May 2016 Traditional Jewish Attitudes Toward Poles

(Rev. Józef Cieślik of Rzeszów: “when I was in the fifth or sixth grade, Father … transferred me to … Saint Jadwiga’s school, where there were no Jewish children. They took care of me there, it was good there, the priest took care of me”; the parish priest of Przybyszówka near Rzeszów: “my parents had friends and acquaintances among Poles. The priest would even come to play cards with Father in the winter and really enjoyed talking to him. He was an older man.”); Testimony of Ewa S. (Stapp), September 2005, Internet: : (Rev. Konieczny of Lwów); Lindeman, Shards of Memory, 75–76 (a priest intervened when some young ruffians attacked a Jewish boy on the way to school in Radom). In Cegłów near Mińsk Mazowiecki, Aron Stein, a merchant, was friends with Julian Grobelny, the owner of a grange lying near the town, and with Rev. Franciszek Fijałkowski, the local parish priest. Aron’s daughter recalled: “It was pleasant to watch my father, wearing his gaberdine and a long bear, strolling along with the priest in a cassock at his side.” Those two friends of the family later saved Aron’s daughter’s life. See “Chaja Estera Stein (Teresa Tucholska-Körner), The First Child of Irena Sendler,” The Polish Righteous, Internet: . In Zdzięcioł, Polesia: “In our little town, I would say [there was no anti-Semitism] because we had actions [dealings] with the Polish priest. He was very, very good to us … he never let anything to with the anti-semitism or whatever.” See Interview with Sonia Heidocovsky Zissman, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, May 25, 1995, 2. Grzegorz Pustkowiak, “W służbie Boga i człowiekowi,” Myśl Polska (Warsaw), February 6, 2005, describes the caring attitude of the Franciscan Melchior Fordon of Grodno, whose funeral brought together people of all faiths, both Christians and Jews. Faye Schulman, A Partisan’s Memoir: Woman of the Holocaust (Toronto: Second Story Press, 1995), 24, describes a celebration in Łunin that brought the residents of that small town in Polesia together: “I remember the whole town, Christians and Jews alike, celebrating the priest’s fiftieth anniversary of service to the church in our town. The Jewish community honoured him by presenting him with a book bound in gold covers.” Szymon Leibowicz of Radomyśl Wielki near Tarnów, recalls Rev. Jan Curyłło, the local pastor, as a friend of his father’s: “My father used to make contributions to held expand the church. In return, the priest promoted my father’s company among the inhabitants of the town.” See Jan Ziobroń, Dzieje Gminy Żydowskiej w Radomyślu Wielkim (Radomyśl Wielki: n.p., 2009), 177. Rosa Lehmann, Symbiosis and Ambivalence: Poles and Jews in a Small Galician Town (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2001), 98, mentions Rev. Walerian Rąpała of Jaśliska and Rev. Paweł Smoczeński of Królik Polski, two villages near Krosno, and describes the pastoral visit of the bishop of Przemyśl, which united both Poles and Jews in welcoming him to Jaśliska and receiving his blessing. A Jewish resident spoke of the event as a special occasion during which the Jewish and Polish religious elite met in public, and which was remembered by the Jewish community long after the event had taken place. Ibid., 103, 112. Ryszard Majus recalls the welcome given when a tzadik or bishop visited his small town of Wielkie Oczy: The tzadik was greeted by the mayor and local Catholic pastor together with well-to-do farmers. Similarly, the Jews would carry Torah scrolls to the edge of the town where the bishop would descend from his litter and kiss it. See the account of Ryszard Majus in Krzysztof Dawid Majus, Wielkie Oczy (Tel Aviv: n.p., 2002); this account is also posted online at . Michał Rudawski’s memoir Mój obcy kraj? (Warsaw: TU, 1996), at p. 43, contains a moving tribute to the friendly attitude of Bishop Henryk Przeździecki of Siedlce toward the Jewish community of Łysobyki. During his pastoral visit to that village, the bishop was greeted ceremoniously by a Jewish delegation, extended his blessing to the Jewish community, and quoted the Torah in Hebrew in his address to the gathering. When the arcbishop of Warsaw, Cardinal Aleksander Kakowski, visited Góra Kalwaria in the early 1930s, “everyone welcomed him, including the Jews with the rabbi. But the tzaddik did not come to greet the cardinal, and received him in his house instead. They exchanged gifts.” See the testimony of Henryk Prajs, January 2005, Internet: . The Jewish Chrocicle of August 26, 1935 reported a warm speech by the Bishop of Łuck, Adolf Szelążek, who, while on a pastoral visit to the village of Klewań, in response to a welcoming speech by a rabbi, said: “We are all creatures of the same God.” His speech was reported as having left a deep impression on the Jewish community. See Leo Cooper, In the Shadow of the Polish Eagle: The Poles, the Holocaust and Beyond (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave, 2000), 63. Bishop Teodor Kubina, who struck up a friendship with Rabbi Nachum Asch (Asz), was known for his protective attitude toward Jews. When Bishop Kubina paid a pastoral visit to Działoszyce he was warmly greeted by a delegation from the Jewish community headed by the local rabbi, who greeted him in Hebrew. Bishop Kubina greeted the rabbi in Polish, quoting excerpts from the Old Testament in Hebrew. See Aleksandra Klich, “Teodor Kubina: Czerwony biskup od Żydów,” Gazeta Wyborcza, March 1, 2008. Bishop Marian Leon Fulman of Lublin was met with a simsilar reception in Piaski, where the Jewish community erected an arch to welcome him. See Zbigniew Zaporowski, “Miaszteczko i sztetl: Polacy i Żydzi w województwie lubelskim w przededniu II wojny światowej,” in Sitarek, Trębacz, and Wiatr, Zagłada Żydów na polskiej prowincji, 24. Bishop Fulman engaged Alexander Bronowski, a Jewish lawyer, to represent the Lublin diocese in legal matters despite the vociferous protests of the nationalist press. In fact, the bishop dispatched a priest “to apologize in the name of Bishop Fulman for the unpleasantness I had been caused. He assured me that I would be asked to continue to litigate on behalf of the see [diocese]. This I did until the outbreak of the war in 1939.” See Alexander Bronowski, They Were Few (New York: Peter Lang, 1991), 3. Rev. Michał Piaszczyński, the vice rector of the Higher Seminary in Łomża, was known before the war for his openness toward the Jews and even invited rabbis to the seminary. See “Biogramy 108 męczenników,” Głos Polski (Toronto), May 18–24, 1999. On the attitude of the Roman Catholic Church towards the Jews during the interwar period, a historian writes: “Without ignoring the activities of individual priests, linked for the most part with the Nationalist camp, directed against Jews (though one should add that, generally speaking, they were the result of associating Jews with communism), we should bear in mind the overall correctness of attitudes and relations where the official Church was concerned. We do not then find aggressive, anti-Jewish comments in the pastoral letters of individual bishops, and, on the evidence of situation reports from local churches, as well as those appearing in the Catholic press, we come across the frequent participation by Jewish communities, often headed by the rabbi, in welcoming a visiting bishop. The Church’s attitude towards the Jewish community is best characterized by a statement of Bishop [Henryk] Przeździecki [of Siedlce], set out in one of his pastoral letters: ‘If we are real followers of Christ, then we should cherish the Jews.’” See Jacek M. Majchrowski, “Some Observations on the Situation of the Jewish Minority in Poland during the years 1918–1939,” in Polin: A Journal of Polish-Jewish Studies, vol. 3 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell for the Institute for Jewish-Polish Studies, 1988), 306. In that same pastoral letter issued in September 1938, Bishop Przeździecki beseeched the faithful to “love [their] fellow citizens … even if they are of a different nationality, not to harm them … To love one’s nation does not mean to bear hatred for other nations.” He admonished them that their “greatest enemies are your fellow countrymen who instil in you hatred toward other nations.” About the Jews he wrote: “And are they [i.e., the Jews] not our neighbours? They are! If we are true followers of Christ, then we should love the Jews! And that is why when one of them is living in poverty we should help that person.” See Henryk Przeździecki, Listy pasterskie i przemówienia, 1928–1938, vol. 2 (Siedlce: Kuria Diecezjalna Siedlecka czyli Podlaska, 1938), 373–74. The author is unaware of similar pronouncements and exhortations issued by rabbis in the interwar period. Another characteristic example of the attitude of priests is the advice that a Polish woman received from a priest in Starogard when she expressed her qualms about working as a nanny for a Jewish family in Warsaw: “There are good Christians and bad Christians and good Jews and bad Jews. The most important thing is that they’re good people, who will love you and whom you will love. I’ve got a feeling you’ll be happy there.” See Ram Oren, Gertruda’s Oath: A Child, a Promise, and a Heroic Escape During World War II (New York: Doubleday, 2009), 42. In Częstochowa, as elsewhere, nuns frequented Jewish dentists and the Pauline monastery on Jasna Góra used the services of a Jewish printing press. Mizgalski and Sielski, The Jews of Częstochowa, 371. In Wizna, Izrael Lewin, a local Jewish tailor sewed cassocks for priests as well as uniforms for Polish soldiers. See “The Dobkowski Family,” The Polish Righteous, Internet: