May 2016 Traditional Jewish Attitudes Toward Poles

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519 Asher Zeiger, “Don’t Violate Shabbat to save non-Jewish life, Shas Rabbi Says,” The Times of Israel, May 17, 2012.

520 “Israeli admits beating rabbi for attending Holocaust conference in Iran,” International Herald Tribune (Europe), March 14, 2007. Rabbi Friedman was kicked and punched repeatedly by Orthodox Jews, including some rabbis, before being saved by the intervention of local policemen. Piotr Kadlcik, who heads the Association of Jewish Religious Communities in Poland, justified the assault of an anti-Zionist “extremist,” gratuitously claiming that Poles would have reacted far worse in an analagous situation. See Piotr Zychowicz, “Rabin pobity w Leżajsku,” Rzeczpospolita, March 14, 2007. An American historian has recently recalled the 1848 killing—by an Orthodox Jew—of the Reform rabbi of Lwów and his infant daughter by asenic poisoning, against the backdrop of tensions boiling over between Orthodox and Reform Jews in that city. This scholar noted that the Encyclopedia Judaica “deliberately and rather shockingly obfuscates the facts.” See Michael Stanislawski, A Murder in Lemberg: Politics, Religion, and Violence in Modern Jewish History (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007).

521 Piotr Zychowicz, “Chuligani z pejsami na Ukrainie,” Rzeczpospolita, September 14, 2010; Herb Keinon, “Foreign Ministry Sorry for Uman Rosh Hashana Violence,” The Jerusakem Post, September 17, 2010.

522 Assaf Uni and Barak Ravid, “Israel Denounces Sweden’s Silence on IDF Organ Harvest Article,” Haaretz, August 23, 2009; “Israel Hits Back over Swedish Organ Harvesting Article,” CNN, August 23, 2009; “Israel Admits Removing Organs,” Toronto Star, December 21, 2009; Marcin Szymaniak, “Izrael miał tajny bank skóry,” Rzeczpospolita, December 21, 2009. This story came on the heals of the shocking news of the uncovering of a crime syndicate in New Jersey, which included several rabbis who were charged with human kidney sales and money laundering from Brooklyn to Israel. One of the rabbis tried to sell a kidney to an FBI agent for $150,000. See Reuters, “U.S. Rabbis Suspected of Brokering Sale of Human Kidneys,” Haaretz, July 23, 2009; “US Corruption Probe Nets Dozens: More than 40 people, including politicians, officials and several rabbis have been arrested in a major FBI operation in the US,” Internet: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8165607.stm (according to U.S. officials, investigations originally focused on a network that allegedly laundered tens of millions of dollars through charities controlled by rabbis in New Jersey and neighbouring New York); Shlomo Shamir, “New York Rabbi confesses to money laundering,” Haaretz, March 29, 2011; Piotr Zychowicz, “Rabin, który stał na czele mafii,” Rzeczpospolita, April 1, 2011. The story again hit the media when The New York Times reported on an international organ-trafficking network with Israeli connections (Dan Bilefsky, “Seven Charged in Kosovo Organ-Trafficking Ring,” The New York Times, November 15, 2010).

523 David Shulman, “Israel: The Stark Truth,” The New York Review of Books, March 21, 2015 (preliminary version).

524 Steven I. Weiss, “Congress to Aid Lakewood Yeshiva,” Forward, December 19, 2003; Allan Nadler, “Charedi Rabbis Rush to Disavow Anti-Gentile Book,” Forward, December 19, 2003; Steven I. Weiss, “Ultra-Orthodox Officials Go To Bat for Anti-Gentile Book,” Forward, January 16, 2004. Since Orthodox Jews dominate Lakewood’s school board, although most schoolchildren attend private religious school, the township provides free, gender-segregated busing, which helps account for about half of a $12 million budget deficit. Having taken over Lakewood and essentially turned it into a segregated community, Orthodox Jews are now aggressively pushing into neighbouring Toms River, using blockbusting tactics to get non-Jewish homeowners to sell. See Elise Young, “Orthodox Jews Set Sights on N.J. Town and Angry Residents Resist,” Bloomberg, March 14, 2016.

525 Rodney Stark, The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World’s Largest Religion (New York: HarperOne/HarperCollins, 2011), 62–63 and ff., 78. See also Robert Wilde, The Treatment of the Jews in the Greek Christian Writers of the First Three Centuries (Washington: Catholic University of America, 1949). The Jews called the Christians minim, and found them worse than the pagans, as the latter never had the truth to begin with, while the former did have it, but had abandoned it. Ibid., 144–45. In fact, Jews used terms such as m’shumadim, nosrim, and minim, as part of the Jewish curses offered in synagogues during prayer. Ibid., 119.

526 Israel Shahak, Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years (London and Boulder, Colorado: Pluto Press, 1994), 97.

527 Shahak, Jewish Religion, Jewish History, 92–93.

528 Albin (Tobiasz) Kac, Nowy Sącz: Miasto mojej młodości (Kraków: Khoker-Dapas, 1997), 59–60.

529 Grażyna Lubińska, a conversation with Roman Polański, “Getto: Łatwo wyjść, ale jak przeżyć?” Gazeta Wyborcza, March 15–16, 2003.

530 Marek Urban, Polska… Polska… (Warsaw: Żydowski Instytut Historyczny IN-B, 1998), 52.

531 James Park Sloan, Jerzy Kosinski: A Biography (New York: Dutton/Penguin, 1996), 20. The author goes on to describe how Jerzy Kosiński and his Jewish playmate Stefan Salamonowicz put the child of a Polish Catholic family into a carriage and pushed her down one of the step Sandomierz hills. The child, a mere toddler, could easily have been seriously injured, even killed. Ibid., 24. On another occasion, when Kosiński and his Jewish friend were playing “horses and coachmen” with two Polish Catholic boys, taking turns in the roles of beast and master with whip, the Jewish friend’s grandfather insisted that the Jewish boys not play the part of beasts. Ibid., 23.

532 (Rabbi) Abraham D. Feffer, My Shtetl Drobin: A Saga of a Survivor (Toronto: n.p., 1990), 13. Jewish accounts mention rabbis who were well respected by Jews and Christians alike: “As it turned out, the father had been the rebbe in the Galician shtetl where the Kapo [who was a Polish prisoner in Auschwitz] had lived. He had been greatly respected by the entire population, even by the Christians. He had been called ‘the Holy Father,’ and many Poles had gone to him when they needed advice. … The Kapo had recognized him and his son in Block 16, the death block … and brought them directly over to his Kommando. … The Kapo supplied the rebbe and his son with food so that they would not have to eat the blood sausage and the nonkosher soup from the pot.” See Konrad Charmatz, Nightmares: Memoirs of the Years of Horror under Nazi Rule in Europe, 1939–1945 (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 2003), 101–102. One can also find many favourable references to the Catholic clergy in Jewish memoirs and accounts. The Zionist daily Nasz Przegląd published many such accounts in the interwar period. See Anna Landau-Czajka, “Polacy w ocach ‘Naszego Przeglądu’,” Kwartalnik Historii Zydów, no. 4 (2011): 491–506, here at p. 498. Rev. Jan Skarbek, the pastor of the Catholic parish in Oświęcim, was friendly towards the local Jewish community and became friends with Rabbi Eliyahu Bombach, the Chief Rabbi of Oświęcim. In 1934, as a member if the city council, Rev. Skarbek received the title of Honorary Citizen of Oświęcim by a unanimous vote of both Christian and Jewish members of the council. See Oshpitzin, Internet: