May 2016 Traditional Jewish Attitudes Toward Poles
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… These poems, still recited today, served for centuries as “backstage discourse,” allowing the Jews who recited them to conflate in their minds the dramatic downfall of Haman, Amalek, and Christianity—without arousing the ire of their oppressors.208 In Poland, these customs lingered into the 20th century. Shtetls were known to stage mock represenatations of the passion of Christ.209 Priests were burned in effigy. A Christian was customarily hired for the role of Haman, and was spat on and beaten by Jewish revellers.210 At a costume ball in Zamość, three young men came dressed respectively as a jester, the devil and a Cardinal. To the amusement of the guests, the “jester” and “devil” took turns spitting at a crucifix held by the Cardinal.211 As Elliott Horowtiz demonstrates, there is a long history of violence among Jews against the cross, which for centuries was commonly referred to as an “abomination.”212 Even in contemporary Israel, there are frequent attacks upon Christian religious processions and clergymen, especially in Jerusalem.213 (It is a little known fact that the effigy of a pope is still burned in England, where as many as 50,000 Protestants gather on Bonfire Night in Lewes to observe the festivities.214) On the other hand, Jewish manufacturers did a booming business in Poland producing Christian religious artifacts and Jewish merchants were active in their sale, especially in Częstochowa, the home of the famous Black Madonna and Jasna Góra monastery.215 In Ejszyszki, “Jews never set foot in the Yourzdiki [Juryzdyka] church, even out of curiosity, because ‘they said if you went in a church you were forty days in herem [ban or excommunication].’”216 Yet Jews recalled that Christians came into the main shul [synagogue] on Kol Nidre evening at the start of Yom Kippur to marvel at the musical skill of the chazzan [cantor] and his choir. “They were giving respect for this night,” one resident said.217 Decades later, a Jewish woman insisted that her family’s Polish maid poisoned and killed her baby sister, “although common sense simply does not corroborate the details of her story.” When asked for a possible motive for such an act, the woman replied, “Nu? A shikse!”218 Abraham Lipkunsky, who grew up in the village of Dowgieliszki, a small settlement near Raduń inhabited for the most part by Jewish farmers, recalled a “deep-rooted custom” from his childhood: At every crossroad and before every village there were crosses protected by little sloping roofs, with icons of Jesus or the Madonna hanging beneath them. For some reason, we children were under the impression that Jews were forbidden even to glance at a cross, but our childish curiosity got the better of us and I would quickly and guiltily snatch a glance at the cross while repeating the short prayer ‘thou shalt utterly detest it, and thou shalt utterly abhor it, for it is a cursed thing’ (Deuteronomy 7: 26), spitting in the direction of the alleged cursed thing, but seeing to it that no one should see me doing so. Heaven forbid! Like the spitting after the saying of the prayer: ‘It is our duty to praise the Lord, since he hath not made us like the nations of different countries, nor placed us like the families of the earth.’219 The following account is that of Haya Kreslansky from Dereczyn, in Polesia: Saturday afternoons, we would take a walk in the fields, passing by the Catholic Church, its crucifix and image of the Christ, from which we would avert our eyes, and asking one another: “Have we passed by yet?!” And while a Jewish child was forbidden to gaze at the image of Jesus, one was tempted to steal a glance in passing …220 When Krystyna Budnicka (then Hena Kuczer), who was born in Warsaw in 1932, was sent to the Christian caretaker of the tenement house where she lived to pick up a key, she was warned by her mother not to look around because a cross might be hanging on the walls and it was forbidden to look at it. “I remember the feeling of guilt, of sin: I wanted to see what it was that I wasn’t allowed to look at.”221 Rivka Barlev from the small town of Kosów Lacki, said to have been eighty-five percent Jewish, regarded the very existence of a Catholic church in her town as an intolerable abomination: A Gothic church stood at the end of the street. It looked like a stranger there and was for us children a scary place to run around. … The church, the statue, the bell-ringing every Sunday morning, was a reminder that no matter how many Jews lived in this town, and no matter how many centuries they had lived here, Kosow was Polish and Catholic and the Jews were outsiders. For the young people the church was the turning point when taking a walk on the main street.”222 The Jewish merchants in that town were united in their contempt for Polish peasants, whom they ridiculed among themselves as unclean animals: Aria Dovid, Velvel Holder’s son, used to cry the news of the great event that was soon to occur: Jozef’s [Józef’s] Fair. He would do this on a Friday market-day, standing on the bed of a peasant’s wagon, calling out in a healthy bass voice: “Chodźcie panowie jarmark w Kosowie!”