JEWISH BEHAVIOR is the same the world over. This report is from Poland, where Jewish teenagers are often sent on pilgrimages to “experience” the alleged wartime mistreatment of Jews at the hands of evil Whites. “It happens sometimes that, somewhere between Majdanek and Treblinka, the hotel service has to collect human excrement from hotel beds and washbasins. It happens sometimes that hotels have to give money back to other tourists, who cannot sleep because Israeli ‘students’ decided to play football in the hotel corridor in the middle of the night. It happens sometimes that young Israelis spend their time (and ample stipends) on illegal striptease” (or sex “performances,” almost certainly using trafficked or coerced “labor,” and almost certainly featuring mentally or physically abused Whites, some of them children) “ordered via the hotel telephone.” And it happens sometimes that local Whites are mistreated, even beaten, by Israeli “security agents.” This is an extract from the Polish magazine, Prze Koj.
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The list of losses Israeli teenagers’ visits leave behind is long and costly.ROBERTO Lucchesini, originally from Tuscany, for several years now a resident of Krakow, hasn’t been sleeping well recently. Before he will be able to move his arms normally again, he will have to go through long rehab treatment. All this because of how he was treated, in broad daylight in front of passers-by — and in front of several Jewish teenagers who were hermetically closed in their coach-buses. Israeli bodyguards, equipped with firearms, wrenched and bound his arms behind his back and over his head with handcuffs. In Krakow, in the middle of the street. A moment before, the Italian was asking the Jewish tour’s coach drivers, who were parked in front of his house, turn their engines off: ‘The Israelis handcuffed me, threw me on the ground, my face landed in dog excrement, and then they were kicking me’. After that the perpetrators simply left, leaving Roberto bound and incapacitated. The Italian had to be freed by the Polish police.
Lucchesini had moved to Kazimierz, a district of Kraków, that used to be a Jewish commune of which the only things left now are synagogues and memories, often painful. He found an apartment with a view on the synagogue. ‘Back then I had thought this was the most beautiful place on Earth’ – he says – ‘after some time I understood that the place is indeed beautiful, but not for today’s residents’.
Kicking instead of answers
Another resident of Kazimierz, Beata W., an office worker, is of similar opinion. Israeli security searched her handbag on one of the streets, without telling her why.
‘When I asked what was this all about, they told me to shut up. I listened, I stopped talking, I was afraid they’d tell me to get undressed next’ – she says annoyed.
Even a young Jew residing in Poland was mistreated by intruding, overbearing Israelis. He went to pray in his synagogue a couple of months ago, asked why he was being accosted by Israeli security men, and received no answer. Instead of an answer, he got kicked. ‘I saw this with my own eyes’ – says Mike Urbaniak, the editor of Forum of Polish Jews and correspondent of European Jewish Press in Poland. ‘I saw how my friend is being brutally attacked by security agents from Israel, without any reason.’
The justification given is “Israeli children’s safety.”
‘For Poles it may be difficult to understand, but security agents accompany Israelis at all times, both in Israel and abroad’ – explains Michał Sobelman, a spokesman for Israeli embassy in Poland. ‘This is a parents’ demand, otherwise they wouldn’t agree for any kind of trip. Poland is no exception.’
Professor Moshe Zimmermann, head of German History Institute at Hebrew University in Jerusalem thinks however, that the problem is not only in the security agents’ behaviour. He thinks Israelis basically think that Poles aren’t equal to them — not just that they think Poles can’t ensure their children’s safety.
‘They are not equal partners to any kind of discussion. It applies also to our common history, contemporary history and politics. In result Israeli youth see Poles as second category people, as potential enemies’ – he explains bluntly.
An instruction book on conduct in Poland given to visiting Israeli students confirms the professor’s opinion. It contained this paragraph: ‘Everywhere we will be surrounded by Poles. We will hate them because of their participation in Holocaust’.
‘Agendas of our teenagers’ trips to Poland are set in advance by the Israeli government, and are not flexible,’ says Ilona Dworak-Cousin, the chairwoman of the Polish-Israeli Friendship Association in Israel. ‘Those trips basically come down to visiting, one by one, the places of extermination of Jews. From that perspective Poland is just a huge Jewish graveyard. And nothing more. Meeting living people, for those who organise these trips, is meaningless.’
A resident of Kraków’s Kazimierz district, who is of Jewish descent, says that there is nothing wrong with that: ‘Israelis don’t come to Poland for holiday. Their aim is to see the sites of Shoah and listen to the terrifying history of their families, history that often is not told to them by their grandparents, because of its emotional weight. Often young people who are leaving, cry, phone their parents and say “why didn’t you tell me it was that horrible?”. To be frank, I am not surprised they have no interest in talking about Lajkonik’ [a Polish folk festival].
‘They start to think it was the Poles who created concentration camps for Jews, that it is the Polish who were and still are the biggest anti-Semites in the world,’ adds Dworak-Cousin, who is Jewish herself.
Teenagers behaving badly
‘Someone in Israel decide, that our children going to Poland have to be hermetically surrounded by security,’ says Lili Haber president of Cracovians Association in Israel. ‘Someone decided that young Israelis cannot meet young Poles, and cannot walk the streets. Basically these visits aren’t anything else but a several-day-long voluntary prison.’
