May 2016 Traditional Jewish Attitudes Toward Poles

. See also Petrovsky-Shtern, The Golden Age Shtetl, 47–48, which describes the Jews’ new-found loyalty towards the Russian state in the early 19^th century and the activities of voluntary informers, for example, shtetl Jews informing on Polish gentry hiding French transports. There were also many Jews who informed on fellow Jews who dominated transborder smuggling at the time. Ibid., 71, 79–80.

174 Brian Horowitz, “A Jewish Russifier in Despair: Lev Levanda’s Polish Question,” in Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, vol. 17 (2014): 279–98, at 281.

175 François Guesnet, “From Community to Metropolis: The Jews of Warsaw, 1550–1880,” in Dynner and Guesnet, Warsaw: The Jewish Metropolis, 134.

176 Kalman Weise, “The Capital of ‘Yiddishland’?” in Dynner and Guesnet, Warsaw: The Jewish Metropolis, 134.

177 Włodzimierz Mędrzecki, Województwo Wołyńskie 1921–1939: Elementy przemian cywilizacyjnych, społecznych i politycznych (Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy imienia Ossolińskich, Polska Akademia Nauk, 1988), 182.

178 Nathaniel Deutsch, The Jewish Dark Continent: Life and Death in the Russian Pale of Settlement (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2011), 151.

179 Theodore S. Hamerow, Remembering a Vanished World: A Jewish Childhood in Interwar Poland (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2001), 135–37. As Hamerow indicates, Jews often viewed Poles as morally lax and accused Polish girls and women of promiscuity. The following account from Działoszyce, a small town near Kraków, paints a realistic picture of conditions in a typical, traditional shtetl (the author was born in 1927): “Young men in their 20s would pay me, too, but for a different service. They were too embarrassed to buy their own condoms, so for two groszy per visit, I would do the purchasing for them. I learned all about the different types and brands. … I once counted several unmarried pregnant girls in our modest and very religious town.” See Joseph E. Tenenbaum, Legacy and Redemption: A Life Renewed (Washington, D.C.: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and The Holocaust Survivors’ Memoirs Project, 2005), 79, 81.

180 See, for example, Rabbi Shimon Huberband, Kiddush Hashem: Jewish Religious and Cultural Life in Poland During the Holocaust (Hoboken, New Jersey: Ktav Publishing House, and Yeshiva University Press, 1987), xxxii, xxxvi.

181 Ben-Zion Gold, The Life of Jews in Poland before the Holocaust (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 76, 79, 80. Gold goes on to state: “However, it would be grossly unfair to give the impression that all Polish people wanted to harm Jews. I knew Poles who defended Jews, who did business and worked with them.” Ibid., 80–81.

182 Dynner, Yankel’s Tavern, 32–33.

183 Dynner, Yankel’s Tavern, 45.

184 Dynner, Yankel’s Tavern, 31ff.

185 Dynner, Yankel’s Tavern, 38ff.

186 Dynner, Yankel’s Tavern, 45.

187 Iyov Ha-Giben (pseud.), Willow Weep For Me (New York: Bloch Publishing, 1991), 162–71.

188 John Sack, An Eye for an Eye (New York: Basic Books/HarperCollins, 1993), 28. Although the State Security office was responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of persons (Christians of various nationalities), there is no evidence that any of the murdered victims were Jews. Adam Krawecki’s account is reminiscent of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s 1989 statement that Poles “suck in anti-Semitism with their mother’s milk.”

189 Pinchas Bibel, “Satan Was Left Unemployed…”, in Dov Shuval, ed., The Szczebrzeszyn Memorial Book (Mahwah, New Jersey: Jacob Solomon Berger, 2005), 45–47.

190 Stanisław Likiernik, By Devil’s Luck: A Tale of Resistance in Wartime Warsaw (Edinburgh and London: Mainstream, 2001), 21.

191 Barbara Engelking, Na łące popiołów: Ocaleni z Holocaustu (Warsaw: Cyklady, 1993), 126.

192 Testimony of David Krelenbaum, Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, Interview code 37873.

193 As cited in Christopher S. Browning, Remembering Survival: Inside a Nazi Slave-Labor Camp (New York and London: Norton, 2010), 21.

194 Henia Reinhartz, Bits and Pieces (Toronto: Azrieli Foundation, 2007), 7.

195 Dov Freiberg, To Survive Sobibor (Jerusalem and New York: Gefen, 2007), 6–7.

196 Kopel Kolpanitzky, Sentenced to Life: The Story of a Survivor of the Lahwah Ghetto (London and Portland, Oregon: Vallentine Mitchell, 2007), 18.

197 Halina Birenbaum, “W przyjaźni można sobie wiele wyznać,” Więź (Warsaw), October 1999, 142.

198 Eta Wrobel with Jeanette Friedman, My Life My Way: The Extraordinary Memoir of A Jewish Partisan in WWII Poland (New Milford, New Jersey: The Wordsmithy; and New York: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, 2006), 43.

199 Aleksander Pruszyński, “Ost Front,” Goniec (Mississauga), April 15–20, 2011.

200 John Munro, Bialystok to Birkenau: The Holocaust Journey of Michel Mielnicki (Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, and Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, 2000), 59, 67.

201 William Samelson, “Piotrków Trybunalski: My Ancestral Home,” in Sterling, ed., Life in the Ghettos During the Holocaust, 11.

202 Cited in Alina Cała, “The Social Consciousness of Young Jews in Interwar Poland,” in Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, vol. 8 (1994): 45.

203 Cited in Alina Cała, “The Social Consciousness of Young Jews in Interwar Poland,” in Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, vol. 8 (1994): 45.

204 Haskell Nordon, The Education of a Polish Jew: A Physician’s War Memoirs (New York: D. Grossman Press, 1982), 40.

205 Samuel Honig, Reunions: Echoes of the Holocaust, Pre-War and Post-War Stories (Windsor, Ontario: Benchmark Publishing & Design Inc., 2000), 51.

206 Citing Israeli scholars such as Yisrael Bartal and Rami Rosen, an authoritative source on this topic states: “Rosen included in his long article many well-documented cases of massacres of Christians and mock repetitions of the crucifixion of Jesus on Purim, most of which occurred either in the late ancient period or in the Middle Ages.” See Shahak and Mezvinsky, Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, 116.

207 Fishman, The Rise of Modern Yiddish Culture, 109.

208 Horowitz, Reckless Rites, 86–87.

209 Jan Slomka, From Serfdom to Self-Government (London: Minerva, 1941), 50.

210 Alina Cala, The Image of the Jew in Polish Folk Culture (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew University, 1995), 81, 113; Kurek, Poza granicą solidarności, 83, 93.

211 These events, which took place on April 5, 1924, happened to be observed by two police officers and a military gendarme, and consequently, the culprits were charged and convicted under the criminal laws for profaning the Crucifix. Since the Jewish community had tolerated these anti-Catholic antics, the local Endeks reacted by urging a boycott of Jewish shops. It is doubtful, however, that this boycott was respected or sustained for any period. See “Koszerna balanga,” Nowa Myśl Polska, December 5, 2004.

212 Horowitz, Reckless Rites, 11, passim, especially chapter 6. Horowitz concludes his survey of Jewish attacks on sacred Christian objects by Jews as follows: “we are in a better position to take Christian reports of Jewish cross-desecration seriously rather than dismissing them as anti-Semitic inventions. There is also no paucity of references to such conduct in Jewish sources …” Ibid., 156.

213 Ibid., 10.

214 Sandro Contenta, “Fiery ritual ignites passions: English town clings to ancient practice of burning effigy of pope in its blazing celebration of Bonfire Night,” Toronto Star, November 4, 2006.

215 Mark S. Smith, Treblinka Survivor: The Life and Death of Hershl Sperling (Gloucestershire, United Kingdom: The History Press, 2010), 59.

216 Ellen Livingston, Tradition and Modernism in the Shtetl: Aisheshuk, 1919–1939: An Oral History (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1986), 74.

217 Ibid., 97. A Jewish woman from Wołożyn recalled: “The goyim would often come to the rabbi for a blessing. They would bring a chicken, a few zlotes [złoty] to heal and the rabbi would offer them a prayer.” See Cheyna Rogovin Chertow, “Growing Up in White Russia: My Memories of Belakoritz ans Wolozyn(Poland/White Russia) 1912–1931,” Belarus (SIG) Newsletter, no. 2 (February 1999).

218 Ellen Livingston, Tradition and Modernism in the Shtetl, 96.

219 Aviel, A Village Named Dowgalishok, 19.

220 Haya Kreslansky, “This is How We Lived in Our Town,” in Dereczin (Mahwah, New Jersey: Jacob Solomon Berger, 2000), 158.

221 Testimony of Krystyna Budnicka, August 2003, Internet: