Monday, May 24, 2021

Bieganski Lives: Polish History Is Still Important Enough to Rewrite. And It Will Always Be So.

 


People often tell me that my book, "Bieganski: The Brute Polak Stereotype," is already, or soon will be, outdated. After all, Poland is no longer a country where 70% - 80% of the population are peasants, and the stereotype relies on negative images of peasants for its life. 

These folks have not read the book, or, if they have, they have not understood it. Bieganski lives, and Bieganski will not soon die. If you read nothing else from the book, read the chapter dedicated to Bieganski and the Holocaust. This stereotype is doing hard work for the human race in its understandings of its own worst crimes. 

I'm reading a new book, "The August Trials: The Holocaust and Postwar Justice in Poland," by Andrew Kornbluth, published by Harvard University Press. 

I am finding enough to contend with that I paused in my reading to search how other readers are processing Kornbluth's handling of Poland. 

I came across the above-screen-capped page. Specifically, I came across this paragraph from that page. This paragraph is the very first paragraph in a review of a book about Polish crimes and Polish criminals. Note: it's not a paragraph about Polish crimes or Polish criminals. It's a paragraph about stupid, rabid, illiterate Polish janitor anti-Semites -- that is, it's a paragraph about Bieganski. And it's about a Polish Catholic priest.  

In Mad Dreams, Saving Graces: Poland, A Nation in Conspiracy (1989), journalist Michael Kaufman relates a story told to him by an aide to then Polish prime minister Wojciech Jaruzelski. “He reminded me that when he was growing up in Warsaw, he would often read to his illiterate grandmother from a rabidly anti-Semitic newspaper,” he writes. “That prewar church paper was edited by Father Maksymilian Kolbe, the priest, who in another sad Polish irony was to join millions of Jews as a Nazi victim at Auschwitz.” Apparently, Father Kolbe hated the Germans more than he detested the Jews; his monastery was the source of anti-Nazi publications, and the Germans arrested him in February 1941. He died in the camp in August after an injection of carbolic acid.

Here's a screencap of the passage mentioned 


It's just too perfect, isn't it? Poles are illiterate. Poles are janitors. Poles are not just anti-Semitic. Poles are "rabidly anti-Semitic." Poles, including Poland's most famous martyred priest, are motivated by xenophobic hatred, never love. Just add some kielbasa and stir. 

Ron Slate's bio is here. I see nothing in this bio that informs the reader as to Slate's motivation for rewriting Polish history, slandering a martyred priest, or revivifying the Bieganski stereotype via that slander. And yet there it is. Bieganski lives. 

Note that in the screencap from Slate's piece at the top of this blog post, there is a severe image of Father Kolbe next to the cover of a book that details crimes committed by Poles during the Holocaust. 

In the photo, to modern eyes, accustomed to smiling selfies, Father Kolbe looks mean. I think this photo was taken during the Nazi occupation of Poland. That may play some role in Kolbe's unsmiling face. 

This juxtaposition of images is doing very hard work. It's teaching you to hate. Poles, all Poles, are evil. This sainted Pole, Father Kolbe, who gave his life for another at Auschwitz, no less, who was previously imprisoned by the Nazis exactly because he was Polish, he was Catholic, and he was a priest, openly invited his own martyrdom by, after his release from Nazi imprisonment, helping Jews. 

Father Kolbe's photograph, and a distorted falsification of his biography, carefully crafted to smear him for being the exact opposite of who and what he was, is used to illustrate comments about a book addressing crimes committed by Poles during the Holocaust. 

Slate's piece is so sick and so twisted I lack the vocabulary to address it. 

I can say this, though. Poles are often bashed for questioning how their history is handled. 

I ask, can you blame them? During the Partitions, that is, colonization by Germans and Russians, 1772-1918, Polish identity was often more or less outlawed. Poland was a political entity again between 1918 and 1939, and then, again, invaded by Germans and Russians. 

People who have lived under hostile, foreign powers, yes, are misrepresented in official histories. And, yes, they come to question official histories. 

People like Slate, for their own reasons, lie about Poles and Poland. I have no idea who Ron Slate is; I stumbled across his page. But there are folks out there invested in disseminating false histories of Poles and Poland. Yes, some Poles react to this by doubting what they hear. 

In any case, below please find a passage from "Bieganski" that addresses Father Kolbe. 

In 1941, Maximilian Kolbe sacrificed his own life for another's in Auschwitz. His 1982 canonization brought the previously obscure Kolbe international fame. As night follows day, this remarkable Pole was roundly denounced as a proto-Nazi.

Accusers included superstar scholar Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Washington Post journalist Richard Cohen, celebrity attorney Alan Dershowitz, Vanity Fair's Christopher Hitchens, and the documentary film, "John Paul II: The Millennial Pope," "an all-time bestseller" for PBS (Nash). 

The extreme language and distortion used to besmirch Kolbe was typified by Christopher Hitchens, who wrote that Kolbe was guilty of "stoking the very oven in which he was to perish." Given the Bieganski stereotype, Rabbi Zev K. Nelson choose a very telling word: Kolbe was "unclean" (Finley).

St. Louis University history professor Daniel L. Schlafly, Jr., and Warren P. Green, director of the St. Louis Center for Holocaust Studies, issued an eighteen-page response. Schlafly and Green do not depict Kolbe as without fault. Kolbe was certainly incorrect in some of his beliefs, and the journals he founded did publish a small amount of anti-Semitic material; there is no excuse for this. 

What remains pertinent is that Kolbe's defamers exploit Bieganski to distort the real man. Kolbe criticized his editors for publishing anti-Semitic material, counseling love, not hostility. Nazis arrested Kolbe and other priests, and told them they were "Polish swine" slated for extermination. After his release, Kolbe invited martyrdom by counseling Poles to aid Jews. At his friary, Kolbe sheltered between several hundred and two thousand Jews fleeing Nazism. Kolbe was re-arrested. In Auschwitz he was known as a saint. Sigmund Gorson testified.

He knew I was a Jewish boy. That made no difference. His heart was bigger than persons – that is, whether they were Jewish, Catholic or whatever. He loved everyone. He dispensed love and nothing but love. For one thing, he 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, to be humble, when times are good and peace prevails. For someone to be as Father Kolbe was in that time and place – I can only say the way he was is beyond words. I am a Jew by my heritage as the son of a Jewish mother, and I am of the Jewish faith and very proud of it. And not only did I love Maximilian Kolbe very, very much at Auschwitz, where he befriended me, but I will love him until the last moments of my life. (Treece 200)


20 comments:

  1. You mention reading THE AUGUST TRIALS. I have just reviewed this book:

    https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2021/04/21/andrew-kornbluth-impugning-the-courts-that-tried-polish-jew-killers-a-creatively-polonophobic-gross-grabowski-imitation-german-guilt-diffusion-and-dilution-polish-anti-defamation-law-falsehood-ko/

    ReplyDelete
  2. The book is hardly available in Poland, but there is a free dissertations
    https://digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/etd/ucb/text/Kornbluth_berkeley_0028E_16038.pdf

    ReplyDelete
  3. There is a 'poem' attacking Cardinal Glemp (died in 2013). Here is his 2001 letter https://opoka.org.pl/biblioteka/W/WE/glemp/jedwabne_04032001.html

    ReplyDelete
  4. The same Ron Slate writes about tragedy of Poland https://www.ronslate.com/on-sobbing-superpower-poems-by-tadeusz-rozewicz-translated-from-the-polish-by-joanna-trzeciak-norton/ Are there two Ron Slates or the writer has changed between 2011 and 2021?

    ReplyDelete
  5. "I think this photo was taken during the Nazi occupation of Poland."

    Yes. It was taken in 1939. Most likely after his release from first imprisonment. Note that his beard is missing. Nazis were famous for giving a free shaving. And they didn't take no for an answer.

    https://bi.im-g.pl/im/1e/ac/16/z23775518V,Maksymilian-Kolbe.jpg

    ReplyDelete
  6. Jan you could benefit from having a friend read your reviews before you post them. In the review you link, you write

    "JEWS DON’T ALWAYS GET THEIR WAY, SO THEY BAD-MOUTH THE COURTS"

    The all caps are yours. Such statements, and such an attitude, are not helpful.

    However one feels about Kornbluth's handling of the material he writes about, the material he writes about is devastating. Poles killed and robbed Jews attempting to escape the Nazi genocide. That is simply true.

    Our attitude towards this, as Poles, should be one of sorrow and solemnity, not the kind of ethnic hostility reflected in your review.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "Poles killed and robbed Jews attempting to escape the Nazi genocide. That is simply true." This is like "White Americans kill Afroamericans, even if there is no war there". You understand the context of my statement, so you understand its bias. Your statement needs a book to explain the context of German terror and the Holocaust in occupied Poland. Tomasz Frydel cooperated with Grabowski ('Night without the end') but some of his papers summarize the same Commmunist documents in a more critical way. Frydel describes the context of the Hunt for the Jews, igno0red an dmanipulated by Grabowski and Kornbluth.

      Delete
    2. To add to Jerzy's comment, I have reviewed Tomasz Frydel:

      https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/12/14/polish-blue-police-not-collaborationist-frydel/

      Delete
  7. I stand by my statements. They are well deserved. Thank you for posting a link to my review even though you obviously disagree with it.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Sadly I think your book Beiganski is even more topical and necessary than when you wrote it.

    And I too think we will be much more effective in countering it if we keep "the law of loving kindness" on our tongue - which in no way prevents us from speaking out about this.

    It is always always for our good to obey our Creator's laws and to stick to the Golden Rule, but "the world" will do all it can to pressure and persuade us not to.

    ReplyDelete
  9. https://twitter.com/DavidColeStein/status/1399121845777965058 The whole thread contains many similar excesses.

    ReplyDelete
  10. http://bostonreview.net/global-justice/mikhal-dekel-poland-holocaust-law-rewriting-history Mikhal Dekel continues. She is Russian, knows Russia. She has no idea about Poland.

    ReplyDelete
  11. https://raritanval-edu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_HmSGnWzwQ0eBEUfwDZZ-vQ Kean University misinforms. It was not the government of Poland, but an 80-tears old blind woman. Academy degenerates.

    ReplyDelete
  12. My corrections - Dekel was born in Israel, Gessen is Russian. Filomena Leszczynska is 80-years old (but yes, more than 80 tears in her life - war, Communism, poverty).

    ReplyDelete
  13. https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/muse.union.edu/dist/5/237/files/2014/06/Relocating-Auschwitz.pdf This is not a joke - Pole and German in Israel.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Here is the link to that article.

      https://www.jta.org/2007/03/19/culture/exploring-polish-jewish-distrust

      Delete
  14. Regarding the Partitions - there was also an Austrian part of Poland. Austrian rules are idealized by many Poles, but Professor Ewa Thompson quotes "Ashes" ("Popioły") by Stefan Zeromski describing Austrian colonial policy - high taxes. There was no industry in Austrian Poland, many peasants starved to death. The former capital of Poland Krakow was a fortress, so Lwow became the biggest Polish city, lost twice - in 1939 and in 1945.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. IIRC the valley of hunger was in Austrian Poland.

      Someone, I forget who, called Galicia a giant outdoor tavern.

      "Biedna Galicia."

      The Szela Uprising

      Delete
  15. https://twitter.com/Ojdadana/status/1383888993536733185 Two years have passed, no Polish politician, no Polonia activist has read the bill.

    ReplyDelete
  16. You may find this of interest.

    https://emerging-europe.com/news/belarus-poland-and-world-war-ii/

    ReplyDelete

Bieganski the Blog exists to further explore the themes of the book Bieganski the Brute Polak Stereotype, Its Role in Polish-Jewish Relations and American Popular Culture.
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