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Saturday, February 5, 2011
Casimir the Great and Esterka by Wladyslaw Luscczkiewicz
A previous post introduces this series of quotes. Another previous post attests to the Importance of Poland to Jews. Subsequent posts attest to Love as a Factor in Polish-Jewish relations, and Jews' Defense of Poland.
Jews,
Judaism, and Polish-Jewish relations are and have been central to Poles and
Poland. Jews were there at Poland's genesis, and recorded it. The first known
written record of Poland is by Abraham ben Jacob. The vivid and unique portrait
of Early Poland is seen, not through the eyes of indigenous Poles, but through
the eyes of a literate, sophisticated Jewish traveler. He described a fertile
land inhabited by a violent, anarchic, lusty but loyal people making their way in
a demanding landscape.
"In general, the Slavs are
violent, and inclined to aggression. If not for the disharmony amongst them,
caused by the multiplication of factions and by their fragmentation into clans,
no people could match their strength...Their women, when married, do not commit
adultery. But a girl, when she falls in love with some man or other, will go to
him and quench her lust. If a husband marries a girl and finds her to be a
virgin, he says to her, 'If there were something good in you, men would have
desired you, and you would certainly have found someone to take your
virginity.' Then he sends her back, and frees himself from her. The lands of
the Slavs are the coldest of all. When the nights are moonlit and the days
clear, the most severe frosts occur ... The wells and ponds are covered with a
hard shell of ice, as if made of stone. When people breathe, icicles form on
their beards, as if made of glass" (Davies I 3)
In his function, recording a people who had not yet recorded themselves in
an idiom that had penetrated the outside world, and in his perceptions of the
people so described, Abraham ben Jacob can be compared to Jewish writers on
Poland who lived a thousand years later, for example, Isaac Bashevis Singer.
Legend as well as history places a Jew in a key role in
Poland's genesis. In 842, according to one retelling, a Jewish man, Abraham
Prochownik, was invited to become the next king of an embryonic Poland. If he
turned this invitation down, it was implied, he would be put to death.
Prochownik regarded this invitation with hesitance, and made a speech arguing
for the coronation of Piast, peasant and wheelwright. Prochwnik's oratory was
so persuasive that Piast, indeed, became king, establishing a dynasty (Adler
26).
Again, in this legend, themes appear that had
resonance in later Jewish literature on the Jewish experience in Poland. It may
be that this legend was developed out of these resonant themes. Poles, it is
understood in much Jewish literature, see Jews as superior in many ways, but
may threaten Jews with their own superior might. Poles require Jewish wisdom to
govern themselves. Jews are most safe when they exercise their superior powers
from behind the throne, and do not take on overt trappings of power. Poles have
the superior might; Jews, the superior verbal and reasoning skills.
The centrality of Jews and Judaism to Poles and Poland can
often be summed up as the importance of an urban, literate, mobile and
mercantile population to its rural or sylvan, oral, rooted, and in many ways
culturally isolated counterpart. Poland's pre-World-War-II urban populations including
large percentages of Jews; the professions were disproportionately Jewish. Until
recently, the majority of Catholic Poles were agricultural, non-mercantile, and
many, oral, as opposed to literate. "It is impossible to study the history
of the Polish town without taking into consideration their Jewish
population," attested Polish scholar Maria Bogucka. Prolific Polish author
Jozef Ignacy Kraszewski (1812-1887) stated the importance of Jews to Polish
urban life more poetically. "And do you know what makes every town Polish?
The Jews. When there are no more Jews, we enter an alien country and feel,
accustomed as we are to their good sense and services, as if something were not
quite right" (Hoffman Shtetl 132).
Jews
played a central role in the development of Polish economy (Rosman).
"Jews, acting as merchants, traders, arendators of propination, or agents
of the szlachta, were almost the only intermediaries between the peasants and
the market, and it was through them that the Polish village slowly emerged from
its isolation" (Goldberg "Poles and Jews" 262).
Polish novelist Tadeusz Konwicki provided a picture of rural
Poles' isolation, and the role that language played in it.
"Imagine a wooded area where human settlements are scattered over
several miles, where the nearest train station is forty miles away, where
communication is so difficult, where everywhere around is a forest, where mail
is always late, where you have no bookstores, theaters, gramophones, then forms
of entertainment are restricted. People visit one another during holidays, come
for Christmas or a wedding or a name day, and it lasts for a week. Then, what
is the most enjoyable way to cheat time, apart from music? A talent to tell
stories." (Sobieska)
Jews, who often traveled and
had ties to the outside world, played an important role as storehouses and
purveyors of Polish cultural products, both material products, like books, and
intangible products, like performed music. This role of Polish Jews is
epitomized by the Jewish character Jankiel in Adam Mickiewicz's national epic, Pan Tadeusz. "Every Polish child
learns about Jankiel," according to Jewish-Polish cultural leader
Stanislaw Krajewski (75). Through Jankiel, Adam Mickiewicz, Poland's most
revered poet, declared that "Israel constitutes an integral part of the
Polish community" (Hertz 29). Jankiel was credited with being the first to
bring to his region the tune that would later become Poland's national anthem
(Hertz 30). Hertz cited other important Jewish characters in Polish literature.
He noted author Wladyslaw Syrokomla's fictional character of a Wilno bookseller.
Jankiel from Pan Tadeusz source
"Syrokomla's bookseller ... is a Jew who brings Polish
books to people in thatched cottages and saves important remnants of the past
from oblivion ... Polish-Jewish historian Shatzky would write a beautiful piece
on the role and activities of those small dealers in old books who made such a
great contribution in disseminating Polish values and cultural traditions"
(Hertz 30).
The role of a Jewish book merchant as one
who knows Poles and Poland was vividly captured by Polish poet Maria Konopnicka
in her portrayal of Mendel, a Jewish bookbinder (1842-1910).
"Mendel knows the little secrets of this world by heart. He knows
when the cough of the old archivist who brings him thick, dust-laden folios of
musty papers for binding is worse or better; he knows the smell of the pomade
of the little ward for whom he sews together the records of his benefactor; he
knows when Joasia comes from the wife of the counselor with the request that he
'set nicely behind glass' a congratulatory scroll on which a gilded angel
uncovers himself and reveals a young man with a bouquet of roses in his hand;
he knows when the student living in the attic goes without supper; and he knows
from which side will run up the breathless schoolgirl asking him to bind 'in
blue and with gold strings' some romantic poetry transcribed on letter
paper" (Segel 222).
Not only Jewish dealers in
books disseminated Polish culture; other Jewish merchants also played a role.
Not only high culture was disseminated by Jews; folk culture was, as well. Hertz
cites a certain style of Hucul apron that was introduced and distributed by
Jewish merchants (231). Polish wycinanka, paper cut outs, are its most
recognized folk art. Jewish merchants played a role in their distribution and
acceptance (Hertz 232). Hertz saw Jewish influence as well in Polish folk
carving and jewelry.
Not only dealers in cultural
products functioned as culture bearers. Jews who worked in other capacities
were also expected to be sources of information for rooted and isolated Poles,
reported Hertz.
"Polish society to an increasing
degree became transformed into a number of local groups that were very isolated
from each other. The nobleman was not inclined to travel distances. He was a
homebody and proud of it. His interests were concentrated on his farm ... The
printed word seldom reached him; a prayer book, an almanac, and a dream book
were sufficient
"In his Wspomnienia z Polesia, Wolynia, i Litwy (Memoirs of Polesie, Volhynia,
and Lithuania) Jozef Ignacy Kraszewski writes that, in the years of his
youth, a landowner who was hiring a Jew as a tavern keeper would mention that,
along with various other duties, the Jew was to inform him of any news of the
world that he might hear. A variety of sources belonging to the world of the
nobility and its mores confirms Kraszewski's statement. In the nobles'
tradition the Jew was seen as particularly well informed, an unerring source of
quickly spreading information. In Poland there was an expression, "the
Jewish mail." And as Sienkiewicz's Pan Zagloba said, when a Jew sneezes by
the Warta River, the zydeks in Lithuania answer "God bless you" a
minute later ... In his story "Karabela z Meschedu" (The Scimitar
from Mesched), Ksawery Pruszynski describes how his hero, a Jewish antiquary,
keeps up relations with his fellow Jews throughout the world" (223).
