Old fashioned, corrosive Polish stereotypes about Jews linger stubbornly in Kazimierz, of all places.
Kazimierz, a pre-Holocaust centre of Jewish life in the southern city of Krakow, has materially capitalized on its historic association with Jews. Jewish-style restaurants and cafes, as well as vendors flogging Judaica and books with Jewish themes, cater to a booming tourist trade, while the Jewish Cultural Festival attracts hordes of visitors. You would think that Polish entrepreneurs and merchants who profit from this lucrative influx of travellers would be sensitive to anti-Semitism. Yet at shops and hotels in Kazimierz, repulsive wooden figurines of stereotypical chassidic Jews are for sale. Most of the figurines are charming, but one figurine, clasping a coin in one hand and clutching a bag of coins in another hand, panders to prejudices that can only reinforce existing notions of money-grubbing Jews. When I asked a hotel owner why he carried such figurines, his jaw dropped and his face went ashen before replying that they were simply good luck charms.
“In Polish folklore, Jews and money go together,” explained Anna Pawlikowska, a magazine editor and advocate of Christian-Jewish dialogue. “Some Poles don’t yet understand that such figurines are offensive.”
These ill-conceived figurines, however, are the least of the problem in the convoluted saga of Polish-Jewish relations, which the director of the Jewish Cultural Festival, Janusz Makuch, describes as “very complicated.”
During the Middle Ages, Jews fleeing persecution in western Europe found a safe haven in Poland thanks to Polish kings. By the third decade of the 20th century, at least 3.3 million Jews lived in Polin, as it was called by Jews in Yiddish.
But after about 800 years of coexistence, Jews and Poles were not exactly the best of friends, their relationship tarnished by the spectre of anti-Semitism and mutually antagonistic stereotypes.
Surveying this spiteful landscape, scholar Joanna Rohozinska observes in the Central Europe Review, “Both sides tend to adopt inflexible, judgmental and defensive attitudes toward one another, practically forestalling any chances at reconciliation.”
The period following Polish independence in 1918 was especially problematic. Pogroms erupted, and the primate of the Roman Catholic church, Cardinal August Hlond, issued a notorious pastoral letter in which he stated that “there will be a Jewish problem” as long as Jews remained in Poland and in which he supported a boycott of Jewish businesses.
Maciej Kozlowski, Poland’s former ambassador to Israel, acknowledged that there was “vicious” anti-Semitism in Poland during the inter-war interregnum. Indeed, it was an era when Jewish university students were forced to sit on “ghetto benches” and when Poles and Jews were preoccupied with finding a solution to the “Jewish question.”
To Poles who disliked Jews and considered them an alien component in Polish society, the only solution was emigration, an idea to which Zionists subscribed. One of them, Yitzhak Shamir, a future prime minister of Israel, would declare that anti-Semitism was deeply imbued in Polish tradition and mentality. Reflecting on these two solitudes, Polish academic Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska told me that Poles and Jews essentially lived separate lives and were “worlds apart” before World War II.
During Germany’s occupation, the vast majority of Poles remained indifferent to the suffering and mass murder of Jews. The Catholic church concentrated on providing assistance to converted Jews, writes scholar Dariusz Libionka. Tellingly, not one of the three councils convened by Polish bishops during the Nazi occupation mentioned the Holocaust, he adds. In other cases, Poles informed on Jews. In extreme instances, such as in the town of Jedwabne, Poles, egged on by the Nazis, massacred their Jewish neighbours.
Yet Poles also exhibited courage and heroism. Zegota, a Polish Catholic organization, rescued several thousand Jewish children. In all, more than 6,000 Poles rescued Jews, risking their lives to do so.
Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial and museum in Jerusalem, has recognized them as Righteous Gentiles. Also worth mentioning is the fact that Poland, unlike France, did not have a collaborationist government in place doing the bidding of the Nazis.
After the war, a wave of pogroms swept across Poland, the worst one breaking out in Kielce in 1946. Cardinal Adam Sapieha is reported to have observed that Jews brought the violence upon themselves because Jewish bureaucrats served the Communist regime.
In a paper, Adamczyk-Garbowska says that the Kielce pogrom “created an atmosphere of panic” and drove thousands of (Holocaust) survivors out of Poland.
Jan Gross, a Polish-born scholar living in the United States, writes that survivors returning to Poland were often met by hostility from Poles who had taken their property.
The notion that Jews had an affinity for communism, and were thus disloyal to Poland, is contained in the phrase Zydo-Komuna, which still resonates in Polish right-wing nationalist circles.
It is true that Jews were disproportionately represented in Poland’s pre-war and post-war Communist party, yet an overwhelming preponderance of Polish Jews were staunchly opposed to communism.
Zbigniew Nosowski, the editor of Wiez, a Catholic intellectual monthly, and a member of the Polish Council of Christians and Jews, addressed this sensitive issue. As he put it in an interview, “Jews were over-represented in the Communist party.” But in a reference to the Solidarity trade union, he quickly added, “Jews were also over-represented in the anti-communist movement.”
In retrospect, Polish Jews could hardy consider communism a blessing, even if some benefited from it. In 1968, less than a year after Poland severed diplomatic relations with Israel, the Polish government launched an anti-Semitic campaign under the guise of anti-Zionism, prompting upwards of 30,000 assimilated and Polonized Jews to emigrate.
“This campaign broke the back of the Jewish community,” said Konstanty Gebert, a well-connected Jewish journalist based in Warsaw. “There was a climate of intimidation. Jews were forced into a social and psychological ghetto. These events enjoyed a certain amount of popular support. ‘Jewish rule’ in Poland had ended. The Catholic church never once spoke out against it.”
The advent of democracy in Poland since the demise of communism in 1989 has had a salutary effect on Polish-Jewish relations.
The pro-Israel Polish government has encouraged the Jewish revival taking place in Poland today, and some important figures in the church, including the current archbishop of Lublin, Josef Zycinski, have displayed a refreshing openness to Jews and Judaism.
Certainly, the late Polish pope, John Paul II, contributed to this positive and important atmosphere. Gone are the days when controversy simmered over the placement of crosses at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. “Polish-Jewish relations are definitely getting better,” said Nosowski. “There is better mutual understanding.”
Yet as Stanislaw Krajewski – a Jewish community activist – noted, anti-Semitism in Poland remains “pretty strong.” Radio Maryja, which is run by Catholic priest Tadeusz Rydzyk, occasionally broadcasts anti-Semitic commentaries, while hooligans at football matches shout, ‘Jews to the gas chambers.’
Nonetheless, as Poland’s Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich believes, anti-Semitism in Poland in 2009 is no more serious than it is in the rest of Europe.
