May 2016 Traditional Jewish Attitudes Toward Poles

375 Among the many words borrowed from Yiddish are: machlojka (“swindle”), melina (thieves’ “den” or “hang-out”), sitwa (“gang”), szaber (noun) and szabrować (verb) (“loot”), szacher (“swindle, cheat”), szwindel (“swindle”). See Kazimierz Ożóg, “Ślady kultury żydowskiej w języku polskim: Język polski odbija życie codzienne i kulturę Żydów polskich,” Kwartalnik Edukacyjny, no. 60 (2010), Internet: .

376 Goldstein, The Stars Bear Witness, 10–11.

377 Goldstein, The Stars Bear Witness, 13. Curiously, Goldstein avoided punishment for organizing violent activities, even though he was arrested once. Ibid., 16.

378 Daniel Pater, “Żydowski Akademicki Ruch Korporacyjny w Polsce w latach 1898–1939,” Dzieje Najnowsze, no. 3 (2002): 12–16.

379 Nordon, The Education of a Polish Jew, 85. For additional examples of “preventive actions,” see Chodakiewicz, Żydzi i Polacy, 1918–1955, 82–86.

380 Testimony of Józef Grynblatt cited in Anka Grupińska with Bartek Choroszewski, “O obrazie powstania w getcie, Żydowskim Związku Wojskowym i książce Mariana Apfelbauma,” Tygodnik Powszechny, June 29, 2003. A Jew who lived in Kaunas described the situation there prior to the war: “The competing fund-raising drives of the various Zionist factions were reaching their peak. … A great controversy developed. Should the funds be used to acquire more land in Palestine … or should they be used for the financing of illegal immigration … At school, the controversy took the form of fist fights resulting from the students grabbing and breaking the collection boxes, while the adults gave their support to various political groups whose conflicting aims and views were disseminated through vituperative articles published in Jewish newspapers. The heated arguments and the violent enmities that ensued often created rifts or even break-ups of family and friendships. … When my father discovered that I had become a member of the Betar, he beat me severely, after chasing me around the dinner table, and called me ‘dirty dog, Nazi!’ It was quite common in those days for Jews to call their political opponents Nazis, just as it is today in Israel when ‘the Likud accuses Labor of using Stuermer-style Nazi propaganda in its Histadrut [Workers’ Union] election campaign’.” See David Ben-Dor, The Darkest Chapter (Edinburgh: Canongate, 1996), 27–29.

381 Testimony of Baruch Borka Szub, Internet: .

382 Regina Renz, “Small Towns in Inter-War Poland,” in Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, vol. 17 (2004): 151. Also Maciągowski and Krawczyk, The Story of Jewish Chmielnik, 102.

383 Maciągowski and Krawczyk, The Story of Jewish Chmielnik, 102.

384 Shulman, The Old Country, 25–26.

385 See, for example, Chodakiewicz, Żydzi i Polacy 1918–1955, 91–92 (Częstochowa); Gontarczyk, Pogrom?, 31–32; Bechta, Narodowo radykalni, 179; Dembowski, Christians in the Warsaw Ghetto, 94 (Jewish assimilationists decried the lack of commercial ethics on the part of Jewish merchants). Since Jewish merchants in Parczew effectively prevented Christians from operating stands in the local market, the town’s authorities constructed a commercial centre in the town square. See Bechta, Pogrom czy odwet?, Chapter 1. A Jewish woman who did not have a Jewish appearance had to provide assurances that she was Jewish before she was hired as a bakery manager. See Wrobel, My Life My Way, 40–41. Another memoir describes Jewish economic life in the town of Kłobuck, near Częstochowa, as follows: “A number of Jews also made a living by smuggling goods to and from Germany across the border, particularly tobacco, saccharin and silk. One Jewish entrepreneur was known for shooing his geese into the air just before the German frontier and gathering them up on the other side, where he could sell them for twice the amount without having to pay toll charges at the border.” See Smith, Treblinka Survivor, 40.

386 Dynner, Yankel’s Tavern, 146–47.

387 The slogan “Swój do swego” (“Each to his own”) was launched by the National Democrats after the 1912 election to the Russian Duma in retaliation for Jewish support for a social democrat (of Polish origin) who won in Warsaw, and sat as Russian deputy, over the National Democratic candidate who would have represented the Polish Circle and Polish interests, thus leaving the ancient Polish capital without a Polish voice in the Duma. As Theodore Weeks points out, the short-lived boycott it ushered in did not gain broad support and economically, was not particularly successful. See Weeks, From Assimilation to Antisemitism, 166, 169. The notion that Jews were being squeezed out of the economic life of Poland has no basis in fact. In Kielce, for example, their strength in commerce increased from 45.5% in 1919 to 61.4% in 1938/39. See Leszek Bukowski, Andrzej Jankowski, and Jan Żaryn, eds., Wokół pogromu kieleckiego, vol. 2 (Warsaw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej–Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, 2008), 13. The slogan was again popularized by Polish nationalists during the economic crisis in the 1930s. This was not, however, a novel or indigenously Polish movement. Yedida Kanfer traces the boycott to its origins in 19^th century Ireland. English land agent Charles Boycott became the subject of “the boycott” by Irish tenant farmers in their struggle for fair rent prices. There was nothing remarkable in the boycott even in foreign-ruled Poland at the time. Poles boycotted the Prussians’ heavy-handed agricultural policies, as in 1901. Soon thereafter, Jews in the Łódź area boycotted German goods. See Yedida Kanfer, “‘Each for His Own’: Economic Nationalism in Łódź, 1864–1914,” in Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, 1815–1918, vol. 27: Jews in the Kingdom of Poland, 1815–1918 (Oxford and Portland, Oregon: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2015), 156, 172, 173–74. Historian Livia Rothkirchen writes about currency of the boycott in the latter part of the 19^th century in the Czech lands where anti-Jewish unrest continually broke out in Prague and other parts of Bohemia and in Moravia, even though Jews formed a little more than one percent of the population: “With the upsurge of nationalism the growing political pressure soon focused on economy and business: in 1892 a countryside campaign was launched against German and Jewish merchants under the slogan of “each to his own” (Svůj k svému); rioting and looting occurred in towns and villages such as Kladno and Kutná Hora. … Further disturbances occurred in the wake of the 1897 Badeni language ordinances … [The anti-Jewish disturbances were also directed against poor Jews in their traditional district of Josefov in Prague, and the Austrian government was forced to impose a state of emergency in order to restore peace and order.] … Two years later … new disturbances instigated by Czech nationalists directed against Germans and Jews broke out in many localities both in Bohemia and Moravia. … The turmoil in 1897 and subsequently in 1899 generated a popular outpouring of anti-Semitism.” See Rothkirchen, The Jews of Bohemia and Moravia, 17. Although laced with anti-Semitism, Czech nationalism, which could be as belligerent and nasty as any, had primarily an anti-German focus. See Nancy M. Wingfield, Flag Wars and Stone Saints: How the Bohemian Lands Became Czech (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2007). A ritual murder trial was held after Czech nationalist circles fingered a Jewish journeyman-shoemaker in the death of a Christian girl. The Jew was condemned to death in two trials in 1889 and 1900. In total, there were twelve such trials in the Austro-Hungarian Empire between 1867 and 1914. See Heiko Haumann, A History of East European Jews (Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, 2002), 200–1. Although laced with anti-Semitism, Czech nationalism, which could be as belligerent and nasty as any, had primarily an anti-German focus. See Nancy M. Wingfield, Flag Wars and Stone Saints: How the Bohemian Lands Became Czech (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2007). As under Austrian rule before World War I, Germans and Czechs took turns vandalizing each others’ schools in the new Czecholslovakia. Ibid., 161. Surprisingly, a boycott of Jewish business also caught on in Ireland, even though the Jewish population was microscopic, and victims were hard to come by. In Limerick, number of Jews increased from 35, to 90 and then to 130 in 1888, 1892, and 1896 respectively. Easter Sunday of 1884 saw the first of what were to be a series of sporadic violent anti-Semitic attacks and protests. The wife of Lieb Siev and his child were injured by stones and her house damaged by an angry crowd. In 1892 two families were beaten and a stoning took place on 24 November 1896. On 1904 an economic boycott was waged against the small Jewish community for over two years. It was accompanied by a number of assaults, stone throwing and intimidation, which caused many Jews to leave the city. Anti-Jewish riots also broke out in Cork in 1894. See Dermot Keogh, Jews in Twentieth-Century Ireland: Refugees, Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust (Cork: Cork University Press, 1998).

388 E. F. Benson, The White Eagle of Poland (New York: George H. Doran, 1919), 76.

389 Yedida Kanfer, “‘Each for his Own’: Economic Nationalism in Łódź, 1864–1914,” in Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, vol. 27: Jews in the Kingdom of Poland, 1815–1918 (Oxford and Portland, Oregon: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2015), 176.

390 Fishman, Studies on Polish Jewry, 1919–1939, 284.

391 Maksym Hon, “Konflikt ukraińsko-żydowski na ziemiach zachodnioukraińskich w latach 1935–1939,” in Krzysztof Jasiewicz, ed., Świat niepożegnany: Żydzi na dawnych ziemiach wschodnich Rzeczypospolitej w XVIII–XX wieku (Warsaw and London: Instytut Studiów Politycznych PAN, Rytm, and Polonia Aid Foundation Trust, 2004), 245–47; Maksym Hon, Iz kryvdoiu na samoti: Ukrainsko–ievreiski vzaiemyny na zakhidnoukrainskykh zemliakh u skladi Polshchi (1935–1939) (Rivne: Volynski oberehy, 2005), 71, 77–79; Mazur, Życie polityczne polskiego Lwowa 1918–1939, 60; Lucyna Kulińska, Działalność terrorystyczna i sabatażowa nacjonalistycznych organizacji ukraińskich w Polsce w latach 1922–1939 (Kraków: Fundacja Centrum Dokumentacji Czynu Niepodległościowego and Księgarnia Akademicka, 2009), 294–98, 527, 567, 581–82.

392 Vladimir Jabotinsky, The Jewish War Front (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1940; Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1975), 59–60.

393 Jabotinsky, The Jewish War Front, 74.

394 Jabotinsky, The Jewish War Front, 74.

395 See, for example, reports authored by Jews on conditions in Turobin near Krasnystaw and Wiskitki near Żyrardów. See Aleksandra Bańkowska, ed., Archiwum Ringelbluma: Konspiracyjne Archiwum Getta Warszawskiego, vol. 6: Generalne Gubernatorstwo: Relacje i dokumenty (Warsaw: Żydowski Instytut Historyczny im. Emanuela Ringelbluma, 2012), 147, 599. Official statistics show that Jews continued to dominate overwhelmingly in all branches of retail and wholesale commerce in Lwów in 1938, with non-Jews making no significant inroads. See Andrij Bezsmertnyi, “Handel lwowski w okresie międzywojennym,” Dzieje najnowsze, vol. 47, no. 2 (2015): 3–19.

396 Browning, Remembering Survival, 21–22.

397 Salsitz, A Jewish Boyhood in Poland, 244. For information about the ineffectiveness of the boycott in Mińsk Mazowiecki, see Samuel Kassow, “The Shtetl in Interwar Poland,” in Katz, ed., The Shtetl, 137–38. Many Jewish accounts confirm that the growing Christian competition had little impact on Jewish merchants, for example: “two stores were opened in Jaslo [Jasło] by Catholics from near Poznań, but they were not very successful. When university students, back from their vacations, promoted the popular slogan “Swoj [Swój] do swego” (Support your own), which advocated the boycott of Jewish businesses, this also failed to have any effect.” See Jakub Herzig, “Jasło: The Birth and Death of a Jewish Community in Poland from Its Beginnings to the Holocaust,” Internet: .

398 Rosa Lehmann, ““Jewish Patrons and Polish Clients: Patronage in a Small Galician Town,” in Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, vol. 17 (2004): 153–69, at 159, 160.

399 Menachem Katz, ed., Brzezany Memorial Book (Haifa: Association of Former Brzezany Residents in Israel, 1978), 20 (English section).

400 Katz, Gone to Pitchpoï, 30–31.

401 A widely reported statement made in January 1938 by interwar Poland’s last prime minister, Felicjan Sławoj Składkowski, a Calvinist by religion, that voiced approval of economic competition between Poles and Jews in the private sphere, provided it did not entail violence (“Walka ekonomiczna—owszem, ale krzywdy żadnej”), was hardly a state-sanctioned policy to boycott Jewish businesses as the latter benefitted often from government contracts. A sweeping charge frequently encountered in Jewish memoirs is that Jews were discriminated against in business and greatly overburdened with taxes in interwar Poland, to the point of bankruptcy or even near starvation. One memoir by an educated Jew even claims that “hardly anyone paid taxes except for Jews.” See Jehoschua Gertner and Danek Gertner, Home is No More: The Destruction of the Jews of Kosow and Zabie (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2000), 57. Based on such anecdotal sources, Western historians claim, baselessly, that the Polish state “imposed special taxes on Jews and Jewish businesses.” See Anika Walke, Introduction to Kutz, If, By Miracle, xv. (Although Jewish political parties operated freely in interwar Poland and were represented at all levels of elected offices, Anika Walke also claims that Jewish political parties “were driven underground; many activists were arrested and imprisoned.” See Kutz, If, By Miracle, xvi.) Other historians claim that “one in three Polish Jews had been beggared by punitive [sic] taxation.” See Bideleux and Jeffries, A History of Eastern Europe, 482; Crampton, Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century, 174–76. A better informed Jewish historian makes a more modest charge: “taxation policies resulted in a disproportionate tax burden falling on small and medium-sized enterprises, where Jews were concentrated; in consequence, Jews paid between 35 and 40 percent of all direct taxes to the state.” See Jaff Schatz, “Jews and the Communist Movement in Interwar Poland,” in Frankel and Diner, Dark Times, Dire Decisions, 15. Needless to say, there was no differential tax rate based on criteria such as nationality or religion. In Western Poland, most such enterprises were non-Jewish, and many of them were owned by Germans. According to another source, the taxation system was heavily weighted towards the towns, where an overwhelming majority of Jews lived. See Simon Segal, The New Poland and the Jews (New York: Lee Furman, 1938), 141. A recent scholarly study of conditions in the small town of Jaśliska near Krosno is more nuanced and instructive. The author points out that it was the disparity in the Polish and Jewish occupations that affected the contributions to land and income tax paid by both groups, with Jews contributing a disproportionate share of the income tax, and Poles a disproportionate share of the land-tax. The Jewish share of municipal taxes reflected their preponderance (or Poles’ absence) in the local cash economy of the small town. Until the electoral reforms, this also meant considerable overepresentation on the town’s political scene: “Since the Jews paid the highest taxes, they obtained six of the twelve seats, in spite of their proportionally low numbers [about 26 percent]. The situation changed in 1923 when the number of seats was reduced by one-half. The political status of the Jews, however, remained unimpaired and the people took full account of their opinions.” The author demonstrates that even in the 1930s, the period of economic boycotts, the Poles’ involvement in local trade remained limited. Anti-Jewish propaganda had little effect on the activities and interactions of the Poles and Jews at the community level. On the whole, relations remained proper and many Jewish testimonies refer to them as favorable. As one Jew commented, “One hardly noticed anti-Semitism amongst the people. The relationships between Jews and non-Jews were rather good and the trading contacts were based on mutual trust. … We did not experience anything like anti-Jewish harassment. The good relationship between Jews and non-Jews gave rise to a steady material prosperity among the Jews.” See Lehmann, Symbiosis and Ambivalence, 48–49, 75, 82, 185–87. Moreover, the Sunday closure laws, which existed in many Western countries at the time, were not widely enforced. Jewish shops would open for Polish shoppers after mass, and a lookout was posted for the constable. Should he appear, the shops would be hurriedly closed, and he would be bribed to look the other way. See, for example, Chaim Yitchok Wolgelernter, The Unfinished Diary: A Chronicle of Tears (Lakewood, New Jersey: Israel Bookshop Publications, 2015), 35. Compare this to the violence that Orthodox Jews often visit on Sabbath “violators” in Israel.

The overall financial situation of the Jews in Poland belies the claim of “oppression” that is often levelled in popular literature. According to a study by a British economist, undoubtedly the most extensive analysis of the economic history of interwar Polish Jewry, the Jews, who represented 10 percent of Poland’s population, controlled 20 percent of the nation’s wealth. The Jewish share of the country’s wealth increased both absolutely and relative to the non-Jewish share in the period 1929–1939. Although very many Jews lived in poverty (as did non-Jews), Marcus argues that the “Jews in Poland were poor because they lived in a poor, undeveloped country. Discrimination added only marginally to their poverty.” See Marcus, Social and Political History of the Jews in Poland, 1919–1939, 231, passim. The reality of those times is reflected in candid memoirs such as the following. A Jew from Stołpce near the Polish-Soviet border recalls: “The managers of my father’s factories were always Jews. The workers were drawn from the local Polish population. … In every one of the factories, there was a little provisions store that sold the basics … Shopping at this factory store saved them a trip into town, but the prices were high. So he was making money on anything and everything. And he paid very little in official taxes. If you had connections with the right Polish officials—and bribed them heavily enough—you were basically taken care of. Lazar was not the only one who took advantage of this; bribery was a way of life in Poland, for Jews and Poles alike.” See Jack Sutin and Rochelle Sutin, Jack and Rochelle: A Holocaust Story of Love and Resistance (Saint Paul, Minnesota: Graywolf Press, 1995), 7–8. A Jewish memoir from Kraków also stresses that “it was customary to keep one’s financial status secret, mainly from the tax-inspector, but also from a jealous [Jewish] neighbour.” See Rafael F. Scharf, Poland, What Have I To Do with Thee…: Essays without Prejudice, Bilingual edition (Kraków: Fundacja Judaica, 1996), 193. Another Jew who lived in that city concurred in that assessment: “The third group of Jews were newcomers, settlers from the eastern territories. … They traded among themselves and did not mix with other Jews. … They controlled the shoe industry, but for the most part they were wholesalers, supplying goods either to local stores or to shops in the many small towns in the countryside. They engaged trained bookkeepers to keep their books for tax purposes, but in addition they all carried in their pockets little notebooks in which their actual accounts were kept, accounts different from those found in the bookkeepers’ neat ledgers. The information in those little books was entered in a Hebrew script, legible only to them.” See Bruno Shatyn, A Private War: Surviving in Poland on False Papers, 1941–1945 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1985), 101. The following experience is that of a Hasidic family from a small town in central Poland: “There was, however, at least once year when we made a concerted effort to appear less prosperous. That was when Butzke, the tax inspector, came to Dzialoszyce [Działoszyce] to assess every business in town. Butzke was from Pinczow [Pińczów], the regional tax department. When we heard rumors that he was coming, we tried to empty our usually packed store of much of its merchandise. We wanted Butzke to see as little as possible so that he would levy a lower tax.” As “justification” for this conduct the author adds: “Jews were taxed above the normal rate. We were just trying to protect ourselves from this unfair taxation.” 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), 59. There are many such accounts attesting to oervasive white-collar, yet the new generation of Jewish-American historians contend that, unlike Poles, “Jews in reality didn’t steal.” See Robert Blobaum, “Criminalizing the ‘Other’: Crime, Ethnicity, and Antisemitism in Early Twentieth-Century Poland,” in Blobaum, Antisemitism and Its Opponents in Modern Poland, 100. Despite the abject poverty that many Jews faced (as did many non-Jews), there was no significant movement on the part of Jews to occupy poorly paid positions as labourers in small industries (often owned by Jews), as caretakers in Jewish tenement buildings, or as domestics in the homes of the more prosperous Jews. Such menial jobs were usually held by Christians. In their traditional strongholds of business and trade, Jews generally maintained ethnic solidarity, which translated into a de facto monopoly that adversely affected the interests of Polish farmers and the nascent Polish merchant class. This is demonstrated by the following example from Hrubieszów: “with the expansion of the [Jewish-controlled] corn trade bitter rivalries sprang up. … This state of affairs lasted for several years, until they came to realise that the only person who profited from their disputes was the [Polish] farmer. Several sensible Hrubieshov citizens epitomised the situation thus: ‘We are only pouring gold into the farmer’s bag’. The Hrubieshov merchants, the bigger and the smaller, got finally together and hit on the only logical solution: partnership in the form of a cooperative body [from which Poles were excluded]. Not all joined immediately; but as the first attempt met with almost immediate success, the movement spread. In later years, Christians, too, tried their hand; but, characteristically enough, Polish farmers remained loyal to the Jewish merchants.” See Yeheskel Ader, “Trade between the Two World Wars,” in Baruch Kaplinsky, ed., Pinkas Hrubieshov: Memorial to a Jewish Community in Poland (Tel Aviv: The Hrubieshov Associations in Israel and U.S.A., 1962), x. The notion that endemic Christian-based anti-Semitism was the overriding factor that set the tone for relations between Poles and Jews must be dismissed as an unfounded generalization—one that does not reflect day-to-day existence and omits other important components of the equation. In any event, economic conditions were harsher for national minorities in many other European countries. The Baltic States, for example, employed land reform policies as an economic weapon by nationalizing estates belonging to Germans, Russians, and Poles, paying only token compensation, and distributing the land to ethnic Balts. See Georg von Rauch, The Baltic States: The Years of Independence: Estonia, Latvia, Lithunaia, 1917–1940 (Berkeley: University of California, 1974), 89–91; Derek Howard Aldcroft, Europe`s Third World: The European Priphery in the Interwar Years (Aldershot: Ashgate, 206), 96–97; Prusin, The Lands Between, 111. By the mid-1920s, all Jewish ministry employees in Lithuania were dismissed or resigned. Similarly, by 1925, out of Latvia’s 10,237 civil servants and policemen there were only 22 Jews. See Prusin, The Lands Between, 113.

402 The following are but a few examples: “In the 1750s the British provoked the rulers of Bengal into war, defeating them conclusively in 1757. In the aftermath of their victory in Bengal, they plundered the state treasury of some £5 million and gained control of 10,000 Bengali weavers. By 1765, John Company was the civil administration of Bengal. It promptly increased the tax burden on peasants and artisans, which led to serious famines in 1770 and 1783. … Prior to the British military takeover, India had been producing cloth that was cheaper and better than English textiles … To meet this challenge, the British government prohibited the British East India Company from importing calicoes into England. To take advantage of the import restriction, English factories began producing copies of popular Indian textiles for sale both in England and abroad. In addition, India was required to admit English manufacturers free of tariffs. These actions effectively destroyed what had been a thriving Indian textile industry.” Since Western European nations were producing little that the Chinese wanted or needed, but Chinese products, notably tea, were high in demand, the British capitalized on the opium market in China. By 1773, the British East India Company had a monopoly over opium sales and smuggling opium into China, where it was illegal. “Smuggling opium into China was hugely profitable for British merchants, as well as for the Americans and the French. When the Chinese government tried to halt the trade in 1839 by seizing opium held by British merchants in warehouses in Canton, the British government intervened militarily and forced the Chinese government to stop enforcing its own opium laws. An analogy today might be the government of Colombia sending troops to the United States or Canada to force acceptance of Colombian cocaine shipments. Moreover, the British demanded and received additional trading rights into China, further opening a market, not only for opium but for textiles as well. The British-led opium trade from India to china had three results. First, it reversed the flow of money between China and the rest of the world: during the first decade of the 19^th century, China was still enjoying a yearly trade surplus of 26 million silver dollars; by the third decade, 34 million silver dollars per year were leaving China to pay for opium. Second, estimates are that by the end of the 19^th century, one out of every ten Chinese was addicted to opium. Finally, textile exports from England to India and China increased from 6 percent of total British exports in 1815, to 22 percent in 1840, 31 percent in 1850, and more than 50 percent after 1873.” See Richard H. Robbins, Maggie Cummings, Karen McGarry, and Sherrie N. Larkin, Cultural Anthropology: A Problem-Based Approach, Second Canadian Edition (Toronto: Nelson Education, 2014), 55–56. The Americans did not lag behind. The production of cotton using slave labour fuelled the Industrial Revolution in the United States. Another means to accomplish American economic and political goals was the forced removal of the Cherokee (and other North American nations) from fertile lands in North Carolina and Georgia to a reservation in Oklahoma—the so-called Georgia Compact of 1802 instituted by President Thomas Jefferson. “Andrew Jackson made Indian removal one of the cornerstones of his presidential campaign in 1828, signed the final order, and the army was sent in to forcibly move the population as land speculators flooded onto what had been prosperous Cherokee farms and plantations. Thousands of additional acres of what had been Indian land were taken over or converted to cotton production by white farmers using black slaves. In this way, white farmers using Native American land and African labour to produce cotton for the British and American textile industries created much of the future wealth of the young country. The political economy of cotton production, slavery, and land alienation during this period of history laid the groundwork for ongoing systemic racism in North America.” Ibid., 56–58. The 1985 Academy Award-winning documentary Broken Rainbow discusses the history of injustice towards the Native American people.  The film described The Long Walk of the Navajo, which was the 1864 deportation and attempted ethnic cleansing of the Navajo people by the U.S. government. 8,000 Navajos were forced to walk more than 300 miles at gunpoint from their ancestral homelands in northeastern Arizona and northwestern New Mexico to an internment camp in Bosque Redondo, which was a desolate tract on the Pecos River in eastern New Mexico. Many died along the way. From 1863 to 1868, the U.S. Military persecuted and imprisoned 9,500 Navajo (the Diné) and 500 Mescalero Apache (the N’de). Living under armed guards, in holes in the ground, with extremely scarce rations, more than 3,500 Navajo and Mescalero Apache men, women, and children died while in the concentration camp. Native American and Blacks were not the only ones to be subjected to sweeping racist decrees. On December 17, 1862, General Ulysses S. Grant issued and signed General Order No. 11 to evict Jews from the vast war zone under his command—known as the “Department of the Tennessee,” but actually stretching from northern Mississippi to Cairo, Illinois, and from the Mississippi River to the Tennessee River. Although only a tiny handful of cotton traders were Jewish, anti-Semitism flourished, as Grant wrongfully blamed the Jews for the “raging black market in Southern cotton.” His edict was subsequently described as “the most sweeping anti-Jewish regulation in all American history.” It read as follows: “The Jews, as a class violating every regulation of trade established by the Treasury Department and also department orders, are hereby expelled from the department within twenty-four hours from the receipt of this order. Post commanders will see that all of this class of people be furnished passes and required to leave, and any one returning after such notification will be arrested and held in confinement until an opportunity occurs of sending them out as prisoners, unless furnished with permit from headquarters.”

403 The following are but a few examples: Teyer, The Red Forest, 24 (a successful Jewish bakery in Czerwony Bór near Łomża supplied a nearby army camp); Rubin, Against the Tide, 19 (a dentist in Nowogródek engaged by the Polish army); Kolpanitzky, Sentenced to Life, 6 (a meat supplier to the the Polish border police in Sienkiewicze, Polesia); Testimony of Yaakov Kaplan, Internet: (the author’s father, Berko Shevachovich, who owned a butcher shop in Lida, was a food supplier to the 77^th Infantry Regiment of the Polish army); Barbara Ruth Bluman, I Have My Mother’s Eyes: A Holocaust Memoir Across Generations (Vancouver: Ronsdale Press and Vancouver Holocaust Education Society, 2009), 11, 22 (one of the Hoffenberg brothers in Warsaw, who supplied fur coats to Polish railroad employees, scoffed at the suggestion of leaving Poland: “Why would I leave Warsaw?” It’s the new Jerusalem!”); Testimony of William Weiss, Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, Interview code 10957 (Weiss’s father owned a store in Lwów that furnished supplies for the Polish army); Testimony of Isadore Farbstein, Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, Interview code 13378 (the family business in Parczew prospered because of orders from the Polish army).

404 Robert Bideleux and Ian Jeffries, A History of Eastern Europe: Crisis and Change (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), 482; R.J. Crampton, Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), 174–76.

405 Schulman, A Partisan’s Memoir, 26. The author recalled that Polish military officer, a friend of the family, gave her mother 500 złoty, a small fotune in those days, so that she could pay for her daughter’s wedding.

406 Testimony of Bencjon Drutin in Marzena Baum-Gruszowska and Dominika Majuk, eds., Swiatła w ciemności: Sprawiedliwi wśród narodów świata: Relacje historii mówionej w działaniach edukacyjnych (Lublin: Ośrodek “Brama Grodzka–Teatr NN,” 2009), 56.

407 Brandsdorfer, The Bleeding Sky, Chapter 2.

408 Piotr Kosobudzki, Przez druty, kraty i kajdany: Wspomnienia partyzanta NSZ (Wrocław: Nortom, 1997), 20–21.

409 Janina Stobniak-Smogorzewska, “Osadnicy wojskowi a ludność żydowska na Kresach Wschodnich 1920–1940,” in Jasiewicz, Świat niepożegnany, 563.

410 Antoni Zambrowski, “Niczym rozmowa głuchych,” Antysocjalistyczne Mazowsze, June 9, 2005, posted at .

411 These stories from Warsaw were carried in newspaper reports from 1936: “Nielojalna konkurencja żydowskich kupców,” “Pobił ciężko przeciwnika na sali sądowej” (one the accused brought a piece of steel into the courtroom and physically attacked the owner of the store they had demolished and seriously injured him), “Żydowski ‘kartel śledziowy’.”

412 Samuel Iwry, who hails from Białystok, described the following bizarre scenario: “My father had a small business, perhaps two dozen people worked for him … My connection with this business was (and this is very difficult to understand) when we had to pay out every week his workers. There was a need to go to the bank and write out a check, and bring it back to him. … The reason that I had to do it was that according to Jewish law, a certain Hebrew inscription from the Talmud was necessary to provide on every I.O.U. or transaction like this to the bank, since it is biblically forbidden to take interest [usury] or deal with userers. The rabbis had learned how to go around it, because in their time commerce was already developed and you wouldn’t do it any other way. So I had to write out the amendment to this law. The amendment says ‘I thereby make the lender or the borrower a partner in my business, for this sum,” let’s say for 550 zloty. This way, the usury was removed.” See Samuel Iwry, To Wear the Dust of War: From Bialystok to Shanghai to the Promised Land—An Oral History, edited by L. J. H. Kelley (New York and Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 6. An example of deceitful practices that could lead to trouble in the marketplace can be found in Hanna Krall, Shielding the Flame: An Intimate Conversation with Dr. Marek Edelman, the Last Surviving Leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1986), 11: Jewish fishmongers in Warsaw would paint the gills of stale fish red to make them appear fresh. Tellingly, one Jew blames his father’s lack of success in business on his being “too honest to get rich in business.” See Severin Gabriel, In the Ruins of Warsaw Streets (Jerusalem and New York: Gefen, 2005), 62. Some Jews thought that such shady business dealings led to an increase in anti-Semitism. See Stella Zylbersztajn, A gdyby to było Wasze dziecko? (Łosice: Łosickie Stowarzyszenie Rozwoju Equus, 2005), 17. Getting a mitzvah (bargain) was valued highly, and unsophisticated farmers were often taken advantage of. Norman Salsitz describes how Jewish traders descended on Polish farmers bringing their produce animals and produce to market: “The mad dash began as soon as a wagon came into view, everyone running toward it, hoping to get on and lay claim to the fattest geese. This was no simple task, since it involved leaping aboard a moving wagon, then simultaneously holding on and thrusting one’s hand into the cages to size up the birds. … Quite a few people had by now climbed onto the wagon and were standing on the poles that ran along the sides; others were still attempting to. People’s poking around the cages naturally agitates the geese, which begin to screech hysterically. Meanwhile the peasant drive has become quite furious and begins urging his horses on, both to escape those still in pursuit and to shake the grip of the people clinging both to the wagon and the geese. A torrent of curses accomplishes little, so he turns his whip on the unwanted riders, who stubbornly hold their ground. A rising chorus of pounding hooves, abusive shouts, and cackling geese greets onlookers as the wagon careens into town with its original cargo and its recently acquired and remarkably persistent passengers, sometimes as many as five or six. Once in the marketplace the wagon comes to a stop, and the situation gradually returns to normal.” Jewish vendors also cursed and fought among themselves in the market; Jewish buyers ganged up on farmers by entering into agreements not to compete and bid up prices. See Salsitz, A Jewish Boyhood in Poland, 119–20, 123, 128. Other examples of “sharp” business practices employed by Jews who traded with peasants are described in Pell and Rosenbaum, Taking Risks, 11–13. Market place disputes between Jews and Poles thus had little, if anything, to do with “endemic Polish anti-Semitism,” a much overused notion in this and many other contexts of Polish-Jewish relations. One sometimes encounters the charge that Poles did not repay debts owed to Jewish shopkeepers and money-lenders. The frequency of this phenomenon is not known, nor can we gauge to what extent Polish peasants were treated fairly in their dealings with Jewish traders and shopkeepers. Jewish testimonies confirm that loans made to fellow Jews were not always repaid, as the following account from Działoszyce shows: “Father loaned money without interest to people in town. These amounts were 10 zloty [złoty], 20 zloty, 30 zloty, and more. Father had a long list of perhaps 50 people who owed him money at any given time. … Often, very little of the money loaned was repaid.” See Tenenbaum, Legacy and Redemption, 69–70.

413 Arje Rolnicki, “Small Businesses in Our Town,” in Bussgang and Bussgang, Działoszycze Memorial Book, 93.

414 Pinchas Cytron (Zitron), ed., Sefer Kielce: Toldot Kehilat Kielce. Miyom Hivsuduh V’ad Churbanah (Tel Aviv: Former Residents of Kielce in Israel, 1957), 226–27; translated as Book of Kielce: History of the Community of Kielce. From Its Founding Until Its Destruction, Internet: .

415 Richard C. Lukas, The Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles Under German Occupation, 1939–1944, Second revised edition (New York: Hippocrene, 1997), 124.

416 Cited in Stewart Steven, The Poles (London: Collins/Harvill, 1982), 313–14.

417 Jack Sutin and Rochelle Sutin, Jack and Rochelle: A Holocaust Story of Love and Resistance (Saint Paul, Minnesota: Graywolf Press, 1995), 7.

418 Richmond, Konin, 162.

419 Livingston, Tradition and Modernism in the Shtetl, 52–53.

420 Salsitz, A Jewish Boyhood in Poland, 207.

421 As pointed out by Meir Tamari, professor of economy at the Bar Ilan University in Tel Aviv, Judaism permitted usury only in relation to non-Jews. It could be circumvented through the use of non-Jewish intermediaries. See Meir Tamari, With All Your Possessions: Jewish Ethics and Economic Life (New York: Free Press; London: Collier Macmillan, 1987), 179–80, 188–89.

422 Samuel Kassow, “The Shtetl in Interwar Poland,” Katz, ed., The Shtetl, 132–33.

423 Waldemar Kozyra, Urząd Wojewódzki w Lublinie w latach 1919–1939 (Lublin: Wydawnictwo UMCS, 1999), 193–94. For additional examples see: Chodakiewicz, Żydzi i Polacy 1918–1955, 91–92 (Częstochowa); Gontarczyk, Pogrom?, 31–32; Bechta, Narodowo radykalni, 179. Large Jewish-owned factories which operated on a six-day work week sometimes did not hire Jews because of their unavailability for work on Saturday. Occasionally, Jewish factory owners were also reluctant to hire Jewish workers because of their reputation for pro-communist agitation. See Jakub Bukowski, Opowieść o życiu (Warsaw: Żydowski Instytut Historyczny, 2002), 15.

424 For a study on Jewish military evaders and deserters in the Lublin province, see Mateusz Rodak, “Żydowska przestępczość kryminalna w wojsku polskim w województwie lubelskim w latach 1918–1939,” Kwartalnik Historii Żydów, no. 3 (2012): 360–79.

425 Mark Verstandig, I Rest My Case (Melbourne: Saga Press, 1995), 9–11.

426 Testimony of Mieczyław Weinryb, December 2003–January 2004, Internet: .

427 Jacob Shepetinski, Jacob’s Ladder (London: Minerva Press, 1996), 50.

428 Berl Kagan, ed., Luboml: The Memorial Book of a Vanished Shtetl (Hoboken, New Jersey: Ktav Publishing House, 1997), 166–67.

429 Account of Arieh Henkin, “Dokshitz [Dokszyce] Memories,” Internet: .

430 Mayer Kirshenblatt and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, They Called Me Mayer July: Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood in Poland Before the Holocaust (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press; Berkeley: John L. Magnes Museum, 2007), 316–17.

431 Michael Goldberg, Memories of a Generation (United Stated Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives, typescript, April 1998), 15.

432 Tenenbaum, Legacy and Redemption, 49.

433 Werber, Saving Children, 20.

434 Confirmation of this practice can be found in the following sources: Thomas and Znaniecki, The Polish Peasant in Europe and America, vol. 1, 543–44 (a Jewish barber in Goworowo, who doubled as a physician who performed abortions, also performed artificial crippling so that the recipient could avoid travel or military service); M.N. Yarut, “Lizhensk—Russia—Lizhensk”, in H. Rabin, ed., Lizhensk: Sefer zikaron le-kedoshei Lizhensk she-nispu be-shoat ha-natsim (Tel Aviv: Former Residents of Lezajsk in Israel, 1970), 96ff., translated as Memorial Book of the Martyrs of Lezajsk Who Perished in the Holocaust, Internet: ; Jehoschua Gertner and Danek Gertner, Home Is No More: The Destruction of the Jews of Kosow and Zabie (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2000), 26; Tenenbaum, Legacy and Redemption, 107 (the author’s father had difficulty walking: “Before the war, Father had intentionally injured his leg to avoid being drafted into the Polish army. Religious people often inflicted such wounds to avoid serving in an army without Shabes and dietary laws”); Morris Sorid, One More Miracle: The Memoirs of Morris Sorid ([United States]: Jonathan Sorid, 2007), 236 (a young Jew went to an ear doctor and asked to be made deaf in one year, others “tried to lose so much weight that they would be rejected … for being too weak to perform duties”); Testimony of Henryk Prajs, January 2005, Internet: (the author’s father had cut off his finger to avoid being drafted into the Russian army; the author, like most Jews, was treated fairly in the Polish army: “I was assigned to a non-commissioned officer school, as I had completed seven years of school. … I ranked high in the [NCOs] school, because I was able. … I was promoted to corporal. I was doing well in the army, I can’t say I was favored but they treated me fair, no complaints.”). Starvation was a much more common practice but was not always successful. After a 19-year-old Jew in Działoszyce got a draft notice in mid-1939, he wrote to his brother in Canada to express his disappointment with the fact that, despite losing ten kilos, he was accepted into the Polish army anyway. See Wolgelernter, The Unfinished Diary, 59.

435 Szczepański, Społeczność żydowska Mazowsza w XIX–XX wieku, 238; Sol and Toby Rubenstein, “Our Family: Lapy, Poland,” The Museum of Family History, Internet: (a medical officer was bribed to obtain an early discharge).

436 Shiye Goldberg (Shie Chehever), The Undefeated (Tel Aviv: H. Leivick Publishing House, 1985), 67.

437 Avigdor, From Prison to Pulpit, 260.

438 Gary S. Schiff, In Search of Polin: Chasing Jewish Ghosts in Today’s Poland (New York, Washington, D.C.: Peter Lang, 2012), 170. The same phenomenon is evident in modern-day Israel where avoidance of military service is by no means limited to the Haredim. By some estimates, as many as a quarter to a third of secular Jews manage to avoid military service on various grounds, though values as low as 1.5% are also quoted. Furthermore, there is no way of knowing how many secular eighteen-year-olds go abroad, or fake physical and psychological disabilities, to avoid military service. Noah Efron elaborates on the overall situation:
This trend both reflects and contributes to the fact that service in the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] is no longer viewed by many Israelis as the sole measure of good citizenship. This fact is especially evident in the reserves. Several years ago, the police uncovered a “factory” for medical exemptions from military service, based on the army’s central hospital, Tel ha-Shomer (Sheba Medical Center). For a fee running from hundreds to thousands of dollars (depending, among other things, on the length and permanence of the exemption), military doctors signed forms releasing reservists from service. The list included some of Israel’s wealthiest and most successful men …
See Efron, Real Jews, 71, 84, 85.

439 Interview with Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Writers and Company with Eleanor Wachtel, CBC Radio, May 27, 2012.

440 Sorid, One More Miracle, 239, 244.

441 See, for example, Bernard Goldstein, The Stars Bear Witness (London: Victor Gollancz, 1950), 1, where Leonard Shatzkin writes: “My father left Poland at the end of the First World War to avoid military service against the young revolutionary regime in Russia.” Shatzkin’s father was a socialist, not a communist, but harboured pro-Soviet sympathies. Another example: Two of Miriam Brysk’s uncles left for America when they were both barely twenty to avoid serving in the Polish army. See Brysk, Amidst the Shadows of Trees, 23.

442 Tadeusz Antoni Kowalski, Mniejszości narodowe w siłach zbrojnych Drugiej Rzeczypospolitej Polski (1918–1939) (Toruń: Adam Marszałek, 1997), 120. Thus official statistics show that the Jewish component was in all certainty substantially less than the usual claim found in Jewish sources that Jews accounted for ten percent of the armed forces and military losses in the September 1939 campaign. Military historian Waldemar Rezmer estimates that the actual percentage was likely closer to five. According to his count, 46,645 to 49,100 Jews served in the Polish army during the September 1939 campaign, of whom 3,437 perished. See Zbigniew Karpus and Waldemar Rezmer, eds., Mniejszości narodowe i wyznaniowe w siłach zbrojnych Drugiej Rzeczypospolitej 1918–1939 (Toruń: Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika, 2001), 110. Over and above obtaining medical dispensations under false pretences, the rate of reporting for service when called was significantly lower for Jews (in 1933 it was 94.48%) than for Slavs (the corresponding figure for Poles, Ukrainians, and Belorussians was 98.56%, 98.76% and 98.5% respectively). See Kowalski, Mniejszości narodowe w siłach zbrojnych Drugiej Rzeczypospolitej Polski (1918–1939), 110. Jews were known to flee to Palestine and the Soviet Union to avoid service in the Polish army. Ibid., 112. To be fair, in the face of war, the Jewish community, for a variety of reasons including social pressures, did not shirk its responsibility and contributed to the National Loan for the defence of Poland (the equivalent of U.S. war bonds). See Szczepański, Społeczność żydowska Mazowsza w XIX–XX wieku, 389–90. In some communities like Puławy, it was said to have been even more generous than the Poles. See Tomasz Kowalik, “Żydowskie partie i organizacje społeczne w Puławach okresu międzywojennego,” in Filip Jaroszyński, ed., Historia i kultura Żydów Janowca nad Wisłą, Kazimierza Dolnego i Puław: Fenomenon kulturowy miasteczka—sztetl. Materiały z sesji naukowej “V Janowieckie Spotkania Historyczne”, Janowiec nad Wisłą 29 czerwca 2003 (Janowiec nad Wisłą: Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Janowca nad Wisłą, 2003), 145

443 See, for example: Testimony of Benjamin Fisk, Part 31, November 8, 1982, Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive, University of Michigan at Dearborn, Internet: ; Anna Bikont, “Ja, Szmul Wasersztajn, ostrzegam,” Gazeta Wyborcza (Warsaw), July 13–14, 2002; Leon Trachtenberg, interview 03/6588, June 13, 1992 (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives); Ruth Minsky Sender, To Life (New York: Alladin/Simon & Schuster, 2000), 53; Edi Weinstein, Quenched Steel: The Story of an Escape from Treblinka (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2002), 146; Pell and Rosenbaum, Taking Risks, 110, 112 (three Jews avoided the draft with the assistance of a Soviet Jewish official in Równe). Another postwar phenomenon was the ostentatious display by Polish Jewish survivors in Germany of any connection to Poland, although Jews from Hungary, for example, where local collaborators played a pivotal role in their deportation, did not demonstrate such an attitude. According to Irene Shapiro, who lived in Soviet-occupied Poland in 1939–41, “Our Hungarian neighbors are now wearing little Hungarian flags in their lapels, and the Czech girls are wearing their colors, basically to help identify them to their countrymen. The Polish-Jewish girls, however, decide against wearing the red and white flag of our anti-Semitic fatherland. I decide to place a little red flag in my lapel. After all, the Soviet Union was my latest homeland, my parents had Soviet passports, and I have considered myself a ‘lefty’ to this day. … There is an agreement between the Polish students that when we need to specify our nationality, we will all claim that we are ‘stateless.’ There is an ongoing dispute between the Polish and Jewish tables about our obstinate refusal to claim the country of our centuries-old Polish-Jewish heritage.” See Shapiro, Revisiting the Shadows, 267, 296. Jacob Olejski, a Jewish activist in camp for displaced persons in Germany, delivered a speech in August 1945 in which he stated: “No, we are not Poles, even though we were born in Poland … We are Jews!” See Ruth Gay, Safe Among the Germans: Liberated Jews After World War II (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002), 76.

444 Account of Shep Zitler, Louisiana Holocaust Survivors, The Southern Institute for Education and Research, posted online at .

445 Reuben Ainsztein, In Lands Not My Own: A Wartime Journey (New York: Random House, 2002), 17, 115–16, 155. Not surprisingly, Ainsztein is the author of the most vicious sustained attack on the Polish underground, Jewish Resistance in Nazi-Occupied Eastern Europe, which is relied on widely by Western historians to assess wartime Polish-Jewish relations.

446 Even for assimilated French Jews, loyalty to the state was not the same as unreserved identification with the nation. See Penslar, Jews and the Military, 120. As Pendlar notes, modern Jewish identities have frequently blended national attachments to a homeland with a transnationalist, pan-Jewish sensibility. Ibid., 121. Thus, there was something to the notions of Jewish internationalism and dual loyalties, which makes it easier to understand why the Endeks doubted if Polish Jews, even if assimilated and professing a loyalty to Poland, were either fully or permanently identified with the Polish nation.

447 Yehuda Nir, The Lost Childhood: A Memoir (San Diego, New York, and London: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1989), 3.

448 Pell and Rosenbaum, Taking Risks, 29, 33–34.

449 Blitt, No Strength to Forget, 25.

450 Abraham Sterzer, “We Fought For Ukraine!” The Ukrainian Quarterly, vol. 20, no. 1 (1964): 38.

451 Majer Mały quoted in Maciągowski and Krawczyk, The Story of Jewish, 231–32. A Jewish boy warned a Polish school chum not to eat chocolate from a particular Jewish manufacturer who put soap into his products. Ibid., 181. A Pole who started a transporatation business in the village of Śladków, in competition with Jews, found his property burned one night. Ibid., 184.

452 Benjamin Bender, Glimpses Through Holocaust and Liberation (Berkeley, California: North Atlantic Books, 1995), 7.

453 Richmond, Konin, 105.

454 Richmond, Konin, 161.

455 Thomas T. Hecht, Life Death Memories (Charlottesville, Virginia: Leopolis Press, 2002), 67.

456 Avraham Levite, ed., A Memorial to the Brzozow Community (Tel Aviv: The Survivors of Brzozow, 1984), 32, 64, 95–96. Of course, Rev. Stanisław Trzeciak, reputedly interwar Poland’s worst anti-Semite, was no Nazi collaborator. For an account of his positive attitude toward sheltering Jews during the German occupation see Władysław Bartoszewski and Zofia Lewin, eds., Righteous Among Nations: How Poles Helped the Jews, 1939–1945 (London: Earslcout Publications, 1969), 360–62. According to historian Szymon Datner, Rev. Trzeciak rescued at least one Jewish child. See Andrzej Żbikowski, ed., Polacy i Żydzi pod okupacją niemiecką 1939–1945: Studia i materiały (Warsaw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej—Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, 2006), 389, 418. According to a statement submitted to Yad Vashem by Tanchum Kupferblum (alias Stanisław Kornacki) of Sandomierz, later a resident of Montreal, Rev. Trzeciak sheltered two Jews from Kraków who survived the war. See (Cieslakowski, Jan). We also learn, from the testimony of a Jew from Brzozów who served in the Polish army and was captured by the Germans in the September 1939 campaign, that Polish nuns in Rzeszów brought food and encouragement to both Polish and Jewish prisoners-of-war.

457 Haim Shteinman, “The Jews of Rokitno,” in E. [Eliezer] Leoni, ed., Rokitno–Wolyn and Surroundings: Memorial Book and Testimony, posted on the Internet at: ; translation of E. Leoni, ed., Rokitno (Volin) ve-ha-sevivah: Sefer edut ve-zikaron (Tel Aviv: Former Residents of Rokitno in Israel, 1967), 167. A Yom Kippur ritual involving corporal punishment was described as follows (at p. 179): “An unforgettable event etched in my memory was the ceremony of the punishment by lashing—forty less one. This was an ancient custom for those who repent. I watched with great interest as my father took off his shoes, lay down on a straw mattress and received his lashes willingly and with love.”

458 This nefarious volume appears to have been a staple in yeshivas throughout Poland. A 19^th century memoir from Kamieniec Litewski in Polesia also records its availability. See David Assaf, ed., Journey to a Nineteenth-Century Shtetl: The Memoirs of Yekhezkel Kotik (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, published in cooperation with The Diaspora Research Institute, Tel Aviv University, 2002), 323.

459 Rachmiel Frydland, When Being Jewish Was a Crime (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1978), 17, 51, 54–55. The authenticity of the Toledot Yeshu (“The Life Story of Jesus”) is beyond question among serious scholars. It was written by Jews, most likely in the 8^th century, as an internal Jewish response to the Gospels and Jesus, and is unambiguously anti-Christian. The the anti-Christian motifs within it go back at least to the time of the Babylonian Talmud—to a time and place (Sassanid and later Islamic Iraq), where Christians were in no position to persecute Jews, thus refuting the exculpatory argument that Jewish polemics against Christianity only developed when Christians were persecuting Jews. Some of the Talmudic themes in Toledot Yeshu include: Bavli Shabbat 104b—Jesus, the sorcerer, the son of Miriam (a hairdresser and adulterous woman), and Jesus the illegitimate Son of Pandera (Ben Pandera); Bavli Sanhedrin 43a—the death of Jesus Christ, vicariously by stoning, at the hands of the Jews; Bavli Gittin 56b-57a—Jesus is forced to spend eternity in hell in boiling excrement. See Peter Schäfer, Michael Meerson, and Yaacov Deutsch, eds., Toledot Yeshu (“The Life Story of Jesus”) Revisted: A Princeton Conference (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011).

460 Fram, Ideals Face Reality, 23.

461 Arnold M. Rose and Caroline B. Rose, eds., Minority Problems: A Texbook of Readings on Intergroup Relations (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 378.

462 Jeffrey A. Shandler, “Christmas,” in The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, vol. 1, 330; Talmi, Memorial Book of Sierpc, Poland, 406. The editors of the Sierpc yizkor book explain, “Nittel is the 25th of December, the date of the birth of Jesus. (The origin of the word is the Latin natale meaning birth.) The prohibition of studies is to prevent mentioning to his credit ‘that man’ who studied Torah. Because of this prohibition, Hasidim and others would play cards on that evening. Yeshiva students and beit midrash students would play games with scraps of paper.” Ibid., 454. Reading the Torah could be of benefit to Jesus Christ, who, according to Jewish belief, was burning in hell in hot excrement (Gittin 57a). This blasphemy goes further: “This night is called “Bozche Narodziny” [sic, Boże Narodzenie] (the birth of God) in Polish. In Yiddish, we called it “Baiz Gvoiren” (the birth of bad). Probably called so in Yiddish because of the play of words Bozche—Baiz.” Ibid., 454.

As explained in Marc Shapiro’s article “Torah Study on Christmas Eve,” The Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy, vol. 8, no. 2 (July 1999): 319–53, the Jewish custom of refraining from Torah study on Christmas Eve goes back at least a few centuries, even though it was shrouded in oral tradition in order to try to hide it from the Christians. Many, though not all Jews, observed this custom, both Hasidim and non-Hasidim, including well-known Talmudists. Shapiro rejects the common explanation, for not studying the Torah on Christmas Eve, as merely a stay-indoors policy of self-protection from possible violence from Christians on this night. After all, the prohibition also applied to studying the Torah in private at home. The motive, based in part on Sanhedrin 90b, is described by Shapiro, “It is possible that one may study something which Jesus himself studied. This in turn would be of assistance to his soul, which remains in hell.” This motive refutes the contention that Jews had no concern for Christianity other than a source of persecution. Shapiro also clarifies other Jewish teachings about Jesus Christ, as he writes, “The notion that Jesus is condemned to crawl through the latrines on Christmas eve is quite significant, as will soon be seen. The closest parallel is found in Toledot Yeshu ... presumably, a passage in Gittin 57a is relevant in this regard and may even be the origin of the notion that Jesus must crawl through the latrines. According to this passage, it has been decreed in heaven that Jesus is punished with boiling hot excrement.” Shapiro puts all this in broader context as he states that, “Of course, even without a clear halakhic prohibition, Jews were accustomed to use derogatory expressions in speaking of elements of the Christian religion.” He also notes that the dog was used as an image, of bad things in store for the Jews at Christmas-time, owing to the popular Kabbalistic identification of Jesus with a dog.

463 Mahler, Hasidism and the Jewish Enlightenment, 16.

464 Tenenbaum, Legacy and Redemption, 9–10.

465 Wrobel, My Life My Way, 30–31. Superstitions could take on less dramatic forms. One Jew recalled that a Hasidic rabbi gave his mother a kameha, a coin he had blessed, telling her that her son should carry it always so that no harm would come to him. See William Tannenzapf and Renate Krakauer, Memories from the Abyss/But I Hads a Happy Childhood (Toronto: Azrieli Foundation, 2009), 6.

466 For a discussion of Jewish communal zealotry and comments of contemporary fundamentalist rabbis on Jewish superiority over Gentiles, see Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky, Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel (London: Pluto Press, 1999), 57ff., 129–34, 143–47.

467 Artur Markowski, “Anti-Jewish Pogroms in the Kingdom of Poland,” in Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, 1815–1918, vol. 27: Jews in the Kingdom of Poland, 243.

468 “Carmelite convent in Israel vandalized,” Toronto Star, September 27, 1989.

469 Gordon Barthos, “Tensions mar Holy Week celebrations in Israel,” Toronto Star, April 14, 1990; Gordon Barthos, “Jewish settlement bankrolled by government,” Toronto Star, April 23, 1990.

470 “Cursing of Pope lands journalist under five-day house arrest,” The National Post (Toronto), March 26, 2000.

471 John L. Allen Jr., “Playing Politics With the Global War on Christians,” National Catholic Reporter, September 7, 2012.

472 The term “price tag” refers to attacks, usually arson and graffiti, carried out by Jewish extremists to target non-Jews—including homes, churches and mosques. During the attacks, the word “price tag” has often been spray-painted on the vandalized structures. Part of the reason for the frequency of these assaults, and the impunity of the perperators, came out with the arrest, in March 2015, of an Israeli soldier who passed information regarding future Israeli defence forces operations to “price tag” hate criminals, helping them evade authorities and continue their attacks. Exceptionally, this soldier was sentenced to 45 months in prison for leaking classified information to Jewish extremists in the West Bank. See Lee Gancman and Judah Ari Gross, “Soldier who ‘spied’ for Jewish extremists gets 45 months,” The Times of Israel, January 5, 2015.