000 Poles of Jewish origin from Poland. On March 8, 2018. Duda made an emotional plea for forgiveness and placed flowers on at a memorial at the university.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/A. Keplicz
Under the cover of crisis
The March 1968 protests across Poland were quickly suppressed by the government of the People's Republic of Poland. The political crisis was used as an excuse by the communists to purge Jews from the government.
Image: picture-alliance/PAP
Solidarity from the West
German Chancellor Willy Brandt's son Peter (second from right) marched in West Berlin in solidarity with Polish students who were demonstrating in Poland in 1968. The protests in Poland were ruthlessly suppressed by the communist government.
Image: picture-alliance/AP/E. Reichert
Ground zero: Communist Party headquarters Warsaw
Students demonstrated in front of the Communist Party building in Warsaw in 1968. The Communist Party used the student protests to purge Jews from the party and from Poland. 12,000 Jews ultimately left Poland
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/K. Wojciewski
Fighting in the streets
Polish militia cracked down on the student protests. On March 18, 1968, student protests spread across Poland and the Communist Party ruthlessly suppressed the demonstrations.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/T. Zagodzinksi
You say you want a revolution....
Intellectual centers and universities across Poland erupted in protest in 1968 when officials banned a play by Polish Romantic-era poet Adam Mickiewicz which was deemed to have an anti-Russian message.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/T.Zagodzinksi
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Jozef Lebenbaum was a reporter with the Workers' Voice newspaper in Lodz, Poland's second-largest city, when he was forced to leave the country in August 1968. The reason: He was Jewish. Anti-Semitism was ablaze back then in Poland, and the regime sought various, often absurd, excuses to get rid of the Jews.
He was 38 at the time, in the middle of his career, Lebenbaum tells DW. "Suddenly, my work was gone, my colleagues, my apartment, and the Polish culture I had grown up with," he remembers.
Despite being forced to leave his homeland, Jozef Lebenbaum says 'I was never angry at Poland as a country'Image: DW/M. Sieradzka
Anti-Semitic agitation
An anti-Semitic wave forced about 20,000 Jews from Poland to leave the country between 1968 through to the end of 1972. It peaked for the first time on March 8, 1968, when Warsaw police beat up students protesting state censorship and repression of critical fellow students. The student leaders were branded as Zionist and anti-Polish as state-controlled anti-Semitic agitation began to spread across the country.
The authorities organized mass demonstrations in which Jews who held prominent official positions were accused of everything that was wrong with the ailing Communist system. "Zionists to Zion," people yelled at party conventions, the aim being to send the country's Jews — regarded as anti-Polish — to Israel.
Lebenbaum was accused of making pro-Israeli comments about the 1967 Arab-Israeli Six-Day War. "My point of view was in accordance with international law and not with Warsaw's propaganda at the time — Warsaw had sided with the Arab states," Lebenbaum says. The accusations were just a pretext to get rid of him, a Jew, he adds. And the reporter wasn't the only one: All Polish Jews stood accused of being pro-Israel.
'It was the Communists'
But Poland is not to blame for the anti-Semitic purge, according to Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki. Poland didn't even exist in 1968, he said during a recent state visit to Germany. "It was the Communist regime that treated the Jews so badly back then," he said, trying to explain that the system in power in Poland from 1945 to 1989 was forced on the Polish people by the Soviet Union.
The Polish parliament is currently discussing a draft resolution saying that Communists bowing to the Soviet Union were behind the anti-Semitic purges. "The Communist rulers who initiated the anti-Semitic protests in 1968 did not represent the interests of the people, but rather Moscow's interests," the draft resolution by Jan Zaryn, a Law and Justice (PiS) senator and Polish historian, says.
The Holocaust debate has triggered a new wave of anti-Semitic agitation in the media and the internet, says Dariusz Stola, the director of the Warsaw-based Museum of the History of Polish Jews. There are similarities to the anti-Semitic slogans and lies perpetrated in 1968, Stola told DW. Comments on social media include, "The Jews and Israel have the liberal lobby in Brussels on a leash," and "Too bad, that not all Jews emigrated in 1968. Now they are showing off again."
After being neglected for so long, Jewish culture in Poland is enjoying a revival. Photographer Soliman Lawrence captures this budding rediscovery.
Image: S. Lawrence
Exploring a forgotten identity
Before World War II, 3.5 million Jews lived in Poland. Today, there are fewer than 4,000. Photographer Soliman Lawrence portrays how Poles rediscover Jewish culture and their country’s history. His pictures are on display as part of this year's Jewish Music and Theatre Week in Dresden. This picture shows the Jewish Cultural Festival in Krakow, which was founded by Janusz Makuch, a non-Jewish Pole.
Image: S. Lawrence
Poland's largest Jewish festival
The Krakow Jewish Culture Festival is the largest and oldest event of its kind in Poland. It showcases Jewish culture from around the world and attracts visitors all over the globe. It features internationally acclaimed musicians and includes workshops on Jewish dance, Israeli food and lectures. During the final concert "Shalom on Szeroka," visitors of the festival dance together.
Image: S. Lawrence
Host city with a painful past
The city of Chmielnik has a population of about 4,000 and is not home to any Jews. Nevertheless, Chmielnik has put on an annual Jewish cultural festival for the last 10 years. Before World War II, 80 percent of Chmielnik residents were Jewish. Today, remnants of the synagogue and cemetery are all that is left, though plans for restoration are in the works.
Image: Soliman Lawrence
Synagogues repurposed
Of the synagogues that survived the war, many have been repurposed and used as community centers, museums and bookstores, while a few are still used for worship. In this picture, tourists visit the partially restored Izaak Synagogue in Krakow's Jewish district, Kazimierz, which is decorated with life-sized cutouts of pre-war Jews.
Image: S. Lawrence
Resting places
Not only synagogues need rejuvenating, but also Jewish cemeteries. Many of them have been neglected and become overgrown, but there has been a recent drive to restore more of the graveyards. Pictured is a worker clearing brush from the Jewish Cemetery in Warsaw. Photographer Soliman Lawrence, an American living in Berlin, is particularly interested in the relationship between past and present.
Image: S. Lawrence
Keepsake
Another sign that Jewish culture in Poland is enjoying a revival is that souvenirs with Jewish themes are popular throughout Poland, from paintings and menorah key chains to figures mades of glass, wood and ceramic. The picture shows molds for menorahs that are made in Nova Huta - not for religious purposes, but as souvenirs.
Image: S. Lawrence
Ways to remember
Jews have been part of Polish folk art for hundreds of years. Today most figurines are sold to tourists at souvenir shops. Josef Regula, a Polish Catholic folk artist, carves a Jewish figure out of wood in this picture.
Image: S. Lawrence
Welcoming Sabbath
The Jewish community in Warsaw is the largest in Poland. During the Singer Cultural Festival, members of a Jewish group mark the Sabbath in front of a crowd of at least 200 people - most of whom are non-Jewish.
Image: S. Lawrence
Controversial re-enactment
In memory of the 1941 pogrom in Jedwabne, in which Poles forced their Jewish neighbors into a barn and set it on fire, artist Rafal Betlejewski burned a barn in the small town of Zawada. The artistic "performance" was very controversial and stirred a heated discussion among Jews and non-Jews. Soliman Lawrence's photos are on show in Dresden through November 16.
Image: S. Lawrence
Coming to terms with the past
Over the last decade Poland has been debating revelations about the Poles’ role during the Holocaust, which have undermined the previous consensus that Poles were largely victims and not perpetrators. Now more Poles are coming to terms with the past. Pictured here, a women peeks through a fence next to the Old Cemetery and Remuh Synagogue in Krakow.
Image: S. Lawrence
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Personal tragedy
The resonance with present-day events is personally upsetting for Lebenbaum. "It makes me sad to see people revive anti-Semitic slogans," he says, adding it reminds him of 1968.
Having to leave Poland was a "personal tragedy," Lebenbaum says, but he had no choice as "enemies of the state" wouldn't have found jobs in Communist Poland. Ironically, many of the Jews forced out defined themselves first and foremost as Polish citizens, not Jews. "I always had a Polish identity, and never split people in Jews and gentiles," Lebenbaum argues.
Unlike many Jews forced to leave decades ago who never returned to Poland, Lebenbaum couldn't forget his Polish roots. In the 1990s, he seized a new chance to get a Polish passport and returned to his native Warsaw. The anti-Semitic comments pain him, but he will never again leave Poland, he says. "I was never angry at Poland as a country," he says.
