The November 18, 2021 Telegraph features an article about the new book. You can read the entire article here.
Ostarbeiter had to wear an identifying patch:
"We didn’t know where they were taking us. We were unloaded in the drizzling rain and organised into columns in silence. They escorted us with dogs to a building where we found others like ourselves. Everybody was given a coloured patch to attach to the left-hand side of their chest, either red, yellow, green or blue. We were given yellow patches, which assigned us to the distribution camp."
Some were assigned to concentration camps:
"The camps here were large, and surrounded by barbed wire. […] There were barracks with stacks of greatcoats heaped outside that had belonged to our deceased prisoners-of-war. There was no lavatory; just a hole under one of the watchtowers. And you were expected to use this hole in full sight of the guard, who might just take a pot shot at it for fun, to watch you get splattered with excrement."
They were sold to employers at slave auctions:
"Representatives from a firm or enterprise would come and – for a fee – choose workers. They were generally most interested in the candidates’ physical conditions; many of the Ostarbeiter were too young to have professional qualifications and, in most cases, their education had been rudimentary.
Anna Kirilenko (from Rostov-on-Don, Russian SFSR) remembers:
They looked at us to see whether we were in good physical health, and then checked whether our arms and legs functioned properly. For the factory where I worked, they chose young, agile people of a light build. […] The bigger, stronger, fitter ones were assigned to heavy manual labour.
And Anna Sechkina (from Volodarskoye, Russian SFSR) recalls that “not everybody was selected – the elderly, and children younger than 10, were rejected. The managers said that feeding them would be a waste of bread.”
For many, the selection process was redolent of a slave market, where labour was purchased and sold. Lev Tokarev (from Peterhof, Russian SFSR) was deported in 1942. He says:
When we were taken to the labour exchange, everybody was chosen, but nobody took me. I was scrawny, and was left standing on my own. "
Germany looked like paradise to these young people from Poland and Ukraine:
"“There were flowers on the balconies and all along the sides of the roads. It was beautiful – I had never seen anything like it! We had flowers, but not in such abundance.”
“Even the people at the railway station looked to me as though they had just stepped off the pages of a fashion magazine. It was a different world.”
“I tell you, Germany must have been created as a paradise. […] Everything was clean, beautiful and tidy.”
But Germans didn't much like the Ostarbeiter
"The Germans would line the streets when we were being escorted back from work. Each would stand on his own doorstep, and the children would fire little stones at us from their catapults. The Germans would laugh when one found a target."
 |
| Andzrej Stankiewicz provides this caption: Józio, son of Artur, Jurek, son of Stach, my aunt Irena, Janek, younger brother of Jurek, and Seweryn Jan, my father. |
I received an email on October 13, 2021,
the day after my birthday, that prompted me to spend today, a beautiful autumn
Sunday in November, reading, again, about Polish-Jewish relations.
It's as if all the uncried tears are pouring
out now. I need to keep wiping my face so that I can see this computer screen.
Researching Polish-Jewish relations
taught me many things. Inter alia, it taught me this: no matter how dark the
world has gotten, in the midst of that darkness, there have been refulgent
lights. Those lights often have disguised themselves, by necessity. Those
lights have often been ignored, because the world would rather focus on cheap
spectacles. Just because we do not see these lights does not mean that they are
not there. Thus, despair is self-indulgent and a sin. As John wrote, "The
light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it."
***
Back in December, 2015, I wrote the
following on this blog:
"Between fifteen and twenty years
ago I was doing a massive amount of reading that would inform the book
Bieganski. I read Polish history, Jewish history … I read about the Holocaust
and I read about other atrocities including the Rwandan and Cambodian
genocides. I read memoirs, scholarly and newspaper articles and internet
postings by average Joes … I was swimming in an ocean of words so vast that I
could not see dry land.
In all that verbiage, I have forgotten
plenty of things. Sometimes I stumble across a book, think, 'I should read this
book,' and realize that I'd read it, reviewed it, and quoted it …
And then there is a fraction of the
material I read. This fraction consists of material that I not only remember,
but that I can almost quote verbatim …
One such unforgettable passage concerned
a young Polish Jew named Jurek Leder. We know about Jurek Leder thanks to Mary
Berg's Warsaw Ghetto diary. Below is the passage that mentions Leder.
'Jurek Leder, my close friend, who now
works for the Jewish police, is also a passionate Polish patriot. "If only
I could get out and join the partisans!" He says. "At least I could
fight for Poland then. I love my country and even if a hundred anti-Semites try
to convince me that I am not a Pole I'll prove it with my fists if not my
words." Leder's father is a captain in the Polish army and is presently
interned in Russia.'"
And that's all I knew about Jurek Leder.
Just those words that Mary Berg quotes, above. I didn't know what he looked
like, or how old he was, or anything. But those words turned Jurek Leder, to
me, into a breathing, animate, flesh-and-blood human being, stepping out from
the ranks of black-and-white, nameless victims, shuffling through my brain on
their endless march to oblivion.
There's much more in that initial post
about Mary Berg; please see that blog post here.
Five years later, I had reason to post about Jurek
Leder again in July, 2020. Andrzej Stankiewicz had sent me an email seven
months before. Mr. Stankiewicz had happened upon my blog post about Jurek Leder
and he wrote to inform me that he is related to Jurek Leder! He shared with me
a photo of Jurek Leder that I posted on the blog, here. Mr. Stankiewicz
provided me with many interesting details about his family, about those who
perished in the Holocaust, and those who survived. He also informed me that
Jurek Leder was a recipient of the Virtuti Militari "for heroism and
courage in the face of the enemy at war." Mr. Stankiewicz could not tell
me much more because he didn't know much more. War swallows up so many
biographical details. In any case, that blog post is full of the then-available
details; please see it here.
Now, to October 13, 2021. I received a
new email from Andrzej Stankiewiecz with some exciting news. He had found a
document that provides many more details about Jurek Leder.
"I want to let you know that thanks
to Prof. Engelking from the Polish Center for Holocaust Research an important
document surfaced concerning Jurek and his family. This is a 1996 publication
based on the memoirs of Mrs. Zofia Debicka, a 'Righteous among Nations', who
was hiding Jewish families in Warsaw and among them Jurek Leder, his mother
Berta and his younger brother Janek."
This emergence of a fuller picture of Jurek
Leder through the chaos of war and the mists of time and forgetting is very
moving to me. Maybe this is why I am moved to tears. I had thought this human
life, like so many other human lives, erased. Jurek Leder moved me with just
the few phrases Mary Berg recorded about him in her sadly neglected Warsaw
Ghetto diary. I knew he was a special person, but I could not know how or why.
Thanks to the new document Mr. Stankiewicz sent to me, I would soon have a fuller
picture.
I can read Polish fairly well but it
requires patience and concentration and I didn't want to wait till I had some
hours to devote to the task, so I impatiently forwarded the document to Lukasz Klimek,
a great friend of this blog. I asked only for a summary but Lukasz kindly
provided me with a word by word translation into English.
Reading this document opened a window to
the past and allowed me to gain a fuller picture of the man whose plight and
whose patriotism touched me so deeply. The account is very worth reading and I
will be happy to email the Polish-language PDF to anyone who requests it. The
account offers personal glimpses into Jurek Leder from someone who knew him.
Jurek was, the document states, a
19-year-old graphic designer. He made signs at railway stations, such as:
"Exit," "To the buffet," and "For men." He had the
right to wear a railroad cap, which gave him a certain sense of security. He
was "brave, valiant, resourceful, saved many people from death already in
the ghetto with his courage, bravado and resourcefulness. Jurek simply fulfilled
himself in the face of danger."
Mrs. Zofia Debicka describes Jurek helping
to find safe housing for a Jewish toddler whose parents died in the Holocaust. Jurek
contributed so much to the care for this toddler that a ring procured to sell
for provisions for the baby turned out not to be needed. The toddler's rescuers,
who included an Englishman and Mrs. Debicka, put the ring into storage for the
child's future.
Jurek's mother was a timid soul,
terrified of discovery. Mrs. Debicka describes Jurek's mother deciding
"that the safest thing for her boys
would be to hide in some provincial corner, and she moved out from Warsaw.
Jurek could not bear the atmosphere of permanently closed shutters, sneaking
out of the house after dark, and he returned to Warsaw. He quickly came to an
understanding with my 'English son' [an English officer living in Poland and
helping Mrs. Debicka] and joined the sabotage unit. By disarming the Germans
(with his bare hands) several times and thus supplying the unit with weapons,
and by organizing an action in an extraordinary way, he soon became the brain
of the unit and the head of the liquidation cell.
When Jurek's mother found out about
Jurek joining the organization, she was devastated. While sobbing she said to
him that he is willingly taking on additional risks. But when we were left
alone, she said: 'You know, maybe it was a good thing with this organization -
Jurek will die, because he will die for sure, but in battle, not a humiliating
death.'
And so it happened. Jurek was killed in
the fall of 1943 on Plac Zbawiciela [Savior Square] in an action against one of
the executioners of the ghetto. His corpse, abandoned in the street, was taken
by the blue police. At night, the boys from his unit stole the body and buried
it in the cemetery in Bródno. After the war, with difficulty, together with his
father, who came with the Polish People's Army, we found a small grave near the
cemetery wall. We put up a sign with the real name "Jerzy Leder. Hero".
I can only hope that anyone reading this blog might be tearing up right now just as I am. Jurek, thank you for letting us get to know a bit more about you. Through you, may we be reminded that victims of atrocity are all people, just like us, unique, with names, families, loves, life stories. And some of them, like you, are heroes.
In October 2021, he attracted international interest and sympathy. In a video,[10] posted on Instagram and titled “Antisemitismus in Deutschland 2021”, he spoke about experiencing pain and embarrassment from antisemitic treatment while checking in at the Leipzig Westin hotel. Ofarim said that he was told to put away his Star of David pendant by a manager, otherwise they would not check him in.[11] [12] [13] His Instagram video was shared widely, also by the American Jewish Congress, which then started an online petition calling the hotel owner, Marriott, to apologize and educate its employees about antisemitism.[14] On October 5th, about 600 people congregated in front of the hotel to protest antisemitism.[15]
Later, the statements by Ofarim have been contradicted by a hotel employee, and according to closed-circuit television recordings, Ofarim did not wear any neck chain during the time in question. Confronted with the footage, Ofarim then explained that the exclamation came from behind, and that it was not about the star or the chain, but “about something far bigger.”
I have no idea what transpired here, and I'd never heard of Gil Ofarim until a blog reader informed me of the story.
 |
"Final
Account" is a 2020 documentary by Luke Holland. The film consists of
interviews with Germans who were Nazis in their youth and participated in World
War II in various functions. Holland found out when he was 14 that his mother
was a Jewish escapee from Austria just before the Nazi occupation. Holland's maternal
grandparents died in the Holocaust. He began work on the film in 2008, 63 years
after the end of the war, so his informants were very young when they began
their Nazi careers. One recalled being a nine-year-old and standing arm in arm
with other Nazis preventing shoppers from entering a Jewish-owned store. In the
interviews, the informants are in their eighties and nineties. Holland
interviewed over 300 former Nazis and obviously only a tiny fraction of those
interviews appear in the 90 minute documentary. Holland received a terminal
cancer diagnosis in 2015, and he died at 71 of cancer after the film was
finished.
Obviously many previous films also feature
interviews with former Nazis, survivors, and witnesses, including "Shoah,"
"Shtetl," "Hiding and Seeking," etc. What sets Holland's
film apart? I recommend this film because it is very watchable. It is brief and
rapid. The interviews are so substantial that watching it twice I still felt I
wanted more. I really wanted to know more about all the informants. For someone
who doesn't want to invest nine and a half hours in watching "Shoah,"
perhaps they will watch "Final Account." Of course "Shoah,"
widely hailed as a masterpiece, offers the viewer much more than a brief film
like "Final Account" can offer, but the simple fact is that the
number of viewers willing to watch all of "Shoah" is much smaller
than the number of people willing to watch a 90 minute film, and the more
people know about Nazism and the Holocaust, the better.
"Final Account" focuses
exclusively on Germans and Austrians. Unlike "Shoah," it is not
interested in transferring Holocaust guilt to Poland or anyone else. The
Germans in "Final Account" are nice people. I mean that; I'm not
being ironic. I'd want these folks as neighbors. They are grandmotherly and
grandfatherly, polite and charming. Even the interviewees who say things like
"I don't blame Hitler" and "I don't believe that six million Jews
were killed" and "The SS had nothing to do with atrocities" come
across, not as monsters, but as conventionally decent people. I would lend
money to these people and not worry about their paying it back. I would allow
them to babysit my child, for a brief period. I would assume that if I lived
next door to them, I'd never have to call the police on them. Even though I am
Polish Catholic and that very SS to which some of them belonged, that never
participated in atrocities, included the Einsatzgruppen who committed mass
murders of Polish Catholics.
From Wikipedia:
The
Einsatzgruppen's mission was to kill members of the Polish leadership most
clearly identified with Polish national identity: the intelligentsia, members
of the clergy, teachers, and members of the nobility. As stated by Hitler:
"... there must be no Polish leaders; where Polish leaders exist they must
be killed, however harsh that sounds". SS-Brigadeführer Lothar Beutel,
commander of Einsatzgruppen IV, later testified that Heydrich gave the order
for these killings at a series of meetings in mid-August. The
Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen — lists of people to be killed — had been drawn up by
the SS as early as May 1939, using dossiers collected by the SD from 1936
forward. The Einsatzgruppen performed these murders with the support of the
Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz, a paramilitary group consisting of ethnic Germans
living in Poland. Members of the SS, the Wehrmacht, and the Ordnungspolizei
also shot civilians during the Polish campaign. Approximately 65,000 civilians
were killed by the end of 1939.
I would feel comfortable interacting in
a neighborly way with these charming, elderly Germans, even though I cried in
shock and disbelief while watching their interviews, because these people did
not decide on their own to commit mass murder. They were decent people swept up
in a movement directed by virtual demons, exceptionally sick and evil people like
Hitler, Himmler, and Goebbels.
And of course I thought about today. I
thought of nice, decent, average people who don't resist evil as actively as
they might. And I thought about people like myself, people who are always a
thorn in somebody's side, people who don't go along and don't get along, people
who ask awkward questions and say shocking things. Humanity needs both kinds of
people, the "go along to get along" type and the "thorn in the
side" type.
"Final Account" is too brief
to present a detailed retelling of the historical perfect storm that paved the
way for Nazism: WW I, Germany's defeat, the Versailles Treaty, the Depression,
the Weimar Republic, the scientific racism that was accepted by scientists all
over the world, etc. But Holland does show archival film of children
participating in Hitler Youth and other Nazi events. He wants his audience to
understand what appealed to these young people. "We loved the uniforms,
the camaraderie, the athletic games," they testify.
In one scene, very thin German children
are shown eating at what might have been a Hitler Youth picnic. Otto, whose parents
were part of this generation, also saw the film. He told me that when he was
watching that scene, he thought of how hungry his father was, and how the
Nazi's providing food to children was part of their appeal.
No, I'm not saying that being hungry is
an excuse for committing Nazi crimes, even so relatively minor a crime as
blocking shoppers' entrance to a Jewish-owned store. But Nazism didn't just
require vicious, cold-blooded killers. It also required, as one of the informants
was, bookkeepers, and men deeply committed to their own honor.
From USA
Today:
Stephen
Smith, executive director of the USC Shoah Foundation, was in touch with
Holland since the project's origin … "Seeing them as human beings really
makes the movie's point that there were no monsters. They were human beings
that did monstrous things and were living with the consequences," says
Smith. "The final account is Luke holding them to account to some degree
and shows us the fragility of human nature, how easily we're beguiled by
ideology and by putting on a uniform."
The opening scenes of children
participating in Nazi activity and being indoctrinated in hating Jews and other
"life unworthy of life" reminded me of today. Little children are being
brainwashed in American schools right now to believe that some people, only
because of their skin color, bear the taint of evil, and other people, again
because of skin color or other immutable characteristics, are above judgment. We
can't stand up to the evils of the past. Time has marched on. But we can stand
up to evils today. When powerful people tell us that some of us are tainted simply
because of the color of our skin, and others are above judgment, we can be that
thorn-in-the-side of powerful lies.
There's a scene in "Final Account"
when a man in his eighties who was a Nazi in his youth speaks to young Germans.
The documentary claims that they met in the very building where the Wannsee
Conference took place. I was very touched that the speaker condemned the destruction
of Warsaw. I don't know if I've ever hears similar words before. I've been
reading, writing and thinking about Nazism for decades and I don't know if I've
ever come across any German expressing regret for what Germans did to Poland.
Germans have obviously and repeatedly, on stages big and small, expressed regret
for the murder of Jews. Poles, it seems, aren't even a shadow in their
nightmares, a footnote in their confessions. It was good to hear a German
express regret for the destruction of Warsaw.
Below are some screencaps from the
movie.
The first screencap is of a German woman saying, "They didn't belong to our ethnic group," in other words, why care about them? Students are being taught such attitudes in American classrooms today.
"I didn't really care that the synagogue was burning down" on Kristallnacht, another German says. Why should he care? Not my ethnic group.
"I was just a bookkeeper!" at a concentration camp.
"We discovered them and reported it." This informant was the most disturbing to me. He reported escaped Jews hiding in farm outbuildings. His face was a storm of sadness, guilt, and indifference. I think he had a very uncomfortable time when he met his maker.
"The SS had nothing to do with it. I had no regrets." Sure, buddy.
The next informant, a man with multiple religious statues behind him, including one of Padre Pio, acknowledged that the SS committed atrocities, atrocities he witnessed.
"It was cruel, but I did not care who burned." I think this was the informant who had a Jewish grandmother. He adopted Nazism enthusiastically, nonetheless.
The next series of photos is of the former Nazi confronting a young German who said shocking things to him. A confrontation.
"I would dirty myself if I admit to that." This same informant said he blame Hitler for nothing. Not even the Nero Decree, I guess. Denial.
The man with the white hair and stunning blue eyes said that Germans said three things after the war. "I didn't know, I didn't participate, and if I had known I would have acted differently." He ended the interview.
"The idea was correct," this man said. Hitler should have simply deported the Jews, but not killed them. Mind, there were only about half a million Jews in Germany, a country of, I think, 80 million, and they were mostly assimilated
The final three photos are of a visit to a home for the elderly in Ebensee, Austria, near a concentration camp. At first, an informant says "we knew nothing." As the interview progresses, it becomes clear that they did know, and at least one woman participated, by hiding her SS boyfriend for months after the war.
 |
| Source This is the illustration Wikipedia uses for its page on "contempt." |
We also subscribed to Time, Life,
National Geographic, Smithsonian, Reader's Digest, Yankee, and other magazines.
To this day, decades later, there are still so many sentences from so many
magazine articles stuffed into drawers inside my head.
One such sentence, I think, came from an
article in Life, an article published, probably, during the 1960s, when race
was a media obsession. The article mentioned mixed marriages. A spouse said
that there was always this feeling that if things went south in the
relationship, if there was a disagreement or if someone felt disappointed in
the other, the one spouse would call the other by the n-word, or the c-word, or
some other derogatory word that black people use for white people, or that
white people use for black people. In other words, no matter how much someone from
the other group loved you, that equipment of othering could spring into action
when conditions changed.
I have a Jewish friend,
"Harry," who is important to me. I like and care about Harry. Harry
makes derogatory comments about Polish people and Christians. His derogatory
comments follow well-worn stereotypes. His ancestors lived in Poland but he
despises being told he is Polish. Polish people are dirty, stupid, violent,
anti-Semites. I tell Harry that given that his family lived in Poland for so
long, surely he has some Polish genes. Only if my ancestors were raped, he
replies. Lots of Jews have said this to me. They assume that people like me,
Polish Catholics, are rapists. They say this to my face, and give no indication
that they are aware that they are saying something ugly. I often think, what would
happen if I replied, "So, you throw a stereotype of my people as rapists
at me. How would you feel if I asked you if your ancestors were moneylenders
who cheated and impoverished my peasant ancestors?" I have yet to say
that. I don't think they'd have any idea what point I was trying to make.
Shinto-Buddhist-and-Confucian-influenced
Japan supports
significant anti-Semitism. "According to an ADL telephone survey of
500 people, 23% +/- 4.4% of the adult population in Japan harbor antisemitic
attitudes. Furthermore, the study reveals that 46% of the population agree with
the statement "Jews think they are better than other people," and
that almost half of the respondents (49%) think that "Jews are more loyal
to Israel than to Japan." But Christianity is always, always, worse.
Historical facts do not support the
"2,000 years" accusation. Christians were in no position to persecute
anyone the first few hundred years of Christianity, and Christians didn't
become the majority in Europe till centuries after Constantine accepted
Christianity in the fourth century AD. Pagans murdered Adalbert, a Christian
missionary, in what is now the Catholic country of Poland, as late as 997. In
614, Jews participated with Persians in massacring Christians at the Mamilla
Reservoir in Jerusalem. Too, Jews in Christian-majority Europe often prospered
and accomplished great things. Jewish arendators exercised the power of life
and death over Polish Catholic serfs. The "2,000 years" canard
invokes a monolithic and omnipotent Christian edifice that practiced unchanging
anti-Semitism for 2,000 years. Historical facts say otherwise.
Yes, at times and in places Christians
have persecuted Jews. Christians acknowledge those persecutions and have done
everything we can to address them. In fact, Christians alive at the time
addressed them. During the Rhineland Massacres, a heinous, shameful series of
massacres of Jews by Christian Crusaders, Catholic churchmen and nobility
condemned the massacres and threatened to excommunicate and punish anyone
harming Jews. Bishop Ruthard tried hiding Jews in his palace. These attempts by
contemporary Christians to protect Jews did little or nothing to lower the
monstrous death tolls. But these attempts should not be ignored.
The Crusades were prompted by jihad and
Muslim persecution of Christians. Christians, too, were being massacred,
impoverished, and enslaved, by Muslims. And Crusaders didn't just target Jews.
They also targeted my ancestors. There was a Slavic Crusade, one that gets very
little press. But yes, Christian Germans made war on Pagan Slavs in order to
gain their territory and their resources. Attributing atrocities committed by
Crusaders to Christian doctrine is an error. Crusaders, like humans of any
identity, were very good at killing for economic reasons.
So, no, Christians were not a monolithic
and universally and eternally anti-Semitic, totalitarian power as the
"2,000 years" canard implies. But Harry has that notion firmly
entrenched in his head, and he deploys it regularly, and I am left to stand
around being the dirtbag Christian.
I met "Sarah" recently via Facebook.
Sarah is wise, intelligent, honest, and creative, and I like all of those
qualities. One of Sarah's Facebook friends made the "2,000 years of Christian
hatred" comment. I disagreed with her, and cited Pagan Assyrian, Egyptian,
and Roman massacres of Jews that preceded the arrival of Christianity, and
Christians' inability to persecute anyone for a good part of Christian history.
Sarah's friend called me an anti-Semite. Mind: Sarah's friend did not adduce
any facts. She just cut right to the accusation. Sarah said nothing in my
defense. She is Jewish, and I assume she values my friendship; she does say
nice things to me about how our interaction has worked well for her. At this
key moment, though, silence. I was disappointed in Sarah. It was a familiar
disappointment. I did not unfriend Sarah. One gets used to events like this.
In addition to the idea that Christians
are all participating equally actively in something called "2,000 years of
hatred," but not, somehow, in 2,000 years of Western Civilization that has
been challenging and uplifting for all of our ancestors and for us as well, I,
as a Polish Catholic, am also occasionally reminded by Harry that I am stupid
and dirty. He tells jokes whose punchlines rely on "goys" being
stupider than Jews.
My first years of grad school at UC
Berkeley, a fellow grad student, a Jew, told me that I could not possibly be
Polish Catholic "because you read." My ancestors must have been Jews.
Rabbi Laurie, whom I loved dearly and who was my friend for almost twenty years
before he died in 2006, said the same thing. He believed my ancestors were
probably secretly Jewish. Because I read. Both Jewish men's implication, of
course, is that Polish Catholics are too stupid and primitive to read. If they
didn't believe that in some part of their minds, they would never have said those
things to me.
I adored Morton, a veterinarian and
Facebook friend who made positive contributions to my life. We were a mutual
admiration society. In April, 2019, news broke that in Pruchnik, a small and
isolated village in Poland, villagers engaged in a custom of "beating the
Jew," that is, a straw-filled effigy meant to represent Judas. Commentators
in mainstream and on social media insisted that Pruchnik had proven that all
Poles were "Nazi scum." This
blog post contains quotes that appeared at that time. (I also blogged about
the event here
and here.)
Here are some of the comments.
"Roman Catholicism is the Satanic
strategy against the Jewish people."
"The sages tell us that Poland is
doomed. They will never amount to much due to their perpetual
antisemitism."
"Hitler used Christianity to
support his extermination of the Jews."
"I shed no tear over Notre Dame. [The
cathedral of Notre Dame had recently been damaged by fire.] But Poland and the
Catholic Church there are notorious for their anti-semitisn. The Crusades,
Inquisition, and The Holocaust were Catholic led and inspired."
"The Poles are still filthy Nazi
scum. Never forget. Never forgive."
I copied these quotes from social media
and comments under mainstream media. I copied some of those comments from the
Facebook page of my very good friend Morton. Morton did not say those things,
but his friends did. I protested. Morton sided with his Jewish friends.
Morton and I began to talk via private
messenger. I tried to make him see how his allowing his friends to vilify all
Poles and all Christians on the basis of one event in an isolated village, an
event that many prominent Poles denounced, was a roadblock for me. "Is
this what you think of me?" Morton said I was being "hysterical."
Our Facebook friendship ended. I kept hoping that he'd apologize and reconcile
with me. I hoped that he'd stand up to his friends posting ugly things about
Poles and Catholics. Morton was elderly and chronically ill. Before our estrangement,
I used to send him Maryknoll mass cards. I had no idea how else to address the suffering
he was going through, at such a great distance from me. He had said he liked
the cards. Morton passed away six months later, without our ever reconciling in
this life. I think even when we meet again in Heaven he might defend his
actions. I guess we'll see.
I have tried to say to Jewish friends
one-on-one and in small groups the following. Yes, non-Jews, including
Christians, have done terrible things to Jews. But there are also stereotypical
hatreds among Jewish people. Those hatreds, no less than Christian
anti-Semitism, need to be examined and rejected. When I say that, I do not hear
much agreement.
***
In Spring, 2020, AJS Perspective, The
Magazine of the Association for Jewish Studies, published "The Hate
Issue." It contains a couple dozen articles, over 88 pages. You can read
the entire thing here.
The second article dispirited me. It is
titled "When the KKK Exegetes: Circulating Hate with 2 Peter." 2
Peter, pronounced "Second Peter," is a New Testament book. It is a very
short letter written to fellow Christians. Scholars agree that the author was
not in fact Peter, Jesus' apostle, but an anonymous Jewish Christian, that is,
an ethnic Jew who converted to belief that Jesus was the Messiah. The letter is
one of the last New Testament books written. It dates from the early second
century, perhaps a hundred years after Jesus was crucified. The purpose of the
book is to encourage Christians not to despair that Jesus hadn't returned yet.
There was some false teachers encouraging despair. 2 Peter's goal is to buck up
Christians.
Dong Hyeon Jeong, the scholar who wrote the
article, writes that "2 Peter teems with animalizing hateful rhetoric."
I was astounded by this allegation. I've read 2 Peter and I don't find it
hateful at all. 2 Peter refers to a "proverb" that compares false teachers
to dogs who return to their vomit. Jeong says that this verse proves how
hateful this New Testament book is. In fact, this line is a direct quote from
the Old Testament book of Proverbs. It's part of Jewish tradition. In
attempting to smear Christian scripture as hateful, Jeong quotes an ethnically
Jewish author quoting Jewish scripture.
The article that got my attention is
entitled "Drunkards Lying on the Floor: Jewish Contempt for Non-Jewish
Lower Classes" by Professor Gil Ribak, who teaches at the University of
Arizona's Arizona Center for Judaic Studies. Ribak's homepage says that
he is interested in "the varied ways Jews perceived their non-Jewish
surroundings, and how those perceptions affected their interactions with
non-Jews."
Ribak's article reads like one of my
note-taking sessions for "Bieganski:
The Brute Polak Stereotype." His article contains a series of quotes
of Jews saying derogatory things about non-Jews, usually, Polish or other
Eastern European peasants. Ribak mentions a Yiddish folksong that came up
repeatedly from my Jewish informants when I collected data for
"Bieganski." The song is "Shikar iz a goy," or "A Goy
is a Drunk." You can listen to a jolly Jewish man singing the folksong to
a respectful audience here.
You can read the lyrics here. The
lyrics are pretty straightforward: "A Goy is drunk; he needs to drink,
because he is a Goy … A Jew is sober; he
needs to pray, because he is a Jew."
I watched, several times, the above-linked
video of a Jewish man singing "A Goy is a Drunk." The video was
posted just a few years ago. The event is entirely contemporary. Modern sound
equipment is put to use to disseminate contempt. The singer has a magnificent
voice. The audience, which includes young children and adult men, reveals no
discomfort with the lyrics. The tune is very catchy. After I watched this video,
I kept singing the song to myself. I had to listen to another song with a
catchy tune to wash "A Goy Is a Drunk" out of my mind.
The children carefully listening to, and
no doubt learning "A Goy Is a Drunk," both the song and the lesson,
will probably never be taught the following. Polish serfs were mistreated. Read
Jan Slomka's "From Serfdom to Self-Government" and Booker T.
Washington's "The Man Farthest Down." Polish peasants self-medicated
with alcohol to escape their miserable lives.
Polish nobles calculated that alcohol
was more profitable than grain. They deputized Jews to sell alcohol to peasants.
Peasants lapped it up. No one in this complex economic system has clean hands. No
one comes out well. That Polish peasants drank is of course emphasized in the
song. That Jews were the ones selling the alcohol to the peasants is not
covered in the song. Read more about Jews as marketers of alcohol to Polish
peasants in the Yivo Encyclopedia here.
Watching the video of the Jewish man
with the awesome voice singing "A Goy is a Drunk" to an audience that
includes many children makes me sick. Yes, I have been confronted with this level
of hate and contempt in real life, and, yes, it has had an impact on my life
and my career. Hate is often not a victimless crime.
Yes, I know that anti-Semitism is very
powerful and it results in mass death. My dad risked his life as a combat soldier
to defeat the Axis powers, fueled by Hitler's insane anti-Semitism. Here's the
difference. The bastards who openly express anti-Semitism are, largely, not
able to spew their venom in polite society. Law enforcement keeps tabs on them.
They are restricted from responsible employment. There are too many people, of
a variety of ethnicities – no it is not just Jews who do this – who spread
hatred of Poles, and of Christians, and of modern-day peasants, that is poor whites.
Those who hate these targets occupy positions of power in government,
journalism, religious life, and academia.
My friend Morton was a truly great guy.
He was a trusted professional with a long career, a veterinarian. And this man
among men was perfectly okay with people spewing the most extreme anti-Polish
material on his Facebook page. I've met many Mortons. At polite dinner parties,
on college campuses, in political gatherings. These aren't just people who
teach that, for example, Nazism was a Christian phenomenon. (It
wasn't.) These are also folks who habitually make nasty and derogatory
comments about Christmas. Nasty comments about Christmas may seem trivial. It's
the trivial banalities that reveal cultural patterns.
Worthy Christians confront anti-Semitism
in their midst. Christians resisting anti-Semitism is not just a modern thing. After
the horrific massacres of Jews during the First Crusade, Pope Calixtus II
issued "Sicut Judaeis," in 1120 or thereabouts, forbidding Christians
from forcing Jews to convert, from harming Jews, from robbing Jews, and from other
mistreatment. "Sicut Judaeis" is a phrase from Pope Gregory I, who served
as pope between 590 and 604, who also defended Jews. No, neither pope, nor any
other pope, was successful in suppressing all anti-Jewish violence. The point is
that popes and other Christians made it a point to try to suppress anti-Jewish
violence and feeling, and they have done so for hundreds of years. Everyone who
uses the phrase "2,000 year hate" is not only slurring Christians with
an ahistorical canard; they are also desecrating the memory of those Christians
who have worked against hate, sometimes at the cost of their own lives.
When we confront anti-Semitism, we recognize
that we are confronting a deadly toxin, yet hatred of Christians and
Christianity is too often dismissed as no big deal. In fact, "The
persecution of Christians in parts of the world is at near 'genocide' levels … Christians
were the most persecuted religious group," The BBC reported in 2019.
When I do see official Jewish organizations
and prominent individuals speak out against expressions of bigotry against
non-Jews, those Jewish voices are often speaking out against bigotry against blacks
and Muslims. For examples of the former, see the Bieganski chapter on
Jewish-African American relations. For examples of the latter, do a quick
google search. You'll come across articles like
this one, criticizing Jews who criticize Islam. Jews can criticize fellow
Jews who make derogatory comments about "schwartzes" or Muslims. Why
can't that same rectitude be applied to Jews who resort to negative stereotypes
of Christians and Christianity?
My encounters with Jews who have had
anything positive to say about Christianity have been few and far between. I am
very grateful to, and impressed by, Rabbi David G. Dalin who published "The
Myth of Hitler's Pope." I posted a positive review of Rabbi Dalin's book
here.
Yes, I am aware of Jews who work to correct historical falsehoods about
Christians and about Poles. And I am immensely grateful to these folks.
But while I've encountered Jews who
write off Christianity as just a superstitious, anti-Semitic mess, I can't remember
encountering any Jews who had anything good to say even about such groundbreaking
and exalted passages as The Good Samaritan or the Sermon on the Mount.
In addition to some Jews telling me that
Christians are violent anti-Semitic rapists, some Jews have also told me that
Christians are stupid, crafty liars. These accusations involve Isaiah 53 and
the Hebrew word "almah." In both cases Jews, including Harry, my
previously mentioned friend, insist that Christians are both stupid and lying
in their interpretation of Isaiah 53 and Isaiah 7:14. David Klinghoffer, in his
book "Why the Jews Rejected Jesus," addresses these translation
questions in his book. In my
review of his book, I say that the problem is not that there is more than
one way to translate and interpret these passages. Rather, the problem is attributing
to Christians a stupid and dishonest essence, and blaming that essence for an
interpretation with which Klinghoffer, Harry, and other Jews disagree.
To make a long story short, yes, Jews have
interpreted Isaiah 53 as a messianic prophecy, and, yes, "virgin"
is one reasonable translation of "almah." When Christians state
these simple facts, Harry and too many other Jews accuse Christians of being
stupid liars. I can only shake my head.
So, yeah. My Jewish friends don't have
to fear that I am hiding something from them, that, deep down, I assess them as
crafty moneylenders or world dominating conspirators. I do not assess them that
way. I assess them as human in the same way that I am human. But I have had the
experience of discovering that my Jewish friends, in their heart of hearts,
regard me, and will always regard me, as the traditional stereotype. I am
stupid, irrational, and threatening.
I remember the very phone conversation I
had with Rabbi Laurie, a man I adored and miss deeply, when he told me that he actively
agitates against Jews marrying non-Jews. I was so taken aback, I gasped. I said
something about there being bigger issues in the world, like global warming. He
said that Jewish survival was more important than global warming. I can understand
Rabbi Laurie's logic while at the same time feeling that pit-of-the-stomach shock
that he didn't think that people like me should marry people like him. Don't
get me wrong; Laurie was a platonic friend, and I did not want to marry him. It
was when he said that for a Christian like me to marry a Jew would be worse
than global warming that I felt rejected by him as a human being in a way that I'd
never felt so rejected before. I must add that Rabbi Laurie was one of the most
loving and supportive friends I've ever had, for almost twenty years, up to the
heartbreaking moment of his premature death.
Back to Professor Ribak's article. I
admire Ribak's courage and honesty. He quotes blatantly bigoted material without
any attempt to lessen its impact through trivializing it or saying, "Well,
you know, the real people at fault here are the Eastern European peasants who
were, after all, drunks." Ribak writes that "Countless accounts and
folktales by eastern European Jews illustrated peasants as dim-witted people,
whose ignorance could only compete with their ruthlessness." Well, yeah.
That's Bieganski in a nutshell.
He quotes Jews describing Polish and
other Eastern European peasants as "drunkards laying around on the dirty
floor," while an observing Jew "laughs with such deep contempt that his
whole body shook."
When I started writing this blog post, I
assume it would be short. Prof. Ribak's article triggered me, though, and this
all came tumbling out. I'm not even going to attempt any neat conclusion.
