November, 2006

Review of Jan T. Gross, Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz. New York: Random House, 2006. 303 p. $25.95. Forthcoming in Shofar.

In Fear, historian Jan Gross explores a seemingly baffling phenomenon. How is it that there was aggressive anti-Semitism in Poland, after the Holocaust?

How is that even thinkable? After all, did not ethnic Poles and Polish Jews both suffer horrifically during the Nazi years? Did not Poles see much more intimately than other Europeans what the Nazi system of mass murder was like, since Poland was the site of so many death camps?

In his investigations, Gross was intrigued to discover cases of Righteous Gentiles among the Poles who hid Jews during the Nazi slaughter, yet after World War II, they were reluctant to let their heroism be known to their fellow Polish citizens. Why be silent, when they exhibited an all too rare humanity on behalf of the Jews? They were afraid of the likely hostile reaction by their Polish neighbors.

Here is Gross’s summary view: “I see no other plausible explanation of the virulent postwar anti-Semitism in Poland but that it was embedded in the society’s opportunistic wartime behavior. Jews were perceived as a threat to the material status quo, security, and peaceful conscience of their Christian fellow citizens after the war because they had been plundered and because what remained of Jewish property, as well as Jews’ social roles, had been assumed by Polish neighbors in tacit and often directly opportunistic complicity with Nazi-instigated institutional mass murder” (247).

At the center of Gross’s study is an analysis of the murderous outbreak of anti-Semitism in Kielce in 1946 and the reactions to it. Gross estimates that up to a quarter of the population participated in some degree with the violence against the town’s Jews. Scores of Jews were murdered by both police and townspeople. Authorities themselves took pains to side with the locals involved in the melee, and not be seen as sympathetic to the Jews under attack. With one exception, the Catholic Church hierarchs basically blamed the Jews for what happened. There was no social stigma attached to those involved in the harassment, beatings, and murder. Gross quotes a witness to the stoning of a Jew at that time: “After several hours of these events, people were tired but in spite of everything they were lifting stones and throwing them calmly, as if the death of a human being, killing of a person, were not at stake here” (103).

One rare shining light Gross identifies in Fear is the outraged stands taken by Polish intellectuals vis-à-vis their fellow citizens blithely brutal behavior. Gross comments that these interventions “make all the difference for Poles today, and can be cherished as a measure of moral sensitivity which has not been dulled among the country’s spiritual elite. But at the time they went unheeded, and their calls for vigour combating anti-Semitism fell on deaf ears, very much like the warnings Jan Karski delivered to the Polish government-in-exile in 1940, when he reported that anti-Jewish measures of the Nazi occupiers resonated well with large segments of the Polish society” (133). This is a familiar, sad, and predictable story: Those who embrace the prophetic vocation of afflicting the comfortable experience a kind of marginality, or exile.

The “fear” of the title can be interpreted as belonging to various groups: Obviously, the surviving Polish Jews, who were subject to abuse, intimidation, and murder; the Righteous Poles who were afraid of the consequences if their neighbors knew they had hid Jew during the war (the neighbors might have murdered them in hopes of digging up the mythic Jewish wealth their neighbors must have appropriated); and the Poles who had benefited from the dispossession of the Jews and were, at some level, fearful of the survivors who reminded “them of the fragility of their own existence, of the propensity for violence residing in their own communities, and of their own helplessness vis-à-vis the [Communist] agents … who now invoked class criteria for elimination from public life” (emphasis Gross’s, 256).

But the word “hate” could have also joined “fear” in Gross’s title. He retrieves a pungent line from Tacitus: “It is indeed human nature to hate the man whom you have injured.” While some Poles had an acute conscience that led them to act compassionately toward the Jews, many others had a bad conscience that first led them to act complicitously with the Nazis, and then to treat the Jewish survivors with contempt and violence.

Gross’s tale has an eerie pertinence to our present time. His themes –ethnic cleansing, dispossession of a people, material gain following on persecution of the suspect group, the bureaucratic processes by which such theft is legitimated, perpetrators evading justice—are still all too familiar. Gross cites Albert Camus’s candid self-examination from World War II: “During these four dreadful years all Frenchmen were witnesses to a crime not foreseen by any law (and in saying this we are weighing our words carefully): the crime of not doing enough.” Gross’s lacerating study reveals how few Poles did enough. Surveying our own world today in the light of the themes of Gross’s troubling book, can we honestly say that we are doing enough?

On November 16, my friend Laura Weis hosted a book discussion at her home on Florida Avenue NW for me and her friends, many of whom work, like Laura, at the Friends Committee on National Legislation. I invited other friends from the DC areas to join us, including Julie O’Heir, who came and brought a couple of her Jesuit Volunteer Corps community members. Jumana Musa (who works with Amnesty International’s Denounce Torture Project) and Keren Batiyov also joined us for sharing passages, questions, issues, and concerns. It was an occasion for gratitude to see so many committed, engaged, and passionate people in one living room.

Keren sent me the following email a few days later:

Mark,
I made a decision this weekend – I will return to Palestine this summer for a month to work with ISM. A lot of things converged to make me realize that I had lost a vision – your question of “what is it you really want to do?” was part of the catalyst – and one of the things I really want to do is to return to Palestine – to show a different face of Judaism, to show that not all Jews are oppressors, humiliators, racists, and murderers; to stand in solidarity with the Palestinians – to live what it really means to be a Jew.

So thank you not only for dinner, conversation, and friendship, but for stirring up the fog enough to let me see one of the ways out of it, as well. I was so impressed with all the young people – their depth, their intelligence, their questions and observations – I didn’t have that kind of depth and intelligence at their age – in fact I’m still struggling to catch up to where these young people were a long time ago. And I was equally impressed at how you created an atmosphere of trust, a safe place, so to speak, where everyone sensed that they were not only invited to share, but that they would be heard and their thoughts held gently.
I gave Mark his book – he was really pleased. I do hope that the two of you will meet sometime soon.

I got to hear Ali Abunimah speak on Friday night about the one state solution – he was excellent – he’s as good a speaker as he is a writer.

Take care. And thank you again!!!

Peace,

Keren

Remembering al-Nakba

Mark Chmiel

Recently the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC sponsored an unusual exhibit, “Darfur: Who Will Survive Today?” Photographic images of the genocide in Darfur are flashed to incredible size at night outside on the wall of the Museum.

Even given the fast and furious pace of many who live in Washington, the exhibit may have raised some awareness, touched some hearts, and spurred willingness to get involved. A friend of mine who works on Darfur recently told me that “there are no easy answers” to the crisis there. She sees grave problems with advocacy of military intervention without resolute attention to a meaningful peace process.

It seems to me that Darfur represents, for the U.S. government at least, a “benign” genocide, to adapt an idea from Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky’s books on contemporary bloodbaths, The Political Economy of Human Rights. Darfur doesn’t really affect primary elite U.S. interests and, thus, there appears to be no “Operation Darfur Freedom” in the works, reminiscent of President Bush’s drive to invade and “liberate” Iraq. Despite some occasional rhetoric from the president, the people are Darfur appear to be expendable.

Perhaps such practical indifference on the part of the U.S. government influenced the Holocaust Museum to offer the photo exhibit. Back in 1978, it was President Jimmy Carter who started a President’s Commission on Remembering the Holocaust that would eventually give birth to Holocaust museum. In 1979, Carter addressed why such a project was necessary for us as Americans: “because we are humane people, concerned with the human rights of all peoples, we feel compelled to study the systematic destruction of the Jews so that we may seek to learn how to prevent such enormities from occurring in the future.” So, it is understandable that the Holocaust Museum would have a mandate to be concerned with calling attention to contemporary genocides and ethnic cleansings.

Today is a good time to think about an ethnic cleansing that remains too little known in the United States. For November 29 is the anniversary of the 1947 UN partition plan of Palestine, after which began what Palestinians have called al-Nakba, the catastrophe. In a new book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, describes the process under the Zionists and Israeli Jews by which Palestinian villages were occupied and then destroyed, and its people expelled. Of particular interest to Pappe is David Ben-Gurion’s Plan D, which in March 1948, gave the unequivocal green light for this cleansing (Pappe points out several Hebrew words used in various communications of the time that spoke clearly of “cleaning”). Looting, murder, and rape also accompanied these operations. Pappe writes of early spring 1948: “Between 30 March and 15 May, 200 villages were occupied and their inhabitants expelled. This is a fact that must be repeated, as it undermines the Israeli myth that the ‘Arabs’ ran away once the ‘Arab invasion’ began. Almost half of the Arab villages had already been attacked by the time the Arab governments eventually, and, as we know, reluctantly decided to send in their troops. Another ninety villages would be wiped out between 15 May and 11 June 1948, when the first of two truces finally came into effect.”

Edward Said once recalled, “I’ve frequently said [to Israelis], ‘Look what happened to you: You as Jews are the victims of all time, really. The history of anti-Semitism is a millennial fact. And we are your victims now. How can you, having suffered victimization, in what seems to be with heedless consciences, inflict similar punishments on another people? People, who, in the great scale of things, have done you very little harm—except that they were there?’”

Given the political economy of memory of the Holocaust Museum, one ought neither to expect that the Museum will host an exhibit on al-Nakba nor think that the Museum will invite Jimmy Carter to discuss his new book in which he speaks of Israeli apartheid in the occupied territories. Photos of the suffering in Darfur are acceptable; photos of Palestinians who have suffered ethnic cleansing and apartheid will be unacceptable and arouse outrage. Books speaking of the need for Israel’s security are praised; books addressing Palestinian insecurity at the hands of Israelis are de facto anti-Semitic.

However, other institutions, civic groups, churches, and schools ought to sponsor such al-Nakba photo exhibits and invitations to Carter to speak a truth that many would just as soon forget or deny.

The Holocaust Museum and its leaders like Elie Wiesel have been tireless in urging remembrance of the Holocaust and working against Holocaust denial.

We ought also to be tireless in urging remembrance of the Palestinian Nakba and in working against Nakba denial as well.

Mark Chmiel teaches at Saint Louis University and is author of Elie Wiesel and the Politics of Moral Leadership .

Thursday 16 November 2006
7:30 p.m.
at the home of Lola Weis
1456 Florida Avenue NW
Washington, DC 2009

Discussion on Book of Mev with FCNL lobbyists, ISM activists, and Jesuit Volunteers.

The College will hold its third Poverty Awareness Week from November 12-16. Events will include the week-long sale of Fair Trade coffee and crafts, a lecture, an evening of reflection, a poverty awareness concert, and opportunities for community service. All activities are free and open to the public.

The Fair Trade movement is committed to social justice by returning proceeds of product sales to workers who made them. Its coffee and crafts will be on sale from November 12-16 in the lobbies of Bachmann Main Building and the Abessinio Building. For specific times, see the schedule below. In addition, the main corridor of Bachmann will be outfitted with statistics and images about the plight of the world’s vulnerable throughout the week.

Mark Chmiel, Ph.D., the author of The Book of Mev, will deliver a lecture on Monday, November 13, at 7:30 p.m. in the Schmidt Multipurpose Room. The book is the story of Mev Puleo, an American photojournalist and young Catholic who actively confronted a world of injustice, poverty and violence. From witnessing homelessness in the United States to struggles for social change in Haiti, El Salvador, and Brazil, Puleo used photography and interviews to be a bridge between poverty and affluence, the First World and the Third World. Her familiarity with suffering was dramatically intensified when she was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor at the age of thirty-one and died twenty-one months later. Chmiel will also facilitate an evening of reflection on Israel/Palestine entitled “Is Peace Possible” at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, November 14, on the second floor of the Abessinio Building.

A group reading and discussion on themes of poverty and wealth from The Book of Mev, for the annual Poverty Awareness Week.