The March of the Living in Auschwitz,\ncommemoration the victims of the Holocuast, gathers every year thousands of\nJews and Poles, going together, hand in hand, through the ground of mourning. However\nmany Polish Jews and non-Jews wonder each year: to go or not to go? Do they,\nfrom Israel, have a grudge against us, the Poles? Does the March have another\nmeaning? I think it does not, yet the worries and distrust of a Polish Jew or\njust a Pole are not unknown to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
The\nPolishness of our Jews has not met with sufficient recognition and\nappreciation, either among the Poles, or among the Jews. For that very reason\nour ancestors who were killed in camps have been \u201cwrongly classified\u201d by\nhistoric memory and public discourse. They are remembered exclusively as\nJews<\/em>, whereas so many of them were Poles to the same extent<\/em>. As a\nPolish Jew, I demand that it be remembered that the Holocaust of the Jews was\nalso a Polish tragedy, as hundreds of thousands of its victims felt themselves\nto be and were Polish, just like me and my murdered ancestors. Ignoring this\nfact goes hand in hand with the bad opinion that many Jews have about Poland\nand Poles. I am full of rancour against my compatriot Jews for the fact that\nthey believed so easily that Poland is an especially anti-Semitic country and\nthat so many of them spread such unfair opinions about Poles. I hope it will\nchange in time. Maybe it is already changing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Jews have special reasons for\ncondemning xenophobia and prejudices, also among themselves. Thus, I think that\ndiscussion about the attitude of contemporary Jews towards Poles is necessary,\nsimilar to the one, ongoing for years in Poland, about Polish anti-Semitism.\nWhat especially needs denying is the stereotype of a Pole as an \u201cordinary man\u201d,\nan indifferent witness of the genocide, and in fact an accomplice due to his\nassenting indifference. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In Poland, as in many Western countries, from the 18th century on there were strata of more or less assimilated Jews, patriots of the countries they lived in, but who kept the feeling of belonging to the Jewish nation. Also today there are millions of such double-national Jews around the world. In the case of, let us say, the USA, this is natural for everybody. It is not so natural in the case of Poland. What plays a decisive role here is the prejudice which very often we encounter. Every Polish Jew has frequently been asked: \u201ewhat are you doing in this country?!\u201d, \u201chow can you live in the shadow of the crematoriums of Auschwitz?!\u201d. These questions suggest that Poland and Polish society is an unfriendly environment for a Jew. That it is a bad place for a Jew. That is not true and I, being a one hundred percent Pole, and a one hundred percent Jew, do not want to live anywhere else and it is hurts me to see the distrust that many of my compatriot Jews have against my nation-Poles. What also hurts is that many Jews, aware of the fact that I am a Pole, deny my fully Jewish identity, as if I were some kind of unhealthy hybrid. Why, I ask, can one be a Jew and a Frenchman, a Jew and an American, but cannot be a Jew and a Pole, a \u201cJew-Pole\u201d? One can. I am a living proof of that like dozens of my ancestors, including those murdered by Nazis, of whom I know that they thought and felt as I do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The refusal to understand that many Polish\nJews are and were Poles leads to a distortion of the picture of the war on\nPolish territory. Jews see the war through the prism of the Holocaust and the\ndifference in the situation of Poles and Jews in the face of German aggression.\nThe Germans closed the Jews within the walls of ghettos, and from that time on,\nalso in the minds of the Jews of the world, Polish Jews started to be presented\nas a completely separate society, a society of non-Poles on the territory of\nPoland. Still, this kind of thinking has been imposed by the behaviour of the\nGermans. Let us not succumb to it. The truth is entirely different. Numerous\nPolish Jews were Poles in the same sense in which French Jews were Frenchmen,\nand even German Jews were Germans. The latter perhaps finally stopped being\nGermans, when the German state renounced them, but surely this cannot be said\nabout the Polish Jews. In Poland, there were many anti-Semitic excesses and\ninstances of administrative discrimination \u2013 more than in some other European\ncountries, but less than in many others. However, it would be utterly absurd to\nsuppose that those excesses excluded 3.5 million Jews from the society and\nenclosed them in a ghetto, that such an enormous Jewish society ceased to be\npart of the Polish society, living in one political whole together with ethnic\nPoles and other groups. Between two wars free Poland was a normal and decent\ncountry to such an extent that the minorities living here were simply parts of\nthe social and political whole of that multicultural country, just as it is in\nmost of the countries where Jews lived. Realising this fact helps to understand\nsomething that many still cannot grasp: the Holocaust is an unspeakable Jewish\ntragedy, but it is also a tragedy of the Poles. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Holocaust exterminated three million Polish Jews. Most of these people considered themselves to be rightful members of Polish society, many spoke Polish very well (or even only Polish) and loved Poland. A large part of them, like me, were Jews and Poles. This is why their death is also a Polish tragedy<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The millions of Jews are not the only people whom we lost during the war. The enemy killed another millions, and I am not going to expatiate upon how many of them were ethnic Poles, and how many representatives of various minorities. Let us remember that despite the difference between the fate of an ethnic Pole and a Polish Jew during the war (after all, the former one had a 90% chance of survival, and the latter 10%), the fate of \u201cAryans\u201d was also terrible. Let us remember the soldiers and guerrillas, as well as the hundreds of thousands of civilians tortured to death in the camps or killed during the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, which itself ravaged nearly 200.000 human beings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If some find it difficult to agree with such a perception of the Holocaust, they should think about September 11. Many Jews died under the ruins of the WTC. Do we separate them from the American victims of the tragedy? Of course not, since it is clear to us that the Jews were Americans at the same time. Why does somebody find it repulsive to think that hundreds of thousands of Jews-Poles died in the Holocaust, which makes the tragedy also a Polish one? Perhaps only because he or she is convinced that Poles were enemies of Jews and that Jews were not at home in Poland. As a matter of fact, most Poles were not enemies of Jews, and most of Jews did feel at home in Poland. That is just the same kind of sociological fact as that there was strong anti-Semitism in Poland and other Western countries before the war. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Each year, when the March of the Living goes through the town of O\u015bwi\u0119cim to the Auschwitz camp, there are people standing on the sidewalks and watching. These people look somewhat strange and unfriendly. But what in fact should they be doing? They have to wait until we pass to cross the street themselves or they just watch an extraordinary street scene. It requires a little imagination to understand, that they are not doing anything wrong by standing and watching, and only from our perspective, of the walking, do they seem alien and cold. Making an accusation from the fact that people lived where they lived, lived as it was possible to live though nearby the Germans were killing Jews, is absurd and is proof of a complete lack of imagination. Jews also were trying to live normally until the last moment, even when the ghettos were being wiped out. How could it have been any different? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Many ethnic Poles collaborated with the Germans during the war, giving away the Jews or killing them. There were also many pogroms. This must not be forgotten and we, Poles, ought to bear remembrance of it. Educated people are aware of this. We also wish it to be remembered that it was in the same Poland where Jews received heroic help on the greatest scale in the whole of Europe. This is symbolised by 6500 trees in Yad-Vashem. Although the number of Polish trees is the biggest one, too few Jews associate the Polish nation with acts of heroic solidarity, and too many with enmity and collaboration with the Germans. That is unjust and one-sided, however it is true that more Jews were hurt by Poles than saved. It is painful that the heroes rescuing Jews who were not Polish are incomparably better known than the heroes of Polish nationality. Everyone knows, and should know, the name of Wallenberg or Schindler, few know the names of Henryk S\u0142awik and Irena Sendler \u2013 the people who saved many thousands of Jews from death and deserve the same public recognition. Yet, when it comes to remembering the deeds of the malefactors (and they should be remembered), the Polish nationality of some of them is eagerly stressed. Even Germans are called \u201cNazis\u201d or \u201cHitlerites\u201d in many publications, to underline the fact that not all Germans were malefactors, whereas when the discussion is about \u201ctrackers\u201d or \u201cordinary people\u201d \u2013 indifferent witnesses of\u00a0 the Holocaust, the term \u201cPoles\u201d is often used without hesitation. Let`s call Germans \u2013 Germans, and Poles \u2013 Poles, but when we avoid these names, let us avoid them consistently and justly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The reason for the broad scope of\nanti-Jewish acts on the part of native Polish co-citizens is the same as that\nfor the great number of heroic acts. It is simply that there was the greatest\nnumber of Jews in our country and it was our country that the Germans turned\ninto the scene of the Holocaust. In general, all phenomena connected with the\n\u201cJewish issue\u201d in Poland were manifested more strongly than in many other\ncountries for simply quantitative reasons. The remains of that reality are\nstill visible today, for example in the form of some remnants of the myth of\nthe Jewish threat and the demonising of Jews. Paradoxically, the almost total\nlack of Jews (there are, maybe, around twenty thousand of us) in our country\ncontributes to this kind of anti-Semitism \u2013 it is easier to demonise an\nabstract than living people. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Polish\nanti-Semitism is underpinned with fear and envy, spreading among people who\nwant to see others guilty of their poverty. The same people who say that the\nauthorities are all thieves usually also say that the Jews are to blame for\neverything. However, taking such primitive people as the model of Polish\nsociety is nonsense. Saying on such a basis that Poles are mostly anti-Semitic,\nbears as much truth as saying that they usually hate their country and abuse\nits authorities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I do not\nbelittle the fact that there are inscriptions like \u201eJews to the chambers\u201d and\nswastikas scribbled on walls in Poland, and hateful anti-Jewish papers\navailable in many kiosks. Few Jews have the courage to walk with a kipa on their head through a Polish neighbourhood.\nWhat is more, saying \u201cI am a Jew\u201d in public happens to be viewed as a kind of\nprovocation or pretentious ostentation. Yes, Poland is marked with anti-Semitism\n\u2013 usually primitive, sometimes more sophisticated. That is true. Yet there is\nno reason whatsoever to believe that, in general, anti-Semitism is greater here\nthan anywhere else in Europe. It is usually expressed in such a primitive way,\nbecause it characterises primitive people. One fool can make a hundred\ninscriptions, which stay on the walls for years, and those who should cover it\nwith paint do not do it because they think it will not help. How many such\nfools are there? Judging by the tiny sales of the above-mentioned papers, not\nmany at all. And still, most of us, Jews from Poland, have not encountered since\nthe seventies any significant unpleasantness because of our ethnic origin in\nindependent Poland. That is also of importance. Just like the fact that Poland\nis free of mass anti-Israeli hysteria, which affects many Western societies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The\naverage Pole is probably indifferent to Jews, although he or she is likely to\nsuppose that the Jews disregard and dislike the Poles and consider them to be\nanti-Semitic. And then Poles really start to dislike Jews. So we have a typical\nfeedback loop: Jews often dislike Poles because they think them to be anti-Semitic,\nand Poles do not like Jews because they think the Jews perceive them as anti-Semitic\nor as \u201cindifferent witnesses of the Holocaust.\u201d This is paranoia, which must be\nstopped eventually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Today`s\nPoland is a descent, partly democratic and not very poor a country, really\nworth interest and worth visiting. So many Israelis go to Europe, including\nGermany, to enjoy flavours of Europe and spent some good time. However they do\nnot come to Poland with these purposes. Why not? Is Poland only a burned land\nof the concentration camps, indeed? Is it not as good a place for socializing\nand holiday, as France, Italy or Germany? Of course it is, with its beautiful\nmountains, lakes and coasts, with its charming cities and towns, sometimes\nplenty of Jewish monuments. Do Israeli realize that? Do they realize that\nPoland is a country where all foreigners, including Jews, are warmly welcome\nand safe? That prizes are decent there and services good? Rather not. Perhaps\nthe time came to re-evaluate Jewish image of Poland and to become acquainted\nwith Poland and Poles again. I, a Polish-Jew, warmly invite you to do so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The March of the Living in Auschwitz, commemoration the victims of the Holocuast, gathers every year thousands of Jews and Poles, going together, hand in hand, through the ground of mourning. However many Polish Jews and non-Jews wonder each year: to go or not to go? Do they, from Israel, have a grudge against us, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[541,620,932,930,929,931],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.polityka.pl\/hartman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4576"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.polityka.pl\/hartman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.polityka.pl\/hartman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.polityka.pl\/hartman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.polityka.pl\/hartman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4576"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.polityka.pl\/hartman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4576\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4587,"href":"https:\/\/blog.polityka.pl\/hartman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4576\/revisions\/4587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.polityka.pl\/hartman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.polityka.pl\/hartman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.polityka.pl\/hartman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Who we are<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
The war<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
Anti-Semitism today<\/h1>\n\n\n\n