—”Come, ladies and gentlemen, to the fair in Kosow!” And the grain merchants, who could tell just by touching the thick homespun burlap sack what sort of kernels it contained, would mumble under their breath: “koniami, kurami, jajami, świniami”—“horses, chickens, eggs, pigs”—by that last word meaning the P… [Polacks] themselves.223 Dr. Itzchak Schwartzbart, a resident of Chrzanów, recalled: “Christians—tsabanes [i.e., fools] as they were called—lived on that street. For us children, that fact alone was a source of terror.”224 Miles (Shmoil) Lerman stated that, when he was growing up in Tomaszów Lubelski, “We always felt that we are Jewish. … first of all, we kind of felt that we are intellectually superior.”225 Samuel Oliner, a Jewish scholar, recalled his childhood days in a village in southern Poland: Since I was illiterate at seven, my education was not off to a very good start. ‘Shmulek will grow up to be a stupid goy!’ lamented my grandmother. … My father put down his pencil and glanced at me. ‘… The Poles are not the chosen people of God.’ … One day I rode with Mendel to get farm supplies in Dukla. On the way home he whipped up the horse as we passed the gypsy camp. The frown on his face showed exactly how he felt … The presence of a gentile defiled the home of a Jew, and no good was certain to come of it. … some Jews regarded the Poles with contempt and caution, but we had still been on good terms.”226 As we can see from the above account, Gypsies too were not immune from negative stereotypical attitudes on the part of Jews. Jews folk tales taught that Gypsies kidnap Jewish children.227 A Jew from a Carpathain village acknowledges: “We even had a few Gypsies who moved in and out of our area but never actually settled down. As children we heard stories that the Gypsies kidnapped children, so were a little afraid of them.”228 Leon Weliczker Wells recalls the stories he heard growing up in a Hasidic environment in the Lwów area: “We were also told about the gypsies who steal children and raise them as their slaves. And the fact that gypsies used to set up their tents each summer on the outskirts of our town lent credibility to these tales.”229 Roman Frister from Bielsko recalled: Generally, Gypsies were treated with suspicion and disdain. My parents would never have permitted me to talk to them under ordinary circumstances. Bielsko’s mothers warned their children that a Gypsy woman could cast a spell on their souls; its fathers watched their wallets when Gypsies were nearby, it being common knowledge that they were born pickpockets. … Decent folk kept away from them.”230 Run-ins with Gypsies were not unheard of, as the following account from Skoczów near Cieszyn shows. A band of gypsies invaded the inn and refused to leave for several days. Papa’s regular business dropped off because customers refused to mingle with such rough company. The gypsies ignored Papa’s reasonale efforts that they depart the premises. At last, his patience came to an end. Papa appeared on the stairway wielding his World War I military saber. He leapt upon a table, shouting in anger, “Get out! Get out! All of you! Get off my property at once!” The gypsy rogues were thoroughly intimidated by the ferocity of Papa’s command, and obeyed.231 A Jewish inmate of the Ravensbrück concentration camp painted a uniformly black portrait of the Gypsy prisoners: They stuck us in a Block with gypsies who ganged up against us. We had to take punishment for their misdemeanours, and they’d steal anything we put down, or took all.232 Dora Kacnelson, who lived in Białystok before the war, said: “There are tolerant Jews, like my father for instance, but there are also fanatical ones, holding on tight to old traditions. … The orthodox Jews considered Christians to be beneath them.”233 A Jewish girl who grew up in Nowogródek admits candidly that all Poles were considered to be anti-Semites: “since he was a Pole, he must be anti-semitic deep down.” Moreover, her friendship with a Pole was “resented” by her Jewish friends: “I was presented with an ultimatum: either I must drop Eddie or they would drop me.”234 A girl from a middle class assimilationist family from Piotrków Trybunalski, a city in central Poland, recalls: And what did I know about the other, non-Jewish world? In my home we spoke about goys with a certain irony and aversion which found its strongest expression in my grandmother’s saying ‘Meine shlekhte khulims of ale goims kieps,’ which roughly means ‘May my worse dreams fall on their heads.’ But I do not recall any conflict except for one incident when someone threw a stone into the prayer house on the Feast of Tabernacles during prayers. Generally, the tenants in our home opened their windows to hear these prayers. My grandfather had a beautiful voice and apparently I wasn’t the only one who enjoyed listening to him. I was warned about hooligans who attacked Jewish children on their way from school, but I do not recall ever having encountered something like that. … I don’t think that I ever asked myself before the war whether I was Polish or Jewish. I was Jewish, and that was obvious. My Polishness was accidental since some of my ancestors had settled here, but could just as well have settled elsewhere. … My father spoke Polish poorly, but my mother spoke it impeccably. My parents spoke Yiddish between themselves but spoke to [the children] in Polish. Neither I nor Ala knew Yiddish. My means of expression was therefore the Polish language, but it didn’t mean anything special to me. … Polish literature had no appeal for me nor did it have any impact on my state of mind… I do not recall ever being moved by the partitions of Poland or the country’s loss of independence. That was not part of my history. I knew only too well that none of my ancestors had taken part in any Polish uprising. … In my family—and I’m thinking here above all about my grandparents, goys were spoken of with a certain disdain. They were the ones who didn’t know that Christ was not the Messiah. Moreover, just like the pagans, they prayed to pictures. … the boundary between our world and their strange world was laden with an entire system of taboos. I knew that the worst, the most unimaginable sin was to convert. It was not permissible even to assume a kneeling position, even through inadvertence.235
A Jewish woman from a village in Volhynia recalled: At one point the teacher called on my father and asked him to send my brother Yitshak to an art school in a larger town. … The teacher even said that in such a case the government would provide a stipend, and that he would even request it. However, he could not persuade my father. One, he could not imagine his child so far away from him. Two, who knows, maybe he would fall in, God forbid, among Christians, and be so confused as to forget his Jewish roots?238 A Jewess from a village near Kołomyja recalled: At times I would slip out of the house quietly and hurry to the meadow, to play with the shepherds. This was a constant source of worry for my grandparents. Grandpa often said: “What will she grow up into among these Hutzul [highlander] children—a shikseh, nothing else.” And he would shake his head sadly as he said it. I did not understand what he was talking about; I couldn’t see how I was different from them.239 A Jewish woman, who lived in a tenement house in Mińsk Mazowiecki, has similar recollections: “Our neighbors were the Izbrechts, a Polish family … The youngest girl was named Józka, and I played with her all the time despite the fact that my grandmother beat me good so that I would not play with her. My grandmother did not allow me to play with Józka Izbrecht because she was Polish and she feared that if I went to her home I would eat something with pork in it. So my grandmother beat me, but I still played with Józka.”240 A girl from Skała, in southeastern Poland, recalls: We knew little about the gentiles; they lived their lives and we lived our lives. … Business was the main contact between us. … One of my fellow pupils was the grandson of the manager of the count’s estate … As children, this boy and I played hide-and-seek in the estate’s huge and beautiful park … His family would invite me at Christmas to see the tree … But typical of our relationship with the gentiles, we never invited them to our home for Chanukah.241 Sally Grubman recalled her childhood in the large industrial city of Łódź: It was one of those integrated areas where Jews clung together and had nothing to do with the gentiles. We never visited our gentile neighbors and they didn’t visit us. The children didn’t play together. I remember once there was some Easter celebration and the girl next door wanted to show me the beautiful table. She sneaked me in for a moment when no one was looking—just to look—and then I left.242 Joseph Kutrzeba, then Arie Fajwiszys, the son a music composer and conductor from Łódź, recalled bitterly during his wartime odyssey: Why, oh, why didn’t my parents know a single Polish family they could turn to in times like these? It was always “Jewish this, and Jewish that,” and “we want you to associate only with nice Jewish boys we approve of” and “we don’t want you to have anything to do with the goyim.” Damn them, it’s their own fault. How can you live in a country surrounded by Poles, their country, and all but isolate yourself from them? Why, the only Poles I ever knew were our maid, Vala, and the few actors from the theater who came to my father for music lessons. Serves them right. Now we could use a few Polish friends. Once I brought home a Polish friend, and I was told not to invite him again …243 Martin Zaidenstadt, from Jedwabne, recalled his father’s disapproval of his playing soccer with the Polish boys in town. On one occasion he was whacked thrice with a thick leather strap for the “misdeed” of playing soccer with the shaigitzi and missing temple.244 For Orthodox Jews playing was simply not allowed, especially with Christian children. The following account is from Kulbuszowa: Mostly Polish boys rode bicycles. That doesn’t mean that I was not interested. I was, and actually learned to ride one. Unfortunately, someone saw me and promptly reported the incident to my religious school teacher. For that earned yet another suspension from Talmud Torah. When the war came, prohibitions eased and many things changed. I rode about on my own bicycle—unpunished!245 