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Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Mr. Clair Willcox
Editor-in-Chief
University of Missouri Press
2910 LeMone Blvd.
Columbia, MO 65201
Dear Mr. Clair Willcox,
Editor-in-Chief, University of Missouri Press:
We, the
undersigned, write to express our concern about the 2009 University of Missouri
Press publication, "They Were Just People: Stories of Rescue in Poland
During the Holocaust." This book distorts history in order to perpetuate a
highly destructive and dangerous stereotype of Poles. In this stereotype, Poles
are brutes, and are less evolved than modern, secular people. This very
stereotype was strategically deployed by the Nazis themselves to justify their
atrocities.
Sadly, too many Western elites initially
accepted the Nazi claim of merely bringing "discipline" to Slavic "savages."
The stereotype was first honed in the US by Scientific Racists to deny Poles
entry into the US through the quota acts of the 1920s. American Scientific
Racism inspired the Nazis.
The stereotype is used today
to rewrite the history of World War Two. For these reasons, every decent person
should be concerned about this stereotype. Indeed, it has been named and
condemned by important Holocaust scholars and scholars on Polish-Jewish
relations, including prominent Jewish scholars and activists on both sides of
the Atlantic, for example, Eva Hoffman, Gunnar S. Paulsson, and Adam Michnik.
Further, we are concerned because Rabbi Jacques Cukierkorn, a
co-author of the book, after viewing an Amazon review that critiqued the book,
sent an unsolicited e-mail to the author of that Amazon review, an e-mail
accusing her of being a pogromist and an expeller of Jews. Antony Polonsky, the
world's most important scholar of Polish-Jewish relations, and himself of
Polish-Jewish descent, has publicly condemned Rabbi Cukierkorn's racist e-mail.
We request that the University of Missouri Press
withdraw the current edition of "They Were Just People" and prepare a
revised version. We also request that the University of Missouri Press, in
future, exercise more careful and evenhanded oversight of its publications, and
that it provide evidence that it has taken steps to insure this.
We note, with sorrow, that those who endorse "They Were
Just People" are not prominent scholars in Polish-Jewish relations. One is
a past president of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. This status
does not qualify the speaker to assess a book on Polish-Jewish relations. None
of the endorsers is Polish or is a scholar of Polish history or culture. This
is not reflective of due application of the rigorous peer review process that honors
and safeguards truth.
One of the great gifts, and
challenges, of the Information Age is the flood of data in which each citizen
swims. One can find books and webpages making any number of outlandish, even
destructive, claims. In this new age, university presses and the peer review
process have the unique charge to serve truth. We implore the University of
Missouri Press not to squander or tarnish this sacred, essential duty: truth.
We ask you to review, carefully, the facts below, that
demonstrate beyond question that "They Were Just People" should never
have received a university press imprimatur.
"They
Were Just People," contrary to its subtitle, does not create vivid
impressions of or deep insights into Poles, Poland, or Polish rescuers. Poles are
two-dimensional. Given that most American readers will come to this book
knowing little or nothing of Poland, and given that the authors say as little
about Poland as possible, the overwhelming impression readers will be left with
is of a country, Poland, that was worse than Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia.
An example of this last: "life under Soviet domination
was an improvement. For twelve-year-old Felix, it felt as if he had never been
so free because he experienced no more attacks from Catholic children"
(161). The book profoundly distorts history, here, and makes a mockery of the
millions – including Poles and Jews – imprisoned, tortured, dispossessed and murdered
by Stalin.
The book is happy to report that on January
17, 1945 "Soviet forces liberate Warsaw" (197). In fact, a new war
had begun for Poland. No scholar knowledgeable of Poland would have let that
utterly false line pass peer review.
"They Were
Just People" creates the impression that, out of no reason other than
perverse sinfulness or degradation, Poles and Poland nurtured a deadly hatred
of Jews. Example: "the [Polish] population in general was very
antagonistic toward the Jewish population, or they didn't care, or they were
simply collaborating with the Germans. Many of them ended up with property that
belonged to Jewish people" (114). Jews "were more afraid of the Poles
than the Germans" (131).
Those who might be
perceived as heroes in the US, Polish anti-Nazi resisters, were, in fact, interesting
in nothing but killing Jews. "Partisans look for Jews to kill" (133).
Poles are probably so anti-Semitic because they are
devoutly Catholic. "the history of anti-Judaism in Christian history"
(sic) is to blame (211). "They Were Just People" never mentions the
genocide of Catholic Poles that preceded the genocide of the Jews (see historian
Michael Phayer on this) or the Scientific Racism that, for decades, first in
America, and then in Germany, had identified both Catholic Poles and Jews as
life unworthy of life.
The audience is invited to
discharge the overwhelming trauma that the Holocaust narrative generates by
hating Poles and blaming Christianity, when in fact the ultimate Nazi goal was
to eliminate Christianity, and Polish priests were targeted for destruction.
The most memorable Poles in "They Were Just People" are
very much not rescuers. The most memorable Poles in "They Were Just
People" include, rather, a twisted sadist who tormented a starving Jewish
boy by carefully laying out, in front of him, rows of apples that he forbade
the Jew to touch (58). Why did the Polish sadist do this? We never learn – he
is not interviewed, not even to corroborate this harrowing anecdote.
The single most memorable narrative in "They Were Just
People" describes a Pole feeding the disinterred, decaying corpses of
Jews, ordered murdered by the Nazis, to his pigs.
Did
this really happen?
"They Were Just People"
provides no evidence that it did. The book reports it as an FOAF – a friend of
a friend tale. The teller heard it from someone else who reported hearing it
from someone else. Scholars of narrative identify FOAFs as notoriously
unreliable and non-veridical. This notorious unreliability did not hinder a
university press from publishing the story as if it were unquestionably true –
and not just true, but diagnostic and representational of all Poles and Polish
culture (94).
"They Were Just People" informs
its readers that the Armia Krajowa, or Home Army, was an anti-Semitic
organization bent on killing Jews (206, 133). "The Polish underground in
general and the AK in particular, displayed little interest in the Jews and
certainly took no action to defend them … the AK was imbued with anti-Semitism"
(206). This comment does not reflect current scholarly assessment of the Home
Army. It would not have passed peer review of a competent reader.
Though, in Poland alone, Nazis mandated death for entire
families if one member so much as offered a Jew a glass of water, Poles helped,
the book tells us, because they were peasants too greedy or stupid to
understand the risk (44, 111, 144). Example: "If German authorities came
to that farm and found Jews, she said, 'then he has the same execution that we
would have. But the famer was not smart enough to think of this. He was
thinking of the big chunk of money he would get.'" The speaker is a Jewish
Holocaust survivor, who acknowledges that she survived "Because of a
Polish army officer." Even so, "my generation will never
forgive" Poles.
Polish-Jewish scholar and author,
Eva Hoffman, daughter of two Holocaust survivors, tells a very similar anecdote
in her book "Shtetl." Hoffman goes on to question why Jews who
survived thanks to Poles often hated Poles. Hoffman shows the insight to probe
the power of stereotypes. Hoffman took this step in 1997. "They Were Just
People" reveals no awareness of this previous scholarship, or ethical
leadership.
Another Polish rescuer, Jan Goral, acted
because "the idea of owning sixty more acres intrigued him enough to put
the lives of his whole family on the line."
Was
callous, reckless, selfish greed really Jan Goral's motivation for building a
large bunker and saving eleven Jews? The reader will never know. "They
Were Just People"'s authors don't interview Jan Goral. They just accept
the venal motivation a Jewish storyteller applies to him as fact.
Of an entire family of rescuers, the book states, "The
Switzky family did this more for the money than for any altruistic reason"
(144). The Switzkys are also quite stupid; they do not know that the people
they are rescuing are Jews. If the Switzkys had known, the Jews "would not
have survived" (144). In any case, the Switzkys are verbally abusive of
the Jews they are unknowingly, greedily, saving (145). But the Switzkys lose
their patience, and decide to hand the Jews over to the Nazis for a reward of
sugar.
Were the Switzkys really greedy, stupid, and
abusive? The reader will assume so. The authors of the book never verify any of
these assessments of the Switzkys. A final note: a more likely spelling of this
name is "Switzki," not "Switzky." Even accurately
reproducing Polish orthography is not on the authors' agenda.
Poles should never be forgiven (42); most Poles, including
priests, collaborated with Nazis (114, 167) or were worse than Nazis (131, 189)
and worse than Soviets (161). Leaving Poland for France constitutes
"escape" where one can "breathe clean air for the first
time" (172). France, of course, in the Vichy regime, significantly
collaborated with the Nazis in a way that Poland did not.
The focus is on Jewish survivors. Polish rescuers are not fleshed out.
Many lack full names. They are just "Jan," or "a farmer."
Wladyslaw Bartoszewski's far superior "The Samaritans" and Block and
Drucker's "Rescuers" convey rescuers' hardship, terror, sacrifice and
ingenuity. How to: dispose of human waste; acquire food when Nazis kept Poles
on starvation rations and monitored every transaction; hide footprints in snow?
"Rescuers" tells of Irene Gut Opdyke surrendering her body to save
Jews and Stefania Podgorska heeding spectral voices. Polish heroes struggled
alone: the Allies repeatedly abandoned and betrayed Poland's Jews and non-Jews.
"Just People" erases all this vital
information, and more: the unique demographic, economic, educational, and
political realities of interwar, wartime, and postwar Poland that can never
excuse Polish anti-Semitism, but that certainly reveal as specious Tammeus and
Cukierkorn's insistence that Poles be understood no differently than
twenty-first century, suburban Americans. Their "readers' guide"
presumes to present ethical questions, without ever probing the genuine ethical
realities Poles faced. The authors reveal a damning degree of ignorance, if not
hostility, when they condemn Poles for using the terms "Poles" and
"Jews" (186) when there are very good reasons for these terms that
are used universally by scholars invested in the topic.
"Just People" never mentions that Auschwitz was built and used
for Polish prisoners during its first 18 months, that the Einsatzgruppen
targeted Polish elites, that Polish convents were remarkable in their rescue of
Jewish children. Polish Zegota was the only government-sponsored underground
agency in Nazi-occupied Europe devoted to aiding Jews. The authors never
mention this. The authors mention Ponary, never that 20,000 Poles were killed
there. The number of Polish non-Jews murdered, exiled, tortured, and enslaved
reaches into the millions. Poles rescued even as they lived in Hell.
"They Were Just People" is part of a trend, analyzed
in detail by Ben Gurion University scholar Dr. Jackie Feldman in his 2002
Israel Studies article, "Marking the Boundaries of the Enclave: Defining
the Israeli Collective Through the Poland 'Experience.'" As Dr. Feldman
demonstrates, some have decided, for ideological reasons, to rewrite Holocaust
history and cast Polish Catholics in the role that German Nazis properly play.
One tactic in this revisionism is to denigrate Polish Catholic rescuers.
"They Were Just People" serves this ideological end of Holocaust
revisionism.
Mr. Willcox, we, the undersigned, look
forward to your communication with us on these important matters. Everyone
faces a moment when conscience should function above politics, profit, or ease.
We hope that the University of Missouri Press will exhibit the qualities
necessary to meet and master this moment.
Thank you.
William Adasiewicz, Grandson of Polish Immigrants, Member
Polish Cultural Center of the Pacific and Polish Arts and Cultural Foundation.
Redwood City, CA.
Stuart Balcomb, artist, composer, editor,
TheScreamOnline.
Mary C. Bielski President of Marie Sklodowska Curie
Professional Women's Association, New York.
Antoinette Cooney
Mary Drane Derr, Poet and Writer of Polish Descent.
Danusha V. Goska, PhD, WPUNJ, (author, "Bieganski").
John Guzlowski, PhD, Son of Buchenwald Survivor (author,
"Lightning and Ashes").
Vincent Knapczyk, President of the Polish Army Veterans
Association Of America
Stefan Komar, NY Police Pulaski Association, Son of
Witold Komar, Member of Polish Home Army Battalion "Zoska",
acknowledged by Yad Vashem for saving 350 Jews during the Warsaw Uprising.
Leonard Kress, Professor of Communications and
Humanities, Owens Community College; translator of Polish literature, including
Pan Tadeusz by Adam Mickiewicz. (author, "Sappho's Apples").
Witold J. Lawrynowicz
Krystyna Mew, Daughter of Polish-Jewish Gulag Prisoner
(publisher of her father's memoir, "Lost Between Worlds" by Edward
Herzbaum).
Krzysztof Nowak of The Katyn Forest Massacre Memorial
Committee, Inc.
Christopher Olechowski, Adjutant General, Polish Army
Veterans Association of America
Christina Pacosz, poet, author "A Great Deal of
Doing: The Missouri Leadbelt Riot of 1917."
Peter Rechniewski Litt. B MA, grandson of Dr. Stanislaw
Rechtszaft, murdered in 1943 by SS at Umschlagplatz, buried in Warsaw's Jewish
Cemetery.
William H. Szych, Grandson of Polish Immigrants.
Małgorzata Tarchała, Polish Catholic, brought up to
respect history, other nations, and all religions, living in Heidelberg,
Germany.
Szymon Tolak
Caria Tomczykowska, President, The Polish Arts and
Culture Foundation.
Michał Tyrpa, President, Paradis Judaeorum Foundation; founder
of "Przypomnijmy o Rotmistrzu" worldwide civic initiative to
commemorate Witold Pilecki.
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