‘Moreover, as it turns out, the children are too young, to visit sites of mass murders,’ adds Dworak-Cousin. Traumatic experiences that accompany visits in death camps have its consequences. Kids become aggressive. And instead of getting to know the country of their ancestors, in which Jews and Poles lived in symbiosis for over 1000 years, Israeli teenagers cause one scandal after another.
It happens sometimes that, somewhere between Majdanek and Treblinka, the hotel service has to collect human excrement from hotel beds and washbasins. It happens sometimes that hotels have to give money back to other tourists, who cannot sleep because Israeli ‘students’ decided to play football in the hotel corridor — in the middle of the night. It happens sometimes that young Israelis spend their time on illegal striptease ordered via the hotel telephone.
Six-year-old Krzys from Kazimierz played football too. On Sunday night on 15th April, after shooting two goals, he wanted to go home, as usual. He lives near a synagogue, in front of which hundreds of young Israelis gathered. Just before Szeroka street he was stopped by some not-so-nice men. ‘This is a semi-private area today. There is no entry,’ he was told. It didn’t help when he told them his mum would be upset if he wasn’t home on time.
The security officers guarding the Israeli Jews were Polish this time — and accompanied by the Polish police. They also denied access to the area to a Dutch couple, who had reserved a table at one of the restaurants on Szeroka street six months before. ‘Is this a free country?’ one of the tourists asked.
On a normal day you can access Szeroka street from several sides. That evening from none. I tried to get through myself, without any success. After a long time, the police eventually helped me to pass the security line.
‘There are no official restrictions here,’ they tried to convince me a moment later, although the “unofficial practice” was different.
‘We have only set certain restrictions in place,’ Sylvia Bober-Jasnoch, a spokeswoman for Malopolska Region Police press service, explained to me later.
The police cannot say anything else. Polish law does not allow residents to be denied access to their own streets. Even during mass events (however the Jewish doings on Szeroka did not have that status) residents have the right to go back to their homes and tourists have the right to dine in a restaurant. And Israeli security agents certainly have no right to stop or search passers-by, nor do Israelis have the right to direct the actions of the local police.
Airplane interior left “looking like a battlefield”
The Polish-Italian couple, Robert Lucchesini, his wife Anna, and their two-year-old daughter, cannot understand the Polish government’s attitude. Which, quite the opposite of the Israeli government, is not able to ensure the safety of its citizens. Safety is not the only thing among the pair’s priorities, but also peace and quietness. They are, however, being woken up every morning by the loud noises of the engines of the coach-buses loaded with groups of Israeli youth. Their drivers break driving regulations all the time. They’re allowed to park at the square near the synagogue (in front of Robert’s house) only for up to 10 minutes. They stay there much longer, even hours. With their engines turned on. Reason? Jewish youths’ safety” – they would be able to leave quicker in case of a threat. And because “Israeli kids need to be served coffee.” Even though Kazimierz is full of cafes, Israeli teenagers don’t go there. They are being told: no contacts with “the environment,” no talking to passers-by, no smiles nor gestures.
This has been going on for years. Israeli groups make contact with Poles only there where they have to. First in airplanes.
‘A plane after such group has landed, looks like a battlefield,’ admits a worker for LOT Polish Airlines who asked that his name not be published. ‘The worst thing is these kids’ attitude to Polish staff. Recently a stewardess was slapped by a teenager in her face because he had been “waiting for his Coca-Cola too long.”‘
Leszek Chorzewski, LOT spokesman, admits that Israeli youths make difficult customers. ‘They demand not only more attention then other passengers, but also more security precautions.’
Katarzyna Łazuga, a student from Poznań, could see that first hand. She participated in tourist guides’ training in one of Poland’s airports. ‘Young people from Israel entered the room we were in,’ she recalls. ‘Our group was then made to stop classes and rushed out of the room. Israeli security officers told us to go out, right now and without any talking. Because… we were “staring” at their clients. Yes, we were looking at them.’
By necessity young Israelis see Poles also in Polish hotels, if any hotels will still have them. Most of those in Kraków don’t want to any more.
‘We have quit admitting Israeli youth once and for all,’ says Agnieszka Tomczyk, assistant manageress in a chain of hotels called System. ‘We could not afford to sustain the losses after their stays any more’.
These losses being: demolished rooms, broken chairs and tables, human excrement in washbasins or trash bins, or, as in the Astoria, another hotel in Kraków, burned carpet. The Astoria has also backed out from hosting Israeli groups. One of the reasons is that the teenagers’ “security agents” were ordering other guests, whom they didn’t like, to leave.
‘I understand that Israeli security agents are over-sensitive to any disturbing signals. They are coming from a country where bombs explode almost daily, and young people die in terrorist attacks,’ states Mike Urbaniak. ‘But Poland is one of the safest countries in Europe. Here, excluding a tiny number of incidents, Jews are not being attacked, and Jewish institutions don’t need security, which is very unusual on a world scale.’
This year 30,000 Israeli teenagers are coming to Poland, and they will have 800 security agents to protect them.
‘The results of the investigation of Lucchesini’s beating is of some importance, says Dworak-Cousin. “What matters most though is if the youth that visit Poland will still treat it as a hostile and completely alien country.’