These memoirs are consistent with Polish recollections. Władysław Bartoszewski, one of the founding members of the wartime Council for Aid to Jews (Żegota), recalls that, when he was growing up in a tenement-house in a primarily Jewish area of prewar Warsaw, the mothers of the Jewish children often scolded their children for playing with “that stupid, Polish goy.”246 Stefania Podgórska, who rescued thirteen Jews in Przemyśl, recalled that in the small village she grew up in, “sometimes the mother of the Jewish children would say to them, ‘Don’t play with the goyim.”247 A Pole from Międzyrzec Podlaski recalled the admonition a Jewish child received from his mother: “If you won’t eat, a goyka will take you away.”248 As some Jews admit, even culturally assimilated Jews from the educated classes—generally, professionals—who spoke only Polish generally considered themselves to be Jews, not Poles, and shunned personal contacts with Poles: People usually think that Jews didn’t socialize with Poles because of anti-Semitism, because of the Poles’ reluctance. That’s a great over-simplification. … However, anti-Semitism alone cannot account for the barrier between Poles and Jews in those years. Had my parents wanted to establish social ties with the Poles, it would have involved a great deal of effort on their part to bridge the cultural gap. … Above all, they [i.e., the interlocutor’s parents] were not Poles. Even my mother would not have called herself a Pole. A Polish Jew, yes, but not a Pole, despite the fact that she spoke and read only Polish and that she knew Polish literature so well. These paradoxes were typical not only of my mother, but my parents’ circle—the liberal, assimilated Jewish intelligentsia—as a whole. It was an entire community, a community of neither Poles nor Jews, but of assimilated Jews! … Jewish lawyers, doctors, professors, mathematicians. They were secular, educated, spoke only in Polish, and kept together.249 Even Jews who had Polish acquaintances tended to view the latter as strangers: “Although we had known many Catholics quite well and had lived with the Nowickis [their tenants] for almost a year, they were always seen as strangers, goyim, the people on the other side of the fence.”250 To be sure, a similar phenomenon existed among some Poles.251 Jews who emigrated from Poland to the United States often transplanted these attitudes with them, as one Jewish American from Chicago recalled: “Our home and that of our relatives and friends were typical of Americanized ‘shtetl homes,’ where no non-Jew ever tread. We children were not allowed to play with ‘goyim’ (non-Jews), and our lives were as circumscribed in this respect as they had been in Poland.”252 Writing in prewar Poland’s foremost literary weekly Wiadomości Literackie (no. 35, 1924), Antoni Słonimski, a leading Polish poet of Jewish origin, summed it up in the following words: “I know very few Jews who are not convinced of the superiority of the Jewish race. For that reason this nation … does not neglect even the smallest of reproaches. … Those Jews who complain about the lack of tolerance of others are the least tolerant …” Societal pressures were especially strong in small towns and villages where Jewish religious leaders endorsed isolation and breaches of traditional norms were treated mercilessly. The rabbi—if he was Orthodox and certainly if he was Hasidic—maintained no contact with Christians. The rabbi of Płock, Yona Mordechai Zlotnik, publicly urged that Jews and Christians be educated separately: Jewish religious education was possible only in schools established exclusively for Jewish children.253 Among Jews, and even in cheders or heders (Jewish religious schools), rabbis traditionally referred to gentiles using derogatory terms.254 Most Jews seemed to favour this state of affairs, especially in smaller communities, certainly well into the 1920s. Polish schools were never welcome or fully accepted. In Ostryna, north of Grodno,
Many young Jews—not only from Orthodox but also Zionist backgrounds—were adamant in their support of total segregation from Christians and creeping polonization. A Jewish girl from Kołomyja participated in a boycott of girlfriends who had chosen to attend a Polish instead of a Jewish high school: “We considered them as delinquents and renegades and we did not speak to them or have anything to do with them.” A girl from Kowel, in Volhynia, describes how she, together with her whole class, put pressure on her girlfriend to break off relations with her Christian friends (“shkuts”) and to stop using the Polish language. Nojma left primary school and had many friends. It was quite common for her to exchange a few words or to cross the street with a goy. This used to antagonize the whole class and later the whole grammar school. Her friends, including myself, used to defend her and we tried hard to persuade her that she should stop doing this. And finally we managed it. It was Nojma who introduced the tradition of speaking Polish into our class. I did not like that at all, because I hated all goyim … Yüklə 2,16 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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