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October 10, 2003
Hope for the future in Poland
After over 40 years, Rene Goldman sees new evidence of tolerance.
RENE GOLDMAN SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH BULLETIN
Nagged by curiosity about the country in which I lived my late
adolescent years and which I left in 1959, as well as by a desire
to visit the birthplaces of my parents, I flew to Poland this past
April.
My wife accompanied me on this journey, which lasted 17 days; too
little for an in-depth probe, but enough perhaps, to gain some overall
impressions. Unfortunately, we arrived too soon to be present at
the 60th anniversary commemoration of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.
After a few days in Warsaw, of which the magnificent 17th- and 18th-century
parts have been lovingly rebuilt from the ruins of the Second World
War, leaving the rest a blighted sprawl, we set out for a drive
around the country. We travelled to Cracow, Poland's ancient capital
and soul of the nation. On our way, we stopped in the lovely Renaissance
town of Kazimierz-Dolny.
My only unpleasant memory of Cracow is, unfortunately, that of our
visit to its old Jewish enclave of Kazimierz. In the synagogues,
we met with indifference, rudeness and always requests for money.
I can understand that Polish synagogues need funds, but so do many
of the churches, which we visited without ever being importuned
with requests for donations. A brief encounter with Leopold Kozlowski,
the so-called "last klezmer of galicia," left a particularly
bad taste in my mouth. After selling us an overpriced CD, this gentleman
urged us to attend a klezmer concert that night at the café
which he owns. The "concert," for which we paid 20 zlotys
($8) per person, turned out to be mere background music of one violin,
one accordion and one cello, to an overpriced and skimpy meal. Kozlowski
was not even there. The trio of tolerably good musicians bore no
comparison to true klezmer bands, such as Vancouver's own Tzimmes.
The contrast with the delightful Ukrainian restaurant under the
Wawel castle, where we lunched earlier that day, could not have
been greater: there we enjoyed a delicious meal, listening to superb
Ukrainian musicians.
From Cracow, we drove through the Pieniny foothills to Zakopane,
a pleasant city set beneath the lofty Tatra mountains. En route
we noted that tourist services in Poland still suffer from attitudes
ingrained in communist times: unsmiling faces, rudeness, inefficiency.
The cuisine is indifferent and not enough salads (lettuce seems
to be unknown) and fruits are served. In addition, there is much
pettiness. One has to pay for every little "extra," which
elsewhere is included in the price of a restaurant meal: bread,
potatoes, vegetables, etc. Some restaurants even charge for use
of the toilet.
Documenting suffering
From Zakopane we turned north and stopped in Auschwitz. The camp
is situated at the edge of the city which bears that horror-filled
name – Oswiecim – in Polish. Driving through that
industrial city in search of the camp rose me almost to anger at
the sight of a normal urban life flowing next door to the killing
fields in which millions met such an atrocious end. But then I reflected
that most of the inhabitants of Oswiecim were born after the war,
and that many came from elsewhere. Their jobs and their homes are
in the town and some families have lived there for generations.
Like the inhabitants of any other city, they attend church and carry
out daily chores, beget children, partake in the joy of weddings
and sadness of funerals.
It was more difficult to accommodate the sight of the entrance to
the camp, where a sign proclaims it to be a museum and which, like
any other museum, provides a parking lot, a cafeteria and a souvenir
shop, which, thank God, sells only books. By a further appeal to
reason, I managed to subdue feelings of anger at the sight of tour
buses, as if these ruined my place of grieving for my parents and
unknown members of my family who were murdered there. The ashes
and bits of bones, which still littered the grounds when I first
visited Auschwitz as a child in 1949, are no longer there.
Block barracks, most of them reconstructed, are now exhibition pavilions
that document the suffering and also the struggle of deportees of
various countries; some are storehouses filled with stacks of clothes,
shoes, luggage, spectacles, crutches and other belongings of the
victims. One block is devoted to the martyrdom and resistance of
the Jews. At the entrance to it stand a memorial and a tree planted
on the recent visit by President Moshe Katsav of Israel.
As my wife and I entered a gas-chamber and crematorium block, we
happened upon a large group of visibly shaken Japanese tourists.
I wondered whether they knew of the medical experiments, as horrific
as those of Mengele, performed during the war at secret camps by
the Japanese army in China.
In the satellite camp of Birkenau (Brzezinka) we stood on the railway
platform below that sadly known triple-arched entrance. In my mind's
eye I saw those cattle-car trains arriving from all over Europe
and from which millions of men, women, and children were unloaded
with indescribable brutality and "selected," most of them,
for immediate death in the gas chambers. I visualized my mother,
petite and frail, arriving at the end of a calvary of many days,
which began at the internment camp of Rivesaltes in French Catalonia.
Strong and civil society
After a night in Czestochowa, we headed for the pleasant small town
of Wieruszow on the narrow Prosna River, which, before the war,
marked the border between Poland and Germany. That is where my father
was born and where countless generations of my family made their
home. The only trace that remains of the 5,000 Jews, nearly half
of the pre-war population of Wieruszow, is a devastated cemetery
out in the fields. Few of the tombstones that lie there, helter-skelter,
are legible, and a plaque informs the visitor that 86 Jews were
murdered on this spot by the Germans.
From Wieruszow we drove to Kalisz, where my mother was born. Kalisz
is a sizable city, the oldest in Poland. It was there that, in the
13th century, King Boleslaw-the-Pious enacted a statute that granted
the Jews self-government, freedom of worship and legal protection.
For at least four centuries, Poland was a model of religious tolerance
in Europe. For seven centuries, Jews, among them my maternal ancestors,
prospered in beautiful Kalisz. It was there that a century ago,
my great-grandfather, Rabbi Shimon Arenstein, professed that girls
ought to be given the same education as boys! The caretaker of the
remaining Jewish cemetery, who kindly guided me among the tombs
in a vain search for buried relatives, is the kind, philosemitic,
enthusiastically pro-Israel, young fundamentalist Christian minister
Marek Handtke.
Since the fall of communism, Poland has endeavored to reconnect
with her historical past and, at the same time, seek integration
into the new unified Europe. The white eagle on the national emblem
bears a crown again and street names banned by the communists have
been restored. Thus, in every city, there is again an artery named
after Marshal Pilsudzki, the authoritarian ruler of the years 1926-1935.
But the Poland of today is not the Poland of Pilsudzki and the colonels
who followed him. It is a free country that builds on its strong
and healthy far-reaching democratic roots, which bear testimony
not only to the periodic popular uprisings against foreign and communist
tyranny, but also the fact that Poland alone in the communist world
was able to nourish a strong civil society with an unshakable Catholic
church and a nearly independent judiciary. The Poles are proud of
the fact that, in 1793, they adopted the second constitution in
the world, after the United States. This happened just before their
country, led by Tadeusz Kosciuszko, hero of the American War of
Independence, was dismembered by its three aggressive neighbors
– Russia, Prussia and Austria. Constitution Day, which is May
3, was restored as the national holiday after the fall of communism.
A revival of Jewish life
While in Warsaw, I attended a synagogue situated on Twarda Street,
next to the Jewish Community Centre and the Jewish theatre, in which
plays are staged more often in Polish than in Yiddish. Many among
the worshippers were Americans, as are the rabbi and the prayer
leader. After the service, I conversed with Prof. Konstanty Gebert,
editor of Midrasz, the excellent journal of the Jewish Historical
Institute of Poland, financed principally by the Ronald Lauder Foundation
and the Polish Ministry of Culture.
The following week, the president
of Israel, on a state visit to Poland, led a solemn procession,
which enshrined a new Torah scroll in the synagogue. A Polish-American
girl encountered in the vicinity spoke with excitement of the revival
of Jewish life in Poland. A few years ago, she said, only old people
were to be seen at the synagogue; now there are more and more young
people. One now comes across Jews from western Europe, the United
States and even Israel, who settle in Poland in search of business
opportunities.
I now firmly believe that, as Jews, we should endeavor to reach
beyond our well-founded bitterness and adopt an open attitude towards
the new Poland in the making. Unlike other countries occupied by
the Nazis, Poland did not produce a Petain, a Laval or a Quisling.
It is nevertheless sadly true that the majority of Poles, who themselves
suffered terribly, were either indifferent to or active accomplices
of the German genocide of their Jewish compatriots. Many betrayed
Jewish neighbors, with whom they had lived in amity or, worse yet,
on their own initiative murdered their Jewish neighbors with unspeakable
savagery, as happened in Jedwabne in 1941 and in the post-war pogrom
of Kielce. Countless Poles appropriated to themselves the homes
and belongings of their Jewish fellow citizens. Yet, the largest
number of Righteous Among the Nations honored at Yad Vashem are
Poles. The thousands of Poles who saved Jewish lives risked not
only their own lives, but also the lives of their families. French,
Belgian and Dutch rescuers did not incur a risk as great as that.
When, in 1968, the communist regime
drove out of Poland the near-totality of the 50,000 Jews still living
there, the populace did not respond to official incitement against
the Zionists. In the 20 years that followed, leaders of the mounting
opposition to the regime boldly defied the official taboo against
discussing Jewish issues, initiated intellectual quests into Poland's
Jewish heritage and promoted active solidarity with the Jews. In
Warsaw, the club of Catholic intellectuals organized annual weeks
of Jewish culture and worked at restoring the devastated Jewish
cemetery.
No world leader did so much to promote Jewish-Christian reconciliation
as the greatest Pole of our time, Pope John-Paul II. Festivals of
Jewish culture, which honor with music, song, dance and art the
memory of Cracow's Jews, are now an annual, well-attended event
in Kazimierz, where seven synagogues have been lovingly restored.
Celebrations of the vibrant Jewish culture that once flourished
in Poland take place in other cities as well. Alas, the few Jews
present are mostly foreign visitors.
Curiously enough, carved figures of Chassidim, as beautiful as those
produced in Israel, are sold in all tourist-frequented places. There
is an intriguing vogue for things Jewish among the young, paired
with a nostalgia for pre-war Poland, with the most vibrant Jewish
cultural life in the world.
Poland now follows Germany's example in creating a Jewish space
in its historical memory and its culture, but she is less successful
at it than her economically more powerful neighbor, which now has
the fastest growing Jewish population outside of Israel. Also, the
Poles have a long way to go before they reach the degree of critical
self-examination evident among the Germans. Self-criticism is found
mainly among members of the elite. Arkadiusz Pacholski, a Kalisz
writer, in a heart-rendingly eloquent essay entitled "Landscape
With a Red Sun" ("Krajobraz z Czerwonym Sloncem")
weeps over his city, in which no Jew lives today and no trace is
to be found of the magnificent synagogues that once graced it. He
berates the people of Kalisz for not seeking to be aware of the
disappearance from their midst of 27,000 Jewish fellow-citizens,
of whose murder their parents or grandparents were accomplices,
and in whose apartments many of them now live.
In 1991, the conference of Catholic
bishops of Poland adopted a pastoral letter, which expressed sincere
regret for the past anti-Semitism of the church and asked for forgiveness
of "our Jewish brothers and sisters" for the indifference
of so many Polish Christians to the tragedy that befell the Jews.
At the same time, however, Jewish and Polish sensitivities clashed
over the affair of the attempted planting of crosses and placement
of a Carmelite convent at Auschwitz. Cardinal Glemp made statements
that bordered on the anti-Semitic and the dispute was resolved by
papal intervention. When president Lech Walesa sought re-election,
he proclaimed that, unlike his opponents, he was a 100 per cent
Pole, a statement for which he apologized on his state visit to
Israel. In Kalisz, I was shocked by the sight of scurrilous anti-Semitic
brochures displayed in a kiosk. When I drew our host's attention
to them, he opined that Poland's legal system was not yet perfected.
Is 14 years not enough to enact anti-hate laws, I wondered.
All in all, I would venture that there is less evidence of open
anti-Semitism in today's Poland than, say, in France or Belgium.
Neither do the Polish mainstream media manifest the strong anti-Israel
prejudice of the French, Belgian and British media. In conclusion
of my musings on the theme of Jewish-Polish relationships, I shall
mention Prof. Szewach Weiss, former president of the Knesset, and
currently ambassador of Israel in Poland. In an extraordinarily
moving autobiographic volume of conversations with the Polish journalist
Joanna Szwedowska entitled Earth and Clouds (Ziemia i
Chmury), this native of Boryslaw in the Polish Ukraine, who
survived with his parents, thanks to Polish and Ukrainian neighbors
who hid them, proclaims his love for Poland and yearning for reconciliation.
Calling on Jews to define their place in the new Poland and help
dispel mutual distrust, Weiss also pays tribute to the many Poles
– teachers, priests, nuns and others – who today labor
to save Jewish historical sites and make the young sensitive to
the Jewish legacy of Poland.
Rene Goldman is professor emeritus at the University of
British Columbia.
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