(lubavitch.com) What happens when a Neo-Nazi dedicated to anti-Semitic activity discovers that he is Jewish?

In the case of Pawel Bromson it became the story of a radical about face, a decisive and transformative teshuvah from a one-time skinhead to a proudly identifying Jew. Earlier this week he shared the details of his journey with an audience of 500 at the Oxford University Chabad Society.

After years driven by hatred, Pawel’s wife came home one day with a stack of papers from Warsaw Museum that identified both their matrimonial lines as Jewish. Pawel spoke of the initial personal confusion this created for him, and the steps he finally took to confront the truth about his identity, resolving ultimately, in his and his wife’s full embrace of a Torah lifestyle.

Now Pinchus, sporting a beard and the traditional Chasidic hat, he offered his insights to the problem of anti-Semitism that exists in the groups he knew so intimately well. Young people don’t begin with organic hatred of others, he explained, but are rather socialized into hateful and suspicious attitudes towards Jews and foreigners.

He described the local variety of anti-Semitism as different from what it once was. In his youth, skinheads were open and vocal about their activities; today, absent the popular support they once enjoyed, they keep to themselves. He also does not attribute the smashing of graves and painting swastikas to anti-Semitism but rather hooliganism, which is why, he said, today it’s a Jewish cemetery, tomorrow a non-Jewish cemetery.

Pinchus spoke at length about the life he lives today with his wife as Torah-observant Jews in Poland. 

Chabad on Campus UK Chairman and Director of Chabad of Oxford, Rabbi Eli Brackman said that this “remarkable and inspirational story of Jewish discovery and pride should be told to students on campus as broadly as possible.”