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Saturday, February 5, 2011
Berek Joselewicz by Juliusz Kossak
A previous post introduces this series of quotes. Three previous posts attest to the Importance of Poland to Jews, and The Importance of Jews to Poland, and Love as a Factor in Polish-Jewish relations.
Many Jews, in
Poland and in the US, have worked very hard for Poland, and to correct false
impressions of Poland. Below are just a few examples.
Rabbi
Dov Ber Meisels (1798-1870) was a Polish patriot. He was arrested by the
occupying czarist authorities and sent, in chains, to Russia for his patriotic
activity. Michal Landy, a rabbinical seminary student, was participating in a
demonstration for Polish independence on April 12, 1861. His fellow protestor
was shot, and dropped the cross he had been carrying. Landy retrieved the cross
and marched with it before being shot to death by a Cossack. Landy's heroic
gesture served as partial inspiration for Cyprian Kamil Norwid's (1821-1883)
important poem "Zydowie Polscy," or "Polish Jews." More
recently, Dr. Janusz Korczak, who had suffered professionally from the
anti-Semitism in interwar Poland, donned his Polish army uniform when he
participated in Warsaw's response to Nazi bombing in September, 1939. These
famous heroes and others like them are often invoked as symbolic of active
Jewish service to Poland and the cause of Polish-Jewish relations.
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Rabbi Meisels
Adam Michnik is a worthy successor to figures like Meisels and
Landy. He was a key leader of the Polish movements that overthrew the Soviet
Empire; subsequently he served as editor-in-chief of the Warsaw daily Gazeta
Wyborcza (Sadler). In April, 1991 he gave a speech addressing anti-Semitism
in Poland. The following excerpts are from the transcript.
"I can assure you that in Poland there are many people who have such
courage [to condemn anti-Semitism]. There are in fact large numbers of them.
I'll say more; these are the people who create the authentic, cultural values
of Polish democracy and make up its spiritual core. Relations between Poles and
Jews are still burdened by two stereotypes -- one Polish, and the other Jewish
... which says that each Pole imbibes anti-Semitism with his mother's milk;
that Poles share the responsibility for the Holocaust; that the only thing
worth knowing about Poland is just that -- that Poles hate Jews...I have always
perceived anti-Semitism as a form of anti-Polonism; and, listening to Jewish
accusations of Polish anti-Semitism, I've always felt solidarity with the great
part of Polish public opinion that in every historical period was capable of
opposing clearly, bravely and unambiguously the successive campaigns of hatred.
Among my friends, one thing was always clear: Anti-Semitism is the name of
hatred. But it was also clear to us that the stubborn categorization of Poland
as an anti-Semitic nation was used in Europe and America as an alibi for the
betrayal of Poland at Yalta. The nation so categorized was seen as unworthy of
sympathy, or of help, or of compassion" (Michnik, "Plague").
A similarly stunning deflation of the Bieganski stereotype was
delivered in the August-September 1983 issue of Midstream, a Monthly Jewish
Review. Polish-born author Henryk Grynberg mounted a sustained
deconstruction of the Bieganski stereotype in his article "Is Polish
Anti-Semitism Special?" "The common phrase 'traditional Polish
anti-Semitism' is a platitude with very little historical justification,"
Grynberg asserted.
American scholar Harold B. Segel
wrote:
As they are asked [about supposed responsibility
for the Holocaust] the Poles find themselves newly victimized. Despite the
magnitude of their own losses in the war, the Poles have had to live the later
nightmare of suspicion of collusion in the Holocaust ... this second
victimization ... fails to confront the realities of the German occupation for
the Poles themselves (Segel, Strangers 1-2).
Nobel
Peace Prize Laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel is just the most
prominent of many Jews who have stated that Nazis placed concentration camps in
Poland because the Poles would help them carry out the Holocaust. Peter Novick
accurately deflated that canard: "Strip mines aren't located in West
Virginia because of the local residents' failure to appreciate the beauty of
unspoiled landscapes; that's where the coal is, as Poland was where most of the
Jews were" (Novick 223).
Jerzy Kosinski was a
Polish Jew who survived the Holocaust with the aid of Polish non-Jews. His
novel The Painted Bird has had huge impact in disseminating an image of
Poland as a primitive, hateful place. It dramatizes the trials of a young boy
in a thoroughly debased World-War-II-era Poland. Later in his life, Kosinski
publicly expressed awareness of his book's reception. He began to speak of
Poland with fondness and admiration and to harshly criticize Jews, especially
American Jews, for anti-Polonism (e.g. Kosinski, "Second").
Kosinski repeatedly reminded his readers of "'the
unbroken chain of Polish-Jewish relations'" and worked to exonerate Poles
from charges of historical anti-Semitism (Gladsky 174). In fact, in the facts
he adduces, that Jews found an important historical refuge in Poland
unparalleled elsewhere, that Jews enjoyed high status vis-à-vis most Poles,
that Poles suffered in World War II, and that his duty is to give expression to
the "'Polish soul,'" or, alternately, his "Polish Jewish
soul," (Gladsky 174-5; Kosinski "Restoring"), the mature
Kosinski sounded very much like many non-Jewish Poles engaged in Polish-Jewish
relations, the kind of Poles who are routinely denounced by anti-Polonists as
essentially nationalistic, chauvinistic, and beyond the reach of the rational.
Eva Hoffman openly declared that her book Shtetl was
written to deconstruct anti-Polonism. Hoffman reported that her family did have
"to escape hostile local peasants" but that they ultimately survived
the Holocaust thanks to help from Poles. Some family members died as a result
of betrayal by Jews. "My aim is not to absolve any more than it is to
condemn," she wrote, "but it is, at the very least, to complicate and
historicize this picture" (Shtetl 5-6).
Stanislaw
Krajewski, mathematics scholar, Jew, Polish citizen, lectures on Jewish topics
to Polish audiences, and visa versa. He also photographs, with his non-Jewish
wife, Jewish cemeteries. When asked about a Western "stereotype of Polish
anti-Semitism, sustained in popular consciousness by various kinds of
publications, in which Poles in great numbers not only betrayed Jews to the
Germans, but also assisted in their murder," Krajewski responded,
"This greatly disturbs me, and whenever there is an opportunity I try to
oppose this stereotype." People in the West can't understand the Holocaust
in Poland, he said, "because they don't in general know what terror
is." Further, he said, some "Jews throughout the world ... still
haven't noticed that the Germans also intended to destroy and enslave the
Polish nation."
Krajewski replied that since he is
a Jew, "For me it's easier [to oppose anti-Polonism] and I always do it. I
feel a responsibility, and besides, I get mad as hell when I hear that, after
all, the Germans didn't build concentration camps in Poland without a
reason" (Niezabitowska 26). While stating that "anti-Semitism has not
disappeared" in Poland, Krajewski said in another interview that "I
do not feel threatened in Poland. I have never met with a concrete threat. To
give you one example: my wife and I have been traveling all round Poland for
years photographing Jewish cemeteries, and not once have I felt threatened. I
often tell this to my contemporaries, Jews from the USA, who have been told by
their parents that a trip to Polish countryside presents a mortal danger"
(Polonsky Brother's 101).
Given the
interpenetration of Polish and Jewish identities, sometimes it is not easy to
assign one identity or another to those who oppose anti-Polonism. In 1984
Carmelite nuns moved into an abandoned theater near the Auschwitz concentration
camp in Oswiecim, Poland. Jewish groups began to protest. A Catholic priest
living in Israel, Father Daniel, spoke up. "You must understand that there
was no anti-Semitic intention in the founding of the convent, no attempt to
obliterate the meaning of the Holocaust," he said. Father Daniel went on
to voice regret that Jews tend to forget that the Nazis killed three million
Poles, including twenty-five percent of all Polish priests. Father Daniel
sharply criticized Jewish American protestors at the convent. He called them
"adventurers" and trespassers (Shapiro "Convent"). Father
Daniel's comments are included here because he was born Oswald Rufeisen, a Jew,
near the Polish town of Oswiecim (Auschwitz). He saved other Jews, survived the
Holocaust, and eventually converted to Catholicism and became a priest.
Father Romuald Jakub Weksler Waszkinel is a Polish Catholic
priest. He reported the discomfort he felt when observing Israeli
schoolchildren on a Holocaust tour in Poland eyeing him angrily and defiantly.
Father Romuald Jakub reported, "I would like to go up to them and say, 'I
suffer in the same way that you are suffering' ... In Israel, wrong things are
said about Poland." Given the pervasiveness of the Bieganski stereotype,
one might be tempted to dismiss the priest's words as grandiose, even perverse.
Father Romuald Jakub, though, lost his birth parents in the Holocaust. He was
born a Jew, and was saved from the Holocaust by his Polish Catholic adoptive
parents (the Waszkinels, who named him Romuald) at the request of his Jewish
birth mother (Mrs. Weksler, who named him Jakub). With the end of Communism,
many Poles discovered that they were of partial or total Jewish descent. Father
Romuald Jakub understands himself "as the star of David with the cross
inserted." Voicing an attitude that might be a motto for all of the Polish
Jews who have combated Bieganski, Father Romuald Jakub said, "I am in the
middle, and I know that what is needed is contact, understanding, and love"
(Cohen, "Priest").
