Changing Face in Poland: Skinhead Puts on Skullcap

Pawel used to be a neo-Nazi skinhead. The New York Times writes that Pawel grew up a baptized Catholic in Poland “in a bleak neighborhood of concrete tower blocks in Warsaw in the 1980s.” Pawel and his friends “reacted to the gnawing uniformity of socialism by embracing anti-Semitism. They shaved their heads, carried knives and greeted one another with the raised right arm gesture of the Nazi salute.” The New York Times quotes Pawel: “ ‘I hate to admit it, but we would beat up local Jewish and Arab kids and homeless people. . . . We believed that Poland should only be for   Poles.’ ” Pawel, a 33-year-old former truck driver, is now an ultra-Orthodox Jew. After finding out that his grandparents were Jewish, and that his parents concealed their Jewish identity in an attempt to protect their family, Pawel was shaken. “ ‘Imagine, I was a neo-Nazi and heard this news? I couldn’t look in the mirror for weeks,’ ” Pawel told The New York Times. He spent weeks of “cloistered and tortured reflection but was finally overcome by a strong desire to become Jewish, even Orthodox.” Pawel, who also goes by his Hebrew name, Pinchas, described the transformation from neo-Nazi to ultra-Orthodox Jew as “arduous, akin to being reborn.” Pawel notes that now he is singled out and made fun of by antisemites who, using language akin to what Pawel used as a skinhead, tell him to “ ‘Get out and go back to your country’ or ‘Jew go home!’ ”