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The author and her father, Joseph Kanarek, at lunch in Kansas City, Missouri, in 2018.
During coverage of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, I spotted a man wearing a “Camp Auschwitz” sweatshirt. My nails digging into my palms, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing any more than I could understand how 48% of U.S. adults under 40 could not name one concentration camp, including Auschwitz.
I knew the name of the camp well. My father, before his death last fall, was one of fewer than 2,000 Auschwitz survivors worldwide. A few weeks after his 94th birthday, I opened my laptop and watched him disclose the secrets of his childhood I’d waited decades to hear.
Opinion
A demonstrator carries a Polish flag during a march marking National Independence Day, in Warsaw, Poland, Nov. 11, 2020. Photo: Jedrzej Nowicki / Agencja Gazeta / via Reuters.
When I read about the appointment of a new Polish Deputy Minister of Education, Tomáz Rzymkowski, who asserts that Jews have too much power, I shuddered.
And when I read the results of the CBOS survey, conducted by scholars at Krakow’s famed Jagellonian University and funded by the Polish National Science Center, that one in five Polish respondents believes it is a good thing that World War II led to fewer Jews in Poland, even as a majority disagreed, I shuddered again.