"Green Vase." A Bohunk in the Ivory Tower, Continued

Source

Some years back I received an interesting email from a senior Polonian leader. This person wrote to say that she loved my work, but that "powerful people in Polonia" didn't like me.

I was amazed by this. I didn't know that there were powerful people in Polonia. If there were, why did Polonia face so many intractable problems, not least of which was the pervasiveness and power of the Bieganski stereotype?

I was also amazed to contemplate that any powerful people in Polonia were even aware of my work enough to dislike it.

The email continued. The reason they don't like you, this person said, is that you are open about your parents being peasant immigrants. You talk publicly about being working class. They want to hear only about Chopin, Curie, and other high class Poles.

Well.

I don't know if what this person said was true, or just idle gossip. What we do know is that Poland was a majority peasant country well into the twentieth century. Heroes on horseback get a lot of attention, but most Poles' heroics, in the Old Country and in the US, consisted of working very hard under very tough conditions.

Integration of Poland's elites and its peasants and workers has always been a challenge, as students of Polish history know all too well.

Unfortunately, contempt for the Poles who earn their living by the sweat of their brow is not limited to aristocratic snobs. There are all too many Poles in Poland eager to denounce American Polonians as backward, unworthy embarrassments too stupid to read their Milosz, too eager to go bowling instead. I get emails from snobs telling me that lumpen Polish Americans are responsible for the Brute Polak stereotype because we are all, well, brutes.

What are ya gonna do?

I've been told that there are so many Polish cleaning women in the US that they introduced the word "klinowac" into Polish. It is constructed from the American verb "clean" and "owac," a Polish verb ending.

Like a great many Polish, Slovak, and other Bohunk women, I worked, often full-time, while a full-time graduate student.

Lunch Ticket, the literary journal of Antioch University Los Angeles, has just published a piece by me about my time as a live-in domestic servant and full-time graduate student. You can read that piece, "Green Vase," here.

Call It Genocide: "The Eagle Unbowed: Poland and the Poles in the Second World War" by Halik Kochanski, Reviewed

In my work on the Brute Polak stereotype, I attempt to explain why so many otherwise Politically Correct people, who find stereotyping of African Americans, homosexuals, and women to be utterly beyond the pale, feel free to engage in the most egregious stereotyping of Poles. One justification for anti-Polish stereotyping: "Poles have not suffered." Others have suffered, and they must be shielded from verbal assault. Poles, on the other hand, have not suffered, and deserve no such protection.

Poles have not suffered: that anyone could say this, never mind as an excuse for stereotyping, demonstrates that Poles have not adequately communicated their story on college campuses, in literature, through museums or in the political arena. In addition, there are pressures against Poles speaking the truth. In 1939, a week before the Nazi blitzkrieg in Poland, Hitler stated, "I put ready my Death's Head units, with the order to kill without pity or mercy all men, women, and children of the Polish race or language." I was once told that I could not include that quote in a scholarly work if I wished to see my work published. Referencing Polish suffering, I was told, would be interpreted as an attempt to minimize Jewish suffering.

According to the Harvard University Press webpage, in "'The Eagle Unbowed,' Halik Kochanski tells, for the first time, the story of Poland’s war in its entirety." It's been a long wait, but now that Kochanski's book is here, one thing is clear: if the word "genocide" cannot be applied to Poland during World War II, then the word "genocide" has no meaning.

The sadism and suffering recorded in these pages is overwhelming. Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia invaded Poland in September, 1939. Both intended to erase Poland. Both explicitly stated as much. Both Germany and Russia had, for hundreds of years, tried to erase Poland. Both performed genocidal acts, including mass murder of non-combatant civilians, mass murder of political, religions, cultural, and military leaders, targeting children for persecution, outlawing education, outlawing Polish language, focused attempts to erase Polish culture, mass deportations, enslavement, and resettlement of former Polish territory with non-Poles. Both had clear and plausible plans for the ultimate elimination of Poland and Polishness; the German was named Generalplan Ost.

Polish priests in Dachau concentration camp; Polish professors in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp; Polish military officers mass murdered by the Soviets in Katyn; Polish children kidnapped by Nazis; some to be raised as Nazis, some to be gassed; Polish children starved to death in the Soviet Gulag; Polish villages destroyed by the Nazis; Polish villagers massacred by Soviet partisans; Polish villagers massacred by Ukrainians; Polish museums, factories, forests, libraries, artworks, burned, bombed, despoiled, crated up and carted away; Poland abandoned and betrayed by her allies France, England, and America: If the word "genocide" cannot be applied to this, the word "genocide" has no meaning. It does not belittle others' suffering to state that Poland was a victim of genocide during World War II. It demeans humanity to refuse to say so.

We've read bits and pieces of this history in other volumes. If Harvard's advertising is correct, this is the first English-language overview of WW II in Poland. It is the first such book I have read. Even though I am familiar with this history, reading it all in one sitting is an emotional and spiritual challenge.

Kochanski's style is brisk and no-nonsense. She covers a massive amount of material – addressing diplomacy, military maneuvers, espionage, torture – in the most efficient manner possible. She does not linger over the heartbreaking aspect of her narrative. She does select quotes that do the work of bringing to brief life the emotional impact of massive human evil. These quotes flame out on the page, and, like lit matchsticks, go out quickly, as we return to the forced march through hell. At times, Kochanski's text can be dry. This is especially true of the opening chapters that hurry the reader through a necessary introduction to Polish history. Even when discussing highly contested material, such as the role of Polish non-Jews in the Nazi genocide of Jews, Kochanski is dispassionate and quick. This book will never be a bestseller, but anyone who has any interest in Poland owes it to himself to read it, indeed, to soldier through it.

I am not a historian, and I am not qualified to assess this massive amount of data. I have read professional reviews of "The Eagle Unbowed" and been positively impressed. I've also read two critical reviews of the book, one by Antony Polonsky, the other by John Connelly. Polonsky praises the book on its handling of military history and the Second Polish Republic. Polonsky cites errors of fact, errors that could easily be corrected in subsequent editions. Polonsky faults the book for not citing recent work by Barbara Engelking, Andrzej Zbikowski and Jan Grabowski, including work that depicts Polish-Jewish relations during World War II in a less favorable light.

In his December 3 review of "The Eagle Unbowed" in The Nation, John Connelly mimes a tone of forced befuddlement. He doesn't understand how Poles can be sometimes stereotyped as noble, and, at other times, as base scum. Connelly's befuddlement might end if he read "Bieganski, The Brute Polak Stereotype." Ironically, Connelly chastises Kochanski for not being aware of current scholarship. This current scholarship, Connelly writes, demonstrates that Poles, inspired by their own anti-Semitism, collaborated with Nazis in the Final Solution. He also criticizes Kochanski for citing anti-Communism as the cause of Polish hostility to Jews, for example, in territory often occupied by the Soviets. In sum, Connelly writes, Kochanski is to be faulted because the Polish viewpoint prevails in her book.

No doubt historians will debate whether or not Kochanski is too soft on, or underrepresents, Polish anti-Semitism, and whether or not the book is representational. I am not an historian, and I can only watch from the sidelines of such a debate. No matter the outcome, the book as it stands now is one that must be read by anyone who wants to talk about Poland during WW II.

Beata Chomatowska Commemorates the Jews of Muranow and a Disgruntled Pole Complains

Photo: Adam Galica. Source

NBC news just published "The Ghosts of Muranow: A Journalist's Mission to Illuminate Poland's Haunted Past," by Donald Snyder. Snyder's article records Polish journalist Beata Chomatowska's efforts to bring attention to Jews who were murdered in Muranow by the Nazis. Muranow is a district of Warsaw.

The full article is linked, below.

There are comments below the article.

One of those commenting wrote:

"Yes, it is nice to remember history, but not to falsify it. The woman remembers Jewish history, but not Polish history which I know a lot better than she.

I lived only a block from there and have seen the destruction myself. I lived through German occupation, the bombings, the extermination of Polish population by the Germans and then the Soviet under Jewish leadership of Jakub Berman.

'Communist rulers.... purposely erased its Jewish history ' what b.s. ! The Communist rulers were Jews sent by Stalin who were too busy exterminating Polish patriots who fought Germans and who were being hunted down like dogs by the Jewish Communist mafia with Stalin's blessing.

This women so concerned with Jewish propaganda forgets the suffering of her own people (if she is Polish at all ) that she has no clue what actually happened.

I find this article disgusting because I have seen the suffering first hand and remember freezing and being hungry within 500 ft. of the picture. The Jewish whining about being victims and forgetting their part in bloody extermination of Poles is beyond my comprehention [sic]. All this Jewish propaganda is to try to justify killings of Palestinians, for which there is no excuse. One crime does not justify another."

My response to this person.

If you want people to remember Polish history, you have to do what Ms. Chomatowska and others are doing to educate people about Jewish history.

You have to read books, buy books, and get books on syllabi. You have to unite with your fellows, organize, and act strategically. In short, you have to do this.

The world is tired of Poles who do not get their own story out there, or support those who do so, but who do manage to sit on the sidelines, complaining bitterly, when others tell their story publicly. The person who posted the above message is like the dog in the manger. He isn't doing the work necessary to commemorate his own history. He spitefully rants against those who commemorate a history he does not value as part of his own. By his anti-Semitism, he shames his own history.

Link to the Donald Snyder's article about Beata Chomatowska commemorating the murdered Jews of Muranow is here.

Thank you to Otto Gross for sending this in. One of Otto's previous blog contributions can be read here.

Bieganski on The Big Bang Theory

Still photo from the television show, "The Big Bang Theory." 

Bieganski made an appearance on a television comedy show entitled "The Big Bang Theory." A joke depended on the Bieganski stereotype. Thanks to Otto Gross for sending this in.

Below are excerpts from an online site "explaining" the joke, and the Bieganski stereotype.

Begin excerpts from online site:

A viewer asked: "so when Bernadette said that her ancestors and Howards ancestors were neighbors in Poland is the assumption that they were on opposite sides? Or that both were persecuted? Or something else I am clueless about?"

[A Polish character is] extremely right wing and has some anti-semitic tendencies

Persecution of Jews was endemic in Poland - Bernadette's ancestors would have ignored the persecution or participated in it.

An unspecified pogrom or two. It's all the explanation the joke really needs.

End of excerpts.

I've repeatedly said here on the blog that Polonians need to respond to the Bieganski, Brute Polak stereotype by uniting, supporting each other, organizing, and acting strategically. A three-part blog post on the Crisis in Polonian Leadership, Organization and Vision outlines this plan of action.

So far no Polonians have taken up this challenge. Most Polonians do nothing. Some write individual leaders to those they perceive as being responsible for our problems. One such person wrote a letter to a website devoted to "The Big Bang Theory." That letter is copied and pasted below. Believe me, this letter will do nothing to lessen the power of the Brute Polak stereotype.

Full text of a letter written to a website devoted to "The Big Bang Theory:"

THAT WAS FUCKING RACIST! I'M POLISH AND I'M OFFENDED BY THIS JOKE. IT'S "THE POLISH CONCENTRATION CAMPS" LIE ALL OVER AGAIN.

You know why there was so many jews in Poland prior to war? No? It's beacuse poles were the most tolerant people in whole Europe. When in all over the continent jews were attacked by angry mobs, they fled to Poland, only sanctuary they had for almost 8 or 9 centuries. Poland was the first country to resist Nazi Germany and only one ever invaded both by III Reich and Soviet Union and what we get? The same crap that we are responsible for holocaust.

FUCK YOU TBBT. You have one fan less to worry about.

