Published: 6 March 2025
Last updated: 6 March 2025
Some sections of the pro-Palestine protest movement have taunted Jews with cries of “Go back to Poland” or “Go back to Russia”.
This dismissal of Jews' right to be in Israel has a particular irony if you understand the history of Poland and Russia, where Jews were often told to “Go to Palestine”.
The contemporary anti-Zionist movement frequently denies the Jewish indigenous connection to Israel. Historically, on the other hand, antisemites have sought to emphasise that very connection, implying Israel/Palestine is the only place where Jews belong.
I was startled when I first came across the way Jews had been told to leave Europe for Palestine during the Holocaust. In a 1948 Polish report ‘Hitlerite Crimes in Jaroslaw’ survivor Alexander Lubasz testified that as the town’s 7,000 Jews were forced across the San River by the Nazis , they were met with a mocking inscription scrawled in chalk on the bridge railings: “Kierunek do Palestyny” (Directions to Palestine).
Comments2
Fiona Kelmann15 March at 01:01 pm
@kazys
The author is correct in identifying that despite constituting the largest minority group in prewar Poland ( 10 percent), with 30 percent of prewar Warsaw being Jewish, Jews were a stigmatised and persecuted group.
My grandmother who was one of the over 200,000 Polish Jews speaking Polish as their first and primary language recorded in her testimony the prewar taunts she received by non Jewish Poles “ Go back to Palestine”.
This is a historically accurate and cogently argued article which speaks truth .
kazys skirpa6 March at 07:16 am
First, the translation of the Polish text was replete with errors and incomplete. Second, of course Jews were not considered Poles. They were not. Jews were one of several minority groups in interwar Poland with their own language and culture. Only 10% of Jews in Poland spoke Polish as their primary language.