File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/marxism-international.9709, message 425


Date: Mon, 22 Sep 1997 09:31:37 -0400 (EDT)
From: Louis N Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: M-I: Polish anti-Semitism


MASTERS OF THE "HOWEVER" SYNDROME

London Times Literary Supplement: June 27, 1997.
Abraham Brumberg

review of

BONDAGE TO THE DEAD
Poland and the Memory of the Holocaust
by Michael C. Steinlauf
184 pp. New York: Syracuse University Press
Cloth ISBN 0-8156-2729-7  $39.95
Paper ISBN 0-8156-0403-3 $16.95

        According to a survey conducted a few years ago by the Jewish
Historical Institute in Warsaw, most Poles believe that Polish society as
a whole "does not like Jews." This, however, does not make the Poles
"anti-Semitic." In fact, there is more to this apparent contradiction than
at first appears. The notion that those who do not like Jews should not be
considered anti-Semites is emblematic of the paradoxes inherent in the
perceptions of things Jewish in general, and of the role of Jews in Polish
history entertained by many Poles. (The question of "how many" is probably
best left alone, since it has proved beyond the ken of any opinion survey,
however sophisticated, to answer with any degree of accuracy, and also
because the term "anti-Semitism" covers a multitude of sins from which
hardly any ethnic group is exempt.)

        Poland is still a special case. A country where Jews settled
nearly 900 years ago, it was at one time known for its benign attitude
towards all minorities, most prominently Jews. By the nineteenth century,
it had become the most dynamic centre of Jewish cultural, religious and
political creativity on the one hand, and a hotbed of political and
religious Jew-hatred on the other. In inter-war Poland, Jews constituted
nearly one tenth of the country's total population (three-and-a-half
million out of 30 million inhabitants), which clearly made that country
the natural site of Hitler's "Entlosung." After the Holocaust, Jews in
Poland numbered about 200,000, most of them returnees from exile in the
Soviet Union. Only about 50,000 Jews are estimated to have survived the
Nazi slaughter in Poland. The combination of Communist distrust of any
form of organized independent activity and the pervasive anti-Jewish
animus (Nazi propaganda, a recent survey indicates, helped to fuel the old
flames) destroyed most remnants of Jewish communal life, and when 35,000
Jews left in 1967-68, following an officially organized "anti-Zionist"
campaign, Poland became virtually "Judenrein." In perhaps the supreme
paradox, it became the country of "anti-Semitism without Jews."

        Michael Steinlauf, an American historian and Senior Research
Fellow at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York, discusses
this and other paradoxes and incongruities in his excellent study of
Polish-Jewish relations, "Bondage to the Dead." He cites widely shared
convictions from the survey mentioned above: the Jews control a large
share of the world's finances, exercise a disproportionate and evil
influence over Polish affairs, are engaged in secret preparations to rule
the world, and go to extraordinary lengths to support their brethren
against the "goyim." At the same time, most of the same respondents spoke
warmly about their personal relations with individual Jews. ("Kazdy Polak
ma swego zydka" -- each Pole has his own little Jew -- was once a popular
saying.)

        Such inconsistencies have always characterized Poland's brand of
anti-Semitism. The pre-war primate of Poland, Cardinal Augustus Hlond,
alleged that Jews engaged in white slavery, usury, cheating and spreading
pornography. However, he said, violence against the Jews would be
"un-Christian." Jews should rather be ostracized, Jewish merchants and
shop-owners avoided. "Swoj do swego" (each to his own kind) was the slogan
of the largest right-wing anti-Semitic party in Poland, the National
Democrats (Endecja), who staunchly maintained that they were not
anti-Semites. When the government adopted the Endeks' philosophy, Jews
were to be excluded from Polish national life. The Endek goal of expelling
Jews from Poland altogether was justified by Polish raison d'etat: there
were simply too many jews in the country for it to develop a healthy
economic and political existence. After the war, the few Endeks who had
risked their lives to save Jews were given disproportionate attention;
they were the exceptions to the unfortunate rule.

        Perhaps the most curious example of the "however" syndrome was the
Catholic writer Zofia Kossak Szczucka. In 1942, she passionately urged
Poles to protest against the Nazi slaughter of Jews, however they might
(justifiably) detest them. Steinlauf quotes from her appeal, including a
passage that was until recently omitted in nearly every text of the letter
published in Poland:
                Our [Polish Catholics'] feelings about the Jews
                have not changed. We have not ceased to regard them
                as political, economic, and ideological enemies of
                Poland. Furthermore, we recognize that they hate us
                more than the Germans, that they hold us responsible
                for their misfortunes. Why, for what reason -- that
                remains a secret of the Jewish soul....Our awareness
                of these feelings, however, does not free us from the
                responsibility of denouncing the crime.

        Steinlauf rehearses and dismisses the argument that Kossak
Szczucka believed she had no way to reach her putative readers without the
anti-Semitic arguments, since most of them were rabid anti-Semites. In
fact, she didn't deny her anti-Jewish prejudices: she was a bona fide
anti-Semite, as her writings in the 1930s attest. However, she was truly
revolted by the Nazi carnage.

        Steinlauf carefully analyzes Polish-Jewish relations and the
elements that gave anti-Semitism in Poland its distinctive character,
dealing concisely with the pre-war period and in exhaustive detail with
the war and post-war years. One of the few issues he neglects is the
ambivalence of so many Polish intellectuals, which is something of a pity,
since intellectuals played and continue to play an important role in
shaping public attitudes.

        The subtitle of Steinlauf's book is "Poland and the Memory of the
Holocaust," and the passages dealing with the impact of the Holocaust on
Polish perceptions of the Jews and vice versa, and with the Holocaust's
impact on Jewish consciousness among the younger generation of Polish
Jews, are among the best in the book. Hardly any of these younger Jews
knew anything about Jewishness as they were growing up; some were not even
aware of their Jewish roots until rudely apprised of them by their gentile
peers or during the "anti-Zionist" campaign of 1967-8.

        For decades, the Holocaust was buried, ignored or falsified in
history textbooks and in the Polish classroom. In the official and often
in the popular version of the war, Poles -- not Jews -- were the real
victims, often hounded by an unholy alliance of Nazis and Zionists, who
"needed" the Holocaust to justify their struggle for a Jewish state.

        This species of madness gave way to the reassertion of the old
"zydokomuna" myth, according to which Jews were always pro-Russian and
pro-Communist, welcomed the Soviet occupiers in 1939 and again in 1944-5,
and then collaborated with the Soviet security services in persecuting
Polish patriots. This line was difficult to sustain officially as long as
the Polish Communist Party remained firmly allied to the Soviet CP, but in
periods of relative Polish autonomy -- first under Gomulka in the 1960s
and then under Gierek in the 70s -- the notion of a "Jewish-Stalinist"
alliance and, later, the whole concept of Jewish pro-Russian and
pro-Soviet sympathies were revived. This took place with the approval of
the Church, for which "Jew-Communism" -- "zydokomuna" -- had always
represented a clear danger.

        Steinlauf shows how all of this related to the Holocaust. The role
played by so many Poles -- indifferent, hostile, approving -- became the
very touchstone of Polish-Jewish relations. Claude Lanzmann's film
"Shoah," released in 1985, constituted proof positive for some Poles that
Lanzmann -- a Jew -- was deliberately presenting the Poles in the worst
possible light in order to affirm their pernicious role in the Nazi
extermination programme. A long press debate ensued, despite most
participants' inability, thanks to Polish censors, to see the film. Most
of the articles and letters were decidedly hostile to Lanzmann, a few were
sympathetic. A year later, Jan Blonski, a distinguished Polish literary
critic, published a watershed essay in the liberal Catholic weekly
"Tygodnik Powszechny," for the first time since the end of the war
explicitly discussing pre-war Polish anti-Semitism and the degree of
Polish "responsibility" for (not participation in) the Holocaust.

        Blonski's article, like Lanzmann's film, provoked mostly fury from
Poles. Some correspondents maintained that anti-Semitism was merely the
Polish response to Jewish "anti-Polonism," though none of the writers
cared to cite any examples of Jewish pogroms against Poles. One wrote that
Polish indifference to the liquidation of Jews in the Warsaw ghetto was
unconscionable; however, wasn't Western behavior even more contemptible?
None the less, after the Blonski article and discussion, Polish
anti-Semitism and even the anti-Semitism of the Church became
legitimate subjects for debate.

        In the meantime, the generation which had discovered its
Jewishness now set about understanding it. In the days of Solidarity, and
even under Jaruzelski's martial law, this process took the form of
informal classes and discussions. More recently, Jewish Studies has become
an authentic scholarly pursuit, with several universities -- including the
University of Warsaw and Krakow's Jagiellonian University -- establishing
formal courses and degree-granting programmes. With this came an
extraordinary growth in literature on Jewish subjects, by both Jews and
non-Jews. Finally, the interest in things Jewish -- history, contributions
to Polish culture, Polish-Jewish literature, etc -- invaded popular
culture. Concerts of Yiddish, Hebrew and "klezmer" (instrumental) music,
festivals of Jewish culture, conferences of Yiddish theatre have been held
with increasing frequency.

        How can this upsurge of fascination be reconciled with the
previously persistent and strong anti-Semitic attitudes and stereotypes?
One major factor is the disappearance of taboos. Communist censorship
could not tolerate a candid discussion of anti-Semitism in Poland, thanks
to the regime's adoption of the old Endek ethos ("You must understand, Mr
Brumberg," said a Central Committee apparatchik to me some years ago,
"that we are proud to have, at long last, an ethnically homogenous
country"), and to its manipulation of anti-Semitic prejudices for
political purposes. Once the Communist regime collapsed, the enforced
prohibitions also collapsed. A second factor is the Church. Under the
pressure of its own liberals and world public opinion, and in the wake of
theological revisions at the Second Vatican Council, the Church has begun
to put its own house in order. Recent surveys show that the old myths of
deicide and ritual murder that were so integral to old anti-Semitism have
now receded.

        In spite of these favourable developments, anti-Semitic
prejudices still show themselves all too often. In the summer of 1994, for
instance, a review was published in Poland's most popular newspaper,
"Gazeta Wyborcza," by a young Polish historian, Michal Cichy, who
mentioned that during the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 a number of insurgents
killed Jews -- not by accident, but because they were Jews. He was
vilified as a liar and a purveyor of "distinctive racism," as was the
Editor of the paper, the well-known writer Adam Michnik, who was called a
supporter of "anti-Polonism" and "anti-goyism" (this from a distinguished
Polish historian).

        Nor was this an isolated case. A year later, Henryk Jankowski,
Lech Walesa's priest, declared in a sermon and then repeated on television
that Jews had spawned the "Bolshevik menace" and were responsible for the
Second World War. And Walesa himself, in his two public speeches at the
ceremony commemorating the liberation of Auschwitz in January 1995, did
not even mention Jews, who constituted more than 90 per cent of the camp's
victims. A master of the "however" syndrome, Walesa, with tears in his
eyes, denounced anti-Semitism in a speech delivered at the Israeli Knesset
later the same year.

        These attitudes do not cancel each other out. Rather, they both
characterize Polish reality today. What can be said is that the popular
appeal of the worst anti-Semitic hate propaganda is waning, and, most
important, that the younger generation is less susceptible to it than
those who imbibed the poison of hatred before and during the war. I asked
a young Polish-Jewish historian what she thought of the current situation:
"It's getting better," she said. "However, it's not so good, either."








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