A Bohunk in the Ivory Tower, Continued

Sarah el Yafi. Facebook

Source

Polonians, including Polish-Americans, often complain about distortions of Polish history and stereotyping of Poles. Polonians have not yet organized to change these distortions and negative stereotyping. A three-part blog post, "The Crisis in Polonian Leadership, Organization, and Vision," offers a roadmap. Polonians can end the "Bieganski, Brute Polak Stereotype." All that is needed is the will.

One of the steps Polonians will have to take once they decide to take action against the Bieganski stereotype: Polonians will have to decide to support their own scholars.

Fund scholarships and fellowships for students working against the Bieganski, Brute Polak stereotype.

Organize to socially support Bohunk scholars in the same way that African Americans support African American scholars, Jewish Americans support Jewish scholars, gay rights groups support gay scholars, etc. More on this in the first "Bohunk in the Ivory Tower" blog post.

Employ scholars who have contributed to the fight against the Bieganski, Brute Polak stereotype.

Make sure that books like "Bieganski" and "The Auschwitz Volunteer" and films like "General Nil" and "Man of Marble" are on syllabi.

Mount effective protest against the use of books like "Maus" to teach the Holocaust.

***

Many who do not spend time on campuses assume that campuses are places where the objective truth is valued, and where those who discover and speak the objective truth are rewarded.

That is not the case. Politics fashions what can and cannot be said on college campuses. Current politics do not allow the elimination of the Bieganski, Brute Polak stereotype. Rather, they create an environment where that stereotype is necessary to support popular historical revision. Two recent events illustrate this.

According to a youtube video, on October 25, 2012, Grover Furr, a Montclair University professor, to applause, publicly denied atrocities committed by Communists, including Joseph Stalin. That video is visible here.

On November 9, the Jerusalem Post reported that Harvard student Sara el-Yafi protested Harvard's identifying couscous and hummus as Israeli foods in a food court devoted to Israeli foods. Israelis do eat both couscous and hummus. Harvard never identified the foods as exclusively Israeli. Harvard never identified Jews as the inventors of couscous or hummus. Harvard just set up a food court that offered Israeli food and included couscous and hummus, as, indeed, both foods are frequently eaten by Israelis.

Here's the amazing part of this story – Harvard actually publicly apologized for identifying couscous and hummus as Israeli foods. Harvard did not want to offend Arabs.

Remember – a comic book that depicts Poles as pigs is used to teach the Holocaust to young people. That's okay. But offering couscous and hummus on an Israel-themed menu requires a public apology from Harvard to Arabs.

Polonia, if you want to change the Bieganski, Brute Polak stereotype, you must organize, support each other, and act strategically. You exercise zero influence right now. Hummus is a bigger issue to American colleges than the complete historical rewrites that the Bieganski stereotype facilitates.

Polandball: The Bieganski Internet Meme. A Guest Blog Post

There is a particularly influential form of the Bieganski stereotype, and it is among the youth on the internet. It is known as Polandball. They are comics featuring small talking spherical entities that represent nations and peaked on the internet around 2010, although comics are still being created. While there are comics featuring all nations, it started as a satire of Polish internet users from a British perspective. There is a Facebook group about Polandball. I invite you to Google this internet meme and see for yourself.

At a fundamental level these comics dishearten me. Many of them are the same chauvinist mockery of everything Polish, yet are dressed up and presumably treated as intelligent, necessary satire. As 'wit'. My reaction is conflicted to this; I have been taught to laugh at these things, and in many cases I do, as "Poles are too defensive and think they are victims." We should just laugh at the Polack jokes and shut up, right?

But I still see underneath these comics the same old Bieganski: nothing witty or clever, or satirical, but simply the same old reinforcement of prejudice from ages past, a celebration of mockery of the other in cartoon form, an absurdist endorsement of the same old gray status quo, the ritual humiliation and dehumanization of the Bohunk. A reactionary distortion of satire: instead of the marginalized and embattled skewering the elite, here the elite skewers the marginalized and laughs. Can that really be called satire?

I find amazing the meme of Polandball. It's more or less a meme for the internet to project their complexes and fantasies into Europe's most politically correct effigy: Poles. This would have never been tolerated by the masses on the internet if it were any other number of countries: There would never have been a Africaball, Israelball or Mexicanball meme on the level and acceptance that Polandball has become.

I can't be offended by this, not just because I'm American and just have Polish heritage but I find alien the whole mindset of those people who enjoy cranking out these comics. Not the fairly clever ones, but the blatantly provoking ones. This schadenfreude must be a sweet indulgence because kids know they can get away with it. The imageboards would have only taken so much tolerance if this had been Niggerball, Spicball or Kikeball; though it wouldn't be as taboo as posting child porn, it would have ended up fairly close.

It reveals attitudes of UK economic chauvinism and a post-Cold-War ignorance of world affairs. It's supposedly justified by Poles' alleged kneejerk nationalism. I don't deny that exists; I've seen it plenty of times, but it has become a convenient scapegoat of sorts, as though the Poles are on some completely exceptional level when it comes to that sentiment.

Overall the whole meme provides the paradox of giving the user a feeling of politically incorrect rebelliousness – "Stick it to those foreign fuckers!" – while at the same time, as far as mainstream media is concerned, being perfectly politically correct; Poles are considered to be classified under the clumsy Anglo social construct known as "white," but they also "Eastern," so not exactly on the highest tier of "white," so at once they have the cultural stigma of both being depicted as alien, foreign and unwelcome yet not exotic or different enough to be taken seriously if they get offended by the way they're depicted.

I can't feel anything other than constant morbid curiosity and guilt about the whole thing. Guilt because I "ought to be offended" but I feel like it's some kind of karmic crime, too. It seems that something meant to sting and humiliate only seems to inspire me in many ways to understand the thought processes of these people that spread the meme.

Your book "Bieganski" connected with me on a profound level as it explained and made lucid a nameless dilemma that has lurked in my mind my entire life. It is eye-opening to deconstruct a lie that I see all around me culturally, one that is corrupt at the core.

The author of this blog post has chosen to remain anonymous. He has submitted the following examples of Polandball:

Poland isn't always the butt of the joke, though, the guest blogger reports:

Exculpating Germany *During* World War II (!): Bosley Crowther on "The Seventh Cross"

Bosley Crowther

Thanks to the inadequacy of President Barack Obama, Governor Chris Christie, and Mayor Jeff Jones, Paterson, New Jersey's third largest city, and one of the nation's most historic, has left a good number of its citizens without power for the sixth day.

We are cold, we are hungry, and we are worried.

And I've been unable to blog in that time.

But I have been thinking about Polish-Jewish relations.

And I came here to a public library that actually has power to share some thoughts.

***

Readers of "Bieganski" will fully understand the significance of the below-quoted Bosley Crowther, New York Times film review of 1944's "The Seventh Cross."

"Bieganski" describes how guilt for the Holocaust, which properly belongs to German Nazis, is often displaced onto, not just individual Poles, but onto a posited Polish archetype, the Brute Polak.

At the same time, German Nazis can be depicted as sexy. And German Nazis can be exculpated for their guilt through a variety of rhetorical strategies. The chapters on Bieganski in the Mainstream Press and The Necessity of Bieganski talk most directly about the process of exculpating Germans and/or Nazis, and implicating Poles qua Poles, and the clever rhetorical strategies that make all that ethical legerdemain viable.

One previous blog post talks about part of this process in a review of a film, "Decision before Dawn."

While camping out in my dark and cold post-Hurricane Sandy apartment, and reading through my massive clip file on Polish-Jewish relations, I came across Bosley Crowther's review of "The Seventh Cross." Crowther was the New York Times' film critic for twenty-seven years. He had influence, and he reflected the opinions of those who have influence.

"The Seventh Cross" is a grim, black-and-white Hollywood film that attempts to present to American audiences the horrors of the Holocaust.

That this film tries to do that work is admirable. As my own essay on "Hollywood and the Holocaust" reports, too few took up that work.

What I find fascinating about Crowther's review is his immediate and emphatic emphasis, in September of 1944, on NOT blaming or stereotyping Germans.

Think about it.

September, 1944.

By that point, the Holocaust was all but over. The Lodz Ghetto was liquidated in August, 1944. It was the last ghetto in Poland. The gas chambers of Auschwitz murdered their last victims in October, 1944.

Paris had been liberated. The Battle of the Bulge was in full swing. Allies were advancing east. Soviets were advancing west.

It's remarkable that given those world events, American elites were already pressing against any stereotyping of Germans, were, rather, urging Americans to show "tolerance" to Germans. To see how very differently Poles have been treated, please read "Bieganski."

Excerpts from Bosley Crowther's September 29, 1944, review of "The Seventh Cross."

"'Seventh Cross,' Anti-Nazi Drama, With Spencer Tracy, at Capitol Theater

By Bosley Crowther

It was Edmund Burke, the British statesman, who said many, many years ago that he knew of no way of drawing an indictment against a whole people. (The people to whom he then had reference, of course, were the American colonists.) And it is in this same spirit of tolerance that the modern German people are viewed in Metro's absorbing screen version of Anna Seghers' powerful novel, 'The Seventh Cross.' Without in the least overlooking the bestiality of Nazi brutes nor the miserable self-surrender of German citizens to their black regime, this film, which came yesterday to the Capitol, visions a burning zeal for freedom in some German rebels and a core of decency in many simple folk.

True, the German people which it pictures are not supposed to be those of today. They are specifically shown as German people reacting to a crisis in 1936. And presumably most of the rebels and daring burghers of that day are now dead. But the basic theme, by implication, holds today just as much as it held then. It is that in men—even in Germans—there is an instinct for good that cannot be destroyed.

If you will accept this premise, despite the evidence of recent deeds, then you should be both moved and shaken by the better part of this film. For it tells a truly hair-raising story of a German anti-Nazi who escapes from a concentration camp and runs a gamut of terrible trials in his attempt to flee the land. He sees the men who broke out with him killed or captured, one by one; he feels the blank despair and disillusion which comes from finding loved ones false to him. He knows the primitive terror of an animal ruthlessly hunted down, and he gropes in constant dread and suspicion, like a pitiful creature at bay.

All of these torturing emotions are sharply conveyed through the film, as are the more tensile anxieties of the hero when he finds himself with friends. For the most trying part of his experience—and the most touching impact of the theme—comes with the perilous endeavors of these little people to give him aid. The human response of an old pal, now a comfortably settled family man, to the plight of the anti-Nazi outcast is a fine, ennobling portion of the film.

Credit Fred Zinnemann, the director, and Karl Freund, the camera man, for much of the crackling tension and hard-packed realism that prevails. And credit Helen Deutsch for adapting Frau Seghers' novel with all its monstrousness intact. Except for a wholly meretricious romantic interlude provided for the fugitive at the finish, the whole thing rings stunningly true.

Spencer Tracy gives a splendid performance as the tortured and anguished hunted man—a performance sharply reminiscent of that which he gave in 'Fury.' Hume Cronyn is splendidly bourgeois as the old pal who helps him out, and Jessica Tandy is emotionally devastating as the latter's courageous wife. Other good performances are given in lesser roles by Herbert Rudley, Paul Guilfoyle and Signe Hasso, even though that of the last named is a senseless one at best

The big reservation which this writer holds with regard to this film is that concerning the discretion of its theme at this particular time. Without any question, it creates a human sympathy for the people of a nation with whom we are at war and it tends, as have some others, to load Germany's national crime on Nazi backs. Obviously this picture can make sentiment for a 'soft' peace. It looks as though we are getting a dandy 'thriller' at a pretty high price.'"