The Bay View Massacre

You can see National Guardsmen ready to fire on Polish workers. Source.

A Reenactment of the Bay View Massacre. Source: Nickolas Nikolic's blog. 

University of Wisconsin scholar James P. Leary's is an Irish American who is a very good friend to Polonia.

I recently shared with him a link to a previous post about Christina Pacosz's essay on the Missouri Leadbelt riot that drove Polish immigrants out of the lead mining region of Missouri.

Jim responded by introducing me to the Wisconsin Bay View Massacre.

On Saturday, May 1, 1886, Polish-American workers and others demanded an eight-hour day. Under orders, National Guardsmen shot to kill. Kill they did.

It's interesting to me that before Jim introduced me to it, I've never heard of the Bay View Massacre. Before reading Christina Pacosz's excellent essay, I'd never heard of the Leadbelt Riot.

Of course I was not taught about any of these events in school. Polish American and other Bohunk workers never played any role in my formal education. Sure, we read "The Jungle." We read it for the gross-out scenes of rats pooping in sausage, not for its vivid and accurate picture of the life of Jurgis Rudkus, one Bohunk worker very like my own ancestors, and probably very like your ancestors, as well.

But it's interesting that in all the many internet facebook and online discussion posts by and about Polish Americans I've read, I'd never heard of the Bay View Massacre.

I wonder if that is because Polonia tends to prefer heroes on horseback to Bohunks on picket lines? I'm just asking. Or maybe we tend to be so anti-Communist that we don't want to acknowledge how large a role our people played in labor organizing, and how labor organizing helped our ancestors to survive. Again, I'm just asking. You tell me.

Milwaukee County's detailed account of the Massacre is here.

Nickolas Nikolic's blog post dedicated to the massacre is here. Nickolas' blog post includes a wonderful slide show depicting a reenactment of the protest and the massacre.

The Wikipedia page on the Bay View Massacre is here.

My Offer to Speak

My standard offer to speak is below. 

I am writing to ask you to consider inviting me to speak about my book, "Bieganski, The Brute Polak Stereotype, Its Role in Polish Jewish Relations and American Popular Culture."

An African American woman at the UU Church of the Palisades told me that my talk there helped her to understand racism for the first time. Librarian Regina A. Bohn told me that patrons continued to give her positive feedback days after my talk. Prof. Jay Bergman, biographer of Andrei Sakharov, said, "My wife and I liked your talk immensely and learned a great deal from it. It took guts … the audience was as interested in what you had to say as I was. Your students are very fortunate to have you as a teacher!"

The hate the Holocaust engendered challenges the human mind and heart. "Bieganski" honors this challenge by addressing the foundational structures of hate. I have been invited to speak not just by Polish or Jewish groups, but also by other groups addressing hate, for example a Bruderhof and a PFLAG chapter.

I have spoken about "Bieganski' in Krakow's Galicia Jewish Museum as part of the world famous Jewish Culture Festival, and in American synagogues, churches, libraries and universities. I have also spoken in Markowa, Poland, as an invited guest of a researcher for the IPN, the Polish governmental body responsible for cataloguing Holocaust crimes, at the site of the Nazi murder of the righteous Ulma family. I've broadcast via WFIU, an NPR affiliate.

"Bieganski" won the 2010 PAHA Halecki Award. Published chapters have been well reviewed. The Shofar Journal of Jewish Studies called it "Groundbreaking." American Jewish History said that Bieganski points out that the Brute Polak stereotype "gives the illusion of absolving those who failed in their own test of humanity" during the Holocaust. The book has been the subject of cover stories in the highly respected "Tygodnik Powszechny" and the "Polish American Journal."

John J. Mearsheimer, R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, said that ''Bieganski is a truly important book. Goska does a first-rate job. Let's hope that this book is widely read.''

James P. Leary, folklorist, University of Wisconsin, said that Bieganski is "A powerful, provocative, ultimately profound work of scholarship … for anyone wishing to fathom the interworkings of class and ethnicity in an America that has all too often fallen short of its promise."

US Holocaust Memorial Council member Father John T. Pawlikowski, award-winning poet John Guzlowski, who has documented his parents' experiences as Nazi slave laborers, and Rabbi Michael Herzbrun have also provided enthusiastic endorsements of "Bieganski."

My blog devoted to "Bieganksi" has been the springboard for protests against distortions of WW II and Holocaust history.

Imaginary Witness: Hollywood and the Holocaust

John Guzlowski has posted, at his Lightning and Ashes blog, my essay on "Imaginary Witness: Hollywood and the Holocaust." You can read that essay here. 

Good News! New Book by Christina Pacosz

Christina Pacosz is a gutsy, passionate, utterly frank Polish-American poet. The first time I read her work, I felt as if I were reading Kerouac, if he were a Bohunk woman.

In 2012, Seven Kitchens Press will be publishing "How to Measure the Darkness," a new book by Christina Pacosz, and you should buy it, read it, review it on Amazon, and share it with your friends.

More information on "How to Measure the Darkness" here.

A previous blog post about Christina's work on the Missouri Leadbelt Riot, that drove Poles out of the lead mining region of Missouri, can be found here.

The Amazon page for Christina's book "This Is Not a Place to Sing" can be found here.

Below please find a video of Christina reading about her 1986 visit to the Jagiellonian University to study Polish-Jewish relations, about mak, or poppy seed, about women, about women's worth, and about women and aging.

Bieganski on Fox TV Sitcom, "Back to You"

In November, 2007, Fox TV broadcast an episode of the Steven Levitan sitcom, "Back to You" that included this joke: "Bowling is in your Polish blood, like kielbasa, and collaborating with the Nazis."

In response, I sent the letter, below, to Fox.

I will refer to this letter in a future blog post. I'm posting the text here in order to link back.

There is reaction to this letter at a Jewish news site, Vos iz Neias, Yiddish for "What's News?" That reaction can be found here. These posts do not reflect the best in Polish-Jewish relations.

Dear Fox TV,

According to internet reports, the November 14, 2007, episode of the Steven Levitan, Fox TV sitcom "Back to You" contained a "joke" accusing Poles of collaborating with the Nazis. If these reports are true, it is Fox TV's responsibility to eliminate that "joke" from any further broadcasts of that episode, and it is Fox TV's responsibility to publish a retraction.

A "joke" about Polish Nazi collaborators is comparable to a "joke" about Jews orchestrating the September 11, 2001, World Trade Center attacks. It is comparable to a "joke" that denies the reality of the Holocaust. It is no less.

There are rumors and urban legends that do accuse Jews of orchestrating the 9-11 attacks. These rumors and urban legends are factually false. They have currency because they are part of an invidious campaign of anti-Semitic bigotry and hatred. Just so, there are understandings of Poles as Nazis. These understandings, too, are factually false, and are part of vile and dangerous campaigns of bigotry and hatred.

The facts: Poles fought the Nazis first, fought the Nazis longest, and fought them, per capita, the hardest. An abundance of statistics evidences Poles' heroism and sacrifice. Poland had the largest underground resistance army during World War Two; Polish soldiers fought, not just in Poland, but far afield, making significant contributions, for example in the RAF during the Battle of Britain, and in Italy at Monte Cassino. Poles were essential to one of the key factors in the defeat of the Nazis and the Allies' victory, the breaking of the Enigma code. More Poles than members of any other nation rescued Jews; count the trees dedicated to Righteous Gentiles at Yad Vashem.

Poles suffered worse, under the Nazis, than any other national group except for Jews and Gypsies, reports historian Michael C. Steinlauf. Poles were gassed with Zyklon B; Poles were tortured in concentration camps and a special school set up to teach Nazis how to torture; Poles were shot down en masse by Einsatzgruppen; Poles were deported in cattle cars, sterilized, burned alive. Polish churches, museums, and historic monuments were methodically destroyed by German soldiers, even as Germany was losing ground for lack of those soldiers at the front. Poles were denied education; Poles, like the late Pope John Paul II, studied secretly in "flying universities." Poles were executed for crimes like owning a radio, or offering a glass of water to a Jew. Poles were murdered merely to terrorize other Poles.

Given this history, one may ask why "jokes" about Polish collaborators exist. This is why: these jokes are lies concocted to support an alternative history that is no less heinous than Holocaust Denial.

America and Britain did nothing after Jan Karski, a Polish agent, brought, firsthand, eyewitness accounts of the Holocaust to the West. America and Britain betrayed Poland at Yalta. Negative images of Poles assuage that guilt. The West has not been able to confront, morally, the guilt of the Holocaust. Germany, the world's most scientific nation, the world's most modern and secular nation, using Darwinism and Scientific Racism as guides, descended to diabolical depths of insane cruelty and destruction. We, modern, secular, scientific people cannot accept that persons so like ourselves, operating under systems we value, committed such crimes. So, we assign the guilt of that crime to persons unlike ourselves - ethnically distant, and disempowered, Poles. Finally, there is a push, typified by superstar scholars like James Carroll and Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, to equate Nazism with Christianity, specifically, Catholicism. Poland is a Catholic country, and it is the best target for this effort.

"Back to You"'s "joke" about Polish Nazi collaborators is as funny as a "joke" about Jews planning 9-11, or a "joke" that denies the reality of the Holocaust. It is a truly evil fabrication with a disgusting intellectual history and a morally corrupt agenda.

Polish Americans and persons of conscience who do not wish the truth of World War Two or the Nazi era to be erased by lies demand that Fox TV eliminate this "joke" from any further broadcast of the episode in question, and demand that Fox TV publish a retraction. Further, we demand that Steven Levitan receive education in the true history of World War Two.

Thank you,

Danusha V. Goska, PhD

Correction: In the past, I had read that that Armia Krajowa, or Home Army, was the largest resistance army in Nazi occupied Europe. New estimates say that it was the second or third largest.

Bieganski on Saturday Night Live

Watch This Space

source: www.cartoonstock.com

I'm preparing a long blog post.

Tentative title: "Bieganski and the Crisis in Polonian Leadership: What You Can Do About Both."

If anyone reads this blog post, it will be controversial.

I keep going over every word, every anecdote, every conclusion.

Should I really say this?

I'm telling true stories about my real life experience, and yours and yours and yours.

I'm disguising details – who, what, when, why, where, how – so that no one can identify the specific people I'm talking about.

These stories should be told, I think, because they clearly indicate obstacles we need to overcome. We should stop allowing these obstacles to continually trip us up and thwart our progress toward desired goals we all say we want to achieve.

I'm suggesting roadmaps for action toward a better future.

If anyone reads this blog post, it will be controversial.

Is there anything I should not say?

Is there anything I should be sure to say?