Gość: Leszek S
IP: *.jajones.com
11.03.02, 21:51
Fale oburzenia wsrod Polonii USA wywolal artykul Neila Steinberga "Zydzi nadal
postrzegani jako czarne owce w polskiej rodzinie", w chicagowskim Sun-Times z 6
marca. Tym zwlaszcza, ktorzy sa przekonani o rozpetaniu niewybrednej NAGONKI na
Polske polecam artykul w dzisiejszym wydaniu tej samej gazety: "Obrona Zydow
odslania uprzedzenia wobec Polakow, innego "Zyda" andrew Patnera.
To jest "nagonka" czy moze raczej rozwija sie debata na temat stosunkow polsko-
zydowskich?
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Oto artykul. Przyjemnej lektury.
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www.suntimes.com
www.suntimes.com/output/otherviews/cst-edt-ref11.html
Defense of Jews exposes bias vs. Poles
March 11, 2002
BY ANDREW PATNER
The recent flap over remarks by Edward Moskal of the Chicago-based Polish
American Congress attacking Rahm Emanuel, a candidate for the Democratic
nomination for Congress in the 5th Congressional District, raises a number of
concerns about the continuing existence of anti-Semitism.
But some of the responses to it remind us that many in the Jewish community
also need to examine their own views and public statements about Poles and
Polish Americans.
That Moskal remains an unapologetic bigot and anti-Semite cannot be doubted. An
embarrassment to Chicago and to its large Polish-American community, Moskal has
even recently tangled with the president of Poland, whom he regards as just
another puppet of the Jewish and Israeli ''conspiracies'' he sees everywhere.
But a new generation of Polish Americans, as with their counterparts in Poland,
has no interest in the narrow and distorted views of the antediluvian old
guard, whether in Polonia or in the reactionary or nativist wings of the Roman
Catholic Church in Poland.
Nancy Kaszak, a Polish-American candidate in the 5th District congressional
race, has denounced Moskal and distanced herself from his organization. The
Polish News, a publication frequently critical of Moskal and his views, had
endorsed Emanuel even before the recent flap.
But anti-Semites have no monopoly on generalizations and hatred unmoored from
historical fact. A column in these pages March 5 by Neil Steinberg repeated
anti-Polish shibboleths and wide-ranging characterizations of Polish people as
a group that, sadly, are often heard within the Jewish community.
Like Steinberg, I am a Jew of East European descent, born in America 14 years
after the end of the Second World War to parents who were the children and
grandchildren of immigrants. And like Steinberg, those branches of my family
that did not immigrate to the United States were butchered by the Nazis and
their supporters in an area that at various times has belonged to Poland and
Lithuania.
But legitimate concerns about not forgetting the tragedies of the past must not
be confused with the repetition of false charges and untrue stereotypes. An
examination of the voluminous historical studies of Poland and of the Nazi
German Holocaust, much of it written by prominent Jewish and Israeli scholars,
can separate myths from facts, rote prejudice from documentable reality.
Charges that Poles were somehow equally responsible with the Nazis for the
extermination of European Jewry are not supported by evidence. Statements that
the Nazi Holocaust erased 1,000 years of complex and deep Polish-Jewish
interaction and mutual influence are inaccurate simplifications. And
characterizations of contemporary Polish opinion as being either monolithic or
anti-Semitic ignore the vibrant discussion, debate and national soul-searching
that goes on today in free and democratic Poland.
Any standard history of the Holocaust or a visit to the Holocaust Memorial
Museum in Washington, universally regarded as the most comprehensive and
objective popular presentation of the genocide of the Jews, speaks strongly
against these too-common misconceptions. Writing as recently as five months ago
in the pages of Commentary magazine, a conservative publication of the American
Jewish Committee, Robert S. Wistrich, Neuberger professor of modern European
history at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the son of Polish-Jewish
survivors, wrote:
''In the annals of the Holocaust, Poles were guilty of nothing like the savage,
wide-scale murder of Jews carried out by Lithuanians, Latvians, Ukrainians,
Romanians, Hungarians, Croats and other helpers of the Germans immediately
before and during the war. Relatively few Poles served as guards in the
concentration or death camps, and unlike other Eastern European nations, Poland
did not send regiments to the eastern front to fight alongside the Wehrmacht or
the Waffen SS.
''It is also true that, brutally occupied from the outset of the war, Poland
marshaled the largest resistance movement in all of Europe, fighting the Nazis
to the very end . . .''
There can and should be no denying the reality of anti-Semitism, its nefarious
place in history and its ability to recur. But none of the real suffering or
prejudice experienced by Jews can excuse the expression of a similar bigotry
against Poles or Polish Americans. The very kind of speech about ''the Jews''
that would rightly raise the hackles of many right-thinking people cannot go
unchallenged when used against ''the Poles.''
Nearly 60 years after the Holocaust, Poles and Jews of good will need to
continue to work in their communities and with each other to counteract the
hatred and distortions of history expressed by a few misguided members of both
populations.
Andrew Patner is the author of I.F. Stone: A Portrait and critic-at-large for
98.7 WFMT radio.
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