Persons who might be
assigned multiple identities and who came to Poland's defense lived in former
centuries as well. Jan Czynski (1801-1867) was a Polish Catholic whose
ancestors included Polish Jews. His activities included fighting for Poland in
the November Rising of 1830. After that uprising failed, Czynski lived out his
life in exile in Western Europe. There he continued to work both to reform
Poland, to make it a better place for all its inhabitants, and to improving
Poland's reputation. Czynski founded journals, wrote novels, and formed
organizations, always working toward the goals of increasing amity and
cooperation among members of all of Poland's religions and social classes,
increasing social justice and freedom in Poland, and countering the negative
propaganda about Poland that the partitioning powers were disseminating in the
West (Galkowski).
Of course, Jews who have never
converted to Catholicism, or whose ancestors did not, have also come to
Poland's defense. Elie Wiesel condemned the placement of crosses at Auschwitz.
In response, Marek Edelman, at the time of this statement, the sole surviving
leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, said, "Poles, too, died in
Auschwitz, and it's understandable that they should want to have their monument
there. After all, Auschwitz is one giant grave" (Spiewak).
Edelman has denounced anti-Polonism on other occasions.
Andrzej Wajda, a Polish filmmaker and winner of an honorary Academy Award for
his entire oeuvre, made a laudatory biographic film about Janusz Korczak. Shoah's
director, Claude Lanzmann, was among the prominent Westerners who criticized
the film as a typical expression of Polish anti-Semitism. Criticism focused on
the final scene, which did not graphically depict the murder of Korczak and his
orphans at Treblinka, but, rather, focused on Jewish renaissance in the
creation of the state of Israel. Many Jews in Poland approved of this final
scene and took strong exception to the film's negative reception outside of
Poland. The film was praised in Israel as well. In response to the film's
negative reception among Western Jews like Lanzmann, a disgusted Edelman said,
"anti-Polish chauvinism...is...a victory of Hitlerism" (Engelberg).
Edelman has encountered hostility and contempt from other Jews because of such
humanist views. In Israel, he was called a "house Jew" (Klein
Halevi). At a commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto
Uprising, the Israeli Prime Minister did not want to appear on the same
platform with Edelman (Boyarin 306 ftnt 109).
In
addition to the Holocaust, another bone of contention in Polish-Jewish
relations is the role played by Jews in the Soviet secret police. Wladyslaw
Krajewski, born 1919, was professor emeritus of Philosophy at the University of
Warsaw. His father, nee Stein, was exiled to Siberia for his part in the 1905
revolution. While in exile he adopted the name "Krajewski" "out
of nostalgia for Poland" (Krajewski "Facts" 94) He reported
that,
When my wife and I were in the United States, we
also had to argue with those who ascribe anti-Semitism to the Poles en bloc, to
the Home Army, and so on ... [re: the role of Jews in the Soviet secret police]
Jews are very unwilling to speak about all of this. In general, there is a prevalent
stereotype among them, according to which they are always victims (as indeed
they usually are). Many people in Israel, and more so in the United States,
think that the terror was directed exclusively against the Jews during the
German occupation (as indeed it was primarily directed against them). They are
unwilling to believe it when they are told that large number of Poles also feel
victim to German terror ... Such judgments result in large part from ignorance
... Such things are not said by the few Jews living in Poland, who are better
informed about the German occupation of our country ... Auschwitz was
originally set up for the imprisonment of Poles; only later were Jews sent there
and the crematoria built (Krajewski "Facts" 103-5).
An American of Polish-Jewish descent rose to Poland's defense after a
Polish-American scholar's award was withdrawn by the ADL. Dr. Joseph S.
Kutrzeba wrote a protest letter to the ADL's national chairman. Dr. Kutrzeba
identified himself as
"One who had lived through that
infamous period [the Holocaust]; one who has steeped himself in the tragic
literature of the era, and who has made two documentary films on the subject,
performing a staggering amount of research in the process ... Joseph Kermisch,
the eminent historian at Yad Vashem, and a friend of my murdered father,
believes that the documented number of Righteous Christians in Poland could
approximate 100,000 ... In my own case, it had taken the cooperation of nine
persons to save my life, not including some twenty who'd aided me along the
way. Only one has been recognized at Yad Vashem. Thus statistics.
"Time and again in my own research, I have encountered or
heard about incidents of Christian Poles, not officially documented, who'd
risked their live to save Jews. Only last week I came across a case of a former
A.K. commander in the Kielce region who'd helped prepare fake I.D.'s for ca.
