Bieganski: Alternate Covers

Ivan Grave did a brilliant job with "Bieganski"'s cover. The cover captures both Shylock and Bieganski, the Brute Polak. The font is perfect. Above, an early version of the cover, with the proportions different from the final draft.

Ivan did several alternate covers, from which I was allowed to select my favorite. Those are below. 

  

More of Ivan Grave's work can be seen here.

I especially like this cover:

"The Kikey Ones": Bieganski as a Support for Polish Identity and Polish Self-Hatred

Phil Green (Gregory Peck) schools Miss Wales (June Havoc) in "Gentleman's Agreement" 1947.

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Phil Green, a handsome magazine journalist, has just revealed to Miss Elaine Wales, his secretary, a cool and soignée blond, that he is a Jew.

Miss Wales relaxes her guard. She reveals that she, too, has disguised her identity in order to pass, in order to be perceived as a Gentile, in order to work at this prestigious publication.

In fact, Miss Wales had to change her name to get her current job as a secretary. Her real name had been Estelle Walovsky. When she applied for jobs as Estelle Walovsky, she received no offers. When she applied for the same job, with the same CV, as Elaine Wales, she was hired. The job she received, via this subterfuge, was as Phil Green's secretary.

Green is outraged. He tells his boss that the company must hire any qualified applicant, regardless of religion.

But Miss Wales is not happy. She tells Phil Green. Their conversation, below:

Miss Wales: You're practically inviting any type at all to apply.

Green: Any type? What do you mean?

Miss Wales: Mr. Green, you don't want things changed around here, do you? Even though you are a writer, and it's different for writers.

Green: How?

Miss Wales: Get one wrong one in here, and it'll come out of us. It's no fun being the fall guy for the kikey ones.

Green: Words like yid and kike and kikey and nigger and coon make me sick no matter who says them.

Miss Wales: But, sometimes I even say it about me. Like if I'm about to do something I know I shouldn't I say, ''Don't be such a little kike.'' That's all. Let one objectionable one in here –

Green: What do you mean by "objectionable?"

Miss Wales: Loud and too much rouge –

Green: This magazine doesn't hire any loud, vulgar girls. Why should they start?

Miss Wales: You know the sort that starts trouble in a place like this and the sort that doesn't, like you or me –

Green: You mean because we don't look especially Jewish, because we're OK Jews, with us it can be kept comfortable and quiet?

Miss Wales: I didn't say –

Green: Miss Wales, I hate anti-Semitism and I hate it from you or anybody who's Jewish as much as I hate it from Gentiles.

June Havoc plays Miss Wales

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Recently Tygodnik Powszechny posted, on the magazine's facebook webpage, a link to their coverage of "Bieganski."

Several posters, with speed, alacrity and hammer-like emphasis – no nuance, no room for discussion – rushed to insist that Bieganski, the Brute Polak stereotype, is no stereotype; rather, Poles really are lowlifes, stupid, bigoted, crude, con artists, the worst. There was no need to cite social science research, or to compare Poles with any other ethnic group. Poles are the nadir. Period.

Not all posts contained this content. Many did. And they received "like" votes.

These are people posting in the Polish language, on the webpage of a Polish publication. One can assume that the posters are themselves Polish.

An example of a comment: A Polish person was overheard referring to African Americans as "asfalt." Ipso facto, Poles are the world's worst bigots.

No denying. Referring to an African American as "asfalt" is racist and disgusting.

Italian Americans refer to African Americans as "mulignan."

Jews refer to African Americans as "schwartzes."

Arabs refer to blacks as "abdi" – the Arabic word for black and the word for slave.

I live in multicultural New Jersey. All these phrases and attendant attitudes are part of my day-to-day life.

I don't mention this reality to excuse any Poles who use the word "asfalt." I mention this because nothing about ethnicity in America can be understood in isolation. That would be obvious to anyone, but to the posters insisting that Poles are the unquestioned nadir, this reality is not necessary.

What was necessary is for these posters was to rush forward and insist the worst about the Poles.

Why? It's counterintuitive.

In attempting to explain the situation to me, my facebook friends talked about current tensions in Polish society: the post-communist, modernization, "wojna polsko-polska." Others mentioned Poles who miss the mostly rural, devoutly Catholic and traditional past v. Poles eager to modernize.

That's all true and important and good.

But there is something else going on.

Here's my best guess:

Poles and Polonians know about what I call "Bieganski, the Brute Polak stereotype."

They know that Poles are understood as the nadir, the bad guy, the irredeemable beast.

They have two choices.

They can fight that stereotype.

Given that the stereotype is so all pervasive, they will probably lose. They will lose arguments, friendships, respect, jobs, funding.

Or, they can make the "correct" choice, in a Darwinian sense. They can align themselves with the power group, the overwhelming tide of opinion, in America, England, Germany, the scholars, the newspapers, the films, the museums, the novels, the websites about poetry, the paperback bestseller – all amply documented in "Bieganski" the book and this blog – that participate in rewriting the Holocaust, American immigration history, American labor history, and current American multicultural realities by exploiting Bieganski, the Brute Polak stereotype.

For the enhancement of their own survival, their own earning power, their own social networks, their own status, they can rush to say, yes, yes, Poles really are the worst.

And, by saying this, they also say – and there is no need to state this overtly – "I'm not one of those brute Polaks. I'm one of the superior, evolved people. Just like you. Because I see and say how bad other Poles are."

In other words, they play Miss Wales' game.

Me?

The late, great John Garfield is one of my favorite actors. Like me, he was the working class child of Eastern European immigrants. Like my dad, he was sent to reform school.

Garfield couldn't play Miss Wales' game if he wanted to. As old timers might have said, "He had the map of Israel all over his face." He was politically active in a politically incorrect way – yes I identify – and he died young, of a heart attack.

There's a scene in "Gentleman's Agreement" where Garfield just can't take it any more. He stands up, and he punches a bigot out.

Miss Wales is a nice lady. But I'm with Garfield – aka Jacob Julius Garfinkle.

It's better to die on your feet than live on your knees.

John Garfield Stands Up

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The "New" Germany Knew about Eichmann's Whereabouts in 1952

Eichmann. NOT a Sexy Nazi. 

"Bieganski" addresses the question: Why are Poles and Poland often tainted with guilt for the Holocaust in a way that Germans and Germany often not? Some of my informants, when asked about possible travel to Poland, insisted they would never travel to such a guilty, dangerous, anti-Semitic country. Then, without irony, they would quickly mention how much they'd enjoyed trips to Austria or Germany, and how they'd love to return.

The answer to this question is complex. One answer was hinted at by Tom Segev in his excellent book, "The Seventh Million: Israelis and the Holocaust."

In 1960, Israeli Mossad agents captured SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann in Argentina. Eichmann had organized mass deportations of Jews to ghettoes and extermination centers. The trial was televised.

The Eichmann trial, according to Segev, its drama and unambiguous climax, helped to clear Germany's name, and to usher in the concept of a "new" Germany that was cleansed of taint. One obviously bad man could be put on trial, convicted, and hanged, as Eichmann was. After his execution, the rest of Germany could move on.

A recent article in the New York Times suggests that Germany might not have been as "new" after World War II as one might have liked.

When Israelis captured Eichmann, West Germans swore that they had had no idea that he had been hiding in Argentina. In fact, this article states, they knew as early as 1952, and did nothing about it.

Neither West Germans nor Americans were keen to arrest Eichmann. Germans today don't want to think about their government's knowledge of his whereabouts. Both Germany and the US employed Nazis in government jobs. Both want to retain the positive image of post-war Germany.

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50 Years After Trial, Eichmann Secrets Live On

By Michael Kimmelman

Published: May 8, 2011

Germany is famous for confronting its Nazi past. But confronting the years after the war is another matter. The latest proof comes as the country’s foreign intelligence agency, the BND, refuses to declassify several thousand secret files detailing what Adolf Eichmann, the high-ranking Nazi who helped orchestrate the Holocaust, was doing between 1945 and his capture by Mossad agents in Buenos Aires in 1960. More than a few Germans have been speculating that the refusal has as much to do with tarnishing a cherished era as with betraying potential sources.

The 50th anniversary of Eichmann’s trial this spring has cast the early days of the postwar Federal Republic in a fresh historical light. Those were the years when the new West Germany held itself up as the cure for what ailed a humiliated and broken nation, and as an alternative to the Communist East.

Link to full text of article.

Tygodnik Powszechny Publishes an Article on "Bieganski"

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Tygodnik Powszechny, a Catholic Polish weekly magazine, is an historic publication. It was founded in 1945 under Adam Stefan Cardinal Sapieha, himself an historic personage who helped Poland survive Nazi and then Soviet occupation, and who mentored a young Karol Wojtyla.

Tygodnik Powszechny has published Maria Czapska, who had taken part in Zegota, Karol Wojtyla, Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, Leszek Kolakowski, Stanislaw Lem, Czeslaw Milosz and Zbigniew Herbert.

After anti-Semitic attacks in post World-War-II Poland, for example the Kielce pogrom, Tygodnik Powszechny was one of several "outstanding literary and public-interest weeklies" in Poland that protested. "The moral pitch of their articles is so high, so dramatic, so full of exasperation, that one reads them as mourning prayers." Poles "spoke in print, forming the republique de lettres and humanities of postwar Poland" according to "Lessons and Legacies: The Holocaust in International Perspective" (85).

Tygodnik Powszechny was closed in 1953 after refusing to print Stalin's obituary. Jerzy Turowicz, Tygodnik Powszechny's editor, decided that since he could say nothing good about Stalin, he would say nothing at all.

Under Soviet domination, Tygodnik Powszechny gave voice to the opposition. The Encyclopedia of Modern Christian Politics reports that it "constantly pushed the limits of censorship" and that editor Turowicz's "masterful Aesopian prose often transcended those limits."

Under Soviet domination, Tygodnik Powszechny was "Poland's best newspaper: the most reliable source of undoctored information, and the most stimulating forum for social commentary … [it] unmasked the ideological pretensions of the regime and sketched the contours of a truly democratic society with an intellectual integrity and depth that could not be approached by even the most sophisticated of the communist journals.

The regime constantly harassed Tygodnik Powszechny … [including] by manipulating its circulation through the government's control over newsprint … readers passed issues along through a network of intellectual dissent … there were also direct threats on editors and contributors … Bishop Karol Wojtyla was unofficial protector of the newspaper's staff." from "The Final Revolution: The Resistance Church and the Collapse of Communism" by George Weigel.

In January, 1987, Tygodnik Powszechny began a new era in Polish-Jewish relations when it published a groundbreaking essay by Jan Blonski, "The Poor Poles Look at the Ghetto."

Tygodnik Powszechny is the only publication, other than Italy's Il Tempo, to have interviewed Pope John Paul II.

After Czeslaw Milosz won the Nobel Prize, Tygodnik Powszechny was the only magazine in which he published his poems.

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Tygodnik Powszechny is scheduled to publish an article about "Bieganski: The Brute Polak Stereotype in Polish-Jewish Relations and American Popular Culture" by Danusha V. Goska. The article is scheduled to appear in its May 29, 2011 issue, and I encourage interested readers to support Tygodnik Powszechny by purchasing a copy of the magazine and having a look.

I thank Magda Rittenhouse, author of the article. For his invaluable help, I am indebted to Witold Turopolski.

"Bieganski" is the cover story of the May 29, 2011 issue of Tygodnik Powszechny. 

Link to online preview of the article that will appear in full in the print version.

One Photo That Says Much: Lucja Siemienowski Adams and Her Two Babies, Slonim, 1939

It's a lovely photo, isn't it? Anyone, anywhere, immediately enters the heart of the photo, and identifies: A family. A home. A mother's love. The future in the babies' eyes. Tradition in the homestead. You can almost step into the photo. As welcome guest, you enjoy the hospitality of this loving family. Through lace curtains, a cool glass in your hand, you watch butterflies flit through the garden, and tell, and hear long, old, stories.

Lucja Siemienowski Adams wrote this caption beneath her photo: "Two babies, Henryk and Danuta – 1939 in Slonim, northeastern Poland before World War II started and our region was invaded by the Russians. My husband was arrested and deported to a forced labor camp in Kolyma in far northeastern Russia in November, 1939. My mother-in-law, the two children and I were deported in a cattle transport train to a hard labor camp in Siberia in February 1940."

I asked permission to share the photo here. Lucja responded, "It is fine to share my pictures. I only have a couple from that time, since we had to leave mostly everything behind when we were deported."

Kolyma may not be familiar to the reader. In fact, the name "Kolyma" should be as well known, and as notorious, as Auschwitz.

"Bieganski" exposes stereotypical images of Brute Polaks pervasive in Western culture, and analyzes why the Brute Polak image is so central to Western thought today. The photo, above, and the story behind it, does much of the same hard work. It shows human beings. It tells the truth.

Caption beneath this photo: 

Uganda, Africa at our Polish refugee settlement in Koia, close to Kampala near Lake Victoria - sometime between 1943 and 1947.

Caption beneath this photo: 

Me in Uganda in the mid 1940's. I had learned English and was now an elementary school teacher where both the Polish refugee children and the natives attended school.

These are just a few of Lucja's photos. Hers is just one story. Please learn more. 

Simply a Fine Poem by Jan Kot

Jan Kot. Photo courtesy Danuta Reah

I read the poem, below, on the webpage of the facebook group, "The Way Back." I immediately fell in love with the poem for its embodiedness, its spontaneity, economy, authority – for its joy, for its heartbreak.

The poem's author is Jan Kot. His photo is above.

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1938

I didn’t see you

1939

Was too late

Do you remember when

you came to see me

standing there on Gorzow Station

Where is Janek? Did he forgotten to meet me?

And when I crept behind you

pick you off the ground

and twirl. And you pleaded

Put me down. Put me down Janek.

What all this people will say.

And then you kiss me and ruffle my hair

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About the poem, Danuta Reah, Jan Kot's daughter, wrote:

"I'd like to share a poem my father wrote. He was an officer in the Polish cavalry and escaped after the invasions of 1939. He joined the Polish Free Forces in Britain as a paratrooper, and was seriously injured when a parachute drop went wrong. He wasn't able to return to Poland for decades after the war – and by the time he was able to return, his mother was dead. This poem is about the last time he saw her."


Danuta, under the pen name Carla Banks, is the author of the highly recommended WWII-related murder mystery, "The Forest of Souls."

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Danuta also shared the photo, below. The photo is from the Museum of the Great Patriotic War in Minsk, Belarus. The young woman is Masha Bruskina, a 17 year old Jewish partisan.

I want people to look at this photo. The media feeds us Sexy Nazis. Many buy it. I do not. This is what real Nazis looked like, as they snuffed out human lives, lives like our own, like our friends, like our parents, like our children. They looked ugly.

I Support Israel, and as an American I Never Thought I'd Have to Emphasize That

I Support Israel, and as an American I Never Thought I'd Have to Emphasize That: My headline for this blog entry was going to be, "Obama to Israel: Drop Dead," but I googled the phrase and discovered that thousands of websites have gotten there before me.

I grew up with veterans of WW II. My dad was a combat sergeant in the Pacific Theater. Several of my friends had parents who were concentration camp survivors: Polish Catholics, Polish Jews, Ukrainian Orthodox. That post-WWII-America recognized that Israel was a miracle, a good thing, a tiny state, an American ally in a very bad neighborhood, an honorable democracy, the appropriate home of millions of people who, we now know genetics show, go back in that Holy Land for thousands of years, and who suffered, but survived, under domination by hostile, genocidal neighbors: Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Romans, and invading Jihadis from the Saudi peninsula, using a text that identifies Jews and Christians as monkeys and pigs as their ethical guide. Jews from Yemen, Iraq, Iran, and Morocco left dhimmitude and made aliyah and the world looked on and glowed.

Now the world is turned upside down. Christians burn in Egypt and Obama talks about the peaceful unity of Muslim and Copt, and, in the same speech, talks in cozy vocabulary more appropriate to a church basement of Jews and Arabs holding a "swap" meet to bargain land for peace. Yeah, that worked really well in Gaza. But the ministry of politically correct truths says so so it must be true.

Simpleminded people see Polish-Jewish relations as two opposing teams: Polish Catholics v. Polish Jews. Those people are stupid and worth listening to only as case studies in bigotry. In fact those worth listening to realize that Poles and Jews are essential to each other.

Further, those worth listening to realize that the Brute Polak stereotype can be disseminated by anyone, not just Jews. Examples on this blog include a book by a Liberal German-American Presbyterian Elder. And Jews have been among those in the forefront of fighting against the Brute Polak stereotype.

Similarly, simpleminded people may think that anti-Polish prejudice and anti-Jewish prejudice would not co-exist. Au contraire.

In a previous post I detailed some of my own experiences as a Bohunk in the Ivory Tower. I described a graduate school classroom where I was asked to apologize for being Polish. In fact that same professor made anti-Semitic, anti-Israel statements. That will not make sense to anyone who, mistakenly, sees Polish-Jewish relations through the failed "Poles v. Jews" paradigm.

In fact the world is far more complex. Bieganski, the Brute Polak stereotype is beloved of a certain kind of mindset that has come to dominate in elite circles in recent years. An exemplar of this mindset: the Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, Tony Kushner, who has made anti-Catholic – "Pope John Paul II endorses murder" – and anti-Israel statements. An example of this mindset at work is NPR's recent firing of Juan Williams. This post explains why, for elites of this mindset, Muslims trump blacks.

So, yes, me, Polish-Slovak-Catholic American, author of a book critical of stereotypes of Poles, I support Israel. And I never thought I'd have to emphasize that publicly. I never thought my country would become a place where I'd have to.