May 2016 Traditional Jewish Attitudes Toward Poles

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84 Jan Slomka, From Serfdom to Self-Government: Memoirs of a Polish Village Mayor, 1842–1927 (London: Minerva Publishing Co., 1941), 199. Słomka, onetime mayor of the village of Dzików near Tarnobrzeg, provides very interesting insights into the relationship between Jews and peasants during this period: how Jews became money-lenders to the peasants, whom they had previously shunned, and took advantage of them and acquired numerous farms from indebted peasants until laws were passed against usury (pp. 84–87); how the gradual entry of Poles into the local trade raised the level of commerce in the interwar period (p. 265).

85 Slomka, From Serfdom to Self-Government, 200.

86 Thomas and Znaniecki, The Polish Peasant in Europe and America, vol. 2, 1180.

87 It is interesting to note that the Maskilim (“enlightened Jews”), in late 18th-century Austrian-ruled Poland as well as in Russia, shared the Poles’ abhorrence towards the vocational choices of most Jews, a theme that is usually considered the property of anti-Semites:
Other Maskilim petitioned civil authorities to prohibit Jewish innkeeping, leasing of land, moneylending, and other debauched occupations, hoping instead to train Jews for more productive work in agriculture or crafts. Another prominent Maskil, Zalkand Hourwitz, suggested that the use of Yiddish and Hebrew be banned in business contracts, even between Jews, so that all transactions be transparent to all, Jew and gentile alike. Yiddish, in particular, took a beating, and was denounced regularly in the pages of Haskalah journals.
[Leon] Bramson was an advocate of the so-called “productivization of the Jews,” according to which the “Jewish problem” could be solved if Jews were to engage in productive occupations, such as manufacturing, crafts, and agriculture (as opposed to trade). The notion was of course popular among Russian maskilim, whom Bramson admired.
See, respectively, Efron, Real Jews, 20; Horowitz, Empire Jews, 122.

88 Two insightful articles on this topic which depart from the prevalent stereotypical conclusions appeared in Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, vol. 8 (1994): Szyja Bronsztejn, “Polish-Jewish Relations as Reflected in Memoirs of the Interwar Period,” pp. 66–88, and Annamaria Orla-Bukowska, “Shtetl Communities: Another Image,” pp. 89–113.

89 Eva Hoffman, Shtetl: The Life and Death of a Small Town and the World of Polish Jews (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1997), 8–9.

90 Ibid., 44–45.

91 Ibid., 63.

92 Joanna Beata Michlic, Poland’s Threatening Other: The Image of the Jew from 1880 to the Present (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2006), 15. Michlic’s study is written from a distinctly one-sided, Jewish nationalist perspective, yet she has nothing to say about the phenomenon of Jewish nationalism istelf. Driven by her ideological agenda, the author pushes stereotypes of Poles to the extreme, frequently descends to the level of partisan polemics, and uses facts in highly selective manner. While excelling at stereotyping Poles, she eschews any hint of a critical approach toward the behaviour of Jews. Only Poles are infected with “ethno-nationalism,” never Jews. Her biases are all too pronounced, and those whose views do not conform to hers) are summarily dismissed as “anti-Semites” or “ethno-nationalists.” This is a rather transparent ploy not to have to deal with problematic or even devastating facts or arguments. Michlic is also quick to level harsh criticism on accomplished non-Polish historians such as Brian Porter and Gunnar Paulsson, who express more measured and moderate views on Polish-Jewish relations than her often extremist positions. Ibid., 283, 299, 329–30. (See Paulsson’s response to the charges Michlic leveled at his book Secret City, in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, vol. 20, no. 2 (2006): 372–74. Porter’s views are by no means complimentary of Polish “nationalism” and his book When Nationalism Began to Hate: Imagining Modern Politics in Nineteenth-Century Poland (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), was subjected to criticism by John Radzilowski in Kosmas: Czechoslovak and Central European Journal, vol. 15, no. 1 (Fall 2001): 97–99, and by Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, “Nacjonalizm wyobrażony,” Arcana, no. 6 (2004): 167–86.) Various historical errors mar her study Poland’s Threatening Other. It is not true that the National Democrats introduced “anti-Jewish images and stereotypes” in Poland in the 1880s (p. 1), since the party was not in existence at that time. It is also not true that Eugeniusz Jagiełło was the only non-anti-Semitic candidate in the election to the Fourth Duma in 1912, as no one seriously accused the main Polish candidate, Jan Kucharzewski, of anti-Semitism (p. 64). Michlic is unaware of important developments in historical research such as the ethnic make-up of the leadership of Stalinist security office (p. 204). Compare with Krzysztof Szwagrzyk, ed., Aparat bezpieczeństwa w Polsce: Kadra kierownicza, vol. 1: 1944–1956 (Warsaw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2005]. Michlic is also not above manipulating facts and making baseless charges with her characteristic rancour and self-aggrandizement. Indeed blatant misrepresentations abound in Michlic’s scholarship, which, in this respect, is reminiscent of Yaffa Eliach’s. For example, she misrepresented the findings of the Jedwabne investigation in the January 2008 issue of History and claimed, bizarrely, in a conference paper presented in Jerusalem in March 2009, that Poles see themselves as the only victims of the Second World War.

