Two books on Polish-Jewish relations have provoked a broad debate on one of the most complex chapters in Poland's modern history.
Michal Kubicki reports
The two books causing a stir in Poland are: Fear. Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz by Jan Tomasz Gross, former professor at Princeton University, and After the Holocaust. Polish-Jewish Conflict in the Wake of World War II by Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, dean at the Institute of World Politics in Washington. Gross is far better known to the Polish public due to his book entitled Neighbours, released seven years ago, about the 1941 massacre of Jews by the Polish inhabitants of the town of Jedwabne. It provoked a debate which led to a re-appraisal of history written under Poland's communist regime. In a nutshell, it showed that the image of Poles being only the heroes and martyrs of the war was not true. Gross's new book Fear, published in the United States two years ago and in Poland last week, focuses on the 1946 Kielce pogrom in which 40 Jews were killed.
“A Jew [in post-war Poland] was looked upon as a threat, for various reasons,” says Jan Tomasz Gross. “He could claim the right to someone's property. He also brought back the memories of various terrible things and crimes in which many people were involved during the occupation. Anti-Semitic actions enjoyed acceptance of broad sections of Polish society. Those responsible for them have not been condemned by the local communities until today.”
In his book, Gross writes about Polish “society's violently expressed desire to render the country free of Jews.” He claims that Poland's communist rulers fulfilled the dream of Polish nationalists by bringing into existence an ethnically pure state.
Gross declared he wanted his book to act as a “shock therapy”. Chodakiewicz, whose After the Holocaust was published in the States three years before Gross's Fear, says that a historian's goal should rather be to reconstruct the truth about the events under study. His own research of Polish archives led him to conclude that most Jews who were killed in post-war Poland were not the victims of anti-Semitism. He stresses that Polish-Jewish relations in the 1940s should be examined in the context of the Soviet-imposed communist dictatorship.
"A free country would have taken care of all the burning issues," he says. "Number one was property restitution. Whoever has been despoiled by the Nazis and the communists should have his or her property restored. That goes both for the Christians and the Jews. That didn't happen because of the communist hostility towards private property. Therefore, there were conflicts over property which only the communists could have solved. Also, the communists entirely destroyed the machinery of the Polish state. When the communists pushed the Nazis out of Poland they started shooting, arresting and deporting functionaries of free Poland. That also means the police and the judiciary of the underground. That means that there was no law and order. When there's no law and order banditries are rampant. If you add into the mixture what the Soviets were doing – raping, pillaging and killing then you have a fuller picture and the Jewish community which survived the Holocaust, individual Jews and the Jews who returned from the bowels of the Soviet Union were thrown into this mini inferno.'
The debate on the two books have only just started in the Polish media and the academic circles. “The book by professor Chodakiewicz is very important. It's a very important voice in the debate because it's a solid historical work,” says Konrad Pisarski, a history student at Warsaw University. “It's not like the book by Gross. The most important thing is to place facts first. Gross says that there was some universal, general actions against Jews, but it's a lie. Of course, there were many actions against Jews but it wasn't a rule and many people helped Jews during that time.”
“I agree with [Gross’s] argument that Poles had their share in the Holocaust and that Polish peasants took part in the murder of Jews in Jedwabne, Radziłów, the regions of Łomża, Zamość and Kielce,” says Marcin Zaremba, a historian at Warsaw University. “I agree that anti-Semitism was a kind of cultural code which Poles used at that time, and that Jews were not responsible for the introduction of communist rule in Poland.”
There are many Polish historians who recognize the positive aspects of Gross's book but argue that the author's strong language makes serious debate virtually impossible. “This is not a controversy about facts,” says historian Paweł Machciewicz. “No serious Polish historian negates the fact that anti-Semitism was widespread in the 1940s, if only to mention the several pogroms of Jews at that time. I am highly critical, however, of Gross's radical interpretations. He claims that during the war Poles took part in the Holocaust and after the war they finished ethnic cleansing against Jews. Such a view is unjustified.”
In his book, Jan Tomasz Gross claims that the Catholic Church and Polish nationalists were to a large extent responsible for Polish anti-Semitism. He was taken to task by Archbishop of Lublin Józef Życiński for suggesting that Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński sympathised with anti-Semitism, and for using such words as “theological cannibalism of most of Polish bishops”.
Father Adam Boniecki, chief editor of the liberal-leaning Catholic weekly Tygodnik Powszechny expresses the view that Gross's book provokes negative emotions because the author confronts the Polish nation as a prosecutor. “He makes generalisations on the basis of specific facts, draws conclusions and creates a general picture of Polish society that is overpowered with a single idea – to kill Jews. Anyone who lived at that time knows this is not true,” says Father Boniecki.
All those taking part in the debate on Polish-Jewish relations after the war refer to its first stage, following the publication of Gross's Neighbours. “It's amazing how much maturity, humility and common sense have been displayed during that debate,” says political analyst Mariusz Ziomecki. “I think we shouldn't be wasting time trying to diminish our discomfort. It's much better to simply accept co-responsibility and accept the news that there were some heroic attitudes but also some acts of exploitation of the victims. That's it. It's part of our history, of the luggage we have to carry.”
Polish prosecutors launched a probe against Gross under a section of a criminal code providing for a three-year prison term for anyone “publicly accusing the Polish nation of participating in, organising or being responsible for Nazi of Communist crimes”. Both the admirers and critics of the book agree that this is a wrong decision. “Books should be read and discussed, and those of poor quality – simply ignored,” said Archbishop Życiński.