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One must face 'bad history' with the whole truth. But Poland today is not an anti-Semitic country
Wednesday, July 25, 2001
By Rafal Geremek
Rain fell on the afternoon of July 10 in Jedwabne, a small town northeast of Warsaw, as Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski apologized for Polish complicity in a 1941 massacre of Jews. Three thousand people gathered, some from around the world. Standing at Kwasniewski's side, Szewach Weiss, Israel's ambassador to Poland, said, "This rain may be a symbol that God also wants to cry with us."
Exactly 60 years ago, on the order of a self-appointed mayor, thugs carrying axes, knives and sticks herded their Jewish neighbors to a barn and set it on fire.
The history of the Jedwabne massacre was known only to a relative few, until the publication ealier this year of "Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne" by Jan Tomasz Gross, a Polish-American professor at New York University. It hit like an earthquake in Poland and started a public debate unprecedented in recent years. And in an unprecedented way, Poland shows the world how to face the "bad history."
In a recent editorial, the Chicago Tribune wrote that "Hitler's 'Final Solution' succeeded in Poland, where anti-Semitism persists today -- and only a few thousand Jews remain." Such a statement has the same worth as disgusting anti-Semitic platitudes. The Nazis established concentration camps in Poland not because Poles hated Jews more than other Europeans did. It happened because most European Jews -- 3.3 million -- lived in Poland. Poland's kings had offered them shelter from the Middle Ages and later. They enjoyed freedom not afforded to Jews living elsewhere in Europe.
Poland today is not an especially anti-Semitic country. I remember when I was traveling around Poland with a friend from New York, who is Jewish. His family was scared for him -- as much as for his brother who served in the Israeli Army in the Golan Heights. Yet when I introduced him as a Jew to ordinary Poles, people showed curiosity rather than prejudice.
You can find anti-Semitism and stupidity there in Poland and elsewhere -- France, Britain and Illinois, for instance. Openly anti-Semitic parties draw less than 1 percent of the vote in parliamentary elections.
Yes, 48 percent of Poles reject the idea of apologizing for the Jedwabne massacre. But the overwhelming majority of those who oppose the apology react this way not because they are anti-Semitic. It's because they are tired of having to defend themselves against such accusations as the Chicago Tribune's.
Most painful for the Polish people is the fact that the rest of the world seems more fixated on the few Poles who collaborated with the Nazis in killing the Jews and turning them in than on the many more who saved them. About 100,000 Jews survived due to Polish help, despite the fact that protecting Jews was punishable by death. About 2,000 Poles were executed because of it.
Some of those saviors are still alive, such as Irena Sendlerowa, 91, of Warsaw who saved 2,500 Jewish children, changing their identity documents during the war. Sendlerowa was a member of group called "Zegota," which was part of the Polish resistance dedicated to rescuing their Jewish countrymen. Zegota is credited by Simon Wiesenthal with having saved some 40,000 Jews. There was only one article in American newspapers about Sendlerowa, a dozen or so about Zegota -- and 164 articles about the massacre in Jedwabne. Some people know that Poles had many "Schindlers." Ambassador Weiss of Israel is one who knows it well. He is one of the children saved by Poles.
To understand what happened in Jedwabne, we have to review the history of Polish-Jewish relations. After Poland had gained independence in 1918, ending the 120-year period of partition, anti-Semitism was, unfortunately, rising, especially in the 1930s. But it was economic conflict, not religious or racial.
In September 1939, Poland was torn into two pieces by neighboring totalitarian monsters: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
In eastern prewar Poland, the Soviets started to exterminate all the people who didn't fit in with Communist society, especially the Polish intelligentsia. Many Jews collaborated with the Soviet occupation. Their activity harmed not only Poles, Belarusans and Ukrainians living in this area, but also other Jews. Rich and middle-class Jews lost their property. Jews lost religious and cultural autonomy. But those who joined local Soviet authorities or Soviet militia and security forces were highly visible and that aggravated anti-Semitic resentments.
But in "Neighbors," Gross claims that a large Polish crowd killed the Jews out of fanatical religious passion, because the Polish Catholic Church taught them that "Jews are Christ killers." This statement touches on the biggest area of dispute. The strongest of Gross' opponents, Tomasz Strzembosz, a World War II historian, pointed to many incidents of Jewish-Soviet collaboration in Jedwabne. Also, experts checking the grave two months ago found a statue of Lenin, indicating that the fury was fueled more by political than religious reasons.
But even Strzembosz emphasizes that this collaboration cannot be a justification for massacre, just as pre-war anti-Semitism cannot be an excuse for Jews who collaborated with the Soviets. That's why Polish Catholic bishops apologizing for the massacre during their own ceremony (May 29) said they expect also an apology from the Jewish side in the future.
The second area of dispute concerns how deep was the German involvement. It doesn't excuse the Polish assailants, who took revenge on innocents.
But if we are seeking truth we should find the whole truth. Only then we can learn something important from the history. And from Jedwabne case we can learn how people can behave if you destroy a community's elite.
Rafal Geremek, a Polish journalist, is at the Post-Gazette on an Alfred Friendly Press Fellowship. His e-mail address is rgeremek@post-gazette.com.