2 August 2007

Warsaw (dpa) - More than 60 years after the Holocaust Jewish life in Poland is thriving with new diversity.

Before its occupation by Nazi Germany, Poland was once home of Europe's largest Jewish community, and Warsaw was the continent's largest Jewish city.

Poland's Jews were almost wiped out by the Nazis during the Second World War, while the heroic rising of Warsaw's Jewish Ghetto against the militarily more powerful Nazis marked a tragic end of an era.

But a new era is beginning. Reformed Jews are planning to build communities all over the country where until a few years ago what remained of Jewish life in Poland was either orthodox or completely secular.

Beit Warszawa, the reformed community in Warsaw, started up with only two members in 1999. In the meantime its membership has risen to some 200, and for the last year it has even had its own full-time rabbi, Burt Schuman.

During his recent visit Rabbi Joel Oseran, the associate director of the World Union for Progressive Judaism (WUPJ) in Jerusalem, met a lively community of people, many of whom had only discovered their Jewish identity a few years ago.

"We're open for all those who are looking for something," Oseran said.

Representatives of the reformed community in recent months have therefore been trying to establish contact to events addressing Poland's Jewish heritage or interreligious dialogue.

"No matter whether it's Zielona Gora, Gdansk or Lublin - time and again people approach us who say initially they're just curious and then slowly admit that they're actually of Jewish origin," Schuman says with a smile.

Many Holocaust survivors were too traumatized to pass on their Jewish heritage to their children or grandchildren.

Anti-Semitic incidents in post-war Poland also meant that many remained silent over their Jewish identity.

Only after the fall of communism religious traditions were revived, mainly through the activities of Jewish foundations from the United States, such as the Lauder Foundation.

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