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Neo-Nazi turns ultra-Orthodox
after discovering Jewish roots
“Before learning about his Jewish roots, Pinchads
Zlotosvsky from Poland was a skinhead with uncompromising contempt for Jews,
the 32-year-old ultra-Orthodox Jew told Haaretz last weekend during Shavei
Israel's annual conference for hidden Jews in Lodz.
The transition in Zlotosvsky's life occurred after his
mother told him she comes from a Jewish family. Her parents, she said, sent her
to a monastery when she was a small child so that she would survive the
Holocaust.
All her relatives were murdered, as far as Pinchas
Zlotosvsky knows.
"I realized I was Jewish according to Judaism. I
couldn't look myself in the mirror for a whole week after I found out," he
recalls. After he recovered from the shock, he spent the past few years
rediscovering his Jewish roots. He has also become very active with the Jewish
community.
Zlotosvsky's return to Judaism is something he has in
common with many of the participants in the conference, which saw the
restoration of the Rabbinic Association of Poland for the first time since the
1930s. Attending the ceremony was Israel's chief rabbi, Yona Metzger, and, of
course, Poland's chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich.
Official data mentions some 3 million Jews living in
Poland prior to World War II. Today, official figures list only 4,000 Jews as
residing in Poland, but the actual figures at least in terms of Halakha, or
Jewish law are probably higher. The discrepancy stems from the fact that
thousands of Jews who survived the war preferred not to reveal their Jewish
identity for fear of anti-Semitic persecution by the local population.
Indeed, there were pogroms against Jews after the war,
with the authorities turning a blind eye to lynching and murders, and even, at
times, taking part in the killing of people who had managed to survive the Nazi
purge.
Another significant portion of the hidden Jewish
population consists of people like Pinchas Zlotosvsky's mother, whose parents
sent them to monasteries to be raised as Christians. Despite efforts by
international Jewish organizations to locate these people, not all have been
found, and many are assumed to have remained Christian....”
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