A Letter

I was raised Polish, not Jewish. Maybe that's because my father isn't Jewish (Polish only) and my mom was raised mostly Polish. Her parents were both Jewish but besides speaking Yiddish, they didn't raise her with many Jewish traditions. So. . .I grew up always visiting Poland and getting to know this incredibly huge and loving family there (on my dad's side). I never knew of or heard of any anti-Semitic feelings toward my family or myself from the people we met through my family and through all of my travels there. I decided 5 years ago to move to Poland to get to know my roots. I lived there for a year and stayed with college students in Sopot (near Gdansk). I taught English at a few schools and talked about being half Jewish (which is what I considered myself at the time)with high school and college aged students. There might have been one sort of strange remark by someone in all the talks with dozens of wonderful people I met there. I thought it was one of the best years of my life. My mother taught me to be proud of being Polish and being Jewish. She always was and always will be not b/c of the communist bastards who through her out, not b/c of anti-Semitism that still exists everywhere, but b/c it's the place that bore, raised and cultured her to becoming the beautiful person she is. She has passed that down to me and I feel very lucky to be both Polish and Jewish and I actually feel sorry for those who still have such hostility and hatred for an ENTIRE COUNTRY AND CULTURE of people that you yourselves are a part of. Go to Poland and spend some time there before making such horrible accusations about the ENTIRE CULTURE. When will we move forward from all of this. Should we hate Germans and Germany for the rest of our lives, too? I don't judge or wish to be judged for my opinions. I think it's actually healthy to vent out these emotions but I hope we can learn something from one another. What do you think?

Ania Wysinski