After Jankiel, the most famous Jewish character in Polish
literature may be Rachela. Stanislaw Wyspianski's 1901 play "The
Wedding" is a centerpiece of the Polish literary canon. One of its central
characters, Rachela, is a Jewish girl who, as Hertz puts it, "unleashes
the mystery. It is she who introduces the element of poetic vision that leads
to the liberation of that 'which is a dream in everyone's soul'" (208).
Like Jankiel, Rachela is a frequently invoked figure, according to Czeslaw
Milosz. She has become "proverbial." "With her crimson shawl,
her dark beauty, her somewhat ethereal refinement, she has been evoked, since
then, by many poets of the twentieth century" (Milosz 357).
Karol Frycz "Rachel" in Wyspianski's "The Wedding"
In one typically Polish worldview, without Jews, reported
Czeslaw Milosz, Polish Nobel laureate, life would be impossible.
"From the old Respublica [i.e., the Commonwealth], with
its rural and patriarchal customs, there had remained the idea of 'our Jews'
without whom life was unimaginable, who comprised an integral part of the human
landscape, and whom it would never have entered anyone's head to disturb in the
exercise of their age old commercial functions or the ordering of their
internal affairs" (Segel 321).
This worldview is
summed up in the proverb, "Kazdy Polak ma swoj Zyd," "Every Pole
has his Jew."
Indeed, at least one Pole, far from
home, in harsh exile, saw home, Poland, in the face of a fellow exile, a Jew.
Adam Szymanski, (1852-1916) was a Polish author who had been exiled to Siberia
for his political activity. He wrote of a Jewish visitor to his hut.
"I looked up ... a typical Polish Jew from a small town
stood before me ... I knew him at once ... I gazed into the well known features
with a certain degree of pleasure; the Jew's appearance at that moment seemed
quite natural, since it carried me in thought and feeling to my native land,
and the few Polish words [spoken by the Jewish visitor] sounded dear to my
ear" (Segel 193).
A thousand years of such vitally
intertwining lives was certainly ample to situate Jews and Judaism in the
center of Polish lives, culture, and consciousness. An event of incalculable
magnitude, the strike of an historic meteor at Poland's heart, drove that
centrality home forever. The Holocaust, to a great extent, took place on Polish
soil. Almost three million of its roughly six million victims were Polish Jews.
Jan Karski (1914-2000) was a Polish underground fighter during
World War II. He barely missed his own death, once, at the hands of the
Soviets, who murdered his fellow Polish officers in a genocidal action at
Katyn, and again, while being held as a prisoner of the Nazis. The latter
tortured him so badly he attempted suicide. After the Polish underground
rescued him, Karski volunteered to be smuggled into a concentration camp and
the Warsaw Ghetto in order that he might bring an eyewitness account of the
Holocaust to the West.
His journey West was fraught with
danger. The scars on his wrist, from his suicide attempt, marked him. He
knocked out his own teeth so that, his mouth swollen shut, no one would expect
him to be able to speak German. "One of the Jews who had prompted Mr.
Karski to enter the Ghetto, and who escorted him, was Leon Feiner, a lawyer.
Mr. Karski recalled that Mr. Feiner kept murmuring, 'Remember this, remember
this'" (Kaufman). That command: "Remember this," echoes
throughout Poland to this day.
"The most terrible
genocide in human history, the massacre of several million Jews in Poland,
which was chosen by Hitler as the place of execution, the blood and ashes of
those victims which have permeated Polish soil, constitute an essential bond
which has fused Poland and the Jewish people, and from which it is not in our
power to free ourselves" (Czapska 53).
Not only
scholars and elite authors are engaged in this necessary and necessarily never
complete or prefect work of struggling with the Holocaust. At least since the
nineteen seventies, some average, everyday Poles have been studying Yiddish.
When asked why, they often replied that Poland without Yiddish was incomplete.
Isolated and independent Polish folk artists, like wood carver
Waclaw Czerwinski, (b. 1911), created Jewish-themed works, long before doing so
would be profitable, trendy, or even noticed by anyone outside of Poland. Asked
why he created such works as "The Farewell Embrace," depicting
"the last steps in the life of these Jewish people into the gas chambers
from Auschwitz to Chelmno," Czerwinski replied, "So that the
persecuted should not remain mute" (Schauss 128-130).
Wood carver Jan Reczkowski (1909-?) created Jewish figures to commemorate
the Jewish presence in Poland. "I can still visualize many of these people
who lived in our midst before the war. Then they were exterminated and that is
why I decided to take up this subject" (Schauss 80).
Tadeusz Konwicki was a resistance fighter during World War II. About the
genocide of Poland's Jews, he wrote,
"A planet
died. A globe incinerated by a cosmic disaster. A black hole. Anti-matter. Oh,
God, how did it happen? ... during the brief night of the occupation, something
was amputated. Some part of the landscape, the flora, the fauna, the
architecture, the sound track was forever severed and borne away into the icy
darkness of the universe which is our heaven and our hell" (Segel Stranger
vi).
One Polish poet's response:
I Did Not Manage to Save
Jerzy Ficowski
Translated by Keith Bosley and Krystyna Wandycz
I did not manage to save
a single life
I did not know how to stop
a single
bullet
And I wander round cemeteries
which are not there
I look for words
which are not there
I run
to help where no one called
to rescue
after the event
I want to be on time
Even if I am too late
A vital part of Poland was
torn away. Poles struggling with the Holocaust are struggling, in part, to deal
with this amputation of a part of the self. Harold Segel sees the process thus:
"the Poles are attempting to recover a now extinct dimension of their own
past ... the importance of literary culture in Poland and the immense presence
of the Jew in that culture enhances the value of such an endeavor" (Segel
xii).
Jerzy Kosinski experienced this searching
firsthand. Returning to Poland after many years away, he reported being eagerly
received by young people in Poland born, not only after the Holocaust, but also
after the 1968 Communist persecutions that drove many of Poland's
post-Holocaust Jews away. "With so much Jewish cultural legacy steaming
from the spiritually fertile Polish soil, to these young men and women the
Polish-Jewish relations are a mystery – mystery, not stigmata. They are as
prompted to know me better as I am eager to know them."
This process was a mutually fruitful exchange, Kosinski reported. He
reported that he was so "rejuvenated by what I found within myself during
my twelve days in Poland [that] I started a new romance with my thousand year
old Polish-Jewish soul" (Kosinski "Restoring"). Andrzej Bryk ,
Jagiellonian University Lecturer in law and history, and scholar of Polish-Jewish
relations, wrote:
"It is said that there are still
Moroccan Jews who have kept the keys to their ancestral homes in fifteenth
century Spain and Portugal. Perhaps there are still Polish Jews, or those who
have inherited their legacy, who keep their keys to Polish culture, not only
the keys to the Jewish cemeteries of their murdered brothers and sisters. If
this is possible, then we must ask what part of that culture, what part of the
Polish heritage, can be part of their heritage, too" (Polonsky Brother
177).
Indeed, the facts of the Jewish - Polish ethnic
interface support the poetic pronouncement of Polish-Jewish author Aaron
Zeitlin (1899-1974) in his play based on the legend, and perhaps history, of
Polish king Kazimierz the Great and his Jewish companion Esterka, his mistress
and the mother of his children. Here Kazimierz voices to Esterka the
ineluctable bonds between Poles and Jews, bonds that transcend even death.
"We shall die. But so long as your race and mine inhabit this earth, it is
not ended, Esterke of Opoczno" (Shmeruk 101).
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