It’s with an incredulous combination of contempt, disgust and a throbbing heart I note that Poland, the pre-WW2 biggest homeland of the Jewish life in the world, ignored the death and burial of its fellow citizen, Oded Lifshitz; Poland, likewise, be it on the governmental, media and social level, ignored the death and burial of the Bibas brothers.
The Western world wept; the Poles, how conveniently, looked the other way. New York, Paris (both la Tour Eiffel and le Conseil National), Budapest, San Francisco, Madrid, Perpignan, Los Angeles, Rome, Bern, Rio de Janeiro, Belgrade, Buenos Aires and countless other cities (no London, Oslo or Dublin on the list…) lit their cities in the auburn colours reminiscent of the red heads of the two innocent butchered and massacred Bibas boys.
Argentina announced two days of national mourning and named the street after Ariel and Kfir Bibas. No Oded Lifshitz street in Warsaw in the plans.
I wrote an impassioned report from the Hostages’ Square to the Polish media expressing the Jewish and Israeli tortured spirit during those harrowing days; the plea to publish the article was ignored by the progressive papers in Poland.
All I am capable of now is the feeling of disdain, discomfiture and yet another bout of reprehension for the country which, of all European countries, not only inhabits a land soaked wet with Jewish blood but which also bears historical responsibility to commemorate the 3 000 000 Jewish Poles lost during the Nazi occupation. Shame on each and everyone of you, my Polish friends.
I’m signing it off with profound sadness, shame and another spell of broken hopes.
