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----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, June 24, 2004 1:21 PM Subject: ZGram - 6/24/2004 - "Holocaust survivors in queue for new passports"
>
>
> 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]
>
>
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