A much more balanced study, which largely avoids the extremist premises advanced by Michlic and the relentless pursuit of anti-Semitism as the sole explanation for Polish behaviour, is Theodore R. Weeks’ From Assimilation to Antisemitism: The “Jewish Question” in Poland, 1850–1914 (DeKalb, Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press, 2006). However, it too is flawed in viewing Jews solely as “passive participants” rather than “actors,” in country where they were a major presence on the urban landscape and formed a powerful force on the economic plane. Orthodox Jews, including the Jewish masses, were simply inassimilable, and the assimilationists, a relatively small number, were ostracized by their community. Weeks does not appear to appreciate the critical role of this major stumbling block to Polish-Jewish co-existence. Weeks also fails to come to terms with the real reason why Poles did not embrace his favoured solution of cultural and national autonomy for Jews, also put forward as a “Polish-Jewish condominium.” Not only was there no model for such autonomy (no European country granted Jews that status at the time, and none does today), but more importantly, the Poles considered Poland to be a national state for the Poles, just as Jews today consider Israel a homeland for the Jews and utterly reject the notion of a “Jewish-Palestinian condominium.” (In fact, the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel describes the country as a Jewish state and established Judaism as the dominant religion. Israel has enacted more than fifty laws that provide for preferential treatment of Jews. If any largely Christian country were to treat Christians preferentially over Jews in this way, there would be an international outcry led by Jews. As in most cases, the “double standard” that Jewish nationalists love to decry works in their favour.) Among other shortcomings, Weeks does not draw meaningful comparisons with the situation of Jews in neighbouring countries such as the Czech lands, and fails to reconcile his premise that Polish society as a whole adopted stridently anti-Semitic views by the beginning of the twentieth century with the fact that the anti-Jewish boycott of 1912 was generally ignored by the peasantry, and indeed the majority of Poles. Ibid., 166, 169. While mentioning incidents such as the harassment of Jews “suspected” of supporting the Russians during the 1863 insurrection, he neglects to mention that Romuald Traugutt, the leader of the rebellion, was in fact betrayed by a Jew, a fact that is noted by the very historian he cites (Stefan Kieniewicz). Ibid., 49. (Indeed, there are many dark chapters in Polish history in which Jews played a role. For example, when Frederick II of Prussia, the principle author of the partitions of Poland, embarked on his ruinous scheme to forge Polish currency, he employed Jewish minters and moneylenders.) Weeks neglects to mention that the Warsaw pogrom of 1881 was resoundingly condemned by the Catholic hierarchy, and ignores the role of the Russian authorities in the pogroms in Brześć (Brest, 1905) and Siedlce (1906), which were carried out by the army. Ibid., 72. Weeks’ notion that, while there is no “direct line,” the Endeks’s ideas “made the [Nazi] murderers’ jobs that much easier,” is not only inflammatory but also empirically baseless. Ibid., 178. The rate of survival, once one subtracts those who managed to flee to another country or were exempt from annihilation (e.g. converts, mixed blood, through marriage) was no higher for Jews in countries like Holland, Norway and the Czech lands than in Poland.

Writing from an American perspective, and largely for an American audience, it is surprising that neither Michlic nor Weeks takes the trouble to remind Americans of the many dark chapters of their past and draw comparisons to the treatment of minorities in the United States. Riots (pogroms) and lynchings are an integral part of the fabric of America from its birth. Blacks and Native Americans were the most likely to be victimized. Dr. Arthur Raper was commissioned in 1930 to produce a report on lynching. He discovered that “3,724 people were lynched in the United States from 1889 through to 1930. Over four-fifths of these were Negroes, less than one-sixth of whom were accused of rape. Practically all of the lynchers were native whites. The fact that a number of the victims were tortured, mutilated, dragged, or burned suggests the presence of sadistic tendencies among the lynchers. Of the tens of thousands of lynchers and onlookers, only 49 were indicted and only 4 have been sentenced.” When the United States seized Texas and California from Mexico in mid-19^th century, Mexican landowners lost their properties and many were shot or lynched. During the early-to-mid-19^th century, violent rioting occurred between Protestant “Nativists” and recently arrived Irish Catholic immigrants. These reached heights during the peak of immigration in the 1840s and 1850s in cities such as New York, Philadelphia, and Boston. See, for example, Michael Feldberg, The Philadelphia Riots of 1844: A Study of Ethnic Conflict (Westport, Connecticut: Greewood Press, 1975). During the early 20^th century, riots were common against Irish and French-Canadian immigrants in Providence, Rhode Island. During the San Francisco Vigilance Movements of 1851 and 1856, the vigilantes also systematically attacked Irish immigrants. The anti-immigrant violence later focused on Mexicans, Chileans, who came as miners in the California Gold Rush, and Chinese immigrants. Other racial or ethnic violence targeted Filipinos, Japanese and Armenians in California in the early 20th century. One of the largest lynchings in U.S. history occurred in New Orleans in 1891, when eleven Italians were violently murdered in the streets by a large lynch mob. In the 1890s a total of twenty Italians were lynched in the South. Riots and lynchings directed against Italian Americans erupted into the 20th century in the South, as well as in New York City, Philadelphia, and Boston. Pervasive discrimination against Mexicans resulted in a series of riots, known as the Zoot Suite Riots, that erupted in Los Angeles in 1943 (where several thousand servicemen attacked Mexican-Americans) and spread to other cities like San Diego, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, and New York. Anti-Polish incidents and violence also occurred in the same time period. The fate of Chinese immigrants has been detailed in books such as Jean Pfaelzer’s Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans (New York: Random House, 2007), but remains an unknown chapter in American history. A firestorm of ethnic cleansing erupted in the expulsion of over 200 Chinese communities and thousands of Chinese forced from their homes in the 19^th century American West. Pfaelzer cites records of more than 100 round-ups, pogroms, expulsions and ethnic cleansings in which white Westerners united to drive the Chinese out of their communities from 1850 to 1906. They used warnings, arson, boycotts and violence to achieve their goal. In many cases, labour organizations led the campaigns, casting the Chinese as competitors for jobs and depressors of wages. Filled with resentment over the collapse of the California gold rush and the economic depression that followed, communities from Wyoming to California and up through the Washington Territory, launched a series of violent attacks against Chinese immigrants: rioting in local Chinatowns, levying unfair taxes against Chinese workers, and forcing Chinese women who had fled to rural towns back into sexual slavery in San Francisco. By 1885, white citizens—mayors, judges, and vigilantes—throughout the Pacific Northwest rounded up thousands of Chinese immigrants at gunpoint, marched them out of town and burned their homes to the ground. In one incident, Chinese residents of a California town were given 24 hours to pack up and leave after a city councilman was killed in the crossfire of two duelling Chinese men. The entire local population of over 300 Chinese was stripped of their belongings, loaded onto steamboats in Humboldt Bay, and shipped to San Francisco. In Tacoma, with no notice, the entire Chinese community was marched nine miles in the rain and abandoned at a railroad crossing in the woods as Chinatown burned. However, victims could also turn into victimizers. The violence of Irish gangs’ attacks on Jewish businesses and individuals far exceeded that of violent incidents between Jews and Eastern Europeans. Irish gangs instigated a widespread attack on a Jewish business district in Chicago in the summer of 1916, attacking Jewish shops, smashing windows, and beating merchants and bystanders. About a score of Jews were injured, three of them critically. Although the attack was expected and the Jews had requested police protection, none was forthcoming. Not one single policeman came to investigate until everything was over. The district around Taylor and Cypress Streets “looked like the aftermath of a battle.” See John Radzilowski, “Conflict between Poles and Jews in Chicago, 1900–1930,” Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, vol. 19 (2007): 129. The shameful treatment of immigrants in the United States is largely unknown to the American public, or simply ignored. It has virtually no impact on how Americans view themselves or how others are influenced to view Americans, nor do such stories have any real impact on how these groups interrelate today. While Americans (and Western Europeans) refuse to define themselves by their long history of mistreatment of others in their midst, it has become politically correct, and even quite fashionable, to view Poles through the prism of one-sided Jewish allegations, even by members of nationalities whose own minorities have fared no better, and in many cases, far worse than Poland’s.

93 Theodore R. Weeks, “Jews in the Kingdom of Poland, 1861–1914: Changes and Continuities,” in Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, 1815–1918, vol. 27: Jews in the Kingdom of Poland, 306.

94 Weeks, From Assimilation to Antisemitism, 175–76.

95 The 17^th century Khmelnitsky (Chmielnicki) revolt is commonly presented in Ukrainian-Jewish dialogue as a case of the Polish nobility and Jesuits oppressing the Cossacks, with Jews, as pawns of the nobility, merely transmitting the orders of the Polish overlords, and then becoming the innocent victims of Cossack anger over the Polish policies. This portrayal of Jews as passive victims of anti-Semitic exploitation is at odds with the active role they played in the scheme of things. While not denying the acts of the Polish nobles (who, in the Ukraine, were generally polonized Ruthenians), the German Jewish historian Heinrich Graetz (1817–1891) makes it clear that the Jews played a major role in inciting hatred against themselves and the Poles, and that they did so freely. Far from being mere order-fulfillers of the Polish nobility, the Jews had considerable autonomy, and even advised the Poles on how to more effectively exploit the Cossacks. In addition, there were features of the Talmudism and messianism of the time that facilitated Jewish exploitative conduct. Finally, Khmelnitsky had been personally wronged by the Jews, and acted on his grudge. See Heinrich Graetz, History of the Jews, volume 5: From the Chmielnicki Persecution of the Jews in Poland (1648 C.E.) to the Period of Emancipation in Central Europe (c. 1870 C.E.) (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1974), 6 ff.

96 Borrowing from the arguments of Jewish ethno-nationalist like Joanna Michlic and the moralizing of post-modern historians of Polish-Jewish relations, the first contact between Polish peasants and Jews was in the latter’s capacity as people wanting to enslave Poles. As new Christians, Polish peasants knew nothing of Jews and had no innate predisposition towards them. On the other hand, the “bad” Jews were simply out for profit at the expense of others, whereas the “good” Jews who believed the teachings of their religion also came with hatred in their hearts toward Christians. The role of the relatively small Polish ruling class in the slave trade cannot salvage the reputation of the Jewish slave traders, just as the Western European slave trade of Blacks cannot be pinned on the few tribal chiefs who faciliatated that enterprise. In both cases, the only institution that spoke out against this evil practice and sided with the downtrodden was the Catholic Church. Such was the stage that the Jews themselves set for Polish-Jewish relations.

97 Pogonowski, Jews in Poland, 257–66; M.M. Postan and Edward Miller, eds., The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, vol. 2: Trade and Industry in the Middle Ages, Second edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 416–18, 485–87; Roman Jakobson, Selected Writings, vol. 6: Early Slavic Paths and Crossroads, Part 2: Medieval Slavic Studies (Berlin, New York, and Amsterdam: Mouton, 1985), 864; Timothy Reuter, ed., The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 3: c.900–c.1024 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 69–70; H.H. Ben-Sasson, ed., A History of the Jewish People (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1976), 394–98, Plate 31; Joseph Adler, “The Origins of Polish Jewry,” Midstream, October 1994, 26–28; Livia Rothkirchen, The Jews of Bohemia and Moravia: Facing the Holocaust (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, and Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2005), 8. See also “Radhanite”, Internet: