Ludwik Krasucki

This is a picture of me taken in 2002. This is what I look as I’m telling you my story.

For the last four years I've been working for the Association of Jewish Combatants and Casualties in World War II.

Prior to this, I handled compensations paid to Polish Jews from a Swiss fund.

Arnold Mostowicz invited me to participate in this work. While he was president of the Association, I was elected, on his initiative, its secretary general.

Due to the poor state of his health I carried on the work, and subsequently I was elected president of the Association.

This is an important task in my life for two reasons. First, you age more slowly when you have plenty of work.

Second, in my life I have done many things, which were - in my opinion at a given time - useful; I think now that some of them were positive, about a few others I think with a measure of irony or even embarrassment, but during all that time I never occupied myself with community work, in the narrow sense of the term, among Jews and for Jews.

The last six years are the completion and conclusion of my biography, and as such they are of great significance for me.

Currently, several hundred young people in Poland have decided to return to their Jewish roots and are doing so with huge enthusiasm.

I consider this development positive, but I don't overrate its importance.

No multitudes of young enthusiastic Jews and Jewesses will appear in this country; this affair concerns several hundred individuals.

It is good that they are here, since their presence ensures a measure of continuity and some kind of survival, but it isn't possible to change the facts of history.

I've never shared the naive belief that there will be some great renaissance here.

Of course, it is with tremendous satisfaction that I greet any manifestations of this process, but I wouldn't call it a renaissance, since renaissance is altogether a very big word.