KRAKOW, Poland - In a 1973 essay in Esquire magazine, Cynthia Ozick speculated on how Jews would be remembered if, like every other nation of antiquity, they had vanished long ago. As people speak today of "the glory that was Greece," she mused, the achievements of the long-gone Jews would be celebrated as "the genius that was Israel."
"How - if there were no Jews - the world would be enraptured!" she wrote. "The people that stood at Sinai to receive a desert vision of purity, the people of scholarly shepherds, humane prophetic geniuses, dreams of justice and mercy" - how admired they would be. In a world without Jews, the memory of Jewish civilization would be endlessly fascinating. "Christian ladies," Ozick imagined, would "study 'The Priceless Culture of the Jews' at Chautauqua in the summertime" or create Jewish prayer shawls at "a workshop on tallith making."
Of course Jews haven't vanished from the world. They have, however, all but vanished from Poland. More than 90 percent of Poland's Jews were murdered during the Holocaust, and most of those who survived emigrated or were driven out long ago. The result is that a land that once was home to 3 million Jews - 10 percent of Polish society, the largest Jewish population in Europe - is now more than 99.9 percent non-Jewish. Millions of Poles have never knowingly met a Jew. But oh, how enraptured they are with the genius that was Israel!
I arrived in Krakow near the end of the annual Jewish Culture Festival, a nine-day extravaganza of concerts, lectures, films, and exhibitions - all with the aim, to quote a festival brochure, of "presenting Jewish culture in all its abundance." An elegant catalog, 160 pages long, lists a dizzying array of offerings. Among them: lectures on "Talmudic thought" and "Jewish medical ethics"; forums on European anti-Semitism and the Hebrew poetry of Haim Nahman Bialik; concerts of klezmer music, liturgical music, and "Songs of the Ghettos and Jewish Resistance"; workshops on Jewish cooking, Hasidic wedding dances, and celebrating Hanukkah with children.
Such a cornucopia of Judaica would be impressive in Los Angeles or New York. In Krakow, with just 200 Jews in a metropolitan population of 1.5 million, it is astounding. More or less as Ozick imagined in 1973, Jews and Jewish culture are being embraced far more ardently in their absence than was ever the case when they were such a visible presence.
On my second night here, I caught part of the festival's closing concert, a kind of Jewish Woodstock that grows more elaborate every year. In the heart of what used to be Krakow's Jewish quarter, before an outdoor stage dominated by a giant electric menorah, 10,000 exuberant Poles swayed, cheered, and even sang along as dozens of Jewish artists from Israel, Europe, and America performed. The concert lasted for seven hours, and was broadcast live on Polish TV. In a country with no more than a wisp of Jewish life, where does such an appetite for things Jewish come from?
For some Poles, interest in Jewish culture is simply fun, or a fad; several in the crowd told me they had come because the concert is such a popular scene, not because of its Jewish content. But others, like 26-year-old Ola, who attended with her two young daughters, were drawn by an inchoate attraction they couldn't explain.
"I can't imagine Krakow without Jewish culture," she told me. "Krakow loves Jewish culture." But when I gently pressed her to say what "Jewish culture" means - how, for example, would she explain it to her daughters? - she replied, vaguely, "It's more about feeling than knowing. 'Jewish' to me means a warm feeling."
Then there are people like Tomasz Sierkierski, a 30-year-old computer programmer who was one of a dozen Poles honored during the festival for preserving Jewish landmarks. Searching for a way to reclaim some of Poland's lost Jewish heritage, he discovered a forgotten Jewish cemetery in Skarszewy, a small town near the Baltic Sea, not far from Gdansk. "It was really destroyed," he said, "full of trash and weeds." He recruited a group of teens from his old high school, and together they spent the summer of 2004 carrying away the rubbish, cleaning and righting the fallen gravestones, and building a stone border for the cemetery.
Why do Poles like Sierkierski - and there are quite a few of them - go to so much trouble? Of all the causes to care about, why worry about Jewish memory?
"Because," he told me, "it is Polish memory too." He knows that nothing will bring back the rich Jewish culture that was once so much a part of Polish life. What the Nazis and Communists destroyed is irretrievably lost. But he wants at least to keep it from being forgotten.
When he first came to Skarszewy, he couldn't locate the cemetery. No one he asked knew anything about it. Eventually an elderly woman pointed him in the right direction, and he found the neglected graves.
"Before this project," Sierkierski said, "no one even knew a Jewish cemetery existed. Now the whole town knows." And that, the look on his face makes clear, made the whole thing worthwhile.
(34) elisheva, January 3, 2018 9:32 PM
In the UK Poles are the most incarcerated foreign nationals
Maybe they really are more violent than other nationalities.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2614279/Poland-tops-league-foreign-inmates-UK-jails-ahead-Ireland-Jamaica.html
(33) elisheva, January 3, 2018 7:53 PM
Immigrant Poles in England brutally attack local Jews in 2017, shouting Zhyd
Polish immigrant to the UK smashes 70 year old Jewish woman's head against a brick wall.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/jewish-woman-70-injured-in-london-anti-semitic-attack/
And here, "racially aggravated assault" also by Poles against British Jews. Somewhat ironically the newcomer attacker tells Jews to get out of England, in her broken English.
Apparently making Poland judenrein by murdering 3 million Jews didn't quench their thirst for Jewish blood. Now they've come for the English Jews.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/235535
And as there are so few Jews in Poland, what better than attacking easily identifiable Jews, just to be on the safe side. Why waste the exertion.
Israeli football team attacked by locals.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/235535
Yes there were incredible righteous Poles who risked everything to save Jews, but they did it despite the Germans and their fellow Poles. They were the exceptions. Many more Poles happily and voluntarily participated in the hunting down, the rounding up and the turning over of Jews, when not just murdering them themselves. The Poles even murdered hundreds of Jews who had the audacity to survive the Holocaust. Deeply entrenched, virulent and violent antisemitism just seems to be the name of the game for these people.
(32) Leon, March 21, 2017 6:47 PM
Many Poles risked their lives to save Jews during Holocaust
In the Holocaust museum in Washington DC I saw a book with lists of people who saved the Jews in their country during German occupation. I noticed that many more names were of people from Poland, than from any other country. It is known that many Poles were executed as penalty for saving Jews.
(31) Pessi, February 12, 2016 7:47 PM
Polish antisemitism exists to this very day.
Jeff, you don't know the Polish people, that's obvious. A little nostalgia on the part of Polish people today for their murdered citizens doesn't cut it for me or most others of Jewish Polish extraction.
My parent's ancesters lived in Poland for hundreds of years. They KNEW what the Polish goyim are like. They refused to let their children learn or speak the language.
In the early 1960's when we lived in Brooklyn, on a freezing winter day, my brother, about 10 or 11 years old, noticed a policeman who was wearing a new type of earmuffs. A piece of fabric from ear to ear held together in front by an elastic. He liked it an went over to the policeman to ask him where he bought it. He told him and my brother asked my mom to buy him the same earmuff as the policeman had. I will never forget what my mother said. She said, " Can you imagine? A Jewish boy goes over to a policeman to ask him something and doesn't get beat up? In Poland it would have been unheard of. Jewish boys didn't go anywhere near the police. They would have been brutally beaten if not killed.
My mother knew how to appreciate America. But, don't kid yourself, in any Polish neighborhood in America, you'll find the same antisemitism. But in America they don't have the power to harm Jews.
(30) Yente, November 11, 2013 8:19 PM
I am a Polish Jew and I am very sorry because of what I have read here. Don`t compare Poles to tigers. Go to yad Vashem and see the Polish trees. You appreaciate people from danmark and other countries who saved Jews but only in Poland Poles were executed with whole their families for hiding Jews. What we would do if we were in such a situation. How many Poles would we hide if we were to pay for it with our and our family life ???
Remember there are People and people everywhere- even in Israel. Besides, many young people do not know anything about their jewishness because their parents decide not to tell them about it. They want to protect them as they believe persecutions of Jews may come back any time and anywhere, therefore they believe it`s better not to be a Jew...
(29) Jarek, November 14, 2011 9:26 PM
I have myself felt and been attracted by this "inchoate" warmth of the Jewry in Poland
And I try to define it. Is it that the Jews radiate a particular atmosphere of their own? Is it that they have a way to impregnate the imagination of the Gentiles around them? Is it that they have that spark in them communicated through literature, films, music, theathre or political intrigues (like Communism which there is not a doubt in my mind is of Jewish making) in which we all are implicated? Or perhaps it is the fascination of the danger behind all this attraction? A sense of danger of being fatally hypnotized and enslaved and devoured. Or is it the secret brotherhood like character of Jewry that as any other secret brotherhood is an object of curiosity and source of disappointment in those who are not its members. Or is it the pure nostalgia after a culture once thriving and now almost extinct? But those harbouring the feelings of nostalgia are in for a rude awakening! The international Jewry is anything but almost extinct. It has become a major force behind the recent developements in the world as the Jewish national inclination to USURY has brought the world to a virtual standstill and a brink of yet another calamity.
Elisheva, January 3, 2018 7:20 PM
Jarek, the living embodiment of just another virulent anti-semitic Pole.
Jarek, you are the direct heir to your countrymen who hunted down, rounded up, turned in and murdered Jews during the Holocaust. If you had been around at the time, given your views, you would also have been hard at it.
And now your compatriots are still at it, this time in England. No Jews in Poland, no problem. Let's move to England en masse, where a "brave Polish hero: attacks a defenseless 70 year old Jewish woman, smashing her head against a brick wall".
And here another case of Polish immigrants' violence against Jews in England.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/235535
And back in Poland, up to your old tricks,
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4761400/Jewish-football-team-anti-Semitic-attack-Poland.html
It would be nice to think that after everything maybe lessons would have been learned. But no, Poles have been wallowing in claiming victimhood instead of facing up to their own virulent and deeply entrenched bloody anti-semitism. And then to top it all you project the machinations of your hate-filled mind onto Jews. That's some act you've got going there, you should join the circus.
(28) Joel, October 16, 2006 9:33 AM
Poles with Jewish blood in their hands
During the Holocaust, many Jewish parents entrusted their children to their gentile neighbors in order to save the children's lives. As a great majority of these parents perished in the war and never returned, nearly all of their children were subsequently raised as Catholics totally unaware of their Jewish identity. Perhaps many of the Polish people drawn to these Jewish events and exhibitions are the children of these lost children and their Jewish soul is yearning to reconnect to something Jewish. Who knows?
(27) Marcel Manson, July 11, 2006 12:00 AM
Just returned from Krakow's Jewish Festival
I have now been 8 times in the last 11 years to the festival and take groups end of June if anyone wants to join contact me on 02089545074. The article only partly deals with young Poles new love 'JEWS' and everyone interested in Polish history and presant should attend this event.
(26) Merlock13, December 2, 2005 12:00 AM
Everyone seems so pessimistic; I for one hope that the Poles have really had a change of heart, even if it is horribly too late. God bless!
Bernie Rosenberg, May 3, 2013 5:20 PM
pbrose98@optonline.net
sorry, but tigers don't change their stripes. remember, history does repeat it self.
Ruth Kaiwai, July 21, 2013 11:56 PM
Tourism
I have visited Cracow as a member of school groups and have visited with my family. Polish people I have spoken to seemed perplexed about why people from all over the world visited Auschwitz, and Schindler's factory that became tidied up into a tourist attraction. I also saw on my last trip in 2007 a freshly painted sign on a door Juden Frei. I think Cracow is reaping tourist dollars more than the Polish citizens are gaining empathy with Jewish culture, let alone remorse and regret for the past.
(25) Eva Sidor, August 12, 2005 12:00 AM
And one more thing: R-Lea wrote: ”Do we Jews need their [Polish] warm feelings or excuses ? No..I do not..”
Do you have enough courage to tell this to Jews in Poland? Did you think about them when you were writing this statement?
(24) Shimon Yaakov, July 31, 2005 12:00 AM
dead Jews are much more interesting than living ones
This is a fascinating article that just goes to show what I have long thought - imaginary Jews are much more acceptable that real Jews. Many people avidly read Jewish stories, and tales of the Chasidim, and laugh at Jewish jokes; and enjoy "kosher-style" food, but never meet any actual Jews. I am a member of an interfaith group who all love "Jewish" things, but who really find meeting and communicating with real Jews very disturbing. To have Jews as a mine of quaint stories and as victims of (other people's) persecution is much more comfortable for Christians than to meet real, living Jews with a real, living religious faith.
(23) Anonymous, July 29, 2005 12:00 AM
What a story....??
Living in a neighbourhood, surrounded by Polish Catholics, I can tell you the only reason Crakow appreciates "Jewish Life" is because their Pope John Paul II has told them to. It is hard to believe that people could be so bigotted that a religious leader had to "tell and compel" these people to be decent to Jews, and issue an edict, if you can imagine, that Anti-Semitism is a sin. This is because the Pope, prior to becoming a priest, DATED a Jewish girl, and to the day of his death, remained his friend, often visiting him at the Vatican.
The people I live around, have only processed this idea, somewhat like eating fish on Friday, and now being able to eat meat, because the Pope said they could. Our fish restaurants are PACKED on Fridays still....mostly with those born prior to Vatican II held in the middle '60's.
Anti Semitism will always be a companion of the Poles....they couldn't kill enough of us, and would do the same tomorrow all over again, given the chance.
Wake up.
(22) Anonymous, July 29, 2005 12:00 AM
Poland: anti-Semitism and anti-Gypsism
Only two peoples were, and still are, targeted for complete elimination by Nazist, for "racial" reasons. These peoples are: the Jews and the Romanies (Gypsies). In Poland people are fascinated with Jewish people, although few Jews are left in their country. The Poles, however, are not exactly known to be friendly and tolerant towards the Romani minority. The survivors of Porraimos (Gypsy Holocaust) had nowhere to go after their "liberation", and still face persecution and racism in Poland, and throughout Europe. It's good that they value the Jewish past of their country, but maybe they also could do some more to protect the future of the Romani/Gypsy population?
(21) Jacqueline, July 29, 2005 12:00 AM
Poland's Fascination
I live in Erie, PA where there is a heavy Polish ethnic influence and also Italian influence. I was not raised as a Jew, and only learned many years after my grandmother died that I have Jewish heritage - which I am reclaiming. Being innocently naive to the point of stupidity, it slipped out in small talk w/ a former co-worker that I was observant and had Jewish heritage and thus could not work Friday night through Saturday night since I committed to observe Shabat and promised the rabbi working with me that I would do this. My co-worker was 3rd generation Polish-American. She was anti-Semitic enough to use her company influence to get me fired from the job I desperately needed to support myself and my older, disabled husband after I only had the job a mere 5 days. She reacted to my being Jewish with disdain, contempt and disgust and attempted to make me see the error in my ways of refusing to accept Jesus Christ as G-d by insisting I change to become a Catholic Christian like everybody else in the company, which is something I simply cannot - and will not do. She was just as prejudiced against the Jewish people as the Poles in Poland - make no mistake about that. She may not have been in a position to heard me onto a death train car and take all my earthly possessions like the Poles did to Jews in WW II, but she certainly made sure my family and I suffered economic hardship by unjustly costing me my job. I filed discrimination charges w/ the EEOC. It took the company 7 months to respond. At the fact-finding conference, the EEOC fact-finder examiner asked me why would employees of theirs all say negative things about me on sworn statements regarding my job performance (something I had been praised and commended for - not criticized for - before it got out that I was Jewish). The fact-finder said " How can these 10 people all be lying?" I told her that Ernst Zundel, a famous Holocaust denier has written books denying that the Holocaust even happened and because he got published, many college professors teach revisionism in classes at universities. I answered her question with a question: "We know the Holocaust happened and we have proof many times over. Ernst Zundel wrote a book of lies saying the Holocaust never occurred and learned scholars parrot it and teach it in universities. How can they all be lying?" That gave the arbitrator something to think about. The fact is, in my humble opinion, Poles - even Polish Americans, tend to be very anti-Semitic and unless non-Jews like the EEOC arbitrator understand the full depth and degree of what anti-Semitism is, and how lies like blood libel and revisionsim affect Jews in America and abroad today, arbitrators like the woman from the EEOC cannot understand that the employer's lies set forth in order to defend the charge of discrimination are merely a mild form of the types of lies that are perpetuated to trivialize Jewish suffering during the Holocaust.
(20) Anonymous, July 29, 2005 12:00 AM
"they were Nazis partners". Really? Would you be killing your partners?
Mr or Ms posyaque@yahoo.com,
You state: "they were Nazis partners". Really? Would you be killing your partners?
Let me say a few words on behalf of my neighbours. Actually, let me refer you to online resources for further cognizance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_atrocities_in_Poland
Terror against Poles in 1939
2,000 Polish intelligentsia were murdered, and another 10,000 in other part of Operation Tannenberg.
In 1939 near a village called Piaœnica Wielka in the Western Pomorze province Germans exterminated about 10,000-12,000 people. The majority were Poles from the Third Reich territories (ethnic cleansing ) and from Pomorze. There was a large group of Polish intellectuals, clergy and intelligentsia from Pomorze and Kashubia. In the same area special SS troops executed about 1,200 German psychiatric patients from nearby psychiatric institutions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camps_in_Poland_during_World_War_II
http://www.uca.edu/divisions/academic/history/cahr/holocaust.htm
http://www.citinet.net/ak/polska_26_f2.html
http://www.hbtv.co.nz/polska/articles/jewish.html
Extermination camps
The Nazis established six extermination camps (Vernichtungslager) in Poland. The primary intention of these camps was the extermination of the Jews from all the countries occupied by the Germans, except the Soviet Union (Soviet Jews were generally killed on the spot). Many non-Jewish Poles and other prisoners of the Nazis were also killed in these camps.
These camps were:
Belzec (near the current Ukrainian border north-west of L'viv)
Chelmno (known as Kulmhof in German, between Warsaw and Poznan)
Sobibór (south of Brest-Litovsk)
Treblinka (north-east of Warsaw)
Auschwitz-Birkenau (Oœwiêcim, near Krakow)
Majdanek (near Lublin)
[ edit]
Concentration camps adjoining extermination camps
There were also concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Majdanek and Treblinka, distinct from the adjoining extermination camps. An estimated 70,000-200,000 non-Jewish Poles died at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1183020/posts
"As a military man who has served in war and who has lost close friends in combat, I do not use the word hero lightly," US Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) told a gala ceremony closing three days of commemorations of the uprising in which 200,000 died."
"At this place of Polish pride and German shame, we hope to achieve reconciliation and peace" he said."
"Let's not forget that thousands of people, including 20,000 in one day, were killed here. They were civilian victims, it was genocide," he said as Polish and foreign politicians and members of the church attended a ceremony at Warsaw's Wolski cemetery."
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/2005/06/25/living/11973499.htm
The British historian Norman Davies recently wrote about the 63-day Warsaw Uprising in 1944. During the siege, more than 200,000 Polish Christians died and hundreds of thousands were taken to labor or concentration camps.
"Of all the countries involved in the war, Poland lost the highest percentage of its citizens: over 6 million perished, half of them Polish Jews."
Although, I admit, there were isolated cases of anti-semitism, but it never happened to be a common policy of Polish people.
(19) posyaque@yahoo.com, July 28, 2005 12:00 AM
poland was as guilty as germany or russia
why did they built there the camps? they were nazis partners
(18) Susan Rubinstein, July 28, 2005 12:00 AM
Both of my parents were born in Poland..
My parents were both born in Poland and both came to the USA in the late 1920's after the first WW. When I asked why all 4 of my grandparents left Poland years before the Holocaust, (luckily for them or I would not be sitting here today or even born most likely), my parents use to tell me that the "Poles" were acting anti-semetic way before the Nazi time. They claim my grandparents did not like living there in the early 1900's due to heavy anti-semetism. Maybe today is a new generation, just like in Germany, but I believe what my Dad always said "the acorn never falls far from the tree"...Maybe the Poles should have cared more for their fellow jews duing WW1 and WW2 times, and more could have been saved!!!!!
(17) Menashe Kaltmann, July 28, 2005 12:00 AM
Sorry to disagree!
Normally I really like Jeff Jacoby's articles. I didn't like this one. I live in a Melbourne Australia in a Jewish community full of survivors of The Holocaust and their descendants, many of them from Poland. My Dad (ad 120!) is a survivor from Czechoslovakia and has many friends who are also survivors from Poland.
They constantly tell me how antisemitic the Poles before the war were. Many of these survivors are even against young people going to visit Poland because they suffered so badly from antisemitism before and during the Second World war! Who can blame them!
One of them told me that on purpose the Germans built many of the death camps during The Holocaust in Poland because the Poles were happy for the Germans to kill all the Jews.
One of my our friends went to Poland recently and went to Maidanik death camp which is situated 20 metres from rows of houses. People were living near this infamous death camp where Jews were killed! The Poles knew what was happening and didn't do anything (with very few exceptions!)
Poles can be fascinated with Jews but let the new generation do something to help Am Yisrael!
(16) sandra bugay, July 27, 2005 12:00 AM
enjoy the wealth of articles
I have recently subscribed to the aish
website and look forward to reading at
least one article every day. Each
one is a blessing.
(15) R-Lea, July 27, 2005 12:00 AM
Do not mislead people,please:)
What a misleading article..Do not make somebody,jewish or not , to believe in good feelings of Poles now or then. My gr/granparents had to escape from there before the World War I ,and nothing changed since then,same hatred and hostility.Believe me.I visited Poland 30 years ago.What I want to add is:..Do we Jews need their warm feelings or excuses ? No..I do not.. Do you ,who reads this coment ??
(14) Rubin Feldstein, July 27, 2005 12:00 AM
Mixed emotions
I have very mixed emotions about the topic. I was born in Poland. My immediate family was lucky enough to leave in 1938. My very large extended family couldn’t leave and most became victims of the Holocaust.
The few who survived remembered the anti Semitism that was part of the Polish culture. The active involvement by many Poles in helping the Germans in their persecution of Jews is well documented. The thing that I find disturbing is that the Poles don’t seem to accept the guilt, deal with it, and move into some educational programs to deal with the problem. The Germans have done this.
The Poles often blame the victims in avoiding the issue. Another method is to claim that they were good to the Jews for centuries. That’s a very dubious claim. However, if it were true and absolved them of guilt the Germans were even better for centuries, maybe we should forget about the Holocaust. The final dodge used is that the Germans and Russians did it all.
In all fairness, we should remember and praise the Righteous Gentiles amongst them. These were really courageous people because they were pursued by the Germans and their own. We should not visit the sins of the elders… The younger generation should be encouraged in their positive efforts. We need to teach them about past sins, but, only to help them avoid them in the future
(13) Anonymous, July 26, 2005 12:00 AM
Dear Sir or Madame,
If you allow me, let me try to light a candle of trust between nations. Originally I am from Eastern Europe, Lithuania. And I do not hate any nationality in particular. I knowingly met couple of Jews in my life and worked with them for some time and have one of the best memories from contacts with them.
If you allow, let’s go further. I hope I am not alone like this in the country. There have been hundreds of people who helped Jews during the Nazis occupation period. But, I admit, very few. At the same time there were few people living next door and were committing crimes against humanity. But, as a whole, Lithuanians should not be considered as hostile people against other nations. We have big national minorities of Russians and Polish and they do enjoy their cultural and religious freedom. Jews, I believe, are not the exception. And it is not a phenomenon of the present. Friendly coexistence of nations is our inherited history. Rzecpospolita (Lithuanian –Polish commonwealth state was the refuge for Jews in the Middle Ages, where they did enjoy less prosperous but rather more secure life, if to speak with words of a Jew that read in the internet). In addition, In Lithuania there were no ghettoes and were allowed to settle with general public. Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, once was the major Jewish cultural centre where Gaon of Vilnius resided, one of the biggest scholars of thora in the last 500 hundred years, if to speak again in the words I read on aish.com or thora.org. Further, before the WWII in Vilnius there were around 200 synagogues and prayer houses.
But it was all wiped during the occupation period of Nazis and Soviets, later on. And, I believe, it never would happen if Lithuania would remain independent and the majority of people would never elect a parliament that would form a government that would form the army and give an order to kill its country mates.
After Lithuania restored its independence in the year 1990 the President of Lithuania A. Brazauskas went to Israel were he was honoured to give a speech in the parliament of Israel and apologised for evil deeds of the people that happened to live on the soil of Lithuania.
(12) Susan Weinberg, July 25, 2005 12:00 AM
Collective Polish National Guilt
I read this article first thing this morning, before any postings of comments were made and after cogitating on it came to the conclusion that, just like here in the United States, after the predominate race in political power in the East in the 18th and 19th centuries slaughtered, spread disease, and almost eliminated the Native American people, (except for what is left in the American West) the caucasians of this nation especially those who live in the West Coast (I reside in Arizona) have a facination of Native American culture and religion. I live about 60 miles south of the borders of the Navajo Nation, and the tourists from the rest of the nation (and this applies to you European and Asian tourists, also) all have this facination with them. Go back to the East Coast, like my home state of Pennsylvania, to name one of many, and all you have left of the Native American culture are the names of the towns. I believe this is what is happening in Poland. I do not like to be a vindictive person, but I feel that it serves them right to feel such collective guilt. But these festivals won't bring back those millions of lives or replace the rich Jewish culture they once had. It just assuages their guilt.
(11) Anonymous, July 25, 2005 12:00 AM
Dear Sir/Madame:
East Europeans, and Poles, Lithuanians, & Ukrainians in particular, are the biggest antisemites in the world. I taught in several high schools and a university with a large number of Poles and have had several social contacts with Poles. I heard just dreadful things come out of their mouths. The main reason that Poles are fascinated with the Jews now has to do with money from the tourist trade, but, yes, a bit of sentimentality may be involved like the American fascination with native Americans.
You are misleading your readers when you write about Polish interest in Judaism and the Jews.
(10) Frieda Kaplan, July 25, 2005 12:00 AM
The only thing the Polish people are enraptured with is the tourist trade. Otherwise 99.9% of that country wouldn't be non-Jewish. I have also experienced antisemitsm when in contact with Poles and Eastern Europeans to this day. Not much has changed in their attitude. One person said that if the Jews did as they were told maybe they would have been spared. What more can one say.
(9) Moshe, July 24, 2005 12:00 AM
It will not happen
We will out live them all, we lived 3000 years and we will live an other 3000 years. And than we will see how to go on...
Moshe
(8) Peter, July 24, 2005 12:00 AM
Good news story
I also have a love for the Jews of Poland and for the people of Poland. The world is better for both, where-ever I see and meet them.
Is the Polish empathy with the Jewish Folk, because the Polish peoples have also suffered so much, caught between the powers of the map - Russia and Europe.
God bless them both and protect them.
(7) Robert Fragman, July 24, 2005 12:00 AM
As far as I'm concerned I couldn't care less about Poland. They slautered my whole family ( over 300 men women and children ) How could I justify even thinking about them. They now profit from the tourism of visitors to the concentration camps.
(6) Joan Sullivan, July 24, 2005 12:00 AM
A COLLECTIVE CONSCIENCE
....makes me think of that old song by Sonny and Cher "If I Could Turn Back Time".........We would have been better human beings to the victims is what they seem to be saying.Perhaps its Repentence that is being acted upon there
(5) shimon, July 24, 2005 12:00 AM
I wish it to be even better.
I was born and lived in Poland the first 18 years of my life but it was long time ago. I left the country in 1980. I have so very few positive memories that it's hard for me to believe the polish people can be nice to us Jews. I often didn't even let them know I was Jewish and when asked why I don't go to church, I said that I don't practice religion which was true. In Poland it was impossible to be a practicing Jew, one would be discriminated and even beaten up.
What is happening in Poland may be good afterall, Jews never did any harm to the country, it's the Poles who very often harmed Jews. Maybe one day I will go visit the place.
(4) Hyman Strum, July 24, 2005 12:00 AM
Your article on Poland has enlightened me.
I was born in Bayonne,New Jersey during 1926. The neighborhood was totally Polish and violently anti-semetic. Your
article describes an environment I never hoped to see. Thank you for illustrating that we should never be without hope.
(3) Rachel, July 24, 2005 12:00 AM
Reincarnation?
The inability for some Poles to describe "Jewish culture" - except for an indescribable "warm feeling" - leads me to speculate that some Jewish souls who met their deaths in Poland during the Holocaust may be reincarnating there. It would be interesting to know how many born-Poles have or will actually feel such a depth in their attraction that they find a way to convert to Judaism.
(2) Ruth, July 24, 2005 12:00 AM
irony
I remember reading about the European obsession with American Wild West culture. Mind you, this is after the brutal starvation and eradication of most North American Indians. I am reminded of this after reading Jeff Jacoby's article. Ah, the fascination and romance of remembering an "extinct" race. Excuse my sarcasm, but my family lived in Poland for hundreds of years as did my husband's and all that we have left are our Polish (Catholic) last name, a swear word or two in Polish and my mother's determination never to teach her children the language of the people who imbibed antisemitism along with mother's milk (to poorly paraphrase Menachem Begin); and of course, the nightmares of their time in Poland's ghettoes and concentration camps. I believe strongly that the Nazis could not have perpetuated such large scale abominations on us without the silent but tacit approval of the Polish. I am aware of individual acts of Polish courage but we must not forget the postwar waves of antisemitism on survivors and finally on almost no Jews.
So, ladies and gentlemen, let's not get all nostalgic because the descendants of generations of antisemites get together to dance a hora to klezmer music. We all know, sure as shootin' (and that's an intended pun) just how bad things would be in Poland now if there was a sizable Jewish population.
(1) Anita, July 24, 2005 12:00 AM
Poland is and always will be the country of anti semites it is wrong to go there and give them one zloty. for all the suffering they have done they should never be forgiven