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Friday, March 18, 2011
Polish Americans complain about their
absence from, or misrepresentation in, journalism, films, and academic
curricula.
Polish Americans are correct. Polish
Americans are often erased, at best, and demonized, at worst, in American media
and academia.
Ethnic groups: African Americans, Hispanic
Americans, Asian Americans; Religions: Jews, Catholics, Protestants, Muslims;
Socioeconomic Groups: upper class, working class, white collar, blue collar;
Other interest groups: gays, feminists, communists: all compete for access to
the microphone, to the bank account, to the truth.
Novelist
Milan Kundera described this warfare perfectly:
"People
are always shouting that they want a better future. It's not true. The future
is an apathetic void of interest to no one. The past is full of life, eager to
irritate us, provoke and insult us, tempt us to destroy or repaint it. The only
reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past. They are
fighting for access to the laboratories where photographs are retouched and
biographies and histories rewritten."
Polish
Americans have not significantly, united, organized, and supported each other
in this power game. As a result, Polish Americans lose.
I
offer the anecdotes, below, from my own experience. I have heard anecdotes like
these from others, others who choose to remain anonymous.
It's not easy for me to tell these stories publicly. Often, when they were
happening, I told myself, "Forget this ever happened. Tell no one. There
is no benefit, and much risk, is letting anyone know that this ever happened."
Now is as good a time as any to tell these stories. As a wise
man, Rabbi Hillel, once said, "If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
And if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?"
***
*** *** ***
***
It's my first semester of graduate school. My
mother, an immigrant, had to leave school when she was a child. Her father was
a coal miner. He had contracted emphysema. She, fourteen years old, had to
support her family. My father also left school as a child. His father, also a
coal miner, was bushwhacked and beaten by American men who called him "The
Little Polak." My mother cleaned houses; my father worked in factories. I
supported myself in college by working as a nurse's aid. I graduated magna cum
laude and scored very high on the GRE verbal. I have no money.
My advisor and department chair says to me, "You are the
wrong minority to receive funding. I have to give the funding to an African
American. They are underrepresented." I reflect: I've had African American
bosses and teachers, and bosses and teachers of a wide variety of ethnicities.
I've never had a Bohunk boss or teacher. Aren't we underrepresented?
The African American student who receives the funding is middle
class; her parents are white-collar professionals.
My
advisor puts me to work as a live-in domestic servant for the mother of a
friend. This woman tells me, "I had to take you in because you are
Catholic. Catholics have too many children and can't support them. That's why
you are poor."
*** ***
*** *** ***
I'm in a grad
school seminar. My fellow students are all future PhDs. I'm feeling the
low-level, background discomfort that poor, white Christians and blue collar
ethnics feel in grad school. We
are among the most discriminated against groups on elite campuses like this one.
We are, simply, unwelcome.
The grad school seminar I'm sitting in on this day has nothing
to do with Eastern Europe. The professor mentions, in passing, that none of the
countries of Eastern Europe had existed before the Versailles Treaty of 1919.
I send the professor a polite e-mail after class, mentioning that,
yes, Poland had existed prior to Versailles, and that it had a significant
history.
Our next class is bizarre. The professor puts
the day's scholarly agenda on hold. With chalk, she draws a sloppy map of
Eastern Europe on the blackboard. She locates Poland. She says that Poland had
a history, but that it mostly was a history of oppressing Jews.
There is a Jewish student in the class, a young man from South
America. (Yes, that same South America that provided warm refuge to Josef
Mengele.) He sits across from me. He stares at me, with a combination of righteous
rage and sorrow. If the Poles would just own up to their horrible nature, the
professor, says, and apologize.
Yes, the Jewish student
says, staring at me. If the Poles would just admit it, and apologize. There is
no predicate. There is no "If Poles would just own up to their horrible
nature and apologize, then we could recognize them as human as we are
human." Nope. Poles just need to, over and over, admit to being horrible,
and apologize, over and over. Period.
Every student is
staring at me now. Why won't that woman just apologize and get it over with? I
do not apologize. I am suddenly very unpopular.
There
are offices on campus devoted to African American students, gay students, Hispanic
students, Native American students, international students, returning women students,
veteran students, physically handicapped students, cognitively impaired
students … there are special scholarships, parties, speakers, monies, procedures,
counselors, deans, days, cafeteria tables, recruiters, retention experts, dedicated
to making all of the aforementioned students' lives easier, their graduation
assured, and their post-graduation employment a cinch.
There
is no campus office for me, or others like me, though, poor, white Christian ethnics
are among the most discriminated against and unwelcome students on elite
campuses like this one.
There is no national Polish
American organization I can approach with this matter.
There
will remain an impenetrable wall of hostility between me and this professor.
Collegial relationships with powerful professors are the key to success for
graduate students. This professor's unofficial role is mentoring outspoken
feminist students like me. So much for that.
Officially,
though, the incident slides down the memory hole. It never happened. "There
is not now, and there has never been, discrimination against Polish
Americans." Of course there hasn't been – events like this go undocumented.
***
*** *** ***
***
It's the same class, the same professor,
later in the same semester. The professor mentions that immigrants who arrived
in the U.S. early in the twentieth century often faced discrimination. She
reports that that is because those immigrants were darker skinned than
Americans. It's just another example, she says, of white oppressors putting
down dark-skinned people.
I know that what the professor
is saying is false. I know that the c. 1880-1924 immigrants, including Poles,
were often quite white, and faced serious discrimination.
This truth must not be spoken, though, because it would violate the dogma:
whites oppress; dark-skinned people are oppressed; no whites have ever been
oppressed. Polish-American history must be expunged in order to serve the power
narrative.
I remain silent. It's not that I am afraid to
speak the truth in this class. It's that I know it will be, as it was when I
mentioned that Poland had existed before 1919, a waste of time. The professor
will deny what I say, and the other students will find my comments peculiar and
unnecessary and stare at me and just wait for the disruption to blow over and
for our indoctrination in the power narrative to continue.
***
*** *** ***
***
I'm a graduate student. My professor,
multiply published and honored, asks to talk to me one-on-one. I am excited.
Perhaps he has seen something of value in my work. Perhaps he will encourage
me, point out opportunities I've missed, mentor me.
I
report to the professor's office. "Why are you here?" he asks.
"It's so obvious that you identify with the working class. You dress like
a working class person. You don't fit in here. Why not just go back home?
You're making yourself and everyone else unhappy."
I
am suddenly finding it very difficult to control my facial expression. I had
entered this professor's office with hope. I now wrestle with hurt, outrage,
and anger, all of which I am too polite to show. I surrender trying to control
my facial expression. I stand up and leave.
*** *** ***
*** ***
I'm
a graduate student, focusing on my chosen topic: Polish-Jewish relations. A
Holocaust scholar with an international reputation, neither Polish nor Jewish,
warns me, without prodding, "You are Polish and Catholic and you write
about Polish-Jewish relations. You will never have a career in Academia."
***
*** *** ***
***
A caring advisor pulls me aside. "You're
writing about people no one cares about. You will never get funding. You will
never get a job. You lived in Africa. You speak an African language. There's
lots of money for Africa, lots of jobs. Forget the Poles. Or do the Polish
stuff on the side. Do Africa. Then you can get a job."
***
*** *** ***
***
Indiana University plans to host a discussion
of Jan Tomasz Gross' book "Neighbors." From what I've been hearing,
"Neighbors" is being used to buttress the Brute Polak stereotype. I
contact the organizers and ask to speak. I say that I am a PhD candidate at IU,
and that I'm a Polish American. I would like to speak against using the
Jedwabne atrocity to demonize all Poles. I point out that the 1992 L.A. Riots,
during which African American men tortured truck driver Reginald Denny on
camera, should not be used to demonize all African Americans.
I provide my bona fides: I've published two previous articles about
stereotyping of Poles. One, "The Polish Ogre on Frontline" which
appeared in 2B: A Journal of Ideas, addresses stereotyping of Poles in popular
culture. Another, " Golem as Gentile, Golem as Sabra: An Analysis of the
Manipulation of Stereotypes of Self and Other in Literary Treatments of a Legendary
Jewish Figure" which appeared in New York Folklore, addresses stereotyping
of Poles in Jewish folklore and literature. My work has also appeared in local
media. I've broadcast essays on WFIU, the local NPR affiliate, about
stereotyping and the Holocaust (here
and here).
I'm denied permission to speak on the panel. There is no local
or national Polish organization that contests this. No one to say to the
Indiana University community, "Hey, maybe we shouldn't use 'Neighbors' to
demonize all Poles."
*** ***
*** *** ***
I'm almost done
with being a graduate student. I've jumped through all the hoops. I'm now
writing my dissertation on the role of stereotypes in Polish-Jewish relations.
My committee, consisting of noted scholars, has approved my plan
enthusiastically, and I've been absorbed and beavering away, days from five
a.m. to 11 p.m.
Years into the project, one committee
member, having gotten a whiff of the controversies involved, gets cold feet.
"I can't let you do this," he says. "You are Polish and
Catholic. You can't be trusted. Your ethnicity and religion disqualify
you."
This professor is the most famous.
Reluctantly, two other committee members cave in. A third is too intimidated to
say anything. None of these professors is Jewish.
If an
African American grad student were told by a powerful professor, the kind whose
books are reviewed on the front page of the NYT book review, that she could not
pursue her topic for no other reason than that she was an African American, that story would make the six o'clock
news.
Al Sharpton, the NAACP, Cornell West, and a crack
team dispatched from the White House would be on that story like white on rice.
But this happened to a Polish American, so it's not a story.
It never even happened. It never happened because no one discriminates against
Polish Americans.
Simon, my best friend, is a lawyer. He's
also Jewish, by the way. His outraged advice: sue the damn university. He
offers his services pro bono.
I make an appointment with
a dean. I enter the dean's office. I introduce myself. I never have to broach
the topic of a lawsuit. We've never met, but the dean immediately recognizes my
name – I've been locally active in gay rights; my name has appeared on the
radio and in newspapers. He stops me before I can even begin to tell my story;
he just picks up a telephone. Within five minutes of my entering the dean's
office, my permission is restored.
My work, that would
become the book "Bieganski,"
was rescued by my best friend, who is Jewish, and a non-Polish, non-Catholic
dean, who appeared to be appreciative of my work on gay rights.
At that point I'd been actively working on Polish matters for years. I'd
been an activist; I'd been publishing; I'd been in touch with other Polish
American individuals and organizations via the internet. When a committee member
threatened to shut down my research on the basis of my ethnicity and religion,
there was no one from Polonia who voiced to IU a peep of protest or support.
***
*** *** ***
***
I've been poring over academic job listings
for ten years. Painstakingly reviewing these job announcements in the vain search
for a tenure-track job has taught me much. Academic job announcements in the
humanities value some ethnicities more than others. African American and
Hispanic American identities and/or areas of research and publication are most
frequently cited as making a candidate attractive, or even as the bare minimum
requirement, for academic employment.
After that, one
earns points for Native American, Asian, Gay, Arab, Jewish, and, in a few rare
cases, Italian, and Irish identities and research and publication focus.
Never, not once, in ten years of looking at thousands of job
announcements in a wide variety of humanities jobs, including teaching freshman
composition, film, creative writing, folklore, world literature, and gender
studies, have I seen any Bohunk ethnicity or focus listed as having any appeal
to an employer at all. The University of Scranton, in Pennsylvania's heavily
Bohunk anthracite coal region, emphatically defined Bohunks out of an
"ethnic literature" job announcement.
Bravo to
African American, Hispanic, Native American, Asian, Arab, Gay, Jewish, Italian,
and Irish activists for making themselves visible and valuable in academia. For
making their scholars employable. For making their stories known. For endowing
their worldview with authority and respect.
Bohunks –
Polish-Americans, Ukrainian-Americans, Slovak-Americans, etc, have not done the
same work, and they
suffer for it. Their literature, film, experience, worldview, are disrespected,
misrepresented, stuffed down the memory hole, trashed.
***
*** *** ***
***
I am in a Farmer's Market. A vender is
selling shiitake mushrooms. We get to talking. My name invites him to tell me
that he is married to a Polish woman.
I eventually meet
his wife. She is lovely. She learns of my work. She mentions a manuscript.
Hand-typed. Unique – just one copy. She, this woman I hardly know, with a
heartbreaking resolve, determines to get that manuscript to me. She entrusts to
me a family heirloom, this unique manuscript.
The story
is overwhelming. One of her family members had been rousted out of her home,
packed into a cattle car, and sent to a living hell in Siberia. It's an
amazing, gripping read. I can't help but note that this manuscript is very much
like a dozen Holocaust memoirs I've read. The same elements: the irrational,
random persecution, being targeted only for one's ethnic and religious identity
– in this case, Polish Catholic – the terror, the cattle cars, the unknown
fate. The genocidal dictator – Stalin, not Hitler.
But
the Holocaust memoirs I've read were all published, all known to the world. As
I read these pages, I realize – I am their only reader. There is only one copy.
After I finish this manuscript and return it to the lovely lady met by chance
in a Farmer's Market, these pages may never be read again.
I've been working on Polish issues for years, and I know no one, no Polish
American individual, no Polish American organization, no Polish American
publication, no Polish American scholar, that would accord these pages any
attention at all. There may be such people. They've never made themselves known
to me.
I mention the manuscript to fellow Polish
Americans. They do not respond by offering suggestions on how to publish the
manuscript. Rather, they respond, adamantly: "Isn't it a SHAME. How the
Jewish story GETS TOLD. But nobody tells OUR story. What a SHAME." No
mention, none, that maybe, just maybe, we, Polish Americans, could and should support
each other and tell our own story.
*** *** ***
*** ***
I'm
visiting Chicago. I'm staying at the apartment of a friend, "Fred."
Fred is an African American. We've been friends for over 25 years. We're having
an all-night conversation. I begin to talk about my family, and mention that
one of my family members, a Polish immigrant to America, was lynched.
"Lynched? What do you mean?" Fred asks, suddenly
hostile.
"I mean lynched."
Fred
is incredulous. I mention that 27 percent of lynching victims were white. That
the largest mass lynching in American history, 1891, New Orleans, was of
Italian immigrants. That Leo Frank, white, was lynched in Georgia in 1915. That
my family member, a Polish immigrant, was lynched.
Fred
shrugs contemptuously. "White boy gets lynched. Why should I care?"
Fred is a dean at the University of Chicago. Fred is one of
the people who decides which student's woes the University of Chicago will
allocate resources to addressing, and which student's woes the University of
Chicago will dismiss. Fred, as a University of Chicago dean, helps determine
which group's stories are worth telling, and which group's stories go down the
memory hole. White boy gets lynched? Shrug. Why should the university of
Chicago care.
"White boy gets lynched." Lynched Italians in Florida. source
I'm an adjunct
professor at a large taxpayer-funded university. I'm waiting for a printout from
the university's printer. A student's paper comes out ahead of mine. I read it
as the machine spits it out. This student paper regurgitates the contents of
his professor's lecture. German Nazis were peripheral to the Holocaust. The
real planners and perpetrators of the murder of six million Jews were Polish
Catholic peasants.
I have no outlet. There is no
official body to whom I can protest this matter, or work for any change. There
is no national Polish American organization I can approach – I've tried
contacting them; they don't respond. There is no local Polish American
organization with a presence on campus.
*** *** ***
*** ***
A
state-funded university shows "Sophie's Choice" to educate students
about the Holocaust. The film grossly distorts history. I complain. Those who
hear my complaint smile and nod. I'm the only one complaining. They screen the
film. There is not even a local Polish organization, never mind a national one,
that would join me in this.
*** ***
*** *** ***
My student asks,
"Why did the Nazis persecute only Jews? Why didn't they persecute any
Christians?" I question the student. He really doesn't know that the Nazis
committed mass killing programs of handicapped people, Gypsies, Polish
priests and intellectuals, Soviet POWs. This isn't just any student. He's
an honor student; he's president of the campus Catholic club. He's intelligent;
he's devout, and intellectually ambitious. And he has no idea, none, of Nazism's
plan to eliminate Christianity.
*** *** ***
*** ***
The
television sitcom, "Back to You," tells viewers that for Poles,
collaborating with Nazis is in their Polish blood, like bowling and eating
kielbasa. I know of no Polish organization I can go to with my outrage. I write
to the program as a private citizen, and post my letter on the internet. Other
Polonians quote it, without ever contacting me and suggesting that we work
together for change.
*** ***
*** *** ***
At a conference
devoted to study of working class people, I meet a scholar. He's
multiply-published, both in academic and popular venues, and an award-winner. He
fashions popular and scholarly understanding of working class people. I tell
him that I study Polish Americans. He says, first, "Why are you working on
Polish Americans? Polish Americans don't exist. They've all assimilated."
Later, he says, "Why are you working on Polish Americans?
They're all working class slobs."
Still later, he
says, "Why are you working on Polish Americans? They're all bigots,
racists, drunks, and anti-Semites, without any culture."
***
*** *** ***
***
"Bieganski"
has been kicking around university presses for a number of years. I relive the
same "Groundhog Day"
over and over again: at first editors express interest. The writing is good;
the topic is timely. Eventually editors get a sense of how controversial the
book might be, and drop it. "Bieganski" is at its latest university
press. A previously enthused editor begins to waver. I visit him in person. I
want to see his face as he talks to me.
This episode
took place on the campus of a Catholic university; the editor was not Jewish.
The editor is frank. The majority of the board wanted to publish
"Bieganski." A minority objected. Their position, as the editor
paraphrased it to me, "She can't say this because she's not famous. She
can't say this because she's Polish and Catholic. She can't say this because it
may harm this university's relationship with the Jewish community."
Do
Not Blame the Jews – that stance is false, it is immoral and it is a complete
waste of time. This was the position of the editorial board of a Catholic
university. I applaud Jews for making their voices heard by such boards. My
question for Polonia is, where were you? A major university told a writer she
could not say what she said because she was Polish and Catholic. Will you be
there the next time this happens? Is there an organization in existence today
that would stand up for a Polonian writer in that situation? If there is, I am
unaware of it.
*** ***
*** *** ***
Through the
internet, I've been conversing with "Marek," a very intelligent young
man. He writes beautifully. He is a current-events junkie. He is deeply engaged
not just with the headline news, but with the big trends and clashes of ideas
behind the headline news. I have a PhD and he works a grunt job, but he introduces
me to big thinkers I'd never heard of.
He is
Polish-American. He's a devout Catholic. He is fluent in both English and
Polish. He has a masterful command of scholarship on both sides of the
Atlantic.
One day he says to me, "Since I've been
talking to you, I've given it a lot of thought. I think I'm going to enter a
graduate program."
I am thrilled. He will bring his
unique perspective to American scholarship. We talk about programs, professors,
fields of study.
A few weeks go by, and the plan is scrapped.
"I have a pointless job now, but I can pay rent and I have health
insurance. If I entered grad school, what happened to you would happen to me, I
just know it. I don't agree with the people in power politically or culturally.
They'd tell me how wonderful communism is. I lived under communism and I know
it's not wonderful. They'd tell me how oppressive Catholicism is. I don't see
Catholicism their way. They'd tell me I'm just another white male oppressor,
but people in my family were murdered by dictators. I'd never get funding. I'd
never get a job. Forget it."
Every sharp and
pointed and well-informed contribution Marek could have made to the national
exchange of ideas is lost. He's still working his grunt job. It's a cliché.
It's true. A mind is a terrible thing to waste.
When one
of my African American students or Hispanic American students tells me that he
or she wants to go to graduate school but isn't sure how to proceed, there are
African American and Hispanic Americans professors I can send that student to.
These are professors who have identified themselves as willing to mentor
younger scholars. I know of no Polish American scholar I can send Marek to. I
have been approached by African American and Hispanic American professors who
want to mentor the next generation. I've never had that kind of encounter with
a Polish American scholar.
*** ***
*** *** ***
"Wanda"
has been my student for years. She is perfect, the kind of student who leaves
other students in her shadow. She's always in class, always on time, always
reads everything, is always the first to understand, always gets every
assignment done to perfection. She's also beautiful and a genuinely nice
person.
In a better world, Wanda would be fully funded
and respected. She's "the wrong minority," though. She's
Polish-American. She pays for school herself, and supports herself by working a
pink-collar job.
This semester there are cracks in
Wanda's perfection. She's missed a class, and an assignment. I know something
must be terribly wrong.
After class, we sit and talk.
She is eager to unload. She is stressed beyond enduring. Wanda is a Christian.
She let that slip in one of her classes. Once – she just mentioned it – that
she is a Christian.
The professor in that class has been
verbally harassing Wanda ever since. The stress is getting to her.
Another student pulled Wanda aside and said to her, "I'm a
Christian, too, but I never let them know. I don't want to have to put up with
what he's doing to you. Live and learn."
"We'll
do something about this," I tell her.
We go to a
campus higher-up. "I can't do anything," this person says.
"Academic freedom … Tenure."
I'm stunned. What
does harassing a student have to do with academic freedom?
Wanda says she just can't take the harassment any more. Though she has
paid for the class out of the money she makes in her pink-collar job, she will
drop the class, forfeit the tuition, and take any hit to her transcript that
dropping a class will exact.
Later, I am at a conference
with approximately ten fellow professors. I mention Wanda's fate.
The chair of the conference is a nice guy, widely beloved,
trusted and admired. He is a senior professor, with responsibility for training
other professors.
He immediately adopts a Southern
accent (there are few students on our campus with Southern accents) and begins
performing a Minstrel show mockery of Christian faith. The point: Christians
are dumb, obnoxious, disruptive, and unqualified to study in English
departments. Their insistence on eternal life cripples their ability to
understand mortality, and, therefore, great literature.
This
very same professor, in a previous meeting, had loudly and ostentatiously
celebrated this campus' "Diversity." "We, the professors,
departments chairs, we make very sure that our faculty, staff, and student body
are diverse. We are deeply committed to diversity," he had said, as if
announcing a really courageous stand.
Now he's making
fun of Christian students.
No one in the room says
anything. Ten professors present, in a wide variety of departments, and no one
objects.
I e-mail the chairman after the meeting, and
say that his mockery of Christianity and Christian students shocked me. He
apologizes, but I am never invited to teach in that department again.
***
*** *** ***
***
I've spent my professional life in the US on
community college and university campuses. I'm in the humanities, and work with
professors who teach literature, including ethnic literature, film, history,
ethnicity, anthropology, racism, class. I can't remember ever seeing a book, an
article, not even a poem about the Polish-American, or the wider Bohunk-American,
experience on a syllabus, except in Polish language classes.
My NJ students descend largely from the c. 1880-1924 immigration. I know,
because semester after semester, I ask. "Who here has grandparents or
great-grandparents who came from Eastern or Southern Europe?" between
fifty and ninety percent of the students raise their hands. In required literature
and racism-sexism classes, they are assigned anthologies that define them out
of America. "I envy people who have an identity, a history, people who
matter," they say.
*** ***
*** *** ***
"Jane"
is a bright, charming student, amazingly well-informed, and an original thinker.
The first time I met her, I decided that she was PhD material. She works full
time in a pink-collar job. She lives paycheck to paycheck. Her parents do not
support her. She is in my office, telling me she will quit college.
"You can't quit!" I insist. "Why do you want to
quit?"
She's in a required class. To her the class
feels more like indoctrination than education. Her professor kept going on and
on about poor blacks and Hispanics. Jane raised her hand and said, "There
are poor whites, as well." And the professor told her, "Their poverty
does not count because they are white." For Jane, that was the last straw.
It convinced her that college was just BS.
*** *** ***
*** ***
In
the past four months, two of my students, both under age 22, both hip, good
looking, lots of friends, have told me that they are Polish, but have changed
their names. They don't want me to use their real names. They don't want people
to know that they are Polish.
*** ***
*** *** ***
Chapter two of
"Bieganski" exposes the Brute Polak image in American mainstream
press. I read every Lexis-Nexis or Reader's Guide article I found that was
connected with the Auschwitz convent controversy and the coverage of Jan Tomasz
Gross' "Neighbors" and "Fear." As documented in that
chapter, article after article, in the New York Times, in Commonweal, in
Newsweek, depicts Poles as more monsters than humans. If I remember correctly,
there were no mainstream press articles authored by Poles that interrogated these
stereotypes.
During a comparable controversy, as
"Bieganski" shows, when African Americans and Muslims were in danger
of being negatively stereotyped, the very same publications – the New York
Times, Newsweek – made sure to publish articles by African Americans and
articles that exculpated African Americans and Muslims.
What
was Polonia doing during these controversies? What was the hierarchy of the
Catholic Church doing regarding the press crucifixion of "Rome's most
faithful daughter?"
*** ***
*** *** ***
It's 2011.
"Bieganski" is finally published. Concerned readers of my blog send
me the Brute Polaks they encounter on
museum websites, in films
shown in museums, in online discussions of Polish
Nobel-Prize-winning poets and Polish saints. I post about these hate
incidents on this blog … but where is the national Polish American organization
that will take action?
*** ***
*** *** ***
Jan Tomasz Gross'
new book, "Golden Harvest," is scheduled to be published in America
in August, 2011. Articles about it have already appeared. Reader comments like those found beneath this Jewish
Daily Forward article amply demonstrate that whatever Prof. Gross'
intentions, his audience insists that his work proves that Poles are idiots,
are cannibals, and are spiritually debased. Most troublingly: German crimes
against Poland? Poles deserved it!
What is Polonia doing
in March, 2011, as this book begins to have an impact on world readers?
***
*** *** ***
***
I could go on. You could go on. You tell me
these stories, too. You send them to me via e-mail. And then you tell me never
to tell anyone about them. They could hurt your career. People would call you
crazy, a whiner. They could make Polish Americans look bad. Why cause trouble?
Just ignore it, you say. It will all go away someday, you say.
Why should I complain, you say. Others have had it worse, you say. Just fake it
and forget it and ignore it. Get the degree and get out. Take the salary and
lay low.
You tell me about the Polish American professor
attempting to deliver a paper at a conference and being shouted down before he
could even begin to speak. About the commitment to publication that evaporated.
About the media that use the phrase "Polish concentration camps." The
textbook that identifies Pilsudski as an anti-Semite.
I
could go on. You could go on. We go on. We go on and on and on and on. In our
little internet groups. Talking only to each other, changing nothing.
We can change this.
In the near future
I hope to post another message addressing what we can do.
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