How Could Szpilman Stay in Poland?

[Lee Goldberg <leegoldberg2002...>]

Alex Jacobowitz cites a number of facts about antisemitism in Poland that I 
have no inclination to dismiss.  But they don't justify the conclusion he 
draws, namely, that there is a good "Polish analogy with German savagery".  
Yes, the Polish underground Home Army was generally hostile to Jews and many 
units killed Jews on the run (what I think Alex means when he says "the 
executions of Jews in Poland by Poles during the war"), but the very fact that 
there was a mass Polish resistance fighting the Nazis flies in the face of the 
notion that the Poles as a people collaborated with the Germans in genocide 
(many individual Poles did; organized Polish society as represented by its 
government in exile in London and its resistance forces on the ground did not). 
  The general run of American Jews have enough trouble keeping straight which 
Eastern European nationality is which, and who fought on who's side on World 
War II, as it is, without making outrageous comparisons to the Germans, whose 
crimes are without parallel.
My point is that things (and countries) are more complicated than many 
American-born Jews seem to think.  If we recognize that France and the French 
includes everything from resistance heroes to Vichy scum, then why lump 
everything about Poland and the Poles into one reductive pot? 

Lee Goldberg

Anything´s possible. Wanna look up the facts
yourself? Jews weren´t considered Poles by the Poles 
- until they were murdered in Auschwitz. How about the
executions of Jews in Poland by Poles during the war?
The Kielce pogroms (and others) AFTER the survivors
returned to Poland in 1946? 

The anti-Jewish political purge and anti-Israel riots
of 1968, orchestrated by the government? 
The Carmelite nun affair? Radio Maria? 
Have you read Artur Rubinstein´s autobiography, and
his letter to the New York Times protesting
the new (at the time) Polish purges? That 
Rubinstein himself was presented in the Polish
press as a Pole, but never as a Jew?
The interviews with Poles in Lansky´s "Shoah"?

Don´t misunderstand - there are some Poles who
were good and saved Jewish lives - just as there
were some good Germans, as in Szpilman´s case.
There are devils and angels everywhere, but in
this case, the Polish analogy with German
savagery is more sound than anyone wants
to hear. The record backs it up. I´m sorry.

Alex Jacobowitz



 



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