August 2017 Traditional Jewish Attitudes Toward Poles

Intellectually, of course, I had realized before that clerical, anti-Semitic, and semifascist Poles could never see Hitler’s war in the same light as a Western liberal or a communist would see it. [In this context it is worth recalling that Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were staunch allies in 1939–41. M.P.]…

They [the Poles] hated the Germans for their brutalities, of course, but they hated the like people who, having been used to practicing brutalities against others, never dreamed that they might become the victims of similar treatment themselves.

They admire Hitler. He would lose the war, of course, because he did not have the Poles on his side, but he was an elemental force destined to clear Poland of the Jews and Europe of the rotten democracies [i.e., the very ones the Poles had supplied the Enigma machines and codes to in the summer of 1939] and the Communists, both under Jewish influence. …

I was intent on severing all bonds with the country of my birth; I could not admit for one moment the possibility of fighting in the war alongside Poles, who logically should have been in the same camp as the Nazis.⁴⁷⁴
Service in the military, which was mandatory, cannot—and should not—be equated with identification with the Polish nation.⁴⁷⁵ The contemptuous attitude of many Jews toward Polish statehood was even manifested on the eve of the German invasion in September 1939, and after the defeat of the Polish army by the Germans. A Jew from Lwów recalled the defeatist, mocking atmosphere in his affluent home (his father was one of the country’s major manufacturers of kilims):
That summer everyone was talking politics, but it was beyond me to comprehend the nature of the news. The names of our own Polish leaders were somewhat familiar … I had seen the streets full of patriotic slogans. One of them, “Strong, United, and Ready,” we joked about at home: “Strong to retreat, united to cheat, and ready to give up.”⁴⁷⁶
Yosel Epelbaum (Joseph Pell), a native of Biała Podlaska, recalled the alienation of the Jewish community and the mood in his family on the eve of the war:
Overriding everything was the fact that we never actually felt Polish … It was as if we were part of another nation—the Jewish people—that fate had set down in this godforsaken place. Of course we interacted with Poles. We needed them and they needed us for business. But we never truly mixed, certainly not socially. As a youth in Biała Podlaska, I would never think of entering a church or even the home of a Catholic. …

Although my two older brothers were of draft age, for some reason they were never inducted. I don’t know if they would have served. By this time no one in my family felt any loyalty to Poland or placed any trust in the judgment of its leaders.⁴⁷⁷

The following is the reaction of a Jew who served in the September campaign and returned to his hometown in Volhynia:
He spoke scornfully of the Polish cavalry on horseback, fighting the might of the German tanks … There was no sympathy for the Poles who were massacred, but grave concern for the millions of Jews who fell into German hands.⁴⁷⁸
Other extreme manifestations of anti-Christian bigotry were recorded by Dr. Abraham Sterzer from Eastern Galicia: “I received the traditional Jewish education in a ‘heder’ (religious school). Our rabbi insisted that we Jewish children spit on the ground and utter curses while passing near a cross, or whenever we encountered a Christian priest or religious procession. Our shopkeepers used to say that ‘it is a Mitzveh (blessed deed) to cheat a Goy (gentile).’”⁴⁷⁹ A Jew from Chmielnik conceded that, from a purely practical point of view, it was much more likely for Jews to cheat Poles than vice versa:
Well, it was mostly Jews who cheated Poles, because Jews were typical traders and when they dealt with peasants they were not always honest. It was Jews who were merchants, not Poles. A Jew would never do shopping in a Polish shop, mostly because they were not allowed to buy food in other than Jewish shops. So some Jews cheated.⁴⁸⁰
As mentioned, Christian symbols were detested and to be derided, even publicly. The sight of Jews spitting when passing a roadside cross or deliberately avoiding a church was common in prewar Poland. A Jew recalled the stern admonition he received as a boy in Częstochowa: “My grandfather admonished me to stay away from the church, promising harsh heavenly punishment in the event I didn’t heed his warning.”⁴⁸¹ Leopold Infeld, born in Kraków, recollected that “He was warned that he would go blind if he gazed at Christian holy images.”⁴⁸² Christian processions evoked fright among Jewish children: “we ran away as though from a fire.”⁴⁸³ A young Jewish boy growing up in Busk recalled: “We Jewish children also had a superstition that, if a priest or nun passed by while our mouths were open, our teeth would fall out.”⁴⁸⁴

  The Brzozów Memorial Book records the following testimony:

The oldsters of the former generation had a long account with the Church and always tried to bypass it when in the neighbourhood, turning their heads away so as not to see it. … so, too, in the matter of the Church, we saw just how right they had been. The very name of the Church aroused not only the fears buried in the sub-conscious and associations … it also stood for all the evils of the present … It was not love of man that emanated from it but hatred. Ignorant priests, hoodlums in vestments, used its ‘sacred pulpits’ to preach sermons that incited brutish masses. Possessed by a fathomless hatred of the Jews they could not rest until their dream of a Juden-rein Poland was so monstrously realized before their very eyes. … The Church—that was the source of this evil, the fountain-head that nourished it all.
However, in that same volume we learn that, when there were plans to invite “the notorious anti-Semite and German collaborator, Father Chechak [Trzeciak], whose name alone struck fear into the hearts of the Jews, to come and lecture in the town,” a Jewish delegation approached Rev. Bielawski, the local pastor, to intervene. “Though this priest was no great lover of Israel, belonging to the anti-semitic [nationalist] party, he was basically a decent man and promised the emissaries that he would not let Chechak appear. Bielawsky kept his word and when the hooligans brought their ‘star’, he refused to let them use the ‘Sokol’ hall—the only hall in the town.”⁴⁸⁵

A Jew from Volhynia recalled, “Although the Jews of Rokitno had dealings with non-Jews, they did not follow their customs. There was a division between them when it came to matters of faith and opinion. The locals fed calves for alien work and bowed to emptiness while we [Jews] thanked and blessed our G-d for his creation.”⁴⁸⁶ In a similar vein, a Jew from Chełm recalled what it was like growing up among Christians and what he was taught about them in his yeshiva:

Our relations with the non-Jewish population were never very good … There were the Polish-speaking Gentiles who were Roman Catholics, some more pious than others. We were most afraid of them. We considered them idol worshipers. My parents were proud to point out to me that they taught their children to consider the images on their walls as gods. There was not a home without at least three images: one of Jesus, with His heart showing; one of the matka boska, the “mother of God”; and one of Joseph, the husband of Mary. The priest would come to the village at times and bring the “transubstantiated” wafer, which they believed became the flesh and blood of the Messiah. But at that time the priest’s coming only hardened our hearts. We knew we worshiped the only true God, and not priests and images. …

In these early years I had few contacts of any sort with Christianity. At about this time I learned the stories of Jesus from the Jewish point of view. They are given in the infamous book of legends composed in the Middle Ages and entitled Toledot Yeshu (The History of Jesus). Some of the material is already embodied in the Talmud: that Jesus was born an illegitimate child and He forced Mary His mother to admit it; how He learned sorcery in Egypt; how He made Himself fly up into the sky by sewing the ineffable name of Jehovah into the skin of his leg, but a famous rabbi did the same and brought Jesus down! …⁴⁸⁷

Thus in the yeshiva, the Talmud reigned supreme. The Old Testament Bible could be used only for reference and there were no secular studies whatsoever.

I had no contacts with Christianity at all. On the way to school we passed a Roman Catholic church and a Russian Orthodox church, and we spat, pronouncing the words found in Deuteronomy 7:26, “… thou shalt utterly detest it, and thou shalt utterly abhor it; for it is a cursed thing.” I said it halfheartedly because of my previous favorable contact with Christianity and because some questions were beginning to creep into my mind. Why should we say such horrible words? The people looked pious. They came from surrounding villages to worship, and they never bothered us.

As I continued studying the Talmud, I came to a passage that told of a cruel punishment for that Sinner of Israel, meaning Jesus. For one sin of deriding the rabbis, He was punished forever and ever with cruelty as to be “judged in boiling excrement.” I did not like this story at all. Did it really mean what it said? Could I possibly be in full agreement with this? Did not I also have doubts about the rabbis’ claims that their teachings were given to Moses on Mount Sinai? What then would my punishment be? It was many years before I dared to proclaim these doubts openly.⁴⁸⁸
As noted earlier, the hateful teachings of the Talmud about Christ were reinforced through other strongly held prejudices and beliefs. Christians had always been regarded as “idol worshipers.” As far back as 1582, Rabbi Solomon ben Judah Leybush bemoaned that Jews in Chełm had to live among “non-Jews, our wicked neighbors and our enemies,” while “in other holy communities ‘it [Israel] is a nation that dwells alone’ (Num. 23.9) and no foreigner mixes among them 9cf. Job 15.19)”⁴⁸⁹ The view held by many Catholics everywhere that Jews were Christ-killers was reciprocated by Jews: “As a matter of fact, there are probably a few not-well-educated Jews even today who believe that Jesus deserved to be crucified because he falsely claimed to be the Messiah.”⁴⁹⁰ Not surprisingly, the Polish name for Christmas, Boże Narodzenie, literally Divine Birth, was transformed into beyz geboyrenish, which meant wicked birthing, and study of the Torah was prohibited that on Christmas Eve.⁴⁹¹

Jews also displayed a myriad of superstitions and peculiarities in their day-to-day lives that undoubtedly struck their Christian neighbours as strange and bewildering. As Jewish scholar Raphael Mahler points out,

In contrast to the religious and rationalistic Christian sects which opposed superstitions as adamantly as they did secular science, the Hasidic movement was permeated by superstitions of all kinds. The Hasidim believed as much in magical remedies, amulets, exorcisms, demonic possession (dybbuks), ghosts, devils, and teasing, mischievous genies as they did in the almost unlimited heavenly power of the zaddik.⁴⁹²
A Jew from Działoszyce described some of these superstitions as follows:
Dzialoszyce [Działoszyce] was a shtetl and, as such, its inhabitants often had a folk view of the universe. Many people wore red bintl (ribbons or strings) to ward off the evil eye. My own mother was superstitious. I remember an occasion when Chawzie Lazniaz visited our store. … When Chawzie left, my mother started feeling nauseous and opined, “It could only be the evil eye.”

The folk culture of the shtetl sometimes extended to medicine as well. Leibish Seniawski, nicknamed the felsher (folk healer), worked as a family practitioner. … Another folk remedy was a little harder for us children to take. If any of us had croup or got a really bad cough, we were taken to Uncle Aron Yasny’s stable. Urine was collected from his mare and my parents made us drink it. This was supposed to cure us. …

The logic of the shtetl sometimes approached the logic of Chelm, a topsy-turvy shtetl where twisted reasoning was a purported commonplace and, as such, the subject of humorous folktales. I recall one incident involving the same Lazniaz family. … Itchele was pleased to find a pair of rubber galoshes that fit his diminutive foot. On the way out of the store after having made the purchase, [his wife] Chawzie noticed in the window display a large pair of size 11 galoshes marked for sale at two zloty [złoty]. Chawzie commented, “Look, Itchele, the price for the larger galoshes is the same as for the ones you bought. For the same money, take the larger ones!” … Itchele, as usual, was defenseless in the face of his wife’s overbearing “logic.”

… When I was about six years old, Chane Delesete died. … I followed the funeral procession on its way to the cemetery. On the corner of Dziekanowice Street, between the marketplace and the cemetery, a woman came out of her house, wailing, whenever a funeral passed by. People carrying and following Chane’s coffin cried too, but as they neared the cemetery, this woman—who was a professional crier—started an earnest rendition of her act. She was given a few groszy as she kept on crying, bringing the others to tears. She repeatedly proclaimed, “Such a nice person, and to die so young.” Afterward, I overheard her asking, “Who died? What did he die of?”⁴⁹³

A memoir from Łuków provides additional examples:
During the week between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, live chickens, carp, pike, and whitefish would appear in the big yard in front of the building—the chickens in their cages and the fish in their tubs. …

About two days before the most serious day of the year, Tateh [i.e., dad] would call us downstairs. With a prayer book in his hand, he would take a chicken or a fish and make us repeat his words as he swung them over our heads three times. “This is my chicken (or fish), this is my kaporah, my scapegoat; this chicken (or fish) will go to its death instead of me, and I will live a long life.” Today, many people just give charity instead of swinging the kaporah around their heads, but the truth is, it makes a deep impression on a child when they learn that they could have died, instead of the chicken or fish, for “their sins.” …

During the Days of Awe, things were very quiet and thoughtful. We didn’t go to Tashlich, the tossing of the sins upon the waters, but we always made sure we were in shul in time for the blowing of the shofar, the ram’s horn.

On Erev Yom Kippur (eve of Yom Kippur) … Before we left the house, dressed in our finest outfits, all brand new, except for our shoes—we had to wear slippers because you aren’t permitted to wear leather shoes on the holiest day of the year …

Yon Kippur was also, except for Simchat Torah, the only Jewish holiday where women would come to shul at night. …

The next day was spent fasting, and the women’s section of the shul would smell like bad breath and the spirits of ammonia the women had prepared in case they swooned from hunger. When the service finished at night, the men would blow the shofar and then go out into the street and bless the moon, a concluding part of the services.⁴⁹⁴

Jewish attitudes and superstitions reflected ancient religious traditions, and they were tenacious. They could be as objectionable for Christians as any Christian-held beliefs or biases were for Jews.⁴⁹⁵ Jews sometimes adopted fantastic beliefs about the malevolence of Poles—such as the totally unfounded notion, which surfaced in the 19^th century, that the Poles were out to exterminate the Jews of Warsaw, and would hand out poisoned candy to Jewish children.⁴⁹⁶ The remnants of this attitude are still evident in Israel today, where both Christian churches and mosques are frequently vandalized. In the late summer of 1989, vandals damaged the remains of a 13^th century Carmelite convent in northern Israel following threats from Jewish religious extemists directed at nuns carrying out an archaeological dig.⁴⁹⁷ During Holy Week of 1990, a large contingent of Jewish settlers, bankrolled by the Israeli government and egged on by rabbis and prominent Jewish leaders, illegally occupied St. John Hostel in the Christian Quarter of Old Jerusalem. When the Greek Orthodox Patriarch Dioderos I went to the site to protest, he was teargassed and mistreated by Israeli soldiers. “I went to protest peacefully,” the shaken patriarch said. “I was hit by a teargas can, knocked to the ground, my religious medallion was smashed and my robes were torn. This, in the holiest week of the year.”⁴⁹⁸ Such sentiments resurfaced again during Pope John Paul II’s visit to Israel in the year 2000, when anti-Christian graffiti were widespread and even a cursing ceremony, known as the pulsa de nura curse, was performed.⁴⁹⁹

Christian sites are frequently desecrated in Israel. These incidents receive little or not attention in the mainstream North American media. In 2009, a Franciscan church near the Cenacle on Mount Zion, regarded by tradition as the site of Christ’s Last Supper, was defaced with a spray-painted Star of David and slogans such as “Christians Out!” and “We Killed Jesus!” According to reports, the vandals also urinated on the door and left a trail of urine leading to the church.⁵⁰⁰ The year 2012 saw no less than seven attacks on Christian sites in Israel. In February, vandals hit the Narkis Street Baptist Church and the Valley of the Cross Monastery, both in Jerusalem; the Monastery of Notre-Dame de Sept Douleurs in Latrun, 25 kilometres west of Jerusalem, fell prey in September; next targeted was the Convent of St. Joseph on Mount Zion in early October. And finally the year 2012 went out with a bang, with three attacks in December—the Church of Our Lady in Kafr Bir’im in the early part of the month, the Valley of the Cross Monastery on December 12 (the monastery’s second desecration of the year), followed by the Church of Our Lady again on December 27.

In February 2012, anti-Christian graffiti was found sprayed on the walls of a Greek Orthodox monastery in Jerusalem’s Valley of the Cross, and a Baptist Church in central Jerusalem. In both incidents, the graffiti included phrases such as “Jesus is dead,” “Death to Christians,” “Mary is a prostitute,” and “price tag.”⁵⁰¹ The tires of churchgoers’ vehicles were slashed. In the early morning hours of September 4, 2012, the door of the Cistercian (Trappist) monastery in Latroun, near Jerusalem, was burned and anti-Christian graffiti was sprayed on the walls. Graffiti sprayed on the monastery walls included the words “Migron” and “Jesus is a monkey.” The arson and graffiti are suspected to be a “price tag” attack, following the recent evacuation of Migron, a settlement outpost in the West Bank. In a statement released later in the day and signed, among others, by the Latin Patriarch for Jerusalem Fouad Twal and Gerogio Lingua, Apostolic Nuncio for Jordan, and former Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah, the Catholic Church severely condemned the attack, saying it was the results of an Israeli tendency to scapegoat Christians. “The Christian community awoke this morning … to discover with horror that once again it is the target of forces of hatred within Israeli society,” the missive said, adding “what happened in Latrun is only another in a long series of attacks against Christians and their places of worship.” Further on, the statement asked: “What is going on in Israeli society today that permits Christians to be scapegoat and targeted by these acts of violence?,” questioning why the unknown assialtants chose to “vent” their anger over the dismantling of West Bank outposts “against Christians and Christian places of worship?” “What kind of ‘teaching of contempt’ for Christians is being communicated in their schools and in their homes? And why are the culprits not found and brought to justice?” the statement asked, urging Israeli “authorities to act to put an end to this senseless violence and to ensure a ‘teaching of respect’ in schools for all those who call this land home.”⁵⁰²

In December 2012, vandals spray-painted “Jesus is a monkey” on the wall of the 19th-century Latrun Monastery west of Jerusalem and torched the structure’s front door. The year 2013 has seen a number of additional desecrations of Christian sites. On May 31, 2013, the words “Christians are apes” were written in Hebrew on the wall of the Dormition Abbey on Mount Zion in Jerusalem and church property was destroyed. “Christians are apes” and “Christians are slaves” was spray-painted on two cars parked outside the abbey. On August 20, 2013, a Molotov cocktail was thrown at the Beit Jimal monastery near the city of Beit Shemesh, west of Jerusalem. The graffiti sprayed in Hebrew on the monastery walls included the words “Revenge” and “Goyim perish.”⁵⁰³ On April 1, 2014, vandals scrawled hate graffiti on a Catholic monastery near Beit Shemesh in central Israel and slashed the tires of nearby cars weeks before Pope Francis visits the Holy land. Slogans against Mideast peace talks with the Palestinians as well as graffiti disparaging Jesus and Mary were found on the outer walls of the Deir Rafat monastery close to Jerusalem.⁵⁰⁴ Another spate of hate crimes occurred in early May 2014. Anti-Christian graffiti was found on a wall adjacent to a Romanian Orthodox church on Hahoma Hashlishit Street in Jerusalem. The graffiti read “Price tag, King David is for the Jews, Jesus is garbage.” (That church building had been attacked in October 2012 in a similar fashion.) In addition, “Death to Arabs” graffiti was spotted on the door of a home and on an electrical box in the Old City of Jerusalem. In another hate crime attack, “Death to Arabs and Christians and all those who hate Israel” was daubed in Hebrew on an outer column of the Office of the Assembly of Bishops at the Notre Dame Centre in East Jerusalem.⁵⁰⁵

The assaults on Christian churches came to the attention of world media when, on June 17, 2015, arsonists targeted the Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes at Tabgha (Tiberias), on the Sea of Galilee, causing serious damage to the church structure, roof, reception room, and the nuns’ office. As has become customary, anti-Christian graffiti, in Hebrew, was spray painted on a wall—a passage from a Jewish prayer, which religious Jews recite three times daily, that “False idols be smashed.” The same church had been attacked in April 2014 by Jewish youth who pelted worshippers with stones, destroyed a cross and threw benches into the lake. Since the beginning of 2015, a Greek Orthodox monastery in East Jerusalem and a church in the village of Jab’a were torched. According to a February 2015 report, the management of the Cooperative Village, Ahihud, established on the ruins of the displaced Palestinian village of al-Barweh in Acre, desecrated the Islamic and Christian cemetery of the village. The cemetery’s ground was covered with soil in a preparatory step to turn it into a cattle barn on the remains of dead Muslims and Christians. It turns out that since 2011, 17 Christian and Muslim places of worship have been torched in Israel with nobody indicted in any of the cases. Yeshiva students are suspected of being behind many of the attacks. It would be unthinkable that in a Western country attacks on 17 synagogues would occur in such a short time and, if they did, that the culprits would not have been found. The Israeli authorities have singularly failed to deal with this concerted aggression against holy Christian sites over the last few years.⁵⁰⁶ A June 21, 2015 editorial in Haaretz (“Till When Will Israel Let Its Churches and Mosques Be Burnt?”) made this very point clear, without mincing words: