Saul Friedlander, an expert on the Holocaust period, ends the first volume of his study
Nazi Germany and the Jews with a description of what must have been a typical
little set piece from those times in Germany. The morning after the November 9, 1938
Kristallnacht, when the Nazi authorities instigated anti-Jewish pogroms across the country
(it is called "Kristallnacht" because the broken glass from thousands of
shattered shop windows literally covered the streets of German towns the next day), half a
dozen battered men stood on a truck in the square of the little Mosel town of Wittlich.
Among them was the butcher, Marx, whose despairing wife stood nearby, wailing hysterically
and stretching her hands out towards the faces of the neighbors watching the scene from
behind the closed windows of the houses surrounding the square. "Why are you
tormenting us?" she cried, "Have we ever wronged you?"
More than half a century later there was an unexpected echo of her cry in Hamburg when,
after delivering a lecture, Friedlander was approached by a young man who passed on a
greeting from his grandmother, a resident of Wittlich. Seeing the surprised reaction of
the lecturer, who had never heard of her, the young man explained that his grandmother had
been Mrs. Marx's neighbor before the war. Like many other local people, she had taken over
"formerly Jewish property." It so happened that she was still in the possession
of a pillow that had belonged to Mrs. Marx. She kept it in the bottom of her wardrobe and,
troubled by her conscience, had no idea what to do with it.
Mrs. Marx's pillow came to my mind last spring when I read an article by Jerzy Robert
Nowak in the May 14, 2000 issue of Nasz Dziennik. I learned from the article
that my description of the homicide in Jedwabne is intended to justify Jewish efforts to
obtain compensation for losses suffered during the war. This argument did not come as a
surprise to me, since circles ideologically close to the Nasz Dziennik commentator
generally and spontaneously associate Jews with money. Some time later, mass-circulation
Polish newspapers started voicing anxiety over what would happen after Neighbors
was published in English. After reading Paweł Machcewicz's December 11, 2000 article in Rzeczpospolita,
I wondered why making a good impression abroad should be the dominant concern of an
academic responsible for the education department at The Institute of National Remembrance, which deals
with teaching Polish society about its own history. Then Ryszard Bugaj, the historic
leader of the Union of Labor, reacted to the news of the tragedy
of the Jedwabne Jews in a way similar to the Nasz Dziennik commentator. When the
president of the Administrative Body of the Institute of National Remembrance, Sławomir
Radoń, seconded Machcewicz's views in the January 20-21, 2001 issue of Gazeta Wyborcza,
I realized that we were dealing with a case of basic conceptual confusion. I believe that
Jan Nowak-Jeziorański drew similar conclusions from his reading. In his article "The
Need for Compensation" in the January 26 Rzeczpospolita, he worried that
"the debate (on the Jedwabne affair) is beginning to turn in the wrong
direction." Therefore, I too will join in trying to untangle a few of the threads are
knotted up in the articles by the above-mentioned writers, to clarify what our attitude
towards Jedwabne has to do with aspects of the "formerly Jewish property" issue
and the image of Poland abroad.
We should begin by stating that it was not Neighbors, but rather the commission
of genocide in Jedwabne, that created the problems that Bugaj, Jerzy Robert Nowak or
Machcewicz write about. Reading their articles, we may have the impression that the
problem is not the consequences of acts committed half a century ago, but rather the texts
that describe those deeds. Only through profound reflection on our own history will we be
able to come to terms with the consequences of those acts. Press comments full of
hand-wringing on the topic of "what others will say about us" are rather out of
place: at best, they offer further testimony to the alienation of the collective Polish
identity caused by the falsification of Polish-Jewish relations during the war.
I have written "further" because this is not the first such reaction of
concerned Polish patriots to the persecution of the Jews in Poland. The Zionist Opinia
wrote on July 25, 1946, that "at protest meetings after the Kielce pogrom, Polish speakers kept repeating 'What
will the foreigners think about us?' How glad we would be to hear a question that is
simple but ever so sweet to our ears: 'What will our Jewish compatriots think about
us?'" The point is that the foundations of a free and creative common life cannot be
shored up by nervously monitoring our own reflection in the eyes of others. At best, this
is a way of depriving ourselves of authenticity by somehow handing over to strangers-and
why, of all people, to those American Jewish circles that are ill-disposed towards Poland?
- the power to determine who we really are. It is, in fact, by our own efforts that we
must reconcile our difficult history with our image of ourselves. We must understand the
collective biography that bonds us through the generations. The most important thing is
whether we are able to confront our own past - not what others may say about us. We will
earn the respect of others, in any case, only when we stop being afraid of our own
history. This is a long and time-consuming task, but there is no other way.
The question for political commentators alarmed about Jews suing "Poland," as
Bugaj put it, is: Why shouldn't people settle contentious issues in court? Isn't that the
Poland and the regulated international order that we were fighting for? Weren't we fed up
with the lawlessness of despotic party officials and the law of the jungle, which
guarantees that might makes right? The alternative is the rule of law and the settling of
disputes by independent courts, according to fixed, clear, and generally accepted
principles. It is an imperfect solution, but none better has yet been devised.
So let's calm down. There is nothing scandalous about people settling their disputes with
the help of lawyers. We dreamed of a world where we would be under the jurisdiction of
independent courts, rather than a pliant political police force. And we managed to achieve
it by way of the sacrifices made by many courageous people, as well as a chain of
miraculous coincidences. The fact that we can claim our rights, and strive for
compensation for wrongs that until recently we had to bear in silence, is part of this
joyful new reality. And because today's laws apply by their very nature to all people,
irrespective of their religious denomination or social background, a Jew has the same
right as any other apartment-house owner or dispossessed member of the landed gentry to go
to court and try to get his own back.
Besides, it should be pointed out that it is not "the Jews" who are taking
"us" to court, but concrete Jews who are suing concrete legal entities -
individuals or institutions - over concrete pieces of property. Furthermore, in dealing
with claims of a general nature, as for example the ownership rights of Jewish religious
communities, we also know perfectly well what the point is. This, too, is a concrete
matter and it is analogous to, for example, the claims of the Roman Catholic Church. In
both cases, legal questions of a general nature relate to the laws and expropriation
practices accepted in communist Poland by the communists-who, as we know, had a special
attitude towards private property. Solutions to this aspect of social life, as implemented
by the communists, surely cannot be defended to the bitter end either by the nationalist
patriots from Nasz Dziennik, or even by politicians from
the Union of Labor.
We also remain mindful of the fact there is no analogy between Jewish claims against
"Poland" - to use the emotionally loaded formulation that appears in the papers
- and claims once made by the State of Israel or Jewish institutions against Germany. The
reason is simple: the Polish state never instigated the murder and plunder of the Jews.
This point has recently been dealt with by Jacek Kurczewski, who summed it up in a few
short sentences in the newsmagazine Wprost. The murdering and looting of Jews by
their Polish neighbors during the occupation was a spontaneous action carried out on
individual initiative and was at the most, as in Jedwabne, coordinated by local
authorities established under Nazi auspices.
The problem is that the seizure of Jewish property was so widespread that the scale of
claims is potentially huge. ("All the local scum turned out in the streets of
town," writes the outstanding diarist, Dr. Zygmunt Klukowski of Szczebrzeszyn.
"Many horse-driven carts from the countryside arrived, and they all waited almost the
whole day long for the moment when they could start plundering. News about some Poles
behaving shamefully and looting abandoned Jewish flats was heard from different sources.
Our locality will not lag behind in this respect.") Today we simply face one of the
consequences of the general debasement of morality during the occupation, and there is no
point in blaming Jews for the fact that the anti-Semites acted in precisely this, and no
other, way.
Half a century after the end of the war, the time has come to get rid of various
uncomfortable objects that became our property as a result of tragic historical
circumstances that often give us no reason to feel proud. This was not property that
belonged to no one, and we must be prepared to give it back. We have already made use of a
good deal of the property in question, much of it is worn out, and in any case no one will
ever turn up to claim a great deal of what remains in our hands. However, without a clear
willingness to compensate, we will not be able to bear the burden of the seized property,
even if it is no heavier than an eiderdown pillow. Simply put, after all, we are dealing
here with a question of ethics, and not of accountancy.
Money cannot replace repentance. Compensation cannot be purchased. However, we should not
cherish any illusions - the bill that history has written out and that we will have to pay
for the moral debasement of a generation of our ancestors (those involved in homicide in
different ways, even if all they did was to mock and rub their hands together while
watching a tragedy of human suffering that cried out to the heavens for revenge) will come
due, but we will not be able to pay it with money. We are going to have to cover ourselves
in mourning and weep over the cruel fate of our Jewish fellow-citizens.
