teaching the holocaust 2004 summer workshop - Southern Institute ...

PR Many Polish Jews that I have spoken to, they dislike the Poles more than they do the
Germans.
E Well, the Germans followed the order. They followed. They were hypnotized by Hitler.
Poles were able to be a little more, I don't know, it was, they were anti-Semites. Many just,
some anti-Semitism was instigated by the Polish clergy. The Polish clergy was different.
Because I remember we lived across from the church, across. When Easter or Christmas,
when Easter, they went out from the church, they were so, especially the young people,
“Christ killer, Christ killer,” you just heard “Christ killer, Christ killer.” Because the sermons
that the priests preached on those holidays were full of hate. The Jews killed Christ and what
happened two thousand years ago we are responsible now, that one Jew killed another. Didn't
even kill. Pontius Pilate gave the decree. But that was fight between one Jew and another. It
was inflated, it was terrible. That was the same thing in Russia. Mostly the anti-Semitism was
on a religious basis. This was in one way. The other way somehow it was a jealousy that, I
don't know what kind of jealousy because Poland, you didn't have such rich Jews to be jealous,
but maybe they always, the Jewish family pushed for more education, that the Jew was always
more educated. Even the Jew couldn't be in a high position, but he was always more educated
than the Pole.
PR And there was resentment.
E Yes. That's what I think.
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THE BONFIRE
E Yes. One incident I will tell you and then I will finish because it's too tiresome. When the
Germans came in, that was the second, at 1941, after a few days, they told like the decree,
the man came with the drum and said all the Jews have to assemble in the market place. All
the Jews. If one wouldn't come, he will be shot. Everyone has to come, from big to old. So
they took us in, and they told to go in force, and they made like a parade. They let us go like
in a parade, and all the Poles and all the Ukrainians were watching like you would watch here
a Mardi Gras parade. All the Jews, and they were putting the old Jews with young girls, you