Jonathan Blaustein
“Go Back to Poland!”
Project Statement
The Israel-Hamas War kicked off in late 2023, and by the spring of 2024, large-scale, Anti-Israel protests dominated many American college campuses.
I read the news voraciously, and one day, a story went viral that some Columbia University students were chanting “Go Back to Poland!” at Israelis, and American Jews as well.
Not much gets under my skin, but that certainly did.
Go back to Poland?
Where all of our ancestors were annihilated?
Are you kidding me?
Not to mention, it’s super-insulting to Poland. Like, you Jews need to be punished, so why not go back to that shit-hole country you people came from?
As it happens, my ancestors did come from Poland. (As well as Germany, Prussia and Hungary.)
All of my grandparents, (and two of my great-grandparents,) were born in the US. But all of the relatives they left behind, in the Old Country, were murdered by the Nazis.
The slate was wiped clean.
In Poland, the numbers were horrifying.
Something like 3 million Jews killed, out of a pre-war population of 3.1 million. (And the Jews that survived were dispersed.)
Before the Germans invaded, Jews made up 10% of Poland’s population, and had lived there for 1000 years.
1000 years!
Then they were gone.
These days, a generation of Poles has lived and died in a country without many Jews at all.
I wondered, what would such a place be like?
As it happens, I was invited into an art exhibition at a Krakow museum a few years ago.
(There was a bit of lead time.)
It opened in the spring of 2024 at MOCAK, and by last summer, I couldn’t get the protestors chants out of my head.
“Go Back to Poland!”
When the museum sent me an exhibition catalogue, and I realized how lovely the show was, I decided I was going to take the protestors up on their challenge.
Go Back to Poland?
Sure, why not?
Let’s see what the place is like.
Over eight days in Poland meeting artists and curators, as well as spending hours alone, walking the streets, I found myself enthralled.
From a vibe check standpoint, I loved Poland.
It was so chill. And thriving!
Beautiful and clean, sure, but I felt a live-and-let-live energy in the streets, not unlike the Netherlands. (But with a strong Catholic spine, hence the pronounced societal conservatism.)
In order to be systematic, I visited Krakow, Warsaw and Gdansk, the three major cities of the south, center, and north of Poland.
Did I feel comfortable there, as a Jew?
Absolutely.
I loved the place.
But I did find it odd that there was so little left, after 1000 years of Jewish experience.
Cemeteries. To be expected.
I saw a synagogue in Krakow, and one of its signs had been vandalized.
I saw a guy in Warsaw wearing a yarmulke.
And I felt like an animal in a zoo, in the Polin (Jewish) Museum in Warsaw, because the history was told with the end point known.
Jews used to live in Poland.
But then they all got exterminated.
The end.
Not a good feeling. (Though the exhibits are top notch.)
It’s impossible to discuss this subject, the aftermath of ethnic cleansing, without acknowledging that Israel, the Jewish country, is currently in the midst of doing just that to the Palestinian people in Gaza.
By all accounts, they’ve destroyed the country, and killed or starved so many people. And by many accounts, Israeli right wing politicians seek to remove the Gazan population and rebuild - turning the enclave into a high-end, Israeli tourist destination - which is tantamount to ethnic cleansing.
The trauma cycle continues...
I returned to Poland again in 2025, and have begun to interview other American Jews who’ve been to Poland, to see what their experience was like?
Did they also feel right at home, as I did?
Or was it painful for them?
Did they lose any known relatives in the Holocaust, or was it only a nameless wave of ancestors, as it was for me?
I also plan to interview Poles, to see how they feel about it.