Polish Diaspora in the Lviv Region

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Folks,

The city of Lviv, which was the Polish city Lwów before the Soviet and Nazi invasion of Poland in September 1939 and until 1918 the city was the rather cosmopolitan and multi-ethnic Lemberg in the Austrian Habsurg empire. 1/3 of it's citizens were Roman Catholic Poles back then and 1/3d were Greek Catholic (Orthodox rite) Ukrainians and 1/3d of the population was Jewish, the languages of the city were Polish, Ukkrainian, Yiddish and Austrian German, later due to Soviet times Russian became a much used language as well.

I read books of the Dutch author Milo Anstadt, who was of Polish jewish descent, and was raised Polish by a Polonist Polish Jewish mother, while his fathers was from a Yiddish speaking Orthodox Jewish family. Anstadt said that he belonged to the minority of Polonist Jews (Polish speaking assimilated Jews). In Lwów the apartment building where his parents lived had the ethnic build up of Lwów, 1/3d Catholic Poles, 1/3d Greek Catholic (Orthodox rite) Ukrainians and 1/3d Jewish. Their house maid was Ukrainian. Anstadt and his family left Lwów in 1930 when he was 10. He was treated badly by orthodox Jewish teachers in Amsterdam, and went to a secular socialist school where he felt more at home. Later he was a well known leftwing intellectual, labour party affiliated writer and journalist.


The Dutch journalist of Polish Jewish heritage Milo Anstadt who was born and raised in Poland in the city of Lwów. He spoke Polish, read Polish, and translated Polish documents, texts and letters for Polish people.


Milo Anstadt and his sister Sera Anstadt, photostudio Hirsch, Poland, Lwów 1929 (privé-property family M. Anstadt)

He had a life long connection with Poland and went to communist Poland and had contacts with dissidents and Solidarność. The authorities of the Polish Peoples Republic didn't trust him and didn’t liked him. After the collapse of communist Poland he got a Polish passport of the new Polish embassy of free and democratic Poland. He was proud of that. He translated texts, officials documents and letters from Polish to Dutch and a lot of Poles visited him in Amsterdam and he visited Poland. He never lost the ability to speak Polish and thus spoke Polish his entire life.


Presentation of the Prince Bernhard Fund television prize to Milo Anstadt (right) by Prof. Wiarda (1960)

I learned a lot of Poland because Milo Anstadt wrote a book about the history of Poland and a book about the relationship of Poles and Jewish in Poland. I read both books. I called him 2 times just before he died and he told me a lot about the Lwów of his youth in Lwów and about Poland of that time. Don't think we were defenseless against Polish and Ukrainian antisemites he said, we had our own political parties, movements and self defence organisations.

Anstadt would have maybe been to Polinist for many Jews, but you had of course many assimilated Polish speaking Jews in the socialist, social democratic, liberal and conservative movements and parties in Poland.

Lwów was a very Polish city which became Ukrainianized and Russified furing the Communist Stalinist Soviet years and after that in the Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev years of the SovietUnion.


Presentation of the Prince Bernhard Fund television prize to Milo Anstadt Date : October 6, 1960

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I read this book in the Dutch language about the relationship between Poles and Jews in 'Poland, country, people, culture, 1962' and I learned a great deal from that historical book about Poland. It was the start of my Polish history lessons as to speak. My father had both books of Anstadt. I am greatful for that to my dad. he does not live anymore, but one of the things he tought me was fondness of language, literature, Proze and Dutch, Flemish, German, British, American, Polish and Russian writers. He had a large house library with world literature and he had a large Dutch Winkler Prins Encyclopedia. As a boy I read a lot of books at home and in the city libraries of the cities Vlissingen and Middelburg. You could say that I was addicted to books and comics.

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Milo Anstadt



Milo Anstadt, wł. Samuel Marek Anstadt (ur. 10 lipca 1920 we Lwowie, zm. 16 lipca 2011 w Amsterdamie[1]) – prozaik i publicysta holenderski żydowskiego pochodzenia.

Życiorys

Urodził się i wczesne dzieciństwo spędził we Lwowie. Autobiografię dotyczącą tego okresu zatytułował Kind in Polen (Dziecko ze Lwowa)[1], skąd rodzina wyprowadziła się w 1930 roku do Holandii. W Holandii ukończył szkołę podstawową, ale nie rozpoczął nauki w liceum. Pracę rozpoczął w wieku 14 lat, wstąpił też do klubu ANSKI, zrzeszającego zainteresowanych rozwojem kulturalnym Żydów ze wschodniej Europy. Uzyskał stopień magisterski z prawa na Universiteit van Amsterdam, specjalizował się w kryminologii.

W 1941 roku ożenił się z Lydią Bleiberg, z którą doczekał się w marcu 1942 roku córki, Irki. Od 9 lipca 1942 roku ukrywał się z żoną, a córka przebywała w Beverwijk. Po wojnie był do 1950 roku redaktorem magazynu Vrij Nederland, a następnie dziennikarzem w Radiu Holenderskim. W 1960 roku otrzymał Television Award Fundacji Kultury Księcia Bernharda. W tym też zaczął pisać książkę o Polsce, którą opublikowano w 1962 roku Polen, land, volk, cultuur.

In 1994 roku odznaczony Orderem Oranje-Nassau.



Links:
wyborcza.pl/7,75399,9960832,zmarl-znany-holenderski-pisarz-polskiego-pochodzenia.html
www.tygodnikprzeglad.pl/ambasadorowie-tolerancji/
jagahost.proboards.com/thread/14526/kresy-eastern-poland

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Folks,

The grim side of Lwów and Lviv and Lemberg is that the city was and is in the borderland between West-Slavs and East-Slavs, with a negative historical Austrian, Soviet and German heritage of occupation, oppression and murder. That scars stayed and people, innocent Poles, Jews and Ukrainians will not forget that. Like many cities and area's Lwów had it's bright sides and dark sides.

Pieter

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Today again one people is denying the existence, identity, culture, language and very existence of another people. Putin Russians deny the Ukrainian identity and very existence. Calling the Ukrainian population Nazified people, which have to be erased, defeated and destroyed is very dangerous. It reminds me of German/Austrian Nazi practices, Stalinist practices (NKVD destruction bataljons and the Holodomor and the Stalinist purges in the late thirties, and the deportation of 3 million Poles in from Eastern Poland to Siberia and Kazakhstan and the murder of about 150 thousand Poles by the Soviets in the late thirites and early forties) and the practices of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) in South-Eastern Poland during the massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia (Polish: rzeź wołyńska) in the period 1943–1945.