Tekst jest traktowany jako integralna całość, można go cytować, ale zgodnie z prawem z podaniem źródła, tzn. autora książki i jej tytułu, osoby udzielające wywiadu, no i tłumacza amatora:). Tłumaczenie jest moje (z pomocą Google Translate), dlatego jest pewnie w nim dużo błędów:), pro publico bono, całkowicie bez wynagrodzenia.
Jews should return to Poland
with Seweryn Aszkenazy
Should Poland satisfy the claims of Jewish organizations that demand that it pay compensation for the property of Polish Jews who died in the Holocaust?
I believe that private claims should be made by private individuals. I have heard that many people buy and trade these claims. No one should trade these. This is definitely a great shame for Jews. If Poland can’t afford to give away this property, then it is necessary to understand it and, above all, to recognize the law of the Polish state, according to which - if there are no heirs of a given property or other thing - they should return to the state. This is how it is all over the world. If the Jews, as a group, have any claims to Poland, let them have these claims to Germany, to Austria and to Russia, which unleashed the WW2, but not to Poland!
However, the World Jewish Congress and other Jewish organizations demand $ 65 billion from Poland. To achieve their goal, they exert international pressure on Poland and apply political pressure. It was because of their initiative that both American and British parliamentarians sent open letters to the Polish government, in which they indicated that Poland still failed to restitution of Jewish property and should meet Jewish claims as soon as possible.
And Austria and Ukraine have fulfilled their commitments? And did Switzerland perform fairly honestly? And Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Belgium and France did? This wonderful and civilized France gave a meager 500 million euros in exchange for real estate worth billions of euros, which she took from Jews. And how many tens of thousands of Jews the French helped the Germans murder! Unfortunately, nobody cares about it being publicized, or maybe they are afraid to say what they should say. Please, imagine such a sketch, such a picture. A man without a head, ragged, without one leg and on crutches, talks with a head that has no body. This is the discussion between Poles and Jews. Germans and Russians, and therefore Nazism and communism, murdered Polish intellectuals and cut off Poland's head. At Hitler's command, a list was prepared containing 200,000 Polish intelligentsia who were to be murdered. According to the Institute of National Remembrance, only over 100,000 people were murdered within the Intelligenzaktion during the first half of year of the German occupation. During the entire war, Hitler and Stalin probably killed the majority of these 200,000 Polish intellectuals, officers, scientists, social activists, writers, thinkers, philosophers, priests, etc. All universities were closed, and children had the right to study only for the first four patch. The teachers had to teach them only a minimum of reading and counting. It was supposed to be everything. In this way, the Germans wanted to make Poles half-literate and cheap labor; their slaves.
Therefore, they also limited possibility for Poles to use books of a philosophical nature and robbed the equipment of Polish laboratories and scientific institutions. The scale of plundering works of art during the WW2 in Poland is estimated at 63,000 items. Professors of the Jagiellonian University, who were invited to a lecture on the attitude of Nazism to science, the Germans took to the concentration camp in Sachsenhausen. Even Mussolini interceded for Polish professors with Hitler.
It was a well-organized action. When the Germans entered Lwów, they killed several dozens of professors from the Lviv Polytechnic in the first days. They murdered the most serious and most valuable Polish intellectuals. These are historical facts. That's what he knows well. This is all historically confirmed. They wanted to cut off Poland's head and cut it off. In 1939, two out of three Poles were illiterate or half-literal (In literature can be found that in 30’s 20% of whole Poland society couldn’t read – note from Translator). I don’t know how many illiterates or semi-illiterates were in Poland in 1945, but after the murder of the Polish elite and the leadership class during the war, their percentage in Polish society certainly increased. Thus Poland became a state without a head. A society without the moral and intellectual compulsions that the elite represents in any society. With Jews, the opposite was true. Jews lost almost 90 percent during the Holocaust. its population, but 10 percent, these most important, and therefore the most brilliant minds, thinkers, artists, intellectuals and scientists, were saved in the vast majority. No one can understand this conversation between a body without a head and a head to a saved body. No one, unfortunately, shows sympathy for Poles.
What happened in Poland is a real miracle. The surviving children of the Polish elite and their genetics proved so strong that after three generations of this great tragedy, Polish mathematicians are at the forefront of the best mathematicians in the world. Poland has high-level universities, where lectures are often conducted in English. They educate excellent doctors who work in the world, including America. However, Poland is still a poor country. So how can you give back 65 billion euros? It is pure stupidity! And will it satisfy them? Zuckerberg himself, who created Facebook is worth $ 60 billion. Therefore, Jews should take care of science. Make sure that they help and are a part of society, and don’t argue about a relative pair of pennies. I am realist. Politically, these claims will never be met by Poland. What kind of politician can go to poor voters and say to them: "Look, we have to take you $ 65 billion, and you will continue to be beggars for the next ten years!" It is politically impossible! This must finally be said out loud!
I fully agree with you. If someone thinks that the state on the achievements of Poland will hand over to Jewish organizations and Israel - that is, entities that have no legal right to represent Polish Jews killed by the Germans - 65 billion dollars, it is either naive or specifically uses this subject for implementation of their particular interests. A government that would take away 65 billion dollars for Poles wouldn’t be able to maintain even one month in power. However, the problem still exists because, for now, Jewish organizations haven’t withdrawn from their claims. The Jewish historian, William D. Rubinstein, however, thinks that there is no convincing reason why Poland should pay any compensation to Jewish organizations.
I don’t understand why we argue about it. This policy, these pressures on Poland indicate that those people who demand money from Poland don’t know what they are saying. They should have more empathy and empathize with the situation of Poland and Poles. Unfortunately, they don’t. I don’t like very much that Jews always come out with the subject of the Holocaust and accuse their opponents of anti-Semitism. It's enough with this constant talk about how poor Jews are and that you must pay them!
You have repeatedly demanded the publication of information on the course of restitution of the property of pre-war Jewish communities in Poland. How other Jews assess your commitment to this matter?
I am a man who has no secrets. Living with secrets is difficult. Besides, I'm an independent man and I know most people who are associated with Jewish organizations. Anyway, I once met Abraham Foxman at a party. I gave him a hand and looked into his eyes; I understood that he didn’t know what was going on. Christ, supposedly praying to God, said: "Father, forgive them; they do not know what they are doing." I have to forgive them because they don’t know what they are doing. And how are they looking at me? If only they could, they would recognize me as a non-Jew. My origin, however, means that they can’t accuse me of this, which is a problem for them.
The recovery of property belonging to pre-war Jewish communities is one great tragedy. Poland has given away more than half of this property so far. They, however, almost stole everything or wasted. Nobody wants to disturb anyone in this theft and there is almost nothing left. There is no serious Jewish institution that would look at these matters. All this is carried out wild and full of corruption. It seems to me that this corruption is even considered to be such an interesting cunning. There is no word in Polish that would accurately express the Russian word "maładiec". He stole everything, killed, cheated, maładiec! That's what all such maładiec. Poland is in this situation, God knows who's not stealing there. However, we must look optimistically in the future and count on the fact that it can still be changed and we will finally be able to get rid of these evil and dishonest people. Hence my fight. I see it all and that's why I have to talk about it! I can’t stand corruption. Corruption is hell for me. It's the end of the world. That's how civilization ends. That's how civilization ends. I understand that if an inspector comes to control, he'll give him a bottle of vodka so he doesn’t look for a hole in the bridge. Or you can give a penny to your sister or doctor in the hospital. They don’t earn much and will take additional care of the patient. Although I don’t like it, of course, I can still understand it, but it also has to end.
Even if Poland agreed to give Jewish organizations some percent of these $ 65 billion, say, 12 billion, they would still steal it and Jews who need it after they wouldn’t receive it. Jewish organizations often struggle with the problem of corruption. They don’t do any audit. They also don’t have any exact system that would show what the money is for and what they were really spent on.
The Germans gave the Jewish organizations huge amounts of money and nothing was left of them. That is why I have repeatedly proposed that Poland and Poles, represented by the Polish government, tell the Jews: "Listen, we can’t give money to you, but we want you to be part of our Polish world. That is why anyone who had a grandmother or a grandfather from Poland could become a Polish citizen!". That would be an appropriate gesture, which would be extremely important for Jews, because Europe is becoming a dangerous place for Jews today. On the streets of France, there are cries of "Death to the Jews!". They are attacked and synagogues are destroyed. About forty percent of French Jews hide their Jewish symbols in fear. It is similar in almost all of Europe. The well-known Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo, while masking his anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism, said that Europeans should give Hamas rockets that could cover all Zionist targets, because the rockets they currently have don’t allow them to kill too many Jews.
Not only Europe, but also the United States may turn out to be a place where the Jews won’t be able to feel safe in the future. The number of Muslims is increasing here each year. Against this background, Poland seems to be the safest place for European Jews.
Granting Polish citizenship to the descendants of Polish Jews would, in a sense, follow the footsteps of Spain and Portugal, which, as part of the compensation for expelling Sephardic Jews at the end of the fifteenth century, recently proposed granting their descendants their citizenship. The history of the Jewish diaspora in Poland differs significantly from the history of the diaspora in Portugal and Spain. Poles haven’t expelled Jews from themselves. In Poland, the Jewish community ceased to exist and lost its property as a result of German occupation and Stalin's communist dictatorship. In fact, it was in Poland that some Jews who had been expelled from Portugal, Spain or other European countries once found refuge.
According to prof. Bernard D. Weinryb before the Second World War from 16 to 17 million Jews living in the world, as many as 13 to 14 million came from Poland. Every tenth inhabitant of the WW2 was Jew. It was the highest rate among all the then countries in the world. In 1939, every third inhabitant of the Polish capital was a Jew. Warsaw was the second in the world - just after New York - a city inhabited by such a large Jewish community. However, even if only Jews who survived the Holocaust remained in Poland after the WW2, Poland would be the largest Jewish community in the world right after the United States and Israel. However, this didn’t happen and today we live in a completely different reality. You wrote in one of your texts that: "The number of Polish citizens with some Jewish roots doesn’t exceed 0.5% of the nearly 40 million Polish population, that is 200,000. Less than 30,000 of Polish citizens living in the country today consider themselves for Jews".
On the one hand, the postulate of the return to Poland of the Jewish population that comes from it seems to be noble. On the other hand, the idea of the Jewish re-arrival to Poland arouses much resistance even among the Jews themselves. The Jewish opponents of this idea believe that the diaspora, especially the diaspora in Poland, ended in Auschwitz. Besides, it isn’t known if the Polish state and the Poles themselves would be ready to re-welcome the Jews who, with the exception of their grandparents, have almost no connections with Poland today. It is also not known whether Poles would at all want the national and religious structure of Polish society to change. Many Poles even believe that the possession of relatively few national and religious minorities by Poland is not a disadvantage, but an advantage, because in this way, we rarely encounter tensions and conflicts against this background. Anyway, for Israel to have such a homogeneous social structure that Poland currently has, it would be for many Israeli Jews to fulfill their dreams. Finally, the Arab population is increasing in Israel year by year and in the future, Jews may become a minority in their own country. Besides, many Poles who hear your proposal, an alarm lamp turns on and they fear that calling the Jews to come back to Poland again may be a camouflaged attempt to colonize it. In any case, this presents Poles a former candidate for Polish president, director and publicist Grzegorz Braun, who also claims that such postulates as yours are an attempt to create a "Russian-German condominium under Jewish management" in Poland and other countries of Central Europe. This would be a repetition of the plans of the German Committee for the Liberation of Russian Jews, who in 1914 called for the creation on the lands of the Russian partition a satellite state of Germany, so-called Judeopolonia. What do you think about all this?
This is either a bad or uninformed man. It is possible that he is uninformed and bad! This is absurd. Jews live in America, Australia and Canada. They live all over the world. They also have Israel. They don’t need to colonize anyone! Jews have never colonized anyone! For over two thousand years, they haven’t been proselytizing at all!
I think that he voiced fears and fears of many Poles, who, having in mind the partitions, and thus more than century of slavery, they look with great distrust at all moves on the part of national minorities. Everyone nation have the right to their fears, even if they seem to be irrational and absurd to someone. The Poles and the Jews have the right to do so. Of course, one must be careful that these fears don’t turn into phobias and become a seed of anti-Semitism or anti-Polonism. In order for this to happen, these fears have to be confronted with reality. I think that our conversation gives some opportunity.
As for the Israel mentioned by you, it is of course usual to say that if a war breaks out in Israel, the Jews don’t run away from it, but they return to it. However, the morale of Israeli soldiers is lower than it used to be and there is no such fighting spirit among them as at the beginning of Israeli statehood. In addition, Israel is unable to guarantee its citizens complete security and peace. Almost every day there are terrorist attacks on Jews. Most Jews would certainly not be willing to take advantage of Samson's supposed option if Israel's existence were threatened. Instead of fighting for the last man and the last drop of blood, many Jews would then leave Israel, seeking refuge in other safe countries. For all these reasons and because of the privileges granted to its citizens by the European Union, it has recently become very popular among Israeli Jews to have a second passport. It is always good to have plan B.
Of course, when it is dangerous in Israel, older people, women and children will leave. Most of these people, however, won’t be poor. They will include people of science, teachers, professors and outstanding specialists. Poland could only gain at their reception.
I would like to make Poles aware that what is currently happening in Poland is something completely opposite to what Mr. Braun claims. Well, Israel and the Zionists not only don’t want to colonize Poland, they even strive hard to forget about their almost thousand-year heritage. They want to completely bury Jewish life in Poland. Instead of securing and restoring Jewish real estates taken over from the Polish state, they sell them out and change their purpose. From the most important and the largest yeshivah in the world in Lublin, they made a hotel. A little more and in Poland there will be no more trace of the Jews except for concentration camps, in which the only thing that will be seen is the memorabilia after the Germans murdered them. Only Jewish Marches of the Living will survive Jewish culture and its living people, which symbolize the fact that there is no longer Jewish life in Poland and that it will never exist again.
Every year, new material evidence of the existence of Jews in Poland is being liquidated. The infrastructure that could be used to raise the Jewish world from rubble is being destroyed. A little more and Jewish life will only be seen in museums. Only a great, terrifying emptiness will remain, which no scientific conferences or festivals of Jewish culture can fill. Poland won’t even be an open-air museum of Jewish culture, because there will no longer be any material tissue on which the past Jewish world could be shown to Poles. However, all this isn’t happening at all. This has been carefully planned and this plan has been systematically implemented for decades. In the 1990s, an agreement between the Israeli authorities and the authorities of Poland took place in this matter. Besides, what Israeli Jews are doing today is extremely sad for me. They are trying to make Polish Jews a guests in Poland. During one of the visits of President Szimon Peres in Poland, he thanked - in his speech he gave at the Marriot Hotel in Warsaw - for over seven hundred years of hospitality. He confirmed that the Jews were and are still only temporary guests in Poland. He acknowledged the Polish anti-Semites who always claimed, both in the interwar period and after the war and now, that the Jews, who for several dozen generations have been living in Polish lands, have never been and will never be co-hosts of Poland. It was a humiliating speech for Polish Jews who always felt part of Poland and treated it as their only homeland. Today, the opposite tendency takes place. All these Jewish culture festivals are just a veil to indicate that Jewish life is good in Poland. However, the reality is much more sad than the picture that is trying to present to the Poles. The arrival of Jews to Poland could change everything. It would have thwarted Zionist plans and restored in Poland the wonderful tradition of a common, peaceful existence of Poles and Jews.
Even the most bitter anti-Semite should think about what Poland would look like today if the Jews were to be welcomed in it. After all, if it weren’t for the war, Łódź could be Hollywood today, Sopot Silicon Valley, Warsaw one of the five most important business centers in the world, and the minimum wage could amount to PLN 60 per hour. However, everything isn’t lost. Today, Poland has a chance to become a safe haven for European Jews.
If Poland had already declared that it would grant Jews whose grandparents come from Poland, Polish citizenship, Warsaw could soon become the center of European business and the headquarters of the Jewish financial elite. Poland could also have universities and academic staff at the highest world level. Thanks to this, Poland would become a richer country and, above all, it would be better for all Poles. Adoption of the Jews is also acceptance of their money. Before the war, Jews who accounted for 10 percent of the Polish population paid over 30 percent of taxes. It seems to me that also many Polish intellectuals would like to rebuild a Jewish community in Poland.
Recently a text was published in "Atlantic", in which they wonder whether Jews should leave Europe because they aren’t welcome in it. It doesn’t surprise me. To be part of society, you have to feel it first of all. If the Jews don’t feel it, then they should leave Europe and go to New Zealand and cut the lambs there. If we want to have our place in society, then we must be super in order. Our biblical task wasn’t to be chosen because we are better. We were chosen to work to show to other people and to the world, what is honesty, justice and humanity. If not, what place do we have in this world?
You said that Poland could only gain at the Jewish reception. On the other hand, you also said that the Jews must start to feel part of society, and if they don’t, then they should go to New Zealand and cut the lambs there. If Jews don’t feel part of societies in other European countries, why should it be different in Poland?
By accepting Jews, Poland could continue the wonderful tradition of our common coexistence. This is a company. It currently exists in the United States, Canada, Australia and other countries. It's about giving society everything that's best. If you go to Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Houston, San Francisco, Chicago, Toronto or Melbourne, you would see that only 2% of Jews is also about half of the staff of all major museums, universities, hospitals and foundations. Jews are welcome because they give themselves to society, initiate and work. They are the salt of every society. The same should be in Poland. Meanwhile, they have been wasted or stolen over three billion zlotys that have been recovered so far thanks to the return of property belonging to the pre-war Jewish communities. If it was ensured that this money would be honestly located, then many Polish organizations could go to Jews and Jewish communities, saying: "Listen, we would like to build a new hospital. Will you do it? "And the Jews would surely contribute and would give it a lot of money, as they give it everywhere.
In the fact the Jews not always payed tribute to the Polish state. However, it can’t be denied that the Jews were also great patrons of art, generous sponsors and generous benefactors. After all, the Kronenberg family founded the Warsaw School of Economics and the Warsaw Philharmonic. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Jews gave Warsaw a Jewish Hospital, being at that time one of the best and most modern hospitals in Poland. In the 1920s, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (Joint) paid out forty thousand dollars to buy Amelin and create a dormitory for listeners or the School of Hygiene and the first Health Center in Poland.
I can give you hundreds of similar examples in the United States and in the world. In England, a lot of institutions were built in this way! For it isn’t in accord with Jewry that the Jew should die rich. This isn’t said, it is not promoted anywhere. This is a big secret. Did you hear about it?
I haven’t heard.
The important thing is to show how a Jew is buried in the grave First, he is washed and linen sheet is putted on him. Do you know why a linen sheet? Because there is no pocket. You can’t bury a Jew in any clothing that has at least one pocket. This is a symbol of the fact that man takes nothing with him to the other world. This is subconsciously transmitted to the next generations of Jews. Jewish children learn about it and then in their adult life they understand that if they have an instinct to make money, they should also share it.
Jews make up 2 percent of the inhabitants of Southern California. However, if you go to the universities in Los Angeles and read the list of donors, you will see that a huge percentage on this list will be Jewish names. Jews give their money to universities, hospitals, operas, museums, theaters, etc. This is a Jewish tradition in which it isn’t important how much is there, but how much is given to improve the world. This is the pride! My father always told us: "A wealthy man isn’t one who has a lot of money, but he who gives a lot of money". This is the Jewish approach to life, our parents have taught us and we teach our children. Pleasure comes from the grant, not from later seeing your name on the building. It's not about self-promotion, but making the world a better place. However, I won’t make advertising to Jews here. It is necessary to organize the possibility of returning Jews to Poland. These thieves collected three billion zlotys and stole everything and squandered it. They tell that they spend all their money on cemeteries. If you go to the Jewish cemetery, you will understand that they did not spend a penny there. Only private persons and various foundations deal with the cemeteries.
In one of the articles you wrote the following: "The Jews asked for a meeting with the bishop of Lublin, Stefan Wyszyński - the most charismatic Catholic priest in Poland who soon became a cardinal and primate - turning to him for condemning the slanderous myth of ritual murder. During that meeting, Bishop Wyszyński said he couldn’t do it, because the Church had not yet taken the final position in this matter. At the time, the Jews understood that the bitter anti-Semitism of the Church didn’t end with the war. "
Many people point out that the conversation between Jews and Bishop Wyszyński is known mainly due to the accounts of Jewish communists who, due to their involvement in the process of introducing communism in Poland, can’t be regarded as reliable sources of information. Lack of a clear position on the part of Bishop Wyszyński wasn’t to result from his anti-Judaism or anti-Semitic prejudices, because it was in vain to look for examples of such prejudices in his homilies or articles, but was caused by the fear that the Church's statements regarding the Jewish community would be used by the communist propaganda against the Polish independence underground. In the end Adolf Berman from the Central Committee of Polish Jews proclaimed at that time that the people of the Anders Army were responsible the Kielce pogrom. The fact that Cardinal Wyszynski wasn’t an anti-Semite may also be testified by the fact that the chief rabbi of the Polish Zew Wawa Morejno thanked him later for the attitude he adopted during the communist campaign against Jews in 1968. Recently, it also turned out that Cardinal Wyszynski, still a young priest, helped the Jews during the Holocaust. Does this change your opinion about Cardinal Wyszynski in any way?
This helping Jews during the war is very often a mythology and it is difficult to find someone to be saved by Wyszynski. It isn’t said that you give a piece of bread to someone to get rid of it. The Righteous Among the Nations saved Jews. Wyszyński didn’t save Jews! Wyszyński was an anti-Semite! The Jews knew that. The church was anti-Semitic. It's an intellectual absurdity to say in 1946 that you can’t deny the myth that Jews kill children to have blood on matza! Jews have no right to drink blood! The Jews must cook the meat for hours so that all the blood will go away. And here they are talking about the blood of children. The word "gehenna" comes from the valley near Jerusalem, which is called Gihinom, where children were sacrificed to Moloch. This meant a picture of hell for Jews, so accusing Jews of killing children and drinking their blood is impossible! This is absurdly invented by a monk who may have raped a child in the 11th century in England. How could Wyszyński know at all that the Church had not yet declared herself?! Why was Wyszynski silent when the Bishop of Czestochowa, Teodor Kubina, said that?!
As early as 1939, the church decided to sacrifice everything, including Jews, on the front of its struggle against communism. All Jews paid for the anti-communist attitude of the Church. And so 6 million Jews were murdered. The church was the only institution that could prevent it. The church has been discredited without showing a bit of decency.
It is difficult for me to agree with such a radical and unjust evaluation. In assessing the Church's behavior during the WW2, it is necessary to take into account the political realities and behind-the-scenes activities of the Church. Many historians, moreover, claim that Pius XII could officially condemn the extermination of Jews by the Germans if he had been convinced that such a position of the Church would bring Jews more good than harm. The Pope was to remember the events of July 1942, when, after the pastoral letter of the Bishop of Utrecht, Johannes de Jong, in which he condemned the persecution of Jews and their deportations from the Netherlands, the Germans launched an assault on Catholic churches and monasteries, kidnaping the Jewish Catholics from them and accelerated the deportation of Dutch Jews to concentration camps. It was then that the Saint Edith Stein was arrested and deported to Auschwitz.
Generally, over 70 percent of Dutch Jews were deported to extermination camps. It was the highest percentage of all countries in the West. Of course, such a low percentage of Dutch Jews who survived the Holocaust was also influenced by the collaboration of many Dutch people with the Germans. It is recognized, however, that it was the Church's protest that led to the intensification of the persecution of the Jewish population by the Germans. Of course, this protest also sensitized Dutch Catholics to the fate of the Jews. Research conducted by a Dutch historian and political scientist, Marnix Croes, indicates that the more Catholics lived in a given commune, the more Jews survived in it. As for the number of people awarded the Righteous Among the Nations medal, the Dutch are second only to the Poles, with more than five thousand medals. Of course, the main difference between the Poles and the Dutch is that the Dutch, unlike the Pole, didn’t face the death penalty for hiding Jews.
In any case, according to historians investigating the attitude of Pius XII to the Holocaust, it was the reaction of the Germans to the protest of the Church in the Netherlands that caused the Pope to decide not to take an official position on the extermination of Jews. He didn’t want to be retaliated by Catholics and he was afraid that the Germans would accelerate the extermination of Jews across Europe and would enter - in all their countries - monasteries and religious nurses run by nuns, where the Jews were sheltered. The dilemma faced by the Pope was also recognized by some Jews. The Chief Rabbi of Denmark, Marcus Melchior, even stated that if Pius XII had condemned the Holocaust at that time, not only would more than 6 million Jews die, but perhaps tens of millions of Catholics would also be killed.
Although in the address for Christmas in 1942, Pope Pius XII didn’t speak directly in defense of the Jews, his words were still taken as interfering with them. The Third Reich ambassador at the Vatican protested for it immediately, and the New York Times wrote that the Pope was the first to break the silence in Europe. Similarly, the Jews themselves had to see it, because after the death of Pius XII in 1958, the then foreign minister of Israel, Golda Meir, wrote in a condolence telegram that during the Nazi terror the Pope condemned the perpetrators and supported their victims. Mordechaj Lewy, said in 2011, when he was still an Israeli ambassador to the Vatican, that the Church, the Vatican and the Pope help Jews during the Holocaust as much they could
Instead of exposing the Church to the bloody retaliation of Hitler, who could touch even the Pope himself - about what can be witnessed by the reports of an American Jew, Garry Krupp, who claimed that the Germans planned to kidnap Pius XII and murder him - the Church preferred to focus primarily on all for saving Jews. This is shown by numbers. As reported by Fr. Paweł Rytel-Andrianik, the Medal of the Righteous Among the Nations has been honored with over 500 priests and nuns from Europe, including about 70 people from Poland. They constitute about 2 percent of all people awarded by Yad Vashem. These over 500 people are just the tip of the iceberg, because many priests and nuns who helped the Jews during the war remain anonymous or will never be honored with the title of the Righteous because of the criteria adopted by Yad Vashem. For all these reasons it is very difficult to calculate what percentage of priests and nuns helped Jews in particular countries or in all of Europe at that time and how their results compare to the background of particular social groups. Certainly, thorough and detailed research is needed in this regard.
Of course, there were such clergymen as the Franciscan Miroslav Filipović-Majstorović, priest Krunoslav Draganović, priest Josef Tiso, or bishop Alois Hudal. They were, however, a margin and, above all, their behavior betrayed the Church's teaching. Clergymen who saved the Jews not only didn’t do it against the Church, but even carried out his main mission - to help his neighbor. The Vatican, as the only state in the world - apart from Poland - made almost all its diplomacy to save Jews. Only in 1943, the Vatican Information Office helped to find its families around 20,000 Jews. Pius XII was to personally ask the authorities of Canada, Brazil and the USA to receive Jews. These countries, however, remained deaf to the Pope's appeal. After the pressure of the Vatican, neighbors such as Spain and Portugal were to decide to help the Jews. Assistance from these Catholic countries was incomparably greater than that provided by other neutral countries, such as Sweden and Switzerland. Spain has passed through its territory over 40,000. Jews. Portugal, on the other hand, allowed Jewish aid organizations to operate on its territory. Apparently, it was also thanks to the Vatican's efforts that the deportation of Hungarian and Slovak Jews to concentration camps was stopped. The Vatican was also to push the Romanian and French authorities in this matter.
For all these reasons, John Loftus and Mark Aarons argue that the actions taken by Pius XII most probably saved the lives of more Jews than the actions taken by all the Allies jointly. Israeli diplomat and historian Pinchas Lapide, based on documents stored in Yad Vashem, calculated that the Church saved about 800,000 Jews during the WW2. In turn, the German historian, Michael Hesemann, based on his research work that the church saved life of even 850,000 Jews.
The Church's attitude to Jews during the WW2 may also be demonstrated by the fact that, thankfully for Jews during the Holocaust, the chief rabbi of Rome from Poland, prof. Izrael Zolli personally thanked Pius XII, who, like thousands of Roman Jews, survived the war, hidden by Italian Catholics. If the church were indeed as anti-Semitic and passive as it is presented, Israel Zolli wouldn’t only thank the Pope, but he wouldn’t convert to Catholicism and wouldn’t accept the name Eugenio in honor of Pius XII. And he did all this. Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel, Jicchak Halewi Herzog, who came from Poland also thanked the Pope for the help of the Church for Jews during the Holocaust. It seems to me that the voices of these people are significant for the assessment of the Church's attitude towards the Jews during the Holocaust.
Of course, one can wonder today whether the Church could do more for the Jews than he did and whether the strategy adopted by him was right. However, before acute criticism of Pius XII and the Church, it is necessary to examine all documents on this subject with integrity and meticulousness, and to bear in mind that in 2007, the former head of the communist intelligence of Romania, General Ion Mihai Pacepa, public news that he was involved in a secret operation organized by the KGB, which sought to slander Pius XII by changing his image - from the defenders of the Jews to Hitler's anti-Semitic ally. Everything began as early as 1945, when Radio Moscow described Pius XII as Hitler’s Pope.
According to Pacepa, it was the Securitate that gave the German playwright Rolf Hochhuth false documents and inspired Hochhuth to write in 1963 the defamatory Pius XII theatrical play tilted “the Governor”, in which the Pope is accused of co-responsibility for the Holocaust. In 1964, this play, in a slightly modified version - by Jerome Rothenberg - even hit the boards of Broadway, bringing its author great success. However, this art was criticized by Sigmund Gorson, the Polish Jew who survived Auschwitz. He even wanted to meet Hochhuth in New York to tell him what he thought of him. Gorson claimed that Hochhuth's art is full of lies and slander, because the Pope and the Church - despite what they are accused of - saved the lives of Jews. He himself was supposed to be helped by Saint Maximilian Kolbe. Gorson, however, wasn’t the only Jew who stood up in defense of the Pope. The head of the Anti-Defamation League, a Polish-Jewish lawyer, Dr. Józef Lichten, also opposed the defamation of the Pope. Defending the pope, he risked his career, because then many people wanted to create Pius XII a black legend. Pius XII became an enemy not only for the communists, but also for some influential Zionists. He didn’t accept the rise of the state of Israel.
I don’t see anything radical or unjust in my assessment. I don’t believe in this line of defense of the Church. It isn’t only unconvincing, but sad, that the Church wants to justify her obscenity with trifling examples, using them like a fig leaf. The church wants to whitewash and escape responsibility. It's easy to blame everything on the actions of communists. It is also completely absurd to say that the Pope didn’t defend the Jews because he feared that Hitler would retaliate against Catholics. After all, Hitler wouldn’t have murdered several dozen percent of its citizens and almost all Austrians. He wouldn’t murder all the French, Italians, Poles, Lithuanians and other Catholic nations. If the Pope were afraid for his life, he could have taken refuge in Great Britain or in the United States and condemned the extermination of Jews by the Germans.
If indeed the Church has engaged so much in the power of the Jews, why for so many years can’t declassify its archives and show documents from this period ?! What does the Church have to hide in this matter? It is worth reading about this with Karlheinz Deschner's book “Mit Gott und den Faschisten”. There wasn’t a single case for the church to give a passport to the Jewish people. When the Third Reich was already falling down and in no way threatening the Vatican, which was far from the front, the Church gave thousands of its passports to Nazi criminals, thanks to which they could leave Europe and avoid punishment. In addition, Pacelli's family has been associated with the Vatican for generations and was known for her anti-Semitism. Pope Pius XII was Hitler's partner in the extermination of Jews.
In the same article, you also said: "Today, for every violent anti-Semite, such as father Tadeusz Rydzyk, there are many decent and kind-hearted priests, like father Tomasz Dostatni, priest Wojciech Lemański, father Stanisław Opiela, father Jacek Prusak, priest Adam Boniecki"50. In this case, how do you assess the fact that from initiative of father Tadeusz Rydzyk was created in the church of Saint John Paul II in Toruń, the Memory Hall dedicated to the Poles rescuing - as Fr Rydzyk said - "our brothers of Jews"?
You can be a politician and weigh words. I don’t want to be the one who is politically correct and tells fairy tales. When you listen to the transmission of Father Rydzyk, you understand that this is an anti-Semite. You should spend more time listening to Radio Maryja and then you will come to the same conclusion. I am based on facts and I don’t intend to be politically correct in this matter. The church persecutes Jews from the 4th century AD. Ambrose from Milan and Jan Chryzostom, both saints, fought Judaism. They persecuted and killed thousands of Jews. Later there was practically no time when the Church not torment the Jews in some way. It was the struggle of one religion with another. The same thing happened between Catholics and Protestants in the seventeenth century, when the Seine was red for weeks through human blood. It was then a struggle for existence. Fight for life and death. This struggle between Christianity and Judaism is no longer needed today. Christianity as a religion finally won with Judaism in the tenth century AD. Christianity dominated the world.
I once read a book with sermons published by the Church at the beginning of the 19th century. Every third, every fourth sermon spoke about how terrible Jews are. Scary. This anti-Semitism, hatred and aversion towards the Jew later only intensified. Anti-Semitism gained the most in Poland after the entry of Jesuits in Poland in 1555. They began to teach the Polish aristocracy of hatred towards Jews. They persuaded the Polish gentry not to give Jews any privileges. The Polish aristocracy, however, had no choice, because the Jews were the only ones who could write, read and count. The rest was a dark mass. So how could they not give privileges to Jews when they used them and needed them?! Then, with the arrival of the Jesuits in Poland, the situation of the Jews deteriorated. Jews to this day are afraid of Christians, including Catholics. They are afraid of them.
50 S. Aszkenazy, Appeal for Polish-Jewish reconciliation: This is the truth, http://jewsinpoland.org/pl/content/pl/apel-o-pojednanie polsko-%C5%BCydowskie-taka-jest prawda-pisze-seweryn-aszkenazy, January 27, 2016 r.
For many Jews, however, Catholic Poland was by the name "Paradisus Iudaeorum." Jews had the status of Kalisz, and in 1580 King Stefan Batory established the Sejm of the Four Lands, and Jews didn’t have similar privileges and autonomy in any other European state at that time.
Yes, the Sejm of the Four Lands was active in Lublin. It was, however, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Later it was all destroyed and closed.
However, the Poles never made such a massacre on the Jews as the Serbs in Srebrenica did on the Muslim Bosniaks. They never murdered Jews as massively and with such cruelty as Ukrainians in Volhynia murdered Poles. Pogroms of the Jewish population have never taken on us as much as the pogroms carried out on the Jews by the Russians or Ukrainians who only killed between 50,000 and 100,000 Jews in the years 1917-1919. It is also not Poles, but the Lithuanians took part in the crime in Ponary, where about 20,000 Poles were murdered. Nevertheless, the unpleasant and certainly tragic, but in fact insignificant - against the background of our common and rich history - episodes, coloring and blowing to exorbitant proportions, making them key and breakthrough events. As a result, we are dealing with a very one-sided and distorted, and even a lying image of the almost thousand-year tradition of co-existing between Poles and Jews, which you described as magnificent. In addition to accents and exclamations in the least to the right places, it is also important to accuse the Poles and the Polish Church of everything that was and is - in Polish-Jewish relations - bad, while ignoring the offenses of the Jews themselves. Hence my question. Do you see any actions in the conduct of Polish Jews that led to the deterioration of our mutual relations and harm Poland and Poles?
Perhaps such activities were. I don’t know, however, the situation in which Jews as a society would like to harm Poles or Poland. Certainly some Jews were spies or communists. However, harming your homeland as a nation has never been Jewish in nature. The betrayal of his own homeland isn’t Jewish.
Historian Leszek Pietrzak claims that Jews collaborated with Germans much more often than Poles51. In addition to the activities of the Judenrats and the Jewish police in the ghettos, he indicates that in 1939, in Pabianice and Łódź, the Jews built a triumphal arch of flowers for the German troops, and the Jewish delegation welcomed the Germans with bread and salt. Likewise, many Jews would behave after the Red Army invaded Poland. At that time, however, they not only welcomed the Red Army soldiers with flowers, but also together with members of other national minorities, such as Belarusians and Ukrainians, they pointed out to the NKVD Poles for deportation to. How do you comment on this?
Before the war, over 200,000 Jews lived in Łódź. If it were to be said that Jews welcomed the Germans, then at least 50,000 Jews should have been welcomed, that is, a quarter of all Jews in Lodz. But let Mr. Pietrzak prove at least that there were 50 of them. I can’t imagine that the Jews would welcome the Germans in Łódź, just like the Austrians greeted Hitler in Vienna! Maybe some family threw flowers, but that doesn’t mean that the Jews welcomed the Germans! How many witnesses of this event are there? This isn’t known to me. There are no such photos or films that would show it. If this man says so, he should present such evidence. Then photos were taken and films were made. In Austria, everything has been filmed. Jews this, Jews that. If someone says so, let me show you evidence. After all, Germans were filming every entry to the Polish city. I want to see documents. I am asking for a film and photos that will show Jews as a society cheering in honor of the Germans. If even a few people threw flowers from the window, it doesn’t mean that the Jews welcomed the Germans as a society.
Instead of dealing with insignificant episodes, Mr Pietrzak should better address the question of why Poland wasn’t properly prepared for the WW2. He should carefully analyze why the Polish intelligence and Polish command failed. Where was the Polish aviation? These are the main reasons for Poland failure in the September campaign, not the actions of Jews and cyclists.
Jews are a nation that has, to a lesser or greater extent, all the elements of other nations. We had criminals and collaborators, as well as geniuses and Polish patriots. Besides, the Jews never betray Poland. Poland has always been home to Jews. This is where they were born. They lived here. It was here that they created together with the Poles the greatness of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. It is here that the bones of their ancestors rest. Poland was their Israel. Obviously, a significant part of the Jews kept apart and lived in ghettos. This part was alienated from the rest of society by using the Yiddish language and strict adherence to kosher principles. This part didn’t go beyond her shtetl, but these shtetls were nevertheless right here in Poland. They lived on Polish soil, which was also their land. It was their whole world. They didn’t have and didn’t know them. It was here that they let their roots go and they wanted to live on, and they would certainly live if there was no war. For Poland was their Israel for a thousand years and it was to remain that way. They didn’t need another Israel. It was only in the twentieth century that it disturbed some of them. The fact that the majority of Polish Jews considered Poland to be their Israel stood in the way of the Zionists who wanted to build Israel in Palestine. The positive attitude of Polish Jews to Poland was a problem for them. Zionists, however, were only one of many groups in the Jewish world and didn’t represent all Polish Jews. No one has ever given them the right to do so, so their attitude towards Poland couldn’t reflect the attitude towards Poland of all Jews. However, the Zionists were also so often associated with Poland, that even in Israeli kibbutz they sharply argued with each other whether their cuisine is Polish or Jewish cuisine.
Jews as a nation never betrayed Poland. The Communists were among us, but it was a handful. And they didn’t lead to the enslavement of Poland by the communists. It was not a mythical Judeo-Communism who betrayed Poles in Yalta, but her previous allies had betrayed her - Great Britain and the United States, who weren’t only deaf to Poles' suffering, but also did nothing to prevent Germany from exterminating Jews in Europe. However, this isn’t spoken of today, because it is easier to blame all the Jews. However, you can’t accuse 2 thousand of the Jewish communists who had saved the life of Russia during the war, who trained them and required them in return for total obedience, that they prepared for Poles a nightmare that existed in Poland for almost fifty years after the war. The actual perpetrators of the Polish misfortune are under special protection today. They are too strong and therefor no one is able to speak out loud to them. This time, after it came to light that Poland was betrayed and exposed to Stalin, dozens of Polish officers and soldiers committed suicide. After all, these "Allies" still cynically and unscrupulously exploited, unknowingly, several hundred thousand Polish soldiers on the western front, where they risked their lives in the struggle for the liberation of Poland and beating Hitler. Therefore, Poles need to be reminded that it wasn’t Jews, but London and Washington gave Poland to Stalin in dozens of years of slavery. It was also not Jews, but the British didn’t allow members of the Polish Armed Forces - the fourth largest Allied army - to participate in the winners' parade, which in 1946 marched through the streets of London. And how were Polish commanders and officers treated after the war?! It is sad to talk about this.
As to the greeting of the Soviets by Jews in frontier towns, it must be said that they were usually poor and with very narrow horizons. They were, however, aware of what the Russians could do. In the end, the entire pogrom system came from Russia. So the Jews often behaved towards the Soviets in such a way that they wouldn’t rob, kill or murder them. It can’t be said that the Jews welcomed! It can’t be said that the Poles killed Jews! If we were to generalize on a case-by-case basis, Jews abroad would be right to say that all Poles killed Jews. For me such generalizing is incredibly annoying. I give such people a three-hour lecture on history. I also make them aware that the basic task of every Jew is to strive to leave the world better than it was found. This is called Tikun Olam. This is the Jewish commandment. Leave this world better.
51 Leszek Pietrzak, How the Jews collaborated with the Germans, http://www.uwaza mrze.pl/artykul/995313/jak-zydzi-kolaborowali-z-niemcami.
Almost everyone has a different vision of how a better world would look and how to improve it. Jerzy Piłsudski and another Maksymilian Horwitz had another vision of a better world and future of Poland.
Nobody, of course, is one hundred percent right. There are always units that are destructive. However, I don’t know how to leave this world better by spoiling it and plotting it.
Do Jews who, according to your postulate, return to Poland, don’t want to lead to secularization of the Polish public space and a greater - than is currently the case - separation between the state and the Church?
When it comes to secularism, if one of the ten neighbors on the first floor is secular and manages to inculcate this secularity to the rest, what to say about the faith of his neighbors? So I wouldn’t fear it at all. In addition, Muslims are proselytizing. Protesters proselytize. Various sects proselytize, but not Jews. Poles can be sure that no Jew will pull the Pole by the sleeve and try to persuade him to Judaism.
As prof. Marek Jan Chodakiewicz reported in his book titled Jews and Poles 1918 - 1955, in 1945, Joseph Tenenbaum, president of the World Federation of Polish Jews, said that "tens of thousands of Poles helped the Germans to exterminate Jews". Later, he admired Bolesław Bierut, claiming that he was "the father of the new Poland" 52. He also expressed his joy at the fact of the Soviet tanks breaking up an independence student demonstration in Krakow on May 3, 1946. According to him, this demonstration was in fact, an anti-Semitic pogrom during which priests shot rifles mounted on church towers. Joseph Tenenbaum completely believed in communist propaganda, and the Jews in the United States believed him and considered his opinions about Poles as irrefutable facts. Among other things, people like him created myths in the West about the anti-Semitic fascists from the Home Army and the Anders Army, as well as philo- Semitic and democratic, communistic Polish People's Republic.
Today, unfortunately, it isn’t better. There are still many negative stereotypes and false opinions living among American Jews about Poles. In 2012, an American Jewish journalist, Debbie Schlussel, (publisher in the New York Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times and the Jerusalem Post), a few days after Barack Obama used the wording "Polish death camps", wrote on her blog: “This wasn’t just the Nazis. It was tens of thousands of eager Poles and more. Obama made no gaffe here. Poland’s willing executioners took their significant place among Hitler’s willing executioners". Debbie Schlussel also wrote at that time that: "Poles murdered millions of Jews, they maintained several death camps, and they wiped out almost all of both sides of my family, as well as those in hundreds of thousands of other Jewish families (...) My family and the millions of Jews wiped out in Poland never identified as Polish because the Poles never treated them that way. They were subject to centuries of pogroms and extreme anti-Semitism by the country in which they lived, before they were ultimately rounded up to the camps and mass-murdered with Polish cooperation. So it’s beyond hilarious now to hear that the Poles are “hurt” by Obama’s description of a German Nazi death camp as “Polish”. As if there weren’t any Polish ones or as if the Poles had zero part in the Holocaust they all too eagerly participated in"53. Unfortunately, similar statements are often heard from the mouths of American Jews. Their accusations and attacks particularly affect the American and Canadian Polonia, whose members are considered to be racists and anti-Semites. Many of them feel anti-Polishism on their own skin. In contrast to the Polish elites fighting against anti-Semitism in Poland, Jewish elites in the US aren’t eager to fight anti-Polishism among Jews. Poles are doing a lot of conferences in Poland on anti-Semitism. I haven’t heard, however, that Jews organize conferences on anti-Polonism in the United States. There is a glaring asymmetry in this matter. Why is this happening? Is there something in what Stella Zylbersztajn once said, who said that American Jews discredit Israel and Poland to justify their presence in the US, not in Israel or in Poland, and that in order to feel Jewish in America, one must be a polonophobe?
There are certainly things that should not exist in the Jewish community. I must tell you, however, that Poland, Poles, Polish institutions, consulates and all Polish diplomacy are completely unprepared to defend Poland against the accusations made against Jews by the Jews. They have no idea what it should look like; they aren’t prepared for it either intellectually, neither historically nor diplomatically. And they should be able to react to various attacks or mistakes, because, for example, the phrase "Polish concentration camps" results from the lack of information on this subject. Because these camps are in Poland, people think that they are Polish. If they were in France, it would be a French death camp, it is a misunderstanding, it isn’t a result of bad will and malice, it is simply lack of knowledge, but the biggest problem is that Poles can’t effectively defend themselves against attacks which have been, are and will be. In the United States, the institutions of the Polish state don’t only defend Poland against anti-Polonism, but also give a breeding ground for attacks. Polonia alienates. It isn’t kind to the Jews. With Polonia, the Church came to the United States. The church isn’t, however, a Polish organization, but a Catholic organization.
52 Joseph Tenenbaum, In Search of A Lost People. The Old and the New Poland, The Beechhurst Press, New York 1948, s.224.
53 http://www.debbieschlussel.com/50114/poles-were-complicit-in-holocaust-outrage-over-obama-gaffe-is-fraudulent-ignorant/
Catholicism, however, is one of the pillars of Polish identity.
Fine. The problem is, however, that Poles who came to the United States very often brought hatred with Jews and spoke badly of them. The Jews felt it very much and nobody is really trying to fix it. This institution, which is able to fix it, isn’t interested in this repair at all. I mean the Catholic Church.
From the Second Vatican Council and at least from the pontificate of John Paul II, there is considerable progress in the Church's approach to Jews.
John Paul II was certainly a good man. If he were a Jew, in ancient times he would definitely be a rabbi because he tried to change the world for the better. The priest and the rabbi have similar functions. John Paul II spoke well, but he is gone today. Has anyone listened to him? Does anyone imitate him? You have to look at what's left of him. What is left of him isn’t always happy though. How many good people do we have and what is left of them?
So how do you deal with American Polonia?
They are mostly Catholics. They meet with each other. However, they could more often invite Jews and their Jewish institutions to their homes. When I'm invited, I go to them. Yesterday I spent a beautiful evening with three Poles. I feel at home with them. They also feel at home with me. I have close friends both among Jews and among non-Jews. Yes I was brought up in such way.
Because I'm old enough, I hate winter. However, when there are only 10 degrees in Poland, I want to be in it right away. I feel best in Poland. This is my country, my language, my music. These are my fruits, my wild strawberries, my cherries and mine lilac. It's all mine.
You are the president of the Beit Warszawa Jewish Culture Association, which was established as an alternative to the operation of the Nożyk Synagogue in Warsaw. Why did you get involved in bringing Jewish culture back to life in Poland and promoting progressive Judaism among Polish Jews?
I feel responsible for what is happening in the Jewish world. These are my people, my history, my culture and my religion. For me, Jewish culture is very important, and this culture has its base in religion, which is the glue of all Jewry. The fact that candles shine on Fridays, say a few prayers and bless children, replace bread with a challah talking to the family about learning and other things, doesn’t mean that the family is religious. It means it is a Jewish family. That's why this Friday is so important for this family. Not for getting close to God, in which they may not believe. It is about maintaining the Jewish identity. My children and I are secular Jews, but we are Jews. Poland is the only country in the world where it sells chalka and matzah, and people recognize them as traditional Polish products.
For a young Pole who has found his Jewishness, orthodoxy is totally unacceptable today. In an orthodox woman should shave her head and wear a wig. A woman can’t also greet a man and give him a hand. She must sit alone in a house separate from the praying men. This is today considered by young generations to be total nonsense. This discourages young people from discovering their Jewish identity. They need a Judaism movement that they can understand.
Progressive Jews account for 80-90% of all Jews in the world. In Poland, however, progressive Jews are marginalized by the pseudoortodoks from Twarda. However, Polish authorities unfortunately unknowingly treat them in an exceptional way, Instead of inviting rabbis to the various ceremonies who postulate being Polish to the Mosaic faith, the Polish state, contrary to the religious freedom guaranteed by the Constitution of the Republic of Poland, supports the segregation and discrimination of progressive Jews.
Before the war, the big problem in Poland was that Jews separated from Polish society through their language and kosher. The rabbis tried to keep the Jews apart, at the proper distance from the Christian world, from the world of Poles.
According to Aleksander Hertz, the Jews constituted a closed caste in the social structure of the Republic, from which it was difficult for them to leave. Zygmunt Rolat claims that Jews have never been a foreign element, but they have always been part of Polish society. Both statements don’t contradict each other, but they complement each other. In Polish-Jewish relations, nothing is as simple and unambiguous as it seems to some. Certainly, the main problem in Polish-Jewish relations - apart from obviously religious and cultural differences - was language. In the 1920s, 60% of Jewish conscripts couldn’t handle the Polish language.
Before the war, Jews either didn’t speak Polish well or spoke well, using a literary Polish language to which they put words from foreign languages. Most of them, however, as you have noticed, didn’t cope with Polish. Therefore, it was difficult for them to hide during the war. Who's fault is it? Rabbis, because they wanted to separate Jews from Polish society, fearing that Jewish children would fall in love with Christian children, as is the case today in the West and in the United States. Only that today is OK. At that time, however, they looked at it differently. You can blame the rabbis, but that doesn’t mean that Jews should be hated and wounded or killed. However, it is easy to plant hatred and bring primitive people against the Jews.
Jews were considered rich because the Jew had to pay for everything. Do you want to build a Jewish cemetery? Pay! Do you want to build a building? Pay! Do you want to build a synagogue that is almost as high as a church? You have to pay a lot for it, because the synagogues can’t be high! It should be remembered that the entrance to the synagogues couldn’t be located at the most important places in the city. Have you been in Kazimierz Dolny?
I lived there for about ten years. You could say that I grew up there.
You know that even though before the war, 80 percent of the town's population were Jews, there were three churches and only one small synagogue. The entrance to this synagogue couldn’t be located directly next to the main big market. Did we really need our tragedy to understand these inequalities?!
I invite you to quote my text, which I published a few years ago. Many independent media in Poland for various reasons had a problem to put it on their pages.
With pleasure.
Przystań utracona albo przewodnik dla nieświadomych
Haven lost or a guide for the unconscious
In 1972, after my father's death and after a 25-year absence in Poland, I returned to Krakow to make a sentimental journey. I decided to visit the old Jewish district of Kazimierz. I walked her sad, dirty streets, full of crumbling and falling houses. I found myself in the courtyard of the old synagogue. I could hardly remember the area. I went to the front door and pressed the handle, not counting on the door opening. They opened. I entered a room that seemed deserted. Speaking over the voice, I called several times and after a few minutes an older man appeared who introduced himself as a shames (curator / guardian) responsible for what was left of his Jewish life in Krakow. "There isn’t much left. Maybe 50 or 60 people dying or leaving. Soon, there will be no Jews in Krakow, "he said," it was the same in Warsaw and other cities in Poland". Poland was "judenrein" - deserted from our people. It will never be a haven for Jews again.
I returned to Poland in 1993 to ask for real estate that once belonged to my family. I went to Warsaw and Cracow, where I visited the synagogues there again. History repeated itself: with the exception of several hundred Jews dying or leaving, small Jewish communities lived in despair, existing only thanks to a small charity help from abroad. In the eyes of the Warsaw rabbi and the face of the new shames in Krakow, it was possible to read tragedy and pain.
I returned to Poland several times. I regained some of my movable property and invested in various interests and properties. Until 1995, thousands of Jewish families lived in Poland pretending to be Christians, not wanting or afraid to leave the proverbial "wardrobe." I soon realized that the only option available to them was Jewish orthodoxy. For relatively young Poles at the threshold of the 21st century, orthodoxy was an unacceptable option.. And that's when I decided to create a commune of "Progressive Jews" (also known as liberal, reformed, modern, or simply non-orthodox). That's how Beit Warsaw was born. A few years later, in cooperation with Małgorzata Łubińska, we established the first post-war Union of Progressive Jewish Communities in Poland - Beit Polska, which as an umbrella organization brings together local progressive Jewish communities.
Independent, Jewish life has finally started to wake up. Funds have come from foreign donors. The owners and heirs of the real estate came in large numbers. Post-war Poland, after decades of communism, needed everything, offering in return many possibilities. Polish flocked from the United States, Great Britain and other countries, representatives of law, auditing, consulting, engineering, architectural, construction, real estate, retail, small and large companies.
Many foreign workers, referred to as experts, were Jews, though not orthodox. With such an animated effect, people of suspect origin came to the conclusion that it is worth being a Jew or joining Jews. They were so programmed to believe that the Jews are rich, influential and always help their own. You could earn a lot from it. They made ... and a lot of it.
In 1997, the Polish Sejm voted for a "tailor-made" bill to help the strong lobby of the "New Jews", handing over all pre-war municipal properties to newly established Jewish communities in Poland. Only they had the right to exist. All other Jewish organizations were to be subject to them. Most lawyers considered this law unconstitutional. Until 1998, various social scum, as happens in the stormy time, appeared on the surface and completely controlled everything that was Jewish. In December 1998, these "New Jews" organized a meeting with representatives World Jewish Congress and the World Jewish Restitution Organization. To legitimize their existence, they sought support from international Jewish organizations. As the report of the meeting shows, they had to pay dearly for it, namely half of the value of all recovered properties, which at the time was worth over 50 million dollars. To further strengthen their position, these "New Jews" decided to employ as their representative, a man who would be flexible, right, and who would execute their orders.
In 2002, the Polish government began transferring communal real estate to Jewish communities. By 2013, about 1,000 commercial facilities worth $ 500 million had come under the control of various tricksters. A great historical opportunity appeared before Polish Jews. If the recovered assets were managed competently and the money from the sale was invested wisely, the income would be more than enough to ensure the existence of Jewish communities in Poland. There would be a lot to enable significant philanthropic investments in the country and to provide a haven for our country. This historic opportunity, unique, didn’t get the possibility of fulfillment. A dozen or so people who were indifferent to the fate of Jews in Poland stole or poorly managed, and thus wasted hundreds of millions of dollars. Others looked at it and remained silent.
I tried to beat the alarm bells. I presented my case and I was begging for an independent audit of the majority of Jewish organizations. I met with the Minister of Internal Affairs, the Director of the Minority Department, the Chief Prosecutor, the President of the Supreme Audit Office, officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and with the Polish General Consuls in Los Angeles, New York and Chicago. I spoke with the Polish Ambassador in the United States. I saw myself and talked to Madame Maria Kaczyńska, the wife of President Kaczyński, when she visited Los Angeles. All for nothing. I talk with the most important Polish publishers of newspapers and magazines. I have appeared on several prominent television programs. I have addressed two major global information organizations, as well as publishers and owners of major Jewish newspapers and broadcasters in the United States. I petitioned several members of the Polish Sejm. Everyone I spoke with admitted that they suspected corruption and theft, but they were afraid to speak and didn’t want to interfere in order not to be accused of or engage in anti-Semitism. So they didn’t voice their fears and didn’t suggest audits. I was confronted with a conspiracy of silence until, as a result of an accidental meeting, I didn’t speak to the editor of the Forbes magazine, although he first doubted my accusations, he decided to assign his best investigative journalist to this case and write his own editorial. I was asked to present the matter in an accompanying article.
When in September 2013, in the pages of Forbes, the three articles appeared, with my likeness on the cover, a wave of shock swept among the Jewish community in Poland and beyond. It was sworn that "there is no truth in these accusations" and the people we described are "honest, decent people devoted to the survival of Jewish life in Poland". It was argued that the articles are all lies and they will complain about defamation, and they immediately got the help of the most important Jewish leaders who are careless and ignorant, they signed letters of support and joined the shrieking chorus of wicked people. Ignoring the fact that two of the three authors of the articles were Jews attacked, tormented and accused the owners of the Forbes magazine of anti-Semitism. It turned out that the owners of Forbes were Germans and these accusations were particularly painful for them.
The argument ended with an apology for a few small failings. And of course, they never brought charges of defamation. The Association of Polish Journalists awarded the German publisher for cowardice with the "Hyena of the Year" award. The authors of the main article, Wojciech Surmacz and Nissan Tsur, were awarded by the Association of Polish Journalists with an annual award for the best investigators of the "Watergate" (Polish equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize). And there was silence. Things were going as always. There were still no obstacles to theft and waste. In order not to be outbid, members of some Jewish organizations have speeded up the misappropriation of funds under their control.
After reading the 2015 report, one could learn that by far the largest of the three Jewish communities in Poland, the Jewish Religious Community in Warsaw, were only nine properties, two of which were already on the market and will soon be sold. It is estimated that Polish Jews will be beggars again in two to four years. A huge historic opportunity was lost under the scrupulous eye of major Jewish organizations. Did Mr. Ronald Lauder, Abraham Foxman, David Harris, Steven Schwager and Alan Gill all decide to ignore this opportunity to help erase the thousand-year history of Jewish life in the Diaspora? Or maybe they were deceived by colluding losers and some clever people who saw everything and knew everything, but preferred to pursue their own interests? Whatever the cause, this suicidal defeat will be considered one of the most tragic cases that have affected Polish Jews.
March 16, 2016
