May 2016 Traditional Jewish Attitudes Toward Poles

. It should be noted that Poles were also assaulted by Jews during this period. In addition to the examples mentioned in the text see: Witold Saski, Crossing Many Bridges: Memoirs of a Pharmacist in Poland, the Soviet Union, the Middle East, Italy, the United Kingdom, and Nebraska (Manhattan, Kansas: Sunflower University Press, 1988), 21–22 (Polish student Stanisław Wacławski was stoned to death in Wilno); Wojciech J. Muszyński and Jacek T. Persa, “II Rzeczpospolita korporancka,” Glaukopis (Warsaw), no. 1 (2003): 7–60, at pp. 58–60 (a group of Polish students was attacked in Lwów which resulted in the death of Jan Grodkowski); Grzegorz Mazur, “Skic z dziejów Stronnictwa Narodowego we Lwowie w latach 30. XX wieku,” in Hanna Konopka and Daniel Boćkowski, eds., Polska i jej wschodni sąsiedzi w XX wieku: Studia i materiały ofiarowane prof. Dr. hab. Michałowi Gnatowskiemu w 70-lecie urodzin (Białystok: Uniwersytet w Białymstoku, 2004), 105–137, at pp. 109, 112, 116, 119–20. As for thuse use (and abuse) of the term “pogrom,”Jan Peczkis has argued compellingly:
The term pogrom is not only a matter of semantics, but of application—an application that is determined according to politics. Consider, for example, the unmentioned Crown Heights riots of 1991. There had been a spasm of community anger directed against Jews collectively, and the Jew Yankel Rosenbaum was brutally murdered. Although some Jewish groups called the Crown Heights riots a pogrom, most did not, and the term pogrom never stuck. Why? The answer is simple. The USA is a sophisticated, pluralistic society. Therefore, a pogrom occurring in the USA is not really a pogrom. However, in Poland, a presumably backwards, hyper-Catholic nation, a pogrom is expected to occur, and the term sticks, even when only one Jew is killed, as happened at Przytyk. There is, in addition, the standard politics of victimhood in play, as determined by the leftists who steer our popular culture. African-Americans are a recognized victim group. Jews are a recognized victim-group, especially in the context of Polish-Jewish relations. Poles, in contrast, are not a recognized victim group. Therefore, a pogrom conducted by African-Americans cannot be a true pogrom, while one conducted by Poles certainly can.
One of the bones of contention at Polish universities in the interwar period was the fact the Jewish community refused, ostensibly for religious reasons, to provide Jewish cadavers for use in training medical students, but fully expected Jewish students to have access to and dissect the bodies of Christians. Between 1923 and 1926, of 246 cadavers used in Wilno only one was Jewish, assuming it was genuinely Jewish. Following protests over the fact that only Christian cadavers were being used for dissection in anatomy, Stanisław Wacławski, a Polish student was stoned to death by Jews in Wilno in October 1931, which led to some Polish students calling for the segregation of Jewish students at the university. See Saski, Crossing Many Bridges, 21–22; Aleksander Srebrakowski, “Sprawa Wacławskiego: Przyczynek do historii relacji polsko-żydowskich na Uniwersytecie Stefana Batorego w Wilnie,” Przegląd Wschodni, vol. 9, no. 3 (2004): 575–601; Januszewska-Jurkiewicz, Stosunki narodowościowe na Wileńszczyźnie w latach 1920–1939, 554–56. (Characteristically, Jewish authors ignore the killing of the Polish student and claim that there were “fatalities” in Wilno, implying, falsely, that the victims were Jews. See Larissa Cain, Irena Adamowicz: Une juste des nations en Pologne [Paris : Cerf, 2009], 28.) The Jewish religion considered using Jewish cadavers for such purposes to constitute desecration, though Jews had no ethical qualms about using Christian corpses and even made light of that fact. (As one Jewish student recalled, “‘Find me a young one, a pretty one,’ we would joke …”) Consequently, Polish students pressed the university authorities to require the Jewish community to provide cadavers for the Jewish students. The Jewish Medical Students Association in Warsaw turned to the Central Rabbinic Council for their cooperation, which entailed a ruse involving the “loaning” of death certificates with which to tag Christian female corpses as Jews. When this practice drew suspicion, various bribes were paid to facilitate this unsavoury charade. The practice spread to the medical faculties in Wilno, Kraków, and Poznań. See Moshe Prywes, as told to Haim Chertok, Prisoner of Hope (Hanover and London: Brandeis University Press, 1996), 65–66. Yet this author notes that the resultant campus disturbances did not adversely effect how Jewish students performed and were graded by the professors: “year after year, class after class, graduation after graduation, the outstanding students in the medical school were to be found among the ranks of the bench ghetto.” Ibid., 71. For a Jewish nationalist perspective that glosses over contentious matters, see Natalia Aleksiun, “Christian Corpses for Christians!: Dissecting the Anti-Semitism behind the Cadaver Affair of the Second Polish Republic,” East European Politics and Societies, vol. 25, no. 3 (August 2011): 393–409.

Anti-Jewish excesses and racial strife occurred throughout Europe at that time, even in countries that did not have a sizeable Jewish or non-white population. On August 19, 1911, several hundred miners attacked Jewish-owned businesses in Tredegar, Wales, accompanied by calls of “Let’s get the Jews” and the singing of Welsh hymns. Riots targeting Jews also occurred in industrial towns such as Caerphilly, Ebbw Vale, Cwm and Bargoed. Home Secretary Winston Churchill, who described the events as “a pogrom,” was forced to call in the army after Jewish businesses and houses were looted and burned over the course of a week. (Chinese workers were also attacked in Cardiff.) Subsequently, these events were downplayed and reduced to “social unrest.” See Neil Prior, “History Debate Over Anti-Semitism in 1911 Tredegar riot,” BBC News August 19, 2011, Internet: