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Sunday, March 27, 2011
"Poland can serve as an ideal stage for Israeli Jews playing out the
drama of their identity, as it provides so many good props and so few competing
live actors" Prof. Jackie Feldman
***
Chapters Five and Nine of "Bieganski"
cite Jewish scholars – significantly Peter
Novick, Tom
Segev, and Jack
Kugelmass – whose work offers insight into the process of supporting Jewish
identity through the stereotyping of Poles.
Non-Jews
also use the Brute Polak stereotype to support their sense of their own
identity. As Alan Dundes explained, putting down "white trash"
"dumb Polaks," gained popularity among politically correct elites in
America after the Civil Rights movement made it problematic for elites automatically
to establish their superiority vis-à-vis African Americans.
***
Ben Gurion University's Prof. Jackie Feldman
also offers insight into the stereotyping of Poles for instrumental ends.
Prof. Feldman's excellent and recommended article,
"Marking the Boundaries of the Enclave: Defining the Israeli Collective
Through the Poland 'Experience'" appeared in Israel Studies, volume 7,
issue 2, 2002.
Prof. Feldman's article supports in its every
detail and observation the conclusions of Chapters Five and Nine of
"Bieganski."
***
Prof.
Feldman describes the Holocaust-oriented trips young Jews take to Poland. Feldman
quotes Limor Livnat, Israel's Minister of Education, saying that young Jews
"gravitate toward Auschwitz." They "want their feet to tread
that cursed earth" (84). Indeed, trips to Poland are a "central rite"
in "Israel's civil religion" (90).
Feldman
applies anthropologist Dame Mary Douglas' model of an enclave society to these
trips.
Mary Douglas (1921-2007)
was a prominent British anthropologist. In her model of an enclave society, members
"build a strong boundary" around themselves. Enclave members erect "a
wall of virtue between themselves and the outside world, a world they never
cease to revile" (Douglas, quoted in Feldman, 91).
Feldman
argues that Holocaust-oriented trips to Poland are used by organizers to erect
and maintain the wall an enclave society requires and desires. Each aspect of
the trip is manipulated by organizers to increase the "wall of
virtue." Outside the wall is the world enclave society members "never
cease to revile."
Poles and Poland cannot be seen
in any manner approaching the objective. They exist to serve the enclave, and
their image must be manipulated, perceived, and interpreted in a way that
serves the enclave. "Modern-day
Poland is of no interest. National identity … is all that matters" (93).
As Ferdinand de Saussure observed, we define through
opposites. The other, the opposite, against whom young Jews traveling to Poland
are encouraged to define themselves, is Poland and its Poles. Because the trips
teach young Jews that they are virtuous victims, Poles must be their opposites.
Poles must be guilty, hateful, victimizers. These trips offer no opportunity
for Poles to be anything else; in fact, the trips are carefully choreographed
in such a way as to create and perpetuate Bieganski, the Brute Polak
stereotype.
Trips are designed to bypass cognitive
mechanisms and arouse emotion. Holocaust tourists, Feldman argues, are not
encouraged to think complex thoughts so much as to feel overwhelming feelings.
Those overwhelming feelings are channeled into a particular version of Jewish
identity that cannot allow for the universality of human experience.
Participants are programmed to "experience non-Jews as
anti-Semites." "A picture of the world is created in which
impermeable boundaries separate 'us' from 'them'" (90). The trips
communicate to young Jews that the Holocaust never ended; absent the IDF, "they
would be on their way to the gas chambers" (84).
Feldman
argues that "Visits to Poland by Ministry of Education groups are designed
to inscribe upon Israeli youth the sense of belonging to an egalitarian
collective with well-defined, but constantly threatened boundaries" (91).
These trips emphasize "the division of the world into
Israel and Poland, 'us' and 'them,' life and death" (92).
The trips to Poland began when observers began to fear that forces,
including globalization and the passage of time from WW II, were eroding Jewish
identity. At the same time, differences between Jews – Sephardic and Ashkenazi,
orthodox and secular, doves and hawks – threatened a sense of Jewish unity. The
trips to Poland were seen as necessary to buttress Jewish identity and unity.
"Common bases for national identity were seen as weakened
… Youth became the prime carriers of globalization [through] TV, fashion,
music, MTV, video, the internet … Poland visits have been promoted … as a
bulwark against global forces and a means of shoring up loyalty to the national
collective."
Trips to Poland, one founder put it,
"Made us one nation – the nation that was murdered!" (92)
Mary Douglas said that enclaves maintain their boundaries by
associating contact with outsiders with contact with unclean bodily excretions.
"An enclave uses defilement for reinforcing its antipathy towards the
outsider" (Douglas quoted in Feldman 93).
Feldman
points out that Israeli youth visiting Poland equated Poland with uncleanness and
unclean bodily excretions and the violation of bodily orifices. Trip graduates
communicated that sense of Polish uncleanness to subsequent young people making
the trip. They told other young people that Polish food "stinks" and
is "disgusting," Polish water is "brown," and "not fit
for humans." Even McDonald's in Poland is "grungy." Polish
toilet paper is unacceptable. "Pee whenever you get the chance."
"Hotels are flooded with drunks and whores." One guide, Feldman
reports, "took ten days of food with him from Israel, refusing to eat
anything that grew on 'impure Polish soil'" (93-4).
Feldman argues that there is a sharp boundary drawn between how young
Jewish visitors to Poland behave when in their own group and what they understand
as their own space, and how they behave when Poles are present, and when they
feel themselves to be in Poland. Feldman says that these behavior differences
"becomes a prototype of imagined historic Polish-Jewish and Gentile-Jewish
relations" (95). Outside of their "bubble" of contact with
fellow Jews, the world around them, that is, Poland, is "a place of
hostile, strange surroundings, wandering, and the inevitable end" (95).
"The Israeli guard accompanying each bus" is
"the guardian of gateways to and from Poland." "Security
measures … eliminate any possibility for casual contact with Poles." Feldman
quoted a group leader implying to young Jewish visitors to Poland that they
must be rushed from Holocaust site to Holocaust site because if they linger,
they will be in danger from Poles who might do them bodily harm (95).
Clothing, too, is used to maintain a boundary between Jews and surrounding
Poles. Sweatshirts are "emblazoned with a large barbed wire star of David surrounding
the letters 'ISRAEL'" (96).
In the handbook for
participants, youth are told, "We remind the Poles of this dark chapter in
our history and theirs … the Poles are forced to confront their past anew, and
their role in the tragedy of the Jewish people." Feldman quotes Mary
Douglas, "To vilify the outsider is a way of justifying" the
enclave's disdain for the outsider. "The lines between 'us' and 'them'
reflect widely held Israeli positions (e.g. that Poles are anti-Semites)."
Any event that suggests otherwise – that suggests that maybe, just maybe, some
Poles are NOT anti-Semites, is "neutralized through scheduling and
rhetorical devices" (96).
What do enclave members
do when they encounter realities that do not agree with their narrative? In
concrete terms, what happens when a young Jew on such a trip meets a nice
Polish person?
Mary Douglas outlines five strategies.
Feldman applies Douglas' strategies to Jewish youth visiting Poland (96-7).
Feldman mentions that a great stumbling block to the enclave
is the beauty of Poland, or the attractiveness of individual Poles. To maintain
the enclave, this attractiveness must be overcome. "Israeli students
expect Poland to look like a Holocaust movie" with "mud, ugly, gray
people … they are sometimes disappointed to find that [Polish] scenery,
weather, men or women can be quite beautiful." Soon, though, under their
guides' tutelage, visitors learn to "simply ignore" any attractions
Poland offers (97).
Guides encourage visitors "not
to give the Poles a penny more than necessary." On one occasion, visitors
admitted to shoplifting in Poland. Their Orthodox group leader "dismissed
it as a sin that results from a good deed (averah haba'ah b'mitzvah) – in other
words, depriving Poles of income" (98).
Polish
students "are considered the enemy." Rabbi Moshe Zvi Neriah wrote
that "it is a sacred obligation to remember the deeds of the Polish people
who are imbued with a venomous hatred towards all Jews…these are the very
people who helped carry out mass murder, and whose children also slaughtered
many … Remember our murdered and remember our murderers" (98).
Feldman cites a commentator who notes the de-emphasizing of
universal standards of morality by "many rabbinical leaders."
Hostility to Poles is justified by the Talmudic proverb, "Esau hates
Jacob." Poles are Esau; Jews are Jacob. Since, in this formulation, all
Poles hate all Jews, it is appropriate for Jews to hate Poles in return (99). In
Genesis, Esau is the rough, outdoorsy, impetuous, less favored brother. Jacob
is the patriarch who takes the name "Israel." Assigning Poles the Esau
identity has a long tradition.
Feldman comments on
how even the presence of a "righteous Gentile," that is a Pole who
saved Jews, is handled in such a manner as to reinforce the "us v.
them" paradigm. Audiences are encouraged to conclude that "righteous
Gentiles" are not like other Poles, are, rather, completely unconnected to
their Polish milieu (100). In fact Feldman says, through the use of a poem,
Poland is equated with Sodom. The atypical Pole who helped Jews did so because
he is the one righteous man in Sodom.
Because living
Jews in Poland do not mesh with the dominant paradigm of "Poland = Death,"
young visitors have been kept from interacting with living Polish Jews. In
fact, in their prayer ceremonies, contrary to Jewish custom that advises that
Jews worship according to local custom, young Jewish visitors worship in
Sephardic, not Ashkenazi, style.
Jews who lived in Poland
before the Holocaust are depicted as Orthodox, rather than assimilated to
Polish culture. This emphasizes the "us v. them" paradigm. Pre-war
Polish Jews are "alien in the Kingdom of Amalek." Amalek, of course, is the condemned
nation against whom Old Testament Jews conducted a genocidal war. One can see
that the Bible is used to define Poland as utterly cursed and other: as Esau,
as Sodom, as Amalek (100).
Jews living in Poland today
"post a potential threat" to the us v. them paradigm because these
Jews choose to live in Poland. For this reason, Holocaust tours have avoided contact
with living Polish Jews (101).
Ceremonies in Poland,
Feldman argues, are designed in such a way as to reinforce the "with
me" v. "against me" paradigm. Differences between Jews
disappear. It doesn't matter if they disagree politically or socially; no
differences between Jews matter at all, any more. The important differentiation
is between Jews and outsiders, who are, in Poland, of course, Polish Catholics
(105).
Feldman closes with recommendations for
restructuring young Jews' visits to Poland in a way that will inculcate
universal values, rather than hostile chauvinism. Jews must redefine their
experience in Poland, rather than continue to depict it as "a long, dark
period of suffering and persecution … of fragile existence imbued with fear and
humiliation" (106).
***
Political
mastermind Karl Rove said, "Attack an opponent's strength. Make it a
weakness."
It is widely known that there are more
trees planted at Yad Vashem in honor of Polish rescuers than rescuers from any
other nation. The number is too small. Conditions in Poland were magnitudes
worse than in any other Nazi occupied country. Many rescuers can never be
honored.
One would think that Poles' status as rescuers
would serve to counter the Brute Polak stereotype.
Interestingly,
in recent years, university presses have published books that depict Polish
rescuers as sex deviants, profiteers, reckless fools, and sadists.
"They
Were Just People," a University of Missouri press book, depicts Polish
rescuers acting out of greed or stupidity. Of one, the book says, "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.
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." (Nazis killed
entire families of Poles if anyone in that family aided a Jew in any way.)
Was callous, reckless, selfish greed really Jan Goral's motivation
for building a large bunker and saving 11 Jews? We don't know. "They Were
Just People"'s authors don't interview Jan Goral. They just accept this
venal motivation as fact.
The 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. FOAFs are notoriously unreliable. This notorious unreliability
did not hinder a university press from publishing the story as if it were
unquestionably true.
The "Polish peasant disinters Jewish
corpses and feeds them to his pigs" narrative neatly meets the
requirements for the Holocaust-trip strategy Jackie Feldman describes, above. Feldman
argues that Holocaust trips position the Polish rescuers young Jews are allowed
to encounter in such a way as to define these Poles as the one good man in
Sodom. That's exactly the purpose of the pig story in "They Were Just
People." The teller says as much: "that was the kind of people who
lived there [in Poland]." Other than the one family that helped this
Holocaust survivor, Poles are the kind of people who would disinter Jewish corpses
and feed those corpses to their pigs.
The location of
this nauseating, horrifying tale in a book purportedly about Polish rescuers,
along with statements from survivors like "We will never forgive the Poles,"
serves effectively to satisfy Karl Rove's strategy of attacking one's opponent
on his strength.
Ha, this book says. You think Polish rescuers
deserve respect? You naïve fool.
"Sexual
Violence Against Jewish Women," published by Brandeis University
Press, includes few lengthy, contextualized accounts of sexual violence. The
lengthiest account in the book involves no German Nazis. Rather, in this
account, it is a Catholic Pole who sexually assaults a Jewish girl. The Catholic
Pole does not hand a Jewish girl over to the Nazis. In exchange, he demands a
sexual encounter with her. An additional remarkable feature: the account is
fiction. A university press publishes a self-identified
"groundbreaking" book addressing sexual violence against Jewish women
during the Holocaust, and devotes its longest account, not to assaults by
German Nazis, but to an assault by a Pole, and not a nonfiction account, but a
fictional one.
As is often the case in work that locates
Holocaust guilt in Catholic Poles, Germans are exculpated at least once in
"Sexual Violence." Contributor Eva Fogelman, a psychologist, quotes
one Jewish Holocaust survivor as reporting, "I was never raped by a
German. Not one German ever laid a finger on me." The Germans, Fogelman
reports, "liked her looks, but treated her like a Fraulein, giving her
food and milk." "By contrast with her praise of the Germans, she
said, 'What I do hate is Ukrainians and Poles. I shiver when I see them in the
streets'" (269). In case the reader misses the point, Fogelman, lists
"Germans, Poles, Ukrainians" as "persecutors" (272).
***
Polonia has not responded to the Bieganski
image with effective strategy. Polonian organizations, like the Kosciuszko
Foundation, have not, as far as I know, even acknowledged the existence of the
Brute Polak stereotype.
There are piecemeal efforts, like
a petition to get press organs to stop identifying German, Nazi concentration
camps in Nazi-occupied Poland as "Polish concentration camps," but
these efforts merely put a band-aid on cancer. The Brute Polak stereotype must
be recognized for what it is, and addressed head-on.
Till
that day, Polonia does not have the microphone. Polonia is not controlling the
discourse.
That being the case, every time Poles or
Polonians cite Polish rescuers, audiences hear "Polish Rescuers … those
people who helped Jews out of greed or stupidity or sadism or lust."
That's what audiences hear because the Brute Polak image has
been made dominant through journalism, media, and academia. Audiences, no less
than young Jews on Holocaust tours of Poland, have been conditioned to hear
selectively.
***
It goes without
saying that Holocaust tours in Poland are not the definitive expression of
Jewish culture today. There
are many Jews who love and value Poland. There are also many Jews who have
never heard of, never mind taken, a Holocaust tour of Poland, and who would
find much about these tours unappealing. As stated above, Jewish scholars have
lead the way in offering critiques of the chauvinism and anti-Polonism of these
tours. In fact, a rabbinical student allowed me to post his own critique of
these tours here.
In other words, though this material is disturbing, we cannot
allow it – or anything – to tempt us to fall into hatred's traps. And we
must not blame all Jews for what some Jews are doing. We must remain
mindful that many
Jews have been allies to Poles in combating generalizations, and many
non-Jews have trafficked in stereotypes of Poles. We must regretfully admit the
chauvinists and distorters of history among Polish Catholics.
Rather, what we must do is confront this material in a clearheaded way.
People of good faith, who want a better tomorrow, must act on this material to
discourage stereotyping and encourage the kind of universal values promoted by
heroes Irena Sendler and Janusz Korczak.
Black and White Beach. Source.
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