Look Who it Was Random video

Aleksander Smolar - My parents' separate lives (20/201)

197 views · Published 17 December 2018 · 1:36 · Indexed 1 November 2026

Channel: Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People · 2018 · News & Politics

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To listen to more of Aleksander Smolar’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFwlxPLurqAOCrabBgGrqLA7

Aleksander Smolar (b. 1940) is a Polish writer, political activist and adviser, vice-president of the Institute for Human Sciences and president of the Stefan Batory Foundation. [Listener: Vitek Tracz]

TRANSCRIPT: He and my mother had separated; they had never been very close. They still lived together, but they weren't close. It was the sensible thing to do and besides, that's what I'd encouraged them to do because my mother was a Polish historian, culturally she was completely Polish. Israel and the Jewish world held no interest for her. She wrote about Poland – Poland was simply the only place where she could have worked, and her notion of the meaning of life – both of them, in some way I have inherited this from them – was associated with their activism, their passion… their passions so that it gave their lives a purpose. He no longer had a readership in Poland – most Jews had left or at least those who were able to read what he wrote. Besides, he wouldn't have been able to write. In effect, he had the choice of either Israel or the United States; he was travelling via France. They didn't want to let him go to Israel because that would have been exploited as propaganda, that this uber Jew, this major Jewish figure was being kicked out, but he did leave for Israel and he was given a Polish passport thanks to which he left for France, and from there, from France to Israel. We'd both meet later, they used to come to see us... but I'm digressing into my own biography after this very long family history.

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