More Schindler’s Tour

Count me as one who considers travel broadening. Yet in reading the Sept. 11 letter to the editor (about “The Schindler’s List Tour,” which appeared Aug. 21) by Artur Zygmont, I was astounded you would print such a misstatement of the facts.

Mr. Zygmont states: “There are hundreds of thousands of Jews in Poland. . . . “ If anyone cares to verify this they will find that 6,000 Jews remain in Poland today (out of a community that numbered 3.1 million in 1940!) For Mr. Zygmont to add that “they are in the mainstream of Polish life” is sheer fantasy. Mind you, the population of Poland is 40,000,000. He follows up with an inference that you can’t spot Jews in Poland because, “. . . they don’t wear yarmulkes and they don’t observe the Sabbath.”

Gee whiz. How did the Poles find 3.1 million Jews to turn over to and assist the Nazis in systematic murdering? Will miracles ever cease in Mr. Zygmont’s Poland?

ROBERT ARONOFF

South Pasadena

I was born in Poland and lived there during World War II. Obviously, neither Artur Zygmont nor (second letter writer) Isabelle Sander is familiar with the facts nor is comfortable with acknowledging the truth.

I am Jewish and survived the Holocaust only because I had no Semitic features. My parents and my whole family (over 25 people) perished. My father, who spoke fluent German and looked like a Tirolean German, died because a Pole recognized him on the street and reported him to a passing German policeman. He was arrested on the spot, never to be seen again. That Pole committed an act of sheer hatred, which is better known as anti-Semitism.

I have been back to Poland several times in the last 25 years. I am sad to say that anti-Semitism still exists, especially in the cities. Even today, no Jew would dare to settle in a village. Mr. Zygmont states that there are “hundreds of thousands of Jews living in Poland” in the mainstream Polish life.

On my recent trip to Poland a few months ago, I encountered anti-Semitic signs and posters plastered on the walls. I took a picture of one of these posters. Hasn’t there been enough blood shed of innocent people in Poland? Do not the Poles have enough problems in governing their country without concentrating so much energy on anti-Semitism?

It is time to stop the pretending. Facts are facts.

GERDA SEIFER

Long Beach