Algemeiner: Jews Should Boycott Poland Economically

Zev Friedman, writing in Algemeiner, recommends that Jews not spend one zloty in Poland. He recommends other destinations. 

Catholic Priest: Irena Sendler Was a Jewish Feminist

A Catholic priest in Poland has denounced Polish heroine Irena Sendler as a feminist and a Jew. See more here. 

Video: American Jews Blame Holocaust on Poles and Poland; Demand America Break Off All Relations with Poland

It appears that the video has been removed from YouTube, but it is still visible on the web, on Facebook for example. It was put forth by the Ruderman Family Foundation. You can find it by googling "Polish Holocaust."

Update: ABC reports that the video has been removed by the Ruderman Family Foundation. You can read more here. OTOH the video is still visible on sites other than YouTube.

This comment appears under the above-linked ABC article:

Arthur Leon 

My father and his family were from Poland and in the Holocaust there - 2 Uncles were in the Minsk Ghetto, later w the partisans in the forest and on more than one occasion sheltered Hersh Smoliar, who was always on the run. 

I was born in America so I can only relate what my Dad and his family always said of the Poles - no one hated the Jews more than the Poles, German Nazis were second. Uneducated and brutal, generations of hatred that existed long before WWII. The antisemitism that's seen now... not surprising in the least.

Don't like what my father said? Is it not PC or bothers historical revisionists? Tough, he lived it, he said it.


And while millions of Poles died in WWII fighting against the invading Nazis... that does not obfuscate their hateful sentiments of Jews.

Haaretz and Bieganski: How Poles Are More Vilified as 'Bestial' Brute Jew Killers Than German Nazis Themselves

Haaretz published today a piece by me entitled, "How Poles Are More Vilified as 'Bestial' Brute Jew Killers Than German Nazis Themselves."

You can read the piece at Haaretz here. 

The full text is below. 

I am very grateful to Haaretz editor Esther Solomon who worked with me on this piece. 

To many observers, not least those who are neither Polish nor Jewish, the highly critical press coverage of Poland's new Holocaust law which seeks to criminalize declaring the complicity of the Polish nation in the murder of Jews in WWII, appears both simple and clear.

Poles contributed enthusiastically to the genocide of six million Jews. Poles did so because they are staunchly Catholic, simple-minded and chauvinistic. Right-thinking observers must perpetually goad Poles to drop their defenses, acknowledge their guilt, and make amends.

Polish-Jewish relations are thus reduced to a calculation performed with black and white beads on one rod of an abacus. The black beads represent the bad, anti-Semitic Poles. The white beads represent the exceptional, prejudice-free Poles. A "true" historical retelling is only achieved when the black beads far outnumber the white beads. The token righteous white bead – Jan Karski – is the main concession to any semblance of balance. Karski was the Polish Home Army officer who brought the first eyewitness account of the Holocaust to Roosevelt.

The abacus approach dominates public discussion. But it is intellectually and ethically bankrupt, not just because it distorts beyond recognition a thousand years of Polish-Jewish interaction and the unique horror of 1939-1945. The abacus prevents historical clarity and ethical responsibility. And this debate matters very much in the era of Trump.

In my book Bieganski: The Brute Polak Stereotype, I explored how people talk about the Holocaust, its victims and its executors. Many, though not all, of those I interviewed talked about Poles quite differently from how they talked about Germans.

Visceral vocabulary and animal references were prominent. This trend can be found in Fania Fenelon's Auschwitz memoir Playing for Time. Fenelon writes that Poles exhibit a "particularly disturbing" "bestiality;" they are "monsters," "brick-faced," "servile," "pigs," "bitches," "pests," and "a real cow." A Polish woman has "piercing little black eyes like two glinting gems of anthracite set in a block of lard; she was shapeless and gelatinous." A Polish woman "was big and fat and as strong as a man – a monster! One would have been hard put to find any human traits in her at all."

Survivors often did not apply such visceral language to German Nazis. Fenelon describes one officer. "Goodness, he was handsome. So handsome that the girls instinctively rediscovered the forgotten motions of another world, running dampened fingers through their lashes to make them shine, biting their lips, swelling their mouths, pulling at their skirts and tops. Under the gaze of this man one felt oneself become a woman again." This Nazi "wore his uniform with incomparable ease and style … Insouciantly he laughed and joked, conscious of his charm." Fenelon is describing Dr. Josef Mengele.

Nazis are not seen as representational of Germany, a nation frequently referred to as "civilized" and "decent" in contrast to "backward, gray, gothic, primitive, Catholic" Poland." One madman, Hitler, exploiting unique historical circumstance, Germany's humiliating WWI defeat, and the punitive Versailles Treaty, forced otherwise "decent" Germans to commit anti-Semitic crimes.

Poles, on the other hand, as Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir said, "imbibe anti-Semitism with their mother's milk." One online post I saw stated Poles "were like American rednecks from the Ole South who loathed blacks."

All Poles were, had always been, and would always be, chomping at the bit to murder Jews. Scholars who have abandoned such racist essentializing in reference to other ethnicities, apparently still believe it's legitimate practice in regard to Poles, such as Paul Berman's 1994 New Yorker article that referred to "darkest Poland".

Even scholarly reviews of books about Nazi war criminals and Polish war criminals use very different language. Scholars work hard to distinguish Nazism from German identity. When Poles commit crimes, Poles qua Poles are guilty.

Even when Jan Tomasz Gross published, in 2001 Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland and 2006's Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz, which did not advance a theory of Polish ethnicity as essentially debased, the media response rushed to form that very conclusion.

Professor Joan Mellen's review makes this clear: Poles qua Poles are guilty. "Polish citizens of all classes…Poles of all social classes … The old order and the army, the new Communist apparatus, the cardinal and his bishops – all conspired to kill Poland's remaining Jews," she indicts. Note the adjective: "all." All Poles are murderous anti-Semites. Why? Because "Anti-Semitism was so embedded in the culture of Poland. [Poles express] pure, unregenerate evil."

Elie Wiesel described post-war anti-Semitism in Poland using this same vocabulary of bestiality: "low, primitive, vile and ugly in the human animal."

With increasing frequency, Polish, Catholic peasants, not German Nazis, are positioned as the quintessential Holocaust criminal. It is easier for clean, well-educated, progressive audiences to accept dirty, backward, superstitious peasants as the perpetrators of the twentieth century's most notorious crime. German Nazis are too like modern audiences.

Leading Nazis were, like us, clean, modern, progressive, and well-educated. In fact, though, Nazism was not the fruit of the village, the church, or the past. Scientific racism was a product of the university, the place that true moderns believe will rectify our primitive errors and make us better people.

America engages in a similar sleight-of-hand. Poor, white, rural, Christian Southerners are deployed universally as a personification of the ultimate hater. In our movies, "rednecks" are idiot savant banjo players and anal rapists, as in the film Deliverance. Poor white southerners, rednecks, trailer trash, and hillbillies, are to blame for slavery and Jim Crow. As long as a toothless, drawling pick-up truck driver dominates the crime scene, the rest of us are exonerated. Poor whites recognize their demonization. Thus, they flocked to Trump, their putative champion.

Just so with the brute Polak stereotype being trotted out, with abacus accessory, to remove guilt from the "civilized" world for the Holocaust. As long as anti-Semitism is a crime committed by dirt-stained Catholic farmers, not by educated, "handsome" elites, modern, progressive Americans are insulated from the agony of confronting what human beings can do. And Poles will recognize their demonization, and flock to ever-more nationalist champions.

We need to recognize that the monolithic stereotyping of Poles actually damages our understanding of complicity and responsibility for the Holocaust.

As Gitta Sereny wrote in her 1996 article, "The Complexities of Complicity," in the London Times, challenging the anti-German essentializing of Daniel Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners: "Murderous bigotry is not ingrained in the character of any one nation but is part of the human condition. It is not only young Germans who, as did happen after 1945, needed to be retaught humanity, but all children [of all races] need to learn this now and forevermore."

I support free speech and I oppose this new Polish law. But the tumult that prompted the law will not die down till the false stereotypical calculus of the abacus is smashed.

We need, rather, a mirror. The author of atrocity is not them; it's us.

Danusha Goska is the author of Bieganski, the Brute Polak Stereotype (Academic Studies Press, 2010). You can read the first chapter of the book here.

Bieganski: The Brute Polak Stereotype. Introduction

Bieganski is available for purchase on Amazon here. The introduction is below. 

Also, you can see a video presentation on Bieganski 

This work addresses Bieganski, one stereotype of Poles. Other Eastern European, Christian, peasant-based populations are conflated under this stereotype, while Poles, given the size of their population and the location of Nazi death camps in Poland, remain the primary target. Evidence that non-Poles are conflated with Poles is ample. In 1903, Dr. Allan J. McLaughlin, a public health administrator, attempted to explain all Slavic immigrants to America in terms of Poles. In 1976, scholar Michael Novak wrote that "Dumb Polak" jokes were directed against Slovak-Americans like him. "No one can tell us apart." In 1999, on television's "The Sopranos," an Italian-American said to a character from the Czech Republic, "Czechoslovakian? What's that? That's a type of Polak, right?" Borat, the most talked about film of 2006, conflated all Eastern European, Christian peasants into a character whose catchphrase, "Dzien dobry. Jak sie masz?" is Polish. 

Politicians: Do Not Tear Poles and Jews Apart. Sign the Petition

Sign the petition here. And thanks to Lukasz for mentioning this. 

The Guardian: Poland's Jews Fear for their Future under New Holocaust Law

According to the Guardian, the Holocaust was the project Poles.

The Guardian: Poland's Jews Fear for their Future under New Holocaust Law link. Thanks to Jerzy for this. 

Blog Reader Asks: Is a Relationship with Jews Necessary for Poles?

Chris asked, "Is a good relationship with Jews important for Poles? A lot of people are writing rather bigoted things about Poles and I get the feeling that even if Poles acquiesced to the demands of the most vocal that nothing would change. A relationship of mutual respect would not be the result. All that would remain is a one-way relationship for which only Jews would benefit. The bigotry would remain or might intensify because the conciliatory attitude would be interpreted as a welcome mat for abuse. Would it be better if Poles and Jews just parted ways?"

My answer can be found in the book Bieganski. I hope all will read it.

A highly condensed and very simplified version here: Poles cannot escape negative stereotyping, for reasons I lay out in the book. Not only Jews, but non-Jews also stereotype Poles. James Carroll is, I think, Irish-American, and a former Catholic priest, and he has disseminated a highly influential version of Bieganski in his book "Constantine's Sword."

There is no escape for Poles when it comes to this stereotype. Poles must educate themselves – thus my book – and respond appropriately, thus blogs like this one, on the Crisis in Polonian Leadership, Organization, and Vision. As that blog entry lays out, there are things we could be doing and should be doing that we don't do. Poles and Polonians need to grow up and address the stereotype in an effective way.

About our relationship with Jews. Yes, Poles and Polonians should and must remain in relationship with Jews. This link takes you to a series of blog posts. These blog posts address the importance of Poland to Jews, the importance of Jews to Poland, love as a factor in Polish-Jewish relations, and Jews' defense of Poland. Anyone thinking of writing off Polish-Jewish interactions should really read this series of blog posts.

I'll repeat something I've said a million times. The problem here is us. We need to change our behavior. I stand by what I wrote in the blog series on the crisis in Polonian leadership, organization, and vision. We could and should be doing things to counteract the stereotype, and we just aren't doing them. And our failure is not Jewish people's fault. The good side is that the power for a better tomorrow is in our hands. We just have to exercise that power.

Bieganski, the Brute Polak, and Poland's New Law Criminalizing Some Speech about the Holocaust

This piece first appeared in FrontPageMag here

Poland's New Law Criminalizing Speech about the Holocaust

Why Every American Must Understand the Controversy

"When you say the word 'Poland' what comes to mind? It's real scary. I'd have to be in disguise to go there because I don't wanna be caught and murdered."

"I have this image of a very gothic place. Everything's in black and white and very foggy. Otherwise, I have no real sense of Poland other than food with lots of sour cream, pierogis, and borscht. No, that's Russian. I guess I get confused. All these Eastern European foods seem so similar."

"The only thing I knew of Eastern Europe was in black and white. Probably from reels of Holocaust films. I pictured gray, cold, concrete. I wasn't aware that I was thinking this until we landed in Warsaw and everything was in color. There is nothing attractive about Poland. Even though I know it's in color, in my mind it has degenerated back to black and white."

"It's cold and desolate. I think of large, round women making sausages."

"Just concentration camps. From brick to brick that's all there is."

"I associate Poland with hatred of Jews. I learned this going to Sunday school. In Sweden where all them wore stars, that portrayed sort of a positive in terms of Sweden's relationship with Jews."

"When you said 'Poland,' an image popped into my head, which is it's gray, it's dirty, it's polluted. There's no color. There's one complete cloud over the entire country. I would go with the idea that I've gotta prepare myself. I'm probably going to be depressed at the condition of misery that people are living in. And it probably would be a safer bet if I just don't identify myself as Jewish to too many people and my passport says I'm American."

In 2000, in Bloomington, Indiana, I was asking Jewish people what they thought of Poles and Poland. I was researching what would become my prize-winning book, Bieganski, the Brute Polak Stereotype. My informants were nice people living in a self-consciously progressive university town. They insisted that they would never tell a dumb Polak joke. Then I would ask them a hypothetical question. "You need brain surgery. You have a choice between two doctors whose qualifications, on paper, are all but identical. One is named Dr. Smith. One is named Dr. Kowalski. Which doctor do you choose?"

Their jaws would drop. They suddenly had to confront their own prejudices, prejudices that they did not know they had.

One said, "It's hard for me to say [long pause]. I fear that I might choose Dr. Smith, even though I think that's a terrible thing, but I'm trying to be completely frank. I think just because of those subconscious stereotypes, the things that got in me as a kid and stick around in the back of my mind that are not up for examination."

Before actual questioning began, my informants often insisted that they knew all there was to know about Poles and Poland. "Danielle" informed me that she had received a "comprehensive Holocaust education" from March of the Living. "Every two weeks I received another two hundred pages of reading material. I had, you know, one of these seven-inch binders." She was now a professional Holocaust educator. Danielle told me that the only reason she could ever conceive of travel to Poland would be to "educate Poles."

I asked Danielle if she had ever heard of Jan Karski, a Polish underground army officer who had volunteered to be smuggled into both a concentration camp and the Warsaw Ghetto, in order that he could bring the first eyewitness account of the Holocaust directly to Franklin Roosevelt. Danielle had never heard of Jan Karski. Danielle had also never heard of the 1264 Statute of Kalisz, a Polish document granting Jews legal rights. Polish-Jewish author Eva Hoffman called the Statute of Kalisz "a set of laws that could serve as an exemplary statement of minority rights today." Danielle had also never heard of Adam Mickiewicz, Poland's national poet who celebrated Jews' contribution to Poland in the person of the character Jankiel, Adam Michnik, a Jewish leader of Solidarity, or the 1940 Katyn Massacre of 22,000 Poles, including 8,000 military officers, and, as classified by their Soviet murderers, "intelligence agents, gendarmes, landowners, saboteurs, factory owners, lawyers, officials, and priests."

Another informant, "Sally," told me that she "knew" that "there is a lot of neo-Nazism in Poland." If she ever went to Poland, she said, "I would look for regret" for Poles' assumed Holocaust guilt. Later, Sally made the offhand comment that, "I don't know much about Polish literature, if there is much." Six Nobel Prize Laureates in literature were born in Poland; four were Polish non-Jews (Sienkiewicz. Reymont, Milosz, Szymborska); two were born in a Polish-Jewish milieu (Agnon and Singer).

"Moses" expressed outrage that Poles had opened a discotheque in the Polish town of Oswiecim, where Auschwitz is located. Moses insisted that this discotheque was prima facie evidence of ingrained Polish anti-Semitism. I asked Moses if he knew of any non-Jews who had been imprisoned, tortured, experimented on, or gassed in Auschwitz. Moses had no idea that any non-Jews had suffered these fates. In fact, one hundred forty thousand Polish non-Jews made up approximately 11% of Auschwitz inmates. About half died there.

Many of my informants, in a completely unselfconscious manner, made statements like the following, "I'd love to go back to Vienna. We had a wonderful time in Vienna. We walked around and spoke German. It was a fabulous time," and "I spent days in Berlin and I want to return." Nazism was a German phenomenon; Hitler was born in Austria. These facts did not contribute to my informants' stereotyping these nations in the way that they stereotyped Poland.

Informants often combined popular mythology with factual errors. The informant, quoted above, who believed that "In Sweden all them wore stars" is confused. There is a myth that Danes, not Swedes, wore yellow stars of David in solidarity with Jews. In any case, the "Danes wore yellow stars" myth is false.

My informants' vocabulary was formulaic. Poland was always "gray." I heard the same phrases over and over: "Poles are worse than animals;" "They suck anti-Semitism with their mother's milk." Such formulas are right out of The Painted Bird, a lurid novel that depicts Neanderthal peasants engaging in orgies of violence, incest, and bestiality. Such formulaic depictions of Polish peasants had appeared in literature published before the Holocaust, in some cases centuries before. The Painted Bird was eventually exposed as plagiarized fiction disguised as a memoir.  

It's undeniable that in interwar Poland, that is, between the end of WW I in 1918 and the onset of WW II in 1939, anti-Semitism flourished. The interwar period, for complicated historical reasons, saw one of the worst outbreaks of anti-Semitism in Poland's history. Interwar anti-Semitism was largely predicated on economic grievances. Jews had occupied the middleman minority caste. Most Poles were impoverished peasants. They wanted to own shops and study to become doctors and lawyers. For some, not all Poles, these honorable ambitions veered into the dark, twisted path of anti-Semitism.

What's unexpected is that some pre-war anti-Semites did not become Nazi collaborators. Jan Mosdorf was a self-identified nationalist and anti-Semite before the war. Under Nazi occupation, he helped Jews, and was killed for it in Auschwitz. Calel Perechodnik, a Jewish Holocaust survivor, writes of two Polish brothers, "Staszek and Stefan." Before the war, they thought of "a Jew as a wealthy man who exploited Polish labor and as an opponent deserving of a fight." During the war, Staszek and Stefan saved Jews, both friends and strangers.

A February 4, 2018 frequently-shared Facebook post exemplified the belief that Poles were and are worse than Nazis. I copy it here without editorial changes. "The Poles were worse than the Germans...mean and cold blooded...they were informers and killers and for a piece of bread or a cigarette sold Jews to the slaughter...Warsaw Ghetto was where? excuse me? but here is proof again - The tiger never changes his Spots, Once a killer always a killer and once a Jew Hater always a Jew hater ---as my father said: It's in the blood, its in the genes, its inborn...nothing changes - in the end, the truth always reveals itself ...I find it actually comical for a country to so blatantly lie to the world...but silly me - why...there are those who belie the holocaust as never having existed at all...so why not the Poles…"

Statements like these entered the world conversation on Friday, January 26, 2018, the day before Holocaust Remembrance Day. The lower house of the Polish Parliament passed a law criminalizing speech about the Holocaust. On Tuesday, February 6, Polish President Andrzej Duda ratified the law with his signature.

The full text of the law can be read here. The law threatens punishment to anyone who attributes to Poles or Poland crimes properly attributed to German Nazis. The law was written to "Protect the reputation of the Republic of Poland and the Polish Nation."

This law offered the sorry, public spectacle of Polish leaders shooting Poles' and Poland's reputation in the foot. Immediately and inevitably, numerous commentaries appeared insisting that Poland was sanctifying a form of Holocaust denial and that, of course, Poles were guilty of the Holocaust. "FACT: The Polish People Still Bear Quite A Bit Of Responsibility For The Holocaust," shouts David Benkof, author of Modern Jewish History for Everyone, capitalizing even his prepositions and articles, in the Daily Caller.

I and many other Poles and Polonians (people of Polish descent living outside of Poland) oppose this new law. I support free speech.

The history of Polish-Jewish relations is immensely complex, and there is a powerful thrust not just to simplify, but to misrepresent, that complexity. NYU professor and World Policy Institute Senior Fellow, MacArthur Genius Grant and Guggenheim winner Paul Berman, in a frequently republished essay, claimed that Jews in "darkest Poland" were "almost the same" as Blacks in the US. Berman writes that "Mississippi is Poland; bigotry is bigotry." The analogy: Jews in Poland were just like black slaves in the US. Poles were beneficiaries of something like white supremacy and lorded it over utterly disempowered Jews. Poles are world exemplars of bigotry and oppression.

Well, no. Jewish arendators, estate managers, held the power of life and death over Polish Christian serfs. Jews could own property in Poland. As previously mentioned, the medieval Statute of Kalisz protected Jews under law. An international proverb asserted that Poland was the paradise of the Jews, and hell for Polish peasants. When Jews were persecuted elsewhere, they were invited into Poland, not just, as some cynics insist, to fill an economic niche. Poles were enthusiastically proud of their "golden freedom," their "state without stakes," and they demonstrated that by protecting Jews menaced by other Christians. The 1573 Warsaw Confederation guaranteed religious freedom.

Those who can only recite one Polish atrocity after another – the Jedwabne Massacre, the Kielce Pogrom, the 1968 purge – are telling truths. But they are not telling the truth. The Jedwabne Massacre, for example, occurred only after Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany invaded Poland simultaneously and terrorized and drastically altered the Polish population. What happened in Jedwabne says less about essential Polishness or authentic peasant identity and more about how any population – including our own – might react after similarly being terrorized.

Historian Michael C. Steinlauf, the son of Polish-Jewish Holocaust survivors, wrote that Poles, "after the Jews and the Gypsies [were] the most relentlessly tormented national group in Hitler's Europe." Let those words sink in. You know what happened to the Jews. Maybe you have an idea of what happened to the Gypsies. Poles were third in line, in terms of persecution.

Auschwitz was built in order to destroy anyone in Poland who could lead Polish people, for example, teachers and activists. For almost the first two years of its existence, most of its inmates were arrested and detained as Poles. One estimate of non-Jewish Poles killed by Nazis is about two million. Approximately three million Polish Jews were murdered; their vital presence in Polish life was all but erased. One estimate of non-Jewish Poles enslaved by the Nazis puts that number at 1.4 million. Two hundred thousand Polish children were kidnapped, to be raised as Germans, because of imagined Aryan traits. Kidnapped Polish children who could not measure up to their kidnappers' Aryan ideal were murdered. Nazis killed almost twenty percent of Polish priests. Nazis erased Polish villages. An incomplete post-war count put the number of such villages at two hundred and ninety-nine.

Just about every Polonian is related to someone who lost his or her home, or who was tortured or murdered. The poet John Guzlowski looks like any other sixty-something retired professor. Given that he is tall, white, and male, one might assume he is a recipient of white privilege. John Guzlowski's Polish Catholic grandmother, aunt, and cousin were murdered by Nazis and Ukrainians. They raped John's Aunt Sophie and broke her teeth; they stomped his cousin to death. With his bayonet, a Nazi sexually mutilated John's Aunt Genia. John's parents were Nazi slave laborers; his father was in Buchenwald. John was born in a displaced persons camp.

Not just the personal pain someone with Guzlowski's history might feel inspired the new Polish law. It's the pain someone feels when the truth is obscured. In his infamous speeches to SS leaders, Heinrich Himmler spoke of Generalplan Ost. According to this Nazi plan, the Polish population would be greatly reduced and its remnants would be slaves. Germans would claim Polish territory for themselves. "In Poland in weather forty degrees below zero, we had to haul away thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands … [We] shot thousands of leading Poles."

Nazis and Soviets rounded up, deported, and liquidated teachers, priests, and other potential leaders. Both conquerors worked hard to "divide and conquer," that is, to exacerbate pre-existing tensions between Catholics and Jews, Poles and Ukrainians. Nazis mandated death for an entire family if a Pole so much as offered a glass of water to a Jew. An entire village might suffer because of one Pole's humane act. Historians say that this policy was unique to Poland.

Yes, anti-Semitism has long been one feature of Polish culture. Blood libel, pogroms, discrimination and racist stereotyping all existed in Poland. That is one truth. Another truth: anti-Semitism has been a worldwide phenomenon, from England to Japan. England produced one of the most influential versions of blood libel, in the Canterbury Tales. England exported Shylock and Fagin. What makes Poland different? Scholar Harold B. Segel, author of Stranger in Our Midst: Images of the Jew in Polish Literature, writes that Poland produced a "Judeophilia" or "philo-Semitism" – a love of Jews and Judaism – that had "no parallel elsewhere in Europe."

Poles of conscience resisted anti-Semitism, not while seated at their computers and sipping Starbucks, but under the worst conditions humans have ever faced. Father Maximilian Kolbe, after being arrested for the crime of being a Polish priest, and, thus, a target of genocide, and then released with a warning to lay low, did not comply with Nazi occupiers. Instead, Kolbe aided 2,000 Jews at his friary. Nazis sent him to Auschwitz. Holocaust survivor Sigmund Gorson testified that Kolbe "gave away so much of his meager rations that to me it was a miracle he could live. Now it is easy to be nice, to be charitable … For someone to be as Father Kolbe was in that time and place … is beyond words … I am of the Jewish faith and very proud of it … I will love him until the last moments of my life."

Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, after his release from Auschwitz, helped form Zegota, the only organization in occupied Europe whose express purpose was to aid Jews. Witold Pilecki volunteered to be sent to Auschwitz, so that he could aid the resistance there. Communists tortured and murdered Pilecki after the war, and buried him in an unmarked grave. The Ulmas, a family of Catholic peasants, defied Nazi dictates and aided Jews. In his Bible, Jozef Ulma had underlined, in red, the story of the Good Samaritan. The Ulmas, pregnant mother, father, and six children, were murdered by Nazis for aiding Jews.

Bartoszewski bemoaned how the memory hole had swallowed up his efforts, under risk of his own life, to combat anti-Semitism under both Nazis and Soviet Communism. Bartoszewski wrote, "There are no accounts in histories …  of the All-Polish Anti-Racist League, founded in 1946 … Scholars have not been interested in its existence."

My book argues that there has been a shift in recent years. Blame for the Holocaust has shifted from German Nazis to Polish Catholic peasants. This shift, I argue, is not accidental and not unmotivated. Shifting blame serves a larger narrative.

Nazism's intellectual and ethical roots are utterly plain. They are nationalism, Social Darwinism, a.k.a. Scientific Racism or Eugenics, and neo-Paganism. Decades before Hitler came to power, American Social Darwinists like Madison Grant and Lothrop Stoddard were proclaiming that the Judeo-Christian tradition's command of human ethics belonged only to the dustbin of history. Now humans could and should operate under a new ethical system, one that championed racial supermen and stripped inferior specimens of their right to life. In his book Passing of the Great Race, Grant called for the "elimination of the unfit" on Social Darwinist grounds. Hitler called the book his Bible.

Scholar Richard Weikart has, in a series of publications, including Hitler's Religion, coolly and exhaustively detailed the Social Darwinist influences behind Nazism. One might think that Weikart would be widely celebrated and rewarded for his work. He is widely attacked and denigrated. Weikart is accused of "dishonesty, fact-distortions, ignorance and bias" by folks with an almost religious resistance to seeing any criticism of the impact of Social Darwinism. Powerful people do not want to see any version of the sacred name "Darwin" associated with Nazism. No one says that one must stop believing in the theory of evolution in order to tell the truth about Nazism's intellectual and ethical history. But too many who hold up Darwin as a demigod insist that the truth of how Nazis and their racist precursors cited "survival of the fittest" concepts in their justification for their beliefs must not be told.

Nationalism is easier to criticize than Social Darwinism. Neo-Paganism, though, is, like Darwinism, a protected concept. Modern Americans may announce that they are goddess-worshipping Pagans and that they reject the misogyny and murderous nature of Judaism or Christianity. Modern Americans self-identifying as Pagans face no serious resistance in the press or in universities. No one is asking them to come to terms with their affiliation with a movement that was embraced by the Nazis.

Nazism was the product of highly educated, modern people. Scientific Racism had been promoted by Ivy League Universities, publications like the New York Times and The Atlantic Monthly, institutions like the Bronx Zoo, the Museum of Natural History, the developers of standardized testing and the SAT, Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, and US presidents. Nazism was serviced by IBM, Ford Motor Company, and Hugo Boss. Even Hollywood, which decades after the war gave us Schindler's List, initially did not do all it could to combat Nazism.

This simple fact – that Nazism was a product of shiny and clean university classrooms and books written, edited, and published by the best-educated people – is just about impossible to confront for those who embrace the Brute Polak stereotype. They want to believe that hideous crimes could only be committed by backward people, primitive people, uneducated people, people untouched by the perfecting hand of progressive ideologies. That is, Polish, Catholic peasants. The best people associate peasants with dirt, with animals, with the past. The best people associate Catholicism with darkness and a lack of evolution. The best people say that they can make sure that crimes like the Holocaust will be made less likely if we lead people away from their superstitious, primitive, religious beliefs, and indoctrinate them in shiny, clean, new ideologies. The best people are wrong, and the falseness of the Brute Polak stereotype is very problematic for them.

Yes, anti-Semitism is one feature of Poland's history and culture. Yes, many Polish people committed crimes against Jews in war-torn Poland. Yes, good Poles and Polonians must forever reject and condemn anti-Semitism. Yes, the new Polish law criminalizing speech around the Holocaust is a mistake. 

Not but, but and: scapegoating the Polish, Catholic peasant is an historical error. This scapegoating is factually false. It is ethically bankrupt. This new Polish law is an attempt, a misguided attempt, not to deny the guilt of Polish criminals. Rather, it is an attempt to take on the brute Polak stereotype that is a powerful, largely unexamined form of Holocaust revisionism.

The brute Polak stereotype is an intellectual and ethical escape. It's a way for modern, right-thinking people to distance themselves from atrocity, and to insist that only those people over there – those dirty, primitive, Polish Catholic peasants – could be so cruel. In my years of study of WW II, I encountered one sentence I hope to communicate here. It was written by Zofia Nalkowska. "Ludzie ludziom zgotowali ten los." "People prepared this fate for people." Not just Polish people. Not just Catholic people. Not just peasants. People just like us did this to other people just like us, and we must not allow any stereotype to prevent us from identifying with both victims and perpetrators.

Danusha Goska is the author of Save Send Delete, Bieganski, and the upcoming God through Binoculars . Her essay "Against Identifying Nazism with Christianity" is here. A podcast asking, "Were Nazis Inspired by Christianity?" can be heard here.

German Foreign Minister: The Holocaust Was Carried Out by US and Nobody Else

German Foreign Minister: The Holocaust Was Carried Out by US and Nobody Else link

On Being Compared to Hitler

I got compared to Hitler today on the internet. And someone I thought of as a "friend" "liked" the "you are like Hitler" post. And I was blamed for various massacres of Jews.

Many Holocaust historians have written that only in Poland did occupying Nazis institute a public policy that it would be standard operating procedure that any aid to any Jew would be punished with death to the entire family.

I've heard that in lectures from reputable Holocaust scholars.

I've read that in books from reputable Holocaust scholars.

A retired professor, Jewish American, said that that is not true.

I said, I'm not a historian. I can't say that it's true. All I can say is that canonical scholars in canonical books have made this claim.

I linked three books by received, celebrated scholars: Norman Davies, Lucy Dawidowicz, and Gunnar S. Paulsson. Published by Harvard UP, Yale UP, and Penguin.

In response, the retired professor shouted at me, "Jedwabne! Kielce!" referring to a horrific massacre of Jews by Poles, and a horrific pogrom of Jews by Poles.

Neither one of us had mentioned Jedwabne or Kielce in the conversation. These references had nothing to do with anything anyone had said. It boggles my mind to think that a *professor* would respond to citations from scholarly books on a different topic with such a racist and inflammatory comment.

Then a woman, also Jewish, who had not participated in the conversation up to that point, threw in the Hitler comparison. Then my Facebook friend, also Jewish, liked her comment.

I contacted my Facebook friend privately. I said, why did you "like" a comment that compares me to Hitler for citing three scholarly books?

He wrote back, "I think that conversations about historical events as entangled & multisided as the Shoah can't be entirely free of biases held, consciously or unconsciously, by participants in the debate. This thread, though an important & consequential one among the multitude of threads in the Facebook universe,& though more immediate & edgy than many, is not unique & will not avoid tensions & wounded feelings. Whether or not we agree, I will continue to call you my friend & will not cease to admire your writing."

I don't know what that means. I wish he had just said, "I don't think it is Hitler like to cite scholarly books to try to find out whether or not a statement is true."

I think there is anti Polish sentiment at work here. In my experience, Polish anti-Semites are street rabble and fringe figures. But there are plenty of people who are professors in universities who really don't like Polish people.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson Condemns Polish Law Criminalizing Speech about the Holocaust

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has condemned the Polish law criminalizing speech about the Holocaust link

Blaming Poland for the Holocaust is Unjustified: Haaretz

Blaming Poland for the Holocaust Is Unjustified: Haaretz link

Daily Caller: "The Polish People Still Bear Quite A Bit Of Responsibility For The Holocaust"

The Daily Caller. Polish people are guilty. Link

Polish Evil Is in the Blood, It's in the Genes, It's Inborn: Popular Facebook Post

A public post on Facebook, posted on February 4, 2018. This post, in three hours, has been shared fourteen times.

I have deleted the post's author's last name out of courtesy. Otherwise I have not edited this post, except to insert breaks in the text. 

"My father"zl", whose Polish Name I carry _________ - from Sosnovice ...may he rest in peace said, that the Poles were worse than the Germans...mean and cold blooded...they were informers and killers and for a piece of bread or a cigarette sold Jews to the slaughter...

Warsaw Ghetto was where? excuse me? but here is proof again - The tiger never changes his Spots, Once a killer always a killer and once a Jew Hater always a Jew hater ---as my father said: It's in the blood, its in the genes, its inborn...nothing changes - in the end, the truth always reveals itself ...

I find it actually comical for a country to so blatantly lie to the world...but silly me - why...there are those who belie the holocaust as never having existed at all...so why not the Poles...THE WALK OF THE LIVING has brought billions into the country...Jews have made always the Polish thrive...then and Now..."

This photo is from England, but I'm sure the author of the above
Facebook post would approve the sentiment. Source

Anti-Semitism, Poland's New Speech Law, Team Trump and Whataboutism

I first traveled to my parents' homelands in Eastern Europe in the 1970s. I met some card-carrying communists. 

If I said to them, "You don't have freedom of speech in this country," they'd say something like, 

"Oh yeah? In your country, Negroes are lynched." 

This rhetorical technique, whataboutism, was everywhere, including in the press. 

Anytime anyone pointed out the failings of life in the Soviet Empire, and the successes of capitalism, a commie would say, "What about American racism? What about American pollution? What about American crime?" 

Whataboutism is a way of avoiding discussing a topic, changing the subject to another topic, and accusing the person or entity accusing another person or entity. 

Simple-minded people's brains are shut down by whataboutism. 

Whataboutism has had a grand resurgence among followers of Donald Trump. You can read more about that at NPR, here. "Trump Embraces one of Russia's Favorite Propaganda Tactics: Whataboutism."

Blog reader Michal Karski calls out "whataboutism" re: Poland's new speech law that criminalizes speech about the Holocaust. 

Those supporting the law say, "What about laws criminalizing Holocaust denial?" 

That's a good question. And it should be addressed. And it is addressed, at length, in any number of venues. 

So. Allow people addressing Poland's new speech law to stay on topic. If you want to talk about laws criminalizing Holocaust denial, go do that, and let those of us concerned with Poland's new speech law remain on topic. 

Anne Applebaum: The Stupidity and Unenforceability of Poland's Speech Law

Anne Applebaum, in the Washington Post, condemns the stupidity and unenforceability of Poland's new law criminalizing speech about the Holocaust here

Applebaum mentions what is obvious to anyone with a clear mind: the law will increase, not decrease, accusations that Poles were the real Nazis. 

"The imposition, now, of a three-year prison penalty for anyone who participates in the conversation about the past in ways that irritate the current ruling party is simply ludicrous, even laughable. Will the long arm of the Polish state reach out to academic conferences in Tokyo or Buenos Aires if someone uses an incorrect phrase? Will people be punished for politically incorrect memoirs? 

In a pompous speech the Polish prime minister gave supporting the law, an automatic translation service made it appear as if he himself said that “camps where millions of Jews were murdered were Polish.” Should he go to prison, too? Should Google Translate?

The very stupidity and unenforceability of this law is what has brought on the Streisand effect: Beginning in Israel but moving quickly across all forms of social media around the world, the use of the phrase “Polish death camps” has suddenly spiked and has now been used many more times than ever before in history...

This government does not care how isolated or ridiculous the country becomes. On the contrary, foreign criticism offers another chance to solidify the support of “patriots” who oppose the “slander” of the country, against “traitors” who do not. One pro-government journalist gave the game away when he declared that the criticism of the law in Israel was an element in an international conspiracy against the Polish government. On cue, Polish social media has been saturated with the howls of anti-Semites defending their country against this terrible attack".

Polish-Jewish Relations: A Case Study in What Can Go Wrong. David Harris

David Harris, CEO of the American Jewish Committee, in The Times of Israel, bemoans idiotic and self-destructive new Polish law that criminalizes speech about the Holocaust here.

Polish Senate Approves Law Criminalizing Speech about the Holocaust. A Response

On Thursday, February 1, 2018, Poland's Senate approved a new law criminalizing speech about the Holocaust.

In response, I offer the following. It is one of many difficult and complex accounts of the Holocaust in Poland. This account is by one person. It is not final. There are other accounts that are more positive. But this account is echoed by other accounts. I wonder if my posting of this account would be penalized in Poland.

***

Excerpted from the diary of Calel Perechodnik, a Jewish Policeman in the Otwock Ghetto:

Calel Perechodnik was a young Polish Jew from Otwock – a small town near Warsaw.

In the vain hope of protecting himself and his family, Calel Perechodnik decided to become a Ghetto policeman in Otwock. The true tragedy of his choice became clear during an “aktion” in which he took part as a policeman, when he witnessed his own wife and child being deported.

Later, Perechodnik fled the Ghetto, finding shelter with a Polish woman in Warsaw. During his 105 days of hiding, he wrote his story in a diary.

Shortly before his death in 1944, he entrusted the diary to a Polish friend. The document was eventually given to the Yad Vashem Archives. It was published in Hebrew in 1993 and in English in 1996.

I would like to characterize the attitudes of Poles toward Jews and, in general, toward the acts of extermination of Jews. The lower classes of the townspeople as well as the peasants oriented themselves to which-ever way the wind was blowing. They understood that they had an opportunity to enrich themselves, one that came only in a great while. One could pillage without penalty, steal, kill people, so that many using the slogan “now or never” got to work. They raised their hands to heaven, thankful for the favor that they had lived to see such times...They considered themselves innocent. After all, the Germans were responsible.

In every town where there was an Aktion, the ghetto was surrounded by a mob that participated in a formal hunt on Jews, a hunt according to all the rules of hunting—with beaters or without them. Did many Jews perish at their hands? Countless ones! In the best case, the beaters took money from Jews, resigned to lead them only to the gendarmes. It was in any case a sentence of death. What could the Jew do without money? He could go to the gendarme himself and ask for a bullet. I myself saw and heard from the mouths of Poles about such cases.

Our janitor, Jan Dabrowski, caught Jews by force and delivered them into the hands of the gendarmes after first robbing them. The mob acted in unison, the nameless mob. When the conductors on trains noticed a Jew, they communicated to one another, " I caught a bird.” A bird naturally had to be “plucked of its feathers". I know about this from others, and I witnessed it myself, that the conductor checked the documents of women with a suspicious appearance. In ninety-nine such cases, the conductor exposed himself to shame.

"Sir, do you think me to be a Jewess? I wonder if you sir is looking for Jews as a job, or for your personal purposes?"

But in the hundredth case, the discovered Jewess had to pay the conductor with interest for all past embarrassments. In Warsaw there was even a new occupation: a tracker of Jews. Still, one should not throw stones at these people because they work for the German service. They work as they have an aim and for a "noble purpose". They want to make it easier for the Jews, meaning making it easier on their pockets. That is a noble and lucrative purpose. That is how the masses reacted, but the fact that in Poland half the people belong to these lower classes, that's another matter. And how did the rest of the population react - the intelligencia?

It's a peculiar thing: Jews did not even dream that the order to kill Jews would apply to all Jews, while the Poles realized right away that no Jew would survive the war.

Is this proof for the far sighted or the politically wise? Or is this wisdom a consequence of the saying "everyone draws conclusions regarding the future according to his own convenience?"

In general things happened that the greatest genius would not be able to describe. Tragedies took place that people never dreamed about, and in spite of that, they were not even an interesting topic of conversation. The Magister, who daily rode the electric train to Warsaw, told me that even in the worst time of the Aktion he did not hear comments about Jews in the train or that someone should have had pity for them.

In a word—not an interesting topic for a general conversation, but surely an interesting topic for a family discussion. Indeed, it happened that a Pole had a Jewish friend who gave him things for safekeeping. If he then obligingly went to Treblinka, the matter was finished. Possessions increased; the conscience was clear— tout va tres bien (“Everything is in order” (French) ed.).

It was worse when a Jew appeared to be "bothersome" wanted to live and remind them of his possessions. Then there was something to talk about to others. Indeed, the Jew will not survive the war anyway, and so he will not be able to repay the favor after the war. He will not be able to lodge charges before a court, will not cast a shadow on an unblemished name. To give anything back to him is simply a sin. If we give things back to him, others will come and take things away. Majority found an easy answer.

"The gendarmes took it away." They would say

" Please don't come to us anymore".

There were also those who demanded from the Jews the return of a thousand zloty, claiming that they had to ransom themselves from the Germans, being judged guilty by them for the Jewish possessions they had. Usually, after a couple of months, everything was in order; the Jew perished and the matter was closed.

I don't want to say that there weren't Poles who willingly helped Jews, some of them unselfishly. The best proof of this is the fact that I am still alive; if they had taken all my things, I would not be in this world. It's true that with the things they took away from me I could have lived to be one hundred, but that is really a small difference. It only amounts to two foolish zeroes.

Interesting are the changes in the mentality of many Poles in their relations with Jews. I know a Pole, our former tenant, who considers himself 100 percent patriot and a decent man. And, indeed, he is a decent man. I can trust him absolutely. He is probably the only tenant in 1943 in all of Poland's territory paying rent to his Jewish landlord. This man, in a conversation with my father, could express himself in the following manner: “I traded with that Jew for so many years, and think about it, he gave me nothing for safekeeping. They took him to Treblinka—and what did he get from that?! If only he had left me his goods.”

But let us put aside the material questions; these are dirty matters. It was reasoned plainly. From where did the Jews get such wealth? Wasn't it from the Polish soil? The time had come for them to repay their debt to Poles. Everything, then, is in order. Moreover, pecunia non olet .

I will now describe two other occurrences.

Miss Alkimowitch belonged before the war to society's elite. At the start of war, when she lived in my house, she could have discussions with my wife for hours. She addressed her always as Dear Miss Anka. You will see soon the Germans will start running away and there will be an end to the Jew hunts. Our suffering will disappear. Do you know how good in Poland it will be then! We considered her an educated patriot, a democrat, a person with a noble heart. At the beginning of the war she stopped speaking to my wife. That is why I was very surprised when after the Aktion Miss Alkimowitch didn't even approach me and ask me what had happened to “dear Miss Anka.” It became clear only in the fall. Dr. Lidia Wolanska told me that in a conversation with Miss Alkimowitch, she explained, “The one and immortal favor by the Germans toward the Poles is the fact that they had cleansed her of Jews.”

What was more, Miss Lidia did not say this in an angry tone. She repeated what she heard and also added what she thought.

Mr. Calek,” she explained to me, “so many Poles are being transported to Oswiecim so many thousands of people are being deported to work, and nothing has happened to the Jews so far. They have not suffered such sacrifices. Is this just? The Germans, deporting Jews from Warsaw, behaved fairly. It's too bad that they have deported Jews from Otwock, for these are our friends. ...”

This was how the lady doctor, the mother of two small children, with a clear sacrificed 3.5 million men, women, and children as an equivalent for the losses and sacrifices suffered by the Poles. It is necessary to add that she was not an anti-Semite; she expressed only the opinion of the environment, accepting it as her own. Only her good heart took pity on the Jews of Otwock.

The reaction of prewar anti-Semites is interesting. I was surprised by the actions of Staszek and Stefan M., whom I have mentioned. They came from a Catholic environment. They had no social contacts with Jews and even fought against them using means not sanctioned by the teachings of their religion. For them a Jew was a wealthy man who exploited Polish labor and was an opponent deserving of a fight.

When times changed, when a common enemy ruled Poland, even though he sowed dissension among Poles against Jews, the prewar attitudes lost their significance. The human hearts of the brothers protested against the extermination of Jews. The brothers, as much as possible, saved their friends and those they did not know. I bow in honor to them. That they were anti-Semites before the war means that their behavior should be viewed in a special light. In these difficult and ungrateful times, they behaved as real believers in Christ and as sincere Polish patriots. That is not to say that this is how all prewar anti-Semites behaved. An overwhelming number now found a proper time to show their best tricks. People such as Brothers M. are lost in such a mob.

What, then, was the position of the Polska Partja Niepodleglosciowa [Polish Independence Party] Three months after the start of the Aktion, in October 1942, an article discussing the deportation of Jews appeared in Biuletyn Informacyjny [Information Bulletin]. It emphasized the barbarism of the Germans, expressed compassion for the Jews, but in the end came to the following conclusion: The best class of Jews were those who before the war did not want to be a parasite on a foreign organism and emigrated to Palestine. They were destined to live; the remainder of the nation perished.

The Polish armed forces held to a prewar position of antisemitism and had no intention of defending the Jews. If there had appeared in the daily press even one communique with the following text—“The Special Court has decreed a sentence of death on a functionary of the Blue Police for seizing and delivering Jews to the Germans. Sentence carried out on that and that day, in such and such a place”—the situation would have been different. Various Polish policemen or private trackers would have stopped such a disgraceful, although lucrative practice. Unfortunately, neither did such or similar communique appear, nor did the armed forces proceed to enlist young and able Jews with the purpose of strengthening partisan detachments. Only in December did the Polska Partia Robotnicza [Polish Workers Party] come into contact with the Warsaw ghetto, furnishing arms for a price. But it was already too late for Jews to save themselves or to inflict serious losses on the Germans. The last of the Jewish Mohicans could, however, thanks to that help, perish honorably with arms in hand.

It's difficult for me to write about Poles. What is happening today is the greatest disillusionment that I have endured in my life. I have lived for twenty-six years among the Poles, embraced Polish culture and literature, loved Poland, looked on her as another motherland, and only in the last year have I recognized the true faces of Poles.

I would gladly describe the facts of every noble behavior toward Jews, but I cannot be silent in the face of the vileness of those who, out of desire for profit or out of blind hatred, sacrificed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.

One has to look truth squarely in the eye. Jews perished first of all because they didn't realize in time what level German cruelty and barbarism would reach. They were well aware, however, of the vileness of some Poles. They knew what it was that closed before them the gates of the Polish neighborhood and forced them to wait in the ghetto for the near and inevitable sentence of death.

I am not in the least blind. I don't consider it to be a duty of every Pole to hide, at the risk of his own life, every Jew. But I believe that it was the responsibility of the Polish society to enable Jews to move freely within the Polish neighborhood. Polish society is guilty of not strongly condemning the “trackers” of Jews.

It's true Poles helped me, my father, my mother—they helped thousands of other Jews. Thinking of the base ones should not lead one to draw conclusions touching on all. Does the statistic of good and bad deeds have any meaning? No, this is not important. God on Highest took a position on this matter. In the Old Testament it is written that if one finds in a town ten righteous people, that place will not be destroyed. Probably in Warsaw and in every other city one can also find ten righteous people.

Source: Calel Perechodnik, “Am I A Murderer? Testament of a Jewish Ghetto Policeman,” Westview Press, 1996, pp. 97-101.

Text source here