140 Jews. When asked by his grown son why he had never heard a bout this before
form his own father, the latter replied, 'I didn't do this to gain recognition.
I did this for my own conscience' ... A number of persons of some stature in
the community – including yours truly – have labored for years, without any
remuneration, to ameliorate Polish-Jewish relations and to effect a rapprochement
between these two historically wedded people. We have worked, at times
combating and bemoaning the generalizations uttered in some publications
against Poles in general, condemning references such as 'Polish death camps'
including some contained even in publications put out by the Holocaust Museum
in Washington, D.C." (Kutrzeba).
Another Polish Jew
who has labored, on his own initiative, is Roman Solecki. Solecki posts, on the
internet, texts of letters he has written protesting anti-Polonism. Below is an
excerpt of Solecki's letter to the Simon Wiesenthal Center:
"I looked on your entry about Poland and was upset by: 1. a standing
out note that 'anti-Semitism still exists in Poland.' It's true but it's also
true regarding other countries including the USA. Why on a page which should
show gratitude to those who risked their lives make such a negative comment? 2.
On another page you write: 'The Righteous Among the Nations in Poland make up
the largest number of such persons recognized by Yad Vashem per country of
origin. However, while their absolute numbers might be the largest, by
percentage the amount of rescuers from Poland is small indeed.' Why don't you
give this number, like you do when referring to other countries? Why don't you
explain that Poland was the only country where there was death penalty for
helping Jews?
"You possibly compare the fate of
Jews in Denmark and Norway (they were helped to escape to neutral Sweden)
without realizing that a. the number of Jews in those countries was about 0.1%
of total population; b. the distance from Denmark to neutral Sweden at
Helsingor (Elsinore) is about 3 miles and that Norway shares with Sweden an
over 1000 mile border so that the escape was relatively easy. Poland did not
have neighbors willing to accept 3.5 million Jews. The only country that comes
to mind, Sweden, was separated from Poland by about 120 miles of Baltic Sea.
Even if such a transportation would be logistically possible, and it would be
absurd to think so (Poland had a very short sea shore, small number of boats,
and a developing economy where majority of people, including Jews were poor or
very poor [Dr. Solecki later wrote: "I made a mistake saying: 'Poland had
a very short sea shore.' That's true but the access to this seashore was
eliminated at the first days of war so every sea transportation from Poland was
impossible."], you can't seriously think that Sweden would be willing to
increase its population by 50% of poor foreigners ... I urge you to make
corrections in your site" (Solecki "Wisenthal").
In 1995, the New York Times saluted countries that had
come to terms with World War II and the Holocaust. On May 4, the Times ran
a letter by Monica Strauss that took them to task for their omitting Poland
from this coverage. Strauss wrote: "Poland, which only in the
post-Communist era has been given the opportunity to re-examine its history,
has made a courageous effort, particularly at the grass-roots level, to look at
its role in the war and attempt a dialogue with the Jewish community. I myself
experienced such an initiative last summer in the small town of Skoczow"
Ms. Strauss recorded efforts by a Pole, Jacek Proszyk, to rescue and record
Skoczow's Jewish history. She concluded: "For me, the chance to address
the people of the town in the name of my father, who had fled more than 50
years before, was an act of healing neither he nor I expected to happen in our
lifetimes" (Strauss).
In May, 2001, Israelis from
Yad Vashem removed, secretively and without permission, Bruno Schulz murals
from a town in Ukraine that had, before World War II, been in Poland. Some
letter-writers to the New York Times defended the removal. One argued that
since Poles had not saved Jews during the war, they deserved to be robbed. A Times
article argued that Poles were only interested in Jewish culture in order
to get money from Jewish tourists (Bohlen). Maya Peretz wrote in to contest
this position. Her eloquent letter, quoted in full, below:
"As a child Holocaust survivor from Poland, and a child of a Holocaust
survivor, I believe that my mother and I should never forget that we were among
thousands of Jews saved by Polish Catholics. Many in our situation seem to have
forgotten and repeat the nasty slogans about anti-Semitic Poles.
"Poland today is not a country without Jews, and the
revival of Jewish culture there should not be ascribed to desire for profit. We
Jews also have an obligation to acknowledge what was done for us, not only to
us, and be happy that many Jews who had horrible experiences in Poland may
perhaps now not be afraid to admit that they are Jewish.
"Let's not use Bruno Schultz's name to slander the whole Polish
nation, from which more rescuers were counted by both Yad Vashem and the
Holocaust Museum in Washington than from any other country."
Janusz Korczak
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