ZGram - 6/24/2004 - "Holocaust survivors in queue for new passports"

[zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org]

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny:  Now more than ever!

June 24, 2004

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

FYI:

[START]

World News / June 24, 2004

Holocaust survivors queue for passports to the land they escaped
From Stephen Farrell and Yonit Farago in Tel Aviv

HOLOCAUST survivors holding applications to regain citizenship of the 
land where once they faced persecution gathered in the shade of a 
stunted palm tree in Tel Aviv.

Dozens of Israeli pensioners, reading Hebrew newspapers but chatting 
in Polish, greeted old friends who also fled Poland after September 
1939, escaping the fate of countless less fortunate relatives.

Few of these Jewish grandparents actually plan on moving back to 
Poland or any of the Eastern European countries that have just joined 
the European Union.

They will live out their years in the Levantine sun, but are here at 
the behest of their Israeli-born children and grandchildren, who have 
taken note of the entry of ten new countries into the EU and realised 
the benefits of having Polish or Hungarian-born ancestors. Some are 
businessmen seeking to increase work opportunities, others are 
fearful of rising Middle Eastern tensions.

"I escaped Poland on horseback with my parents when I was five years 
old. We lost the whole family during the war, four uncles, my 
grandfather and his daughter," said Moshe Laschuv, 70, who was born 
in Plaszow. "I don't want the passport for myself, I have a wonderful 
life and I went through all the wars here; that's not the reason. I 
want it for my six grandchildren. You don't know what will happen 
here in 20 or 30 years’ time.

"It's an economic thing, really. So my son or grandson can maybe 
study in Europe. I'm doing it because Poland joined the EU, otherwise 
there would be no point. It's a shame to waste a penny."

All around him, others of his age queued patiently outside the glass 
door. The Polish Embassy says it has seen a marked increase in 
applications: 2,500 so far this year, up from 1,500 in 2003 and 500 
in 2002.

Ilan Charsky, a Tel Aviv lawyer, is handling more than 2,000 applications.

Hundreds of people who applied before Poland joined the EU have 
already obtained citizenship, he said, and he receives between 50 and 
70 new clients a day, the vast majority highly educated.

Any Israeli descendant of a person born in Poland can apply, even 
second or third-generation immigrants, if they can prove a blood 
relation to a parent or grandparent with the relevant birth 
certificate. Only after the father is registered as a citizen can the 
second generation apply.

A few minutes’ drive away, others are filling out similar forms in 
the Hungarian mission, where consular officials handle 250 
applications a week, and have noticed a significant increase in the 
past few months. Here, too, they cite business, study and travel as 
the motivating factors.

Many want to travel on a non-Israeli passport, or avoid paying huge 
student fees for non-EU citizens.

Efrat Schwartz, 26, said she had already completed one degree and 
hoped to do another in the land of her grandparents’ birth, which she 
had never visited.

"I will always consider myself Israeli, but it just gives me 
options," she says. "A better job, everything. I will try my luck 
over there and probably try to stay in Europe, not for a lifetime, 
maybe for three or four years.

“The main reason is economic, but also the security problems here. 
It's not nice to go out every day and be afraid there's going to be a 
bomb. You get tired of the conflict."

It is no small irony that the mini-exodus comes at the height of 
anti-European feelings in Israel, where it is now a mantra that the 
continent harbours deep and abiding anti-Semitism and is congenitally 
biased against Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians.

The Jewish Agency has drawn up a campaign to persuade the 
600,000-strong Jewish community in France - Europe's largest - to 
emigrate to Israel to avoid anti-Semitic attacks, which it blames 
mostly on the country's five million Muslims as tensions rise in the 
Middle East.

But there are also wider demographic implications. Ariel Sharon's 
Government has a publicly stated goal of bringing one million more 
Jews to Israel to counter the soaring Palestinian birthrate.

Many will be encouraged to Judaise remote areas or those with high 
Arab populations, including the occupied West Bank, the southern 
Negev desert and around the Sea of Galilee in the north.

[END]