Zydki: Polish Figurines of Jews Another chapter in Polish-Jewish
relations. They stand in small clusters, praying. They hold
carving boards with pig's heads on them, or haul large canvas
bags with money signs on the front. Often, they have long beards
and huge noses. Occasionally, they take the form of piggy banks,
their insides carved out to make room for coins and dollar
bills. "They" are carved figurines of Jews, hewn out of wood,
sculpted from the insides of the branches that shade Polish
forests, and are nearly ubiquitous in tourist traps in Poland.
Understanding who makes these small wooden zydki (the
diminutive, and often pejorative term used for "Jews"), and who
buys them, can reveal at least a little bit about contemporary
Poland--and its relationship to the 3,000,000 Polish Jews killed
in the Holocaust. A Tourist Reports On a bitingly cold October
afternoon in 2007, I was wandering through a gift shop in
Eastern Poland when I stumbled on a shelf full of Jewish
figurines. The first one I noticed was