May 2016 Traditional Jewish Attitudes Toward Poles

.) When Ludwik Hirszfeld, a renowned specialist and convert, started to give lectures for medical practitioners in the Warsaw ghetto, he was boycotted by Jewish nationalists. See Dembowski, Christians in the Warsaw Ghetto, 122. The blatant hostility and humiliations faced by Christian converts in the Warsaw ghetto are documented by Alceo Valcini, the Warsaw correspondent of the Milan Corriere della Sera, whose diary was translated into Polish as Golgota Warszawy, 1939–1945 (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1973). Converts were repeatedly harassed when they left church after mass and, on occasion, even the German police had to intervene to protect them from enraged Orthodox Jews. Converts who did not figure in community lists were denied food rations and material assistance. Ibid., 235–36. Valcini’s portrayal is fully supported by a report filed by a Jewish Gestapo informer: Crowds of Jews would gather in front of the Christian churches on Sundays and Christian holy days to take in the spectacle of converts attending mass. At Easter in 1942, the crowd of onlookers was so large at the church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary on Leszno Street that the Ordnungsdienst (Jewish police) stationed a special squad there to maintain order and protect the converts. Cited in Christopher R. Browning and Israel Gutman, “The Reports of a Jewish ‘Informer’ in the Warsaw Ghetto—Selected Documents,” in Yad Vashem Studies, vol. 17 (1986): 263. Hostilities also occurred during the Sunday mass at All Saints’ Church, where a large mob of Hasids gathered with sticks to beat up the converted Jews as they left church. The Jewish order police was called in to disperse the Hasidic pogromists. This incident is described in the memoirs of Stanisław Gajewski, which are found in the Yad Vashem archives. See Engelking and Leociak, The Warsaw Ghetto, 654; Dembowski, Christians in the Warsaw Ghetto, 85. A Jewish woman, who was not a convert, describes in her memoirs how Jewish scum in the Warsaw ghetto harassed Jewish Christians who attended church services. See Ruth Altbeker Cyprys, A Jump For Life: A Survivor’s Journal from Nazi-Occupied Poland (New York: Continuum, 1997), 32. A Pole who entered the ghetto recalled the caustic remarks made by onlookers about Jews who attended religious services at All Saints’ Church. See Waclaw Sledzinski, Governor Frank’s Dark Harvest (Newtown, Montgomeryshire, Mid-Wales: Montgomerys, 1946), 120. This is confirmed by another Jew who observed Jewish youths standing in the street as converts walked to church services and calling out mockingly “Good Yontiff!” (Good holiday!). See Gary A. Keins, A Journey Through the Valley of Perdition ([United States]: n.p., 1985), 86. A similar situation prevailed in Kraków: when priests and nuns would enter the ghetto to tend to the spiritual needs of converts, they were spat on and cursed by indignant Jews. “Converts were not popular in the ghetto. … We’re foreigners and they hate us.” See Frister, The Cap, or the Price of a Life, 84, 89–90. Those who did not abide by religious traditions were also abused, especially by intolerant Orthodox Jews. A teenaged girl from Łódź, who took refuge with her parents in Łosice, recalled the abuse hurled on her for performing a chore on the Sabbath. See Stella Zylbersztajn, A gdyby to było Wasze dziecko? (Łosice: Łosickie Stowarzyszenie Rozwoju Equus, 2005); Marek Jerzman, “A gdyby to było nasze dziecko,” Biuletyn Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej, no. 3 (March 2009): 59.

The fate of the Gypsies, who were rounded up and sent to Jewish ghettos, was even harsher than that of the Jews since they had no communal welfare organizations to assist them. The Gypsies were beggars and were forced to wear distinctive armbands. They were universally regarded as intruders and loathsome thieves. Chaim Kaplan, for example, complained in his diary that “they occupy themselves by stealing from the Jews.” See Abraham I. Katsh, ed., Scroll of Agony: The Warsaw Diary of Chaim A. Kaplan (New York: Macmillan; London: Collier-Macmillan, 1965), 294–95. Gypsies apprehended in “Aryan” Warsaw were taken to the prison on Gęsia Street where they were guarded by functionaries of the Jewish police. See Institute of National Memory, Warsaw Regional Commission for the Investigation of Crimes against the Polish Nation, file no. S 5/20/Zn. There is no record of Jews displaying solidarity or offering assistance to the Gypsies. The Gypsies in the Warsaw ghetto were rounded up and deported to the death camps scarcely noticed. Within the confines of the large Jewish ghetto in Łódź, the Germans built a smaller, isolated ghetto for some 5,000 Gypsies. Conditions there were even worse than for the Jews and, without connections or any outside assistance (such as almost all Jewish ghettos received from the surrounding Polish community), the Gypsies were soon decimated by hunger and disease. Jews were not starving in the Łódź ghetto. Although their food rations were reduced from 1,600 calories in 1940 to 1,000 in 1942, in the analogous period, food rations for Poles in the Generalgouvernment were 736 and 400, respectively. See Grzegorz Berendt, “Cena życia—ekonomiczne uwarunkowania egzystencji Żydów po ‘aryjskiej stronie’,” in Zagłada Żydów: Studia i materiały, vol. 4 (Warsaw: Centrum Badań nad Zagładą Żydów, IFiS PAN, 2008): 115, 118. Mordechai Rumkowski, chairman of the Jewish council, argued with the German authorities about the arrival of the Gypsies: “We cannot live together with them. The Gypsies are the sort of people who can do anything. First they rob and then they set fire and soon everything is in flames, including your factories and materials.” See Alan Adelson and Robert Lapides, eds., Łódź Ghetto: Inside a Community Under Siege (New York: Viking, 1989), 173. A Jewish doctor from Łódź admits candidly: “There was no pity in the ghetto for Gypsies.” See Arnold Mostowicz, Żółta gwiazda i czerwony krzyż (Warsaw: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1988), 25–27. According to another source, “The Jews shut their eyes to the fate of the Gypsies. Rumkowski was ordered to set up special barracks for them, to provide food and medical services, and to see that the dead were buried in the Jewish cemetery. A typhus epidemic, in which several Jewish doctors lost their lives, broke out in the Gypsies’ quarters. They were strictly quarantined during their short-lived existence in the ghetto. In December, 1941, they were deported. The Jews neither knew where nor cared. The Gypsies ended at the death camp of Chelmno [Kulmhof].” See Leonard Tushnet, The Pavement of Hell (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1972), 44. In Głębokie, “In the fall of 1941, Gypsy wagons were brought into the Gendarmerie yard. The Gypsies were brought with their women and children. … A rumor spread that they were to be put in the second ghetto with the Jews. To prevent this, the Judenrat asked for another bribe quota for the Germans. It turned out that the Gypsies were shot with their women and children before dawn.” Dov Katzovitch (Petach Tikva), “With the Partisans and in the Red Army,” in David Shtokfish, ed., Book in Memory of Dokshitz-Parafianow [Dokszyce-Parafianowo Memorial Book], (Israel: Organization of Dokshitz-Parafianow Veterans in Israel and the Diaspora, 1990), Chapter 4 (Internet: www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/dokshitsy/). However, sociologist Nechama Tec blames the Gypsies for the conflict. See Nechama Tec, “Resistance in Eastern Europe,” in Walter Laqueur, ed., The Holocaust Encyclopedia (New Haven and Yale: Yale University Press, 2001), 544.

298 Marta Markowska, ed., Archiwum Ringelbluma: Dzień po dniu Zagłady (Warsaw: Ośrodek Karta, Dom Spotkań z Historią, and Żydowski Instytut Historyczny, 2008), 121.

299 Quoted in Ruzhka Korczak (Reizl Korchak), Levahot be-efer, 3^rd edition (Merhavia: Moreshet Sifriat Poalim, 1965), 345. Already in the inauguratory issue of the Wilno Jewish newspaper Vilner Togblat, dated December 27, 1939, the editorial decried: “we are decidedly opposed to the fact that Jews of Wilno, or Warsaw, or anywhere else, speak in Polish on the streets of Wilno, in cafes or in homes.” At the time, Poles constituted a majority of the city’s population. See Andrzej Krzysztof Kunert, ed. Polacy–Żydzi, Polen–Juden, Poles–Jews, 1939–1945: Wybór Źródeł, Quellenauswahl, Selection of Documents (Warsaw: Rada Ochrony Pamięci Walk i Męczeństwa, Instytut Dziedzictwa Narodowego, and Rytm, 2001), 364.

300 While Polish language schools in Łódź were closed down in December 1939, Jewish schools in the ghetto continued to function until the fall of 1941. See Adam Sitarek, “Trzy miasta: Dzień powszedni w Litzmannsadt—wybrane problemy,” in Tomasz Chinciński, ed., Przemoc i dzień powszedni w okupowanej Polsce (Gdańsk: Muzeum II Wojny Światowej; Oskar, 2011), 471–74.

301 See, for example, Acher, Niewłaściwa twarz, 48 (Warsaw); Gustaw Kerszman, Jak ginąć, to razem (Montreal: Polish-Jewish Heritage Foundation, 2003), 52 (Białystok).

302 Piotr Gontarczyk, Polska Partia Robotnicza: Droga do władzy 1941–1944 (Warsaw: Fronda, 2003), 45–46.

303 Celia S. Heller, On the Edge of Destruction: Jews of Poland between the Two World
Wars (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), 286–91.

304 Szyja Bronsztejn, “Polish-Jewish Relations as Reflected in Memoirs of the Interwar Period,” in Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, vol. 8 (1994): 84.

305 Cited in Annamaria Orla-Bukowska, “Shtetl Communities: Another Image,” in Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, vol. 8 (1994): 101.

306 Tuviah Friedman, Nazi Hunter (Haifa: Institute for the Documentation of Nazi War Crimes, 1961), 81.

307 Alexander Szurek, The Shattered Dream (Boulder, Colorado: East European Monographs, 1989), 31.

308 Stillman, A Match Made in Hell, 7.

309 Kutz, If, By Miracle, 11.

310 Dan Kurzman, Ben-Gurion: Prophet of Fire (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983), 50.

311 David Ben-Gurion and Thomas R. Bransten, ed., Memoirs: David Ben-Gurion (New York: World Publishing, 1970), 36–37.

312 Piotr Kardela, “Krasnostawcy Żydzi,” Przegląd Polski (New York), June 16, 2000.

313 Salsitz, A Jewish Boyhood in Poland, 245.

314 Testimony of George (Boris Rubin), Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, Interview code 5800.

315 Salsitz, A Jewish Boyhood in Poland, 64–65, 70–71, 126.

316 Mieczysław Dobrzański, Gehenna Polaków na Rzeszowszczyźnie w latach 1939–1948 (Wrocław: Nortom, 2002), 93.

317 Zdzisław Zakrzewski, “Na Politechnice Lwowskiej,” Glaukopis: Pismo społeczno-historyczne, no. 5–6 (2006): 112–13.

318 Neuman-Nowicki, Struggle for Life During the Nazi Occupation of Poland, 6–7.

319 Interview with Miles Lerman, July 17, 2001, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

320 Yerachmiel Moorstein, ed., Zelva Memorial Book (Mahwah, New Jersey: Jacob Solomon Berger, 1992), 101.

321 Sports was often one more realm in which anti-Jewish sentiment found visceral expression. Non-Jewish teams at times refused to play against Jewish sports teams; when Jewish sports teams played in general arenas, players were called “Jewish pigs” and other such names, and shouts of “Death to the Jews” were commonplace. Jews sometimes responded in kind, and Jewish fans joined in the fighting at times. See Michael Brenner and Gideon Reuveni, eds., Emancipation through Muscle: Jews and Sports in Europe (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006).

322 Rivalry between the Rangers and Celtic football clubs in Glasgow (the former being a bastion of hardcore anti-Catholic and anti-Irish bigotry, the latter considered a Catholic team) led to eight deaths and hundreds of assaults between 1996 and 2003 alone. See Franklin Foer, How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization (New York: HarperCoollins, 2004), 36 – 37. In Busto Arsizio, AC Milan players walked off the field on January 3, 2013, because of racist chants directed at several Milan Black players. In England, there have been several arrests among fans for racist outbursts at Premier League matches, and Liverpool striker Luis Suarez and Chelsea captain John Terry served bans for racially abusing opponents. In October 2012, Serbian fans directed monkey chants at black England players in a European under-21 match that ended in a brawl between players and coaches from both teams. In December 2012, fans of Russian champion Zenit St. Petersburg issued a petition calling for non-white and gay players to be excluded from the team. See “AC Milan Exhibition Ends After Racist Chants,” The Associated Press, The Telegraph, January 3, 2013.

323 Account of Dr. Leopold Lustig in Henryk Grynberg, Drohobycz, Drohobycz and Other Stories: True Tales from the Holocaust and Life After (New York: Penguin Books, 2002), 16.

324 Aleksandra Namysło, “Kim jestem—Polakiem, Niemcem, Żydem? Stosunki żydowsko-żydowskie na dawnym Górnym Śląsku,” Biuletyn Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej, no. 11 (November 2010): 55.

325 Kolpanitzky, Sentenced to Life, 24.

326 Nechama Tec, Defiance: The Bielski Partisans (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 8–9.

327 Peter Duffy, The Bielski Brothers: The True Story of Three Men Who Defied the Nazis, Saved 1,200 Jews, and Built a Village in the Forest (New York: HaperCollins, 2003), 15–16.

328 Ben Rose, “Discarded rifle kept family alive during war,” The Canadian Jewish News, August 24, 1995. One wonders if a Black American could ever expect to see such leniency in the military in interwar America.

329 Pell and Rosenbaum, Taking Risks, 30–31. One wonders if a Black American could ever expect to see such leniency from an official in interwar America.

330 Testimony of Salomea Germot, February 2005, Internet: