Catholic Pole’s obsession helps Holocaust survivor find mother
After Karolina Panz’s high school attempts to build bridges with Jews were stymied by anti-Semitism, researching the slaughtered Jewish communities became her passion
By Steve Maas April 27, 2014, 4:57 pm
BOSTON — When Karolina Panz was a high school senior in Warsaw back in the 1990s, she arranged for a group of Israeli students to spend a day with her classmates.
Panz, who is Catholic, had just taken part in a March of the Living event, accompanying a group of young Canadian Jews on a tour of Treblinka. During a candle-lighting ceremony at the concentration camp, she cried. Her tears moved the Canadians. They hadn’t expected Poles to care about the Jews.
By inviting Israelis to her school, Panz hoped to encourage Poles and Jews to see each other more as people and less as stereotypes. But one of her teachers, the wife of the school director, forced her to cancel the visit at the last minute.
“’Jews in our school? What are you thinking? How is it possible?’” Panz said the teacher told her. “I was shocked. It was the first time I met anti-Semitism.”
http://www.timesofisrael.com/catholic-poles-obsession-helps-holocaust-survivor-find-mother/