“ a Jew from Poland is not and never was simply Polish. … it was clear to Jews and Poles alike

The Mitnagdim not only polemicized against Hasidic doctrine; they waged an uncompromising war against its practitioners, placing them under the rabbinic ban of excommunication and, when possible, denouncing their zaddikim (Hasidic religious leaders; lit. righteous men) as subversives to the tsarist authorities.¹⁹⁰
There are many substantiated accounts attesting to the widespread reliance of the Russian authorities on Jewish informers, especially during the November 1830 and January 1863 insurrections.¹⁹¹ Romuald Traugutt, the leader of the 1863 rebellion, was in fact betrayed by a Jew.¹⁹² Many reports of alleged support on the part of Jews entail nothing more than supplying smuggled arms to Polish insurgents at high prices, that is, purely business transactions.¹⁹³ This state of affairs is not surprising. Jewish attitudes toward Poland (and Russia) were governed primarily by self-interest, not state loyalties. “Many Jews in the 1840s and 1850s saw an opportunity for social advancement in the Russian educational system and little room for social mobility within Polish culture.”¹⁹⁴ They had thus excluded themselves from Polishness, and had often done so long before the rise of Polish nationalism toward the end of the 19^th century.

The role of the so-called Litvaks (Litwak in Polish), Russian-speaking Jews who flooded into the ethnically Polish part of the Russian Empire in the latter part of the 19^th century, in exacerbating Polish-Jewish relations has been remarked on by many authors. Poles were concerned, in particular, about the depolonization of the country’s historic capital. Historian François Guesnet comments:

The settlement of a considerable number of Russian-Jewish businesspeople and tradesmen in the Polish capital in the 1890s enlarged a pre-existing visible sub-community of Russian Jews who had kept close ties with the Empire, and were familiar with the Russian language and administration. Culturally, they were unreceptive to the Hasidic movement, indifferent to the Polish cause, and rather unsympathetic to those local Jews who would consider Polonization a viable cultural trajectory.¹⁹⁵
This growing antagonism is one of the thorny matters raised by Julian Unszlicht, a Pole of Jewish background, in his controversial book O pogromy ludu polskiego: Rola socjal-litwacwa w niedawnej rewolucji [On the Pogroms against the Polish People: The Role of the Social-Litvakdom in the Recent Revolution], published in Kraków in 1912. Reviewer Jan Peczkis summarizes some of Unszlicht’s arguments as follows in an Amazon review:
Litvak (Litwak) publications (for specific citations, see, for example, pp. 127–129) made very derogatory remarks about Poland. Moreover, Unszlicht cited statements from the respected assimilationist Jewish periodical Izraelita, which echo Litvak positions, in stating that Polish culture is “a stinking pond”, “a corpse”, “a bankrupt cheater’s playing card” (p. 5). … The “Polish corpse” innuendo was a common feature of Jewish publications (e.g, pp. 19, 38, 58, 121, 127–128).

Far from being marginal, the Litvaks and their avant-garde, the Socialist-Litvaks (in contradistinction with Polish socialists), were the representatives of Polish Jewry under tsarist Russian rule (pp. 6, 370). Jewish nationalists, whether of the Zionist or Bundist variety (notably the latter: p. 361), actually harmed Jews by keeping them in medieval-like isolation, and in aggressive separatism from, if not enmity against, Polishness. The foregoing was the conclusion of not only the Endeks, but also of Polish socialists, as shown in their publication (which equally condemned the Litvaks and the Endeks: pp. 183–184). 

The most dangerously anti-Polish organizations, controlled by the Litvaks or Jewish nationalists, also included the Marxist so-called Social Democrats (SDKPiL; hereafter SD) (pp. 8, 13), often acting in unison (p. 295). What’s more, SD positions often enjoyed the support of larger Jewish parties, such as the Bund (pp. 58, 361, 284, 368).

The cancer ran deeper. Sometimes, apparent advocates of Polish independence, such as the monthly Krytyka run by the Jew W. Feldman in Kraków, turned out to be allies of the SD and enemies of Polish independence (pp. 27–28).

The Litvaks were agents of Russification, of turning the remaining Jews against Poles, and of trying to turn Poles against their national interests by defamation (pp. 12–13). Thus, the Polish Eagle was vilified as a symbol of the unchecked power and oppressiveness of the Polish nobility (p. 127). Polish heroism at the Battle of Grunwald was merely an escapade of one set of kings, nobles, and clergy fighting against another set, with the Pope switching sides to be on the side of the victor (p. 130). The National Democrats (Endeks) were bourgeoisie reactionaries stifling class-consciousness by turning Polish workers against German and Russian workers, and trying to bring back the pre-Partition Poland of privileged and non-privileged (pp. 130–131).
As for the Wilno-area Litvaks, they were not only hostile to Poland, but remained so long after the reborn Poland had become a reality in 1918. Kalman Weiser writes:
Much of Vilna’s [Wilno’s] Jewish intelligentsia came to embrace a demonstratively pro-Yiddish stance during World War I and continued to do so throughout the interwar period, even if, as elsewhere in the former tsarist empire, its members continued to speak Russian in private. This strategy was conditioned by a combination of factors: their lack of identification with Polish culture and the Polish nationalist cause (despite Vilna’s eventual re-incorporation into independent Poland), their distinctive Jewish nationalist aspirations, and their desire to maintain a relatively neutral positioning the conflict between Poles, Lithuanians, Belarusians, and Russians over control of the city and its environs.¹⁹⁶
In fact, they mostly supported the Lithuanian cause, despite the fact that the 1916 German census made it clear that both the city of Wilno and the surrounding area had a Polish majority, and Lithuanians formed only a few percent of the city’s population. Jews who fled to Poland from Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution mirrored the arrival of the Litvaks in the 19^th century. Paradoxically, like their predecessors, they were overtly pro-Russian culturally and manifested a negative attitude toward Polish statehood.¹⁹⁷ Polish Jews often called derogatory terms such as Litvak Khazir (“Lithuanian pig”) and Litvak Tseylem Kop (“Lithuanian cross head”).¹⁹⁸

Thus inter-ethnic antagonism and conflict had firm roots in tradition and reality, and cannot simply be attributed to Polish chauvinism and xenophobia. Theodore S. Hamerow, who grew up in Warsaw and Otwock, states that

Many Jews regarded the Poles with the same resentment which many Poles displayed toward the Jews. This resentment was partly rooted in religious exclusiveness or intolerance. Pious believers in each community regarded members of the other as infidels, as enemies of the true faith who deserved scorn and reprobation. The refusal of those stubborn believers to recognize divine truth had led to their spiritual decline and moral corruption. Devout Poles often regarded the Jews as devious, cunning, and unprincipled, while devout Jews reciprocated by characterizing the Poles as ignorant, coarse, and dissolute. Hateful stereotypes on each side poisoned relations between them. Forced to live side by side, often dependent on each other economically, they managed as a rule to maintain at least minimal civility in dealing with one another. But inwardly they often shared a profound mutual hostility.

Their antagonism was reflected in language even more clearly than in behavior. The Polish word “zyd” [żyd], meaning a Jew, did not simply define a religious identity or affiliation. It also carried connotations of cringing sycophancy and sly dishonesty. Ethnic prejudice could be found just as easily in Yiddish, the everyday language of the Jewish masses. The word “goy,” for example, meant more than a gentile. It carried overtones of ignorance, dissipation, and mindless pugnacity. To describe a Pole who did not conform to this stereotype, some modifying adjective would generally be added. That is, so-and-so was a “decent goy” or an “educated goy” or a “tolerant goy” or sometimes simply a “Christian,” a term which had no serious pejorative overtones.

Similarly, “shikse” had implications extending beyond its literal meaning of a young woman who was not Jewish. It carried a suggestion of immodesty or coarseness, even promiscuity. Thus the term was often applied to Jewish girls who failed to display sufficient diffidence or reserve, who seemed too bold or assertive or mischievous. By the same token, “shegetz” meant more than simply a boy who happened to be gentile. It also had connotations of rudeness, belligerence, and dissipation, so that a young Jew who was insufficiently pious or modest could be described as a “shegetz” as well. Polish-Jewish hostility was thus as common in daily speech as in popular conduct. [In fact, the Hebrew word shegetz or sheketz which was commonly used to refer to a Christian boy means “abomination.”—M.P.]

It could even be found in popular humor, in the jokes and stories which circulated among the Jewish as well as the Polish masses. Those directed against the Jews generally made fun of their greed, servility, and cunning. Those making fun of the Poles focused on their obtuseness or dissoluteness or combativeness. Sometimes the humor was relatively harmless, but more often it revealed a deep underlying antipathy. I remember some of the pupils in my school singing a bitter parody of the opening lines of the Polish national anthem: instead of “Poland is not yet lost,/As long as we live,” a derisive “Poland is not yet lost,/But it soon will be.” …

And besides, isolation and ghettoization were more than symptoms of oppression; they were also a source of faith, a reinforcement of religious identity. Jews and Poles were so different, so far apart, that the only contacts between them should remain impersonal, confined to economic transactions and governmental affairs. Segregation was not only unavoidable but desirable.¹⁹⁹
The author goes on to add, “This was the view of only a minority, however, a large and influential minority, but a minority nevertheless.” In fact, the reality was that this was the cultural norm, though in direct dealings with Poles these attitudes were not displayed openly and were often tempered. Nonetheless, rabbinical writings are peppered liberally with these derogatory terms.²⁰⁰

Ben-Zion Gold, a yeshiva student from Radom, writes:

Relations between Poles and religious Jews were burdened by prejudices on both sides. Just as our self-image was shaped by our religious tradition, so was our view of Poles. We were the descendants of Jacob, who, according to tradition, studied Torah and lived by its commandments. Poles, on the other hand, were the descendants of Esau, with all of the vile characteristics that our tradition ascribed to him: a depraved being, a murderer, a rapist, and an inveterate enemy of Jacob. This image of Esau, which developed two thousand years ago in reaction to the oppressive domination of the Romans, was transferred onto Christians …

Traditional Jews responded with contempt for both the people and their religion. We viewed Catholicism as idolatry. Poles were stereotyped as lechers and drunkards, given to brawling and wife-beating. I remember a popular Yiddish folk song about Jacob, the Jews, who rises in the morning and goes to the Beit HaMidrash to study and pray, and Esau, a Pole, who goes to the tavern. The refrain exclaims: “Oy! Shiker is a goy, a goy is drunk! And he must drink because he is a goy.” …

Religious Jews looked on assimilationists with a mixture of pity and contempt. We felt that they lost their self-respect as Jews and were still treated by Poles with contempt. We used to say, “Pol Zydem I pol Polakiem jest calym lajdakiem” [Pół Żydem i pół Polakiem jest całym łajdakiem] (“Half a Jew and half a Pole is a whole scoundrel”).²⁰¹
Both Poles and Jews recognized the fact that Poles frequently had problems with alcoholism. For Poles, this was a clearly verbalized matter of consternation and shame.²⁰² For Jews, on the other hand, it often became a matter of Jewish elitism. Historian Glenn Dynner repeats the following oft-quoted Yiddish ditty, Shiker iz der Goy (The gentile [goy] is drunk):
The goy goes to the tavern/ He drinks a glass of wine/ Oh, the goy is drunk, drunk is he/ Drink he must, because a goy is he/ The Jew goes to the study house/ He looks at a book/ Oy, the Jew is sober, sober is he/ Learn he must, because a Jew is he.²⁰³
Dynner then provides an impressive body of evidence that shows that, although they did not do so as much as Polish peasants, Jews did drink frequently.²⁰⁴ For instance, the religious-inspired drinking of the Hasids was not just an allegation of their adversaries (the Maskilim), but a fact supported by Hasidic sources themselves.²⁰⁵ Pointedly, Jewish drinking was less overt, “In fact, Polish Jews—particularly Hasidim—indulged in liquor, and sometimes excessively. Their tendency to do so under regulated religious auspices and within Jewish spaces meant that their drinking was less free and visible to outsiders.”²⁰⁶

The portrayal of Poles, which applied not only to peasants but also extended to the entire Polish society, sometimes took on very extreme forms. Coupled with the stereotype of the mythical Endek (a member or supporter of the National Democratic party), a mindset steeped in the abhorrence of Esau (Jews commonly referred to Christendom as the realm of “Esau”) concocted the following allegorical account of Polish atavism—passed off as fact. An anonymous Jewish boy, a hunchback, is lured to a gathering of Poles by his neighbour, a Polish officer—“a confirmed anti-Semite, and one of the leaders of the Endeks”—and subjected to string relentless humiliations and physical abuse culminating in a mock crucifixion of this hapless victim. The account, however, reveals more about the would-be victim than his cruel—but fictitious—tormentors.

One day the officer approached me and invited me to a musical evening he was holding at home. He said he had invited several couples, friends of his who were music lovers and who wanted to meet me, having heard that I had a good understanding of music and also knew a lot about literature. … This was the first time I was to be in enlightened Christian society and I was afraid I might fail. …

Now I started to take in the whole parlor … Suddenly the doors of all four rooms opened, and dozens of couples burst out gleefully. Very quickly, with refined, elegant movements, they came to the tables and took their places, without honoring me with even the slightest glance. … I felt lost and miserable. I got up, wanting only to leave this place.

At that moment a young man who held a soda siphon in his hand approached me and suggested I have a drink. I refused politely. In response, he started spraying me with soda from the siphon, first on my face and then on my clothes. A roar of laughter, wicked and malicious laughter, burst out all around. And the entire company, some forty in all, men and women, charged upon me and surrounded me in a narrow circle, screaming savagely, “Dance a bit, morda zydowska [morda żydowska] (Jewish dog’s-face), we’ve heard you’re a good dancer!”

Suddenly Jadwiga’s husband came up to me, caught me up in his strong arms, lifted me, and stood me on the large table. With a quick sweep of the hand he knocked my hat off my head, at the same time delivering a hard punch to my forehead. At that moment I understood it all. It was clear to me that I’d been tricked, that a trap had been set for me. In all this uproar a verse from Koheleth (9:12) came to me: “As the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare, so are the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it falls upon them suddenly.” … I did not have time to think any more than that. Two strong gentiles grabbed my arm, lowered me from the table, and started throwing me to each other as if I were a ball for them to play with. I struggled to evade them, fighting with all my feeble strength, stubbornly and fiercely. I wanted to escape from this parlor which had become a den of beasts and a torture chamber for me. But they didn’t let me slip out of their hands, and there was no way I could free myself.

Finally they got sick of it, or grew tired, and left me. Bu then Jadwiga’s husband picked me up again and stood me up on the table, wounded and bleeding. The whole crowd was delighted to see how I stood there, and they chortled and laughed in glee. Several of these “distinguished” guests picked up bottles of wine and cried jeeringly at me, “Dear Jew, drink a bit! This is kosher wine, you’re allowed to drink it.” I tried once more to break free and flee. But the hands, Esau’s hands, held me firmly, binding me as in iron cables, and I was powerless and helpless. I stood there not knowing what to do, beaten, bruised, and shamed, facing this bloodthirsty entertainment-seeking crowd of some forty men and women who were considered “noble” and “enlightened.” They were “fighting” me, a miserable broken Jews, and they saw themselves as heroes. They rushed upon me, forced my mouth open, and started pouring streams of wine into it. I choked and spluttered until I fainted and fell. They hastily poured water over me to bring me back to consciousness, so they could on tormenting me. When they saw that I had regained consciousness and had opened my eyes and was breathing heavily the air suffused with cigarette smoke and alcohol fumes, they burst out laughing wildly again.

At that moment a thought occurred to me: Look at their “intelligence,” their “nobility,” their “enlightenment” … No educational framework can cover up their base and primitive urges which find their release in tormenting someone weaker than themselves. Their religion, “the religion of love and mercy,” has not planted these virtues in their hearts. On the contrary, all they desire is atavistic and uncompromising revenge on the Jew, the representative of their “mother-religion,” Judaism. …

Now they started stripping off my clothes until I stood there completely naked. I gathered up the remnants of my strength and yelled at them, “For all your torturing and tormenting me, God may take revenge on you!” But on hearing this they all burst out shouting wildly. “Dirty little Jew!” You killed our Savior! You killed Jesus! You’re responsible for the crimes of your brothers, all the Jew bastards! You have to pay for the blood of Jesus which your Jewish brothers viciously shed!”

I called on the last remnants of my strength … I shouted into their faces: “Yes, I’m proud that I’m a Jew! And you all, you should be ashamed that a weak little Jew like me had the strength to kill your Savior!”

There was a sudden silence in the parlor. They seemed shocked, both by the things I had shouted at them and by the very fact that I still had the strength and the daring to open my mouth against them. But they quickly recovered, and as if driven by some blind force, they fell upon me, almost all of them, and started flinging some kind of sticky paste, which they had prepared in advance, over my naked body. With this paste they smeared and plastered my entire body, covering it all except for one exposed part—my hump. On this they painted, so I felt, two lines—a cross. When they had completed this job, they burst into a great cry or laugh of triumph, unaware all the while of how by doing this they were desecrating their own faith, the religion of love and mercy, and even the cross itself, symbol of their faith. Drunk with triumph, they pulled me to the mirror and made me stand there to see how I looked.

Then the “ladies” continued the work. They took me to the wall and “crucified” me, tying my raised hands to hooks in the wall, from which they had taken down the pictures of Schubert and Wagner which had been hanging there. And while I hung there crucified on the wall, my toes barely touching the floor, many of the guests, almost all of them, came up to me, one by one, and hit me on the head or in the face, and spat at me, and some even “contributed” a kick or two.

During all the time they performed these “acts of Christian grace” upon me, the phonograph kept playing soft. Pleasant “background music” which served as an accompaniment to the “refined” activities of this “noble company.”

Their tormenting me concluded when one of the company picked me up and carried me along the corridor to the door and threw me out onto the landing, naked and bleeding. After me he threw out my wet and torn clothes. Completely exhausted, I crawled to the door opposite and fell, almost dead, into the entrance of our apartment.

I don’t know how long I lay there, half conscious, until I got a little strength back. I was bruised and wounded in many places, and it was not easy for me to wash myself and clean off the sticky Christian paste. All this time, I didn’t stop crying. What I felt at this time is quite impossible to convey in words, and I will not try.

After a long while, when I had managed to calm down a bit and could think about everything that had happened to me at that “party,” I started to understand that I had only now discovered the true nature of these “noble, cultured, and educated” people. A few minutes before, they had been a fine group of handsome young people, merry and healthy, lacking nothing, enjoying themselves at a cultured social party—and then, all at once, they had turned into vicious beasts, wild animals, reveling in tormenting a weak, wretched, and deformed human being. And most of all I thought of the part played in this metamorphosis by anti-Semitism, the old, ancient hatred of Jews.²⁰⁷

It is little wonder then that a Jewish prisoner of Auschwitz, Adam “Krawecki,” a former student steeped in Jewish philosophy who joined the murderous State Security Office after liberation and became the chief interrogator in the notorious Gliwice prison, claimed to have had the following conversation—steeped in folkloric myth—with an elderly Catholic bishop in Auschwitz, even though the Germans imprisoned no such bishop in that camp:
“Why do the gentiles hate the Jews?” Adam asked.

“It’s this way,” the bishop said. “A lion is lying in the woods, glutted and gorged, and a deer comes along. The lion isn’t hungry, and the deer isn’t going to harm him. But still the lion pounces on it.”

“But why?”

“The lion has a bestial instinct, you see, an instinct that tells it to kill that deer. The same with the gentile against the Jew. The Jew isn’t going to harm him, but the gentile still calls him a Schweinhund Jude. He has this instinct against the Jew.”

“But where does the instinct come from?”

“Maybe,” the bishop continued, “the gentile receives it when he receives his mother’s milk. He hears from the day he’s born that if you don’t eat, the Jew will get you, that if you don’t sleep, the Jew will get you. Maybe that.”²⁰⁸

Poles were also portrayed as the embodiment of Satan—the fountain of evil and sin—in Jewish folklore. A “disgusting shikse” temptress could spell the downfall of righteous Jews:
R’ Shmuel Yaakov, that handsome Jew, and Shofar Blower in the synagogue, began to practice on the shofar about two days before Rosh Hashana. In the midst of such a practice session, he noted that Satan was standing near him. …

Therefore, R’ Shmuel Yaakov made a special effort to exert himself to assure that his face looked happy and satisfied. He stretched out his hand to Satan, and asked:—How are you, R’ Satan?—Oy, R’ Shmuel Yaakov, I don’t feel good!—Surely, you must have overworked yourself, R’ Satan, because nowadays it is difficult to cause a Jew to commit a sin: it’s no small wonder, after all, it is before the Day of Judgement, and Jews are afraid.