Poles apart no longer
WHILE some Poles did the work of the Nazis in executing Jews during the Holocaust, some Polish Jews did the work of the Soviets in executing members of the Polish Underground resisting the Soviet takeover of Poland after World War II, a leader of Australia’s Polish community told a gathering this week.
WHILE some Poles did the work of the Nazis in executing Jews during the Holocaust, some Polish Jews did the work of the Soviets in executing members of the Polish Underground resisting the Soviet takeover of Poland after World War II, a leader of Australia’s Polish community told a gathering this week.
“The problem that developed in the years which followed was that those in each community [Polish and Jewish] who had suffered, saw everyone in the other community as mirror images of those who had done them harm,” reflected Christopher Lancucki, as he received an award for strengthening bonds between Jews and non-Jews of Polish background in Australia.
The Melbourne grandfather, a retired physicist and scientist at the University of Western Australia, was recognised for his efforts to reconcile Jewish and non-Jewish Polish Australians after the wrenching period of the Holocaust and its aftermath, by focusing on eight centuries of Jewish-Polish coexistence.
Lancucki built bonds between Australia’s non-Jewish Polish community and the Jewish Holocaust Centre and encouraged inclusion of Jews in Polish community events.
Lancucki’s family watched as he was honoured by the Australian Society of Polish Jews and their Descendants (ASPJ) with its Henryk Slawik Award at the Caulfield Park Alma Bowling Club on Tuesday, attended by Polish Consul in Melbourne George John Luk-Kozika, Polish Community Council of Victoria president Marian Pawlik, ASPJ president Bernard Korbman, and MPs David Southwick and Nick Wakeling.
Slawik was a Polish lawmaker who helped save more than 30,000 Polish refugees, including 5000 Polish Jews. He was executed at Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria in 1944.
Lancucki, whose father was a Polish officer killed by the Nazis, said the ASPJ “was established by people who value and wish to maintain both their Jewish and Polish heritage. A relationship developed between this organisation and the community I represent.”
Southwick, recounting his own Polish origins and his grandfather changing his name from “Serokovicz”, described Lancucki as “someone who stood up against hatred”. Wakeling, who advocates for Polish Australians in his Ferntree Gully electorate and beyond, spoke of the Polish footprint in Australia, with familiar names such as Strzelecki and Kosciuszko.
PETER KOHN
comments