My point is that it will take spiritual evolution, and not new entries in the deed books,
to deal with the heritage of the Second World War in the area of Polish-Jewish relations.
The multiplication tables will not do us much good, and we are going to have to reach for
the Tablets of the Ten Commandments. To cope in dignity with the past, it will be
necessary to internalize the enormity of the tragedy that befell our Jewish
fellow-citizens back then. It is only the lack of sympathy and mourning for those who were
murdered that makes Jewish claims for the return of their plundered property, lodged by
the heirs of the victims, so vexing and irritating a problem - "poor Poland," as
Bugaj writes, at the mercy of Jewish attorneys from New York. Nor are our parents and
grandparents blameless. Please only recall whether what they taught us about the Jews was
above all melancholy and sympathetic reflection on their tragic fate, or perhaps rather
some other kind of knowledge about the Jews and attitude towards the Jews.
But I am quite sure that those who finally weep over the fate of their Jewish
fellow-citizens under the occupation will follow in the footsteps of the resident of
Wittlich and will part with "Mrs. Marx's pillow" without a trace of regret. And
if the voice of our hearts does not tell us what to do in such a situation, then we should
be guided by cold analysis. The choice we face - whether to take the side of the heirs of
the Polish citizens who came into possession of property by plundering and, in not a few
cases, murdering their fellow citizens, or rather to take the side of the heirs of the
people who were robbed and murdered (and who, it should be added, were also Polish
citizens) -is not difficult.
Of course, what the world says about "us" has great importance for Poland. And
although we can neither turn back the clock nor change the course of events that took
place 60 years ago, we do have substantial influence on the image of Poland that people
form in the perspective of the Jedwabne crime. Polish society will be judged according to
its reaction to the newly acquired information about this act of genocide. And although it
may sound paradoxical, Jedwabne offers us a chance to reestablish credibility in the area
of Polish-Jewish relations-provided that we accept the knowledge of this tragedy with
humility and a sense of responsibility.
When the American edition of Neighbors comes out, almost a year will have passed
since its publication in Polish - from May 2000 to April 2001.This is a very important
year, as it has offered us the opportunity to consider together the case of Jedwabne, to
discuss it publicly and, to some extent, to learn to live with it. We should be aware of
the fact that we owe this year of consideration to the descendants and survivors of the
Jedwabne Jews, who were guided by the understanding that today this case is, above all,
part of Polish history, and who found my idea of publishing the book first in Poland
convincing. The pain and despair caused to them by the fact that the case was hushed up
for decades is something that ought to be easy for us to imagine, since we ourselves were
unable to speak the truth about Katyn out loud, or to draw the world's attention to
it.
We should remember that, for Jews, the anonymity of the death of millions of their
brothers and sisters is one of the most painful curses of the Holocaust, and for my
interlocutors these were the people they held dearest. Neither the New York lawyer Ty
Rogers, who maintains the internet site of the Jedwabne landsmannschaft, nor Rabbi
Baker (whose real name is Piekarz), the publisher of the memorial book about Jedwabne,
ever sent journalists to lie in wait for me or insisted that I publish the
English-language edition of the book as quickly as possible, despite the fact that both of
them had been engaged for years in the effort to increase awareness of the nightmarish
fate of their loved ones.
Whether or not we have made good use of this year is not something for me to judge. The
year, indeed, is not yet up, and the discussion continues, and will continue.
The immediate reaction of journalists to the news about the massacre in Jedwabne was very
encouraging - I am referring chiefly to excellent reports published in Rzeczpospolita
and Gazeta Pomorska, which were followed by the opening of serious, many-sided
debates in Gazeta Wyborcza, Rzeczpospolita, and the newsmagazine Wprost.
When I said during public appearances in the United States and Israel that the issue was
not being dodged in Poland, but, quite the opposite, was being written about - with no
punches pulled - in the largest-circulation newspapers, what I said was greeted at first
with incredulity, and later with great respect and relief.
And that is why I would like to express the hope that we will soon hear the voice of
Church authorities in the discussion on Jedwabne. In any case, it is not only words from
the Church that matter here, but also actions, no matter how modest, no matter how
symbolic. For instance, couldn't a special collection be announced in the churches of the
Łomża diocese some Sunday for cleaning up the Jewish cemetery in Jedwabne and erecting a
new monument to the victims? The eloquence of the message that such a gesture would send
to the world and to Polish society is enormous. Everything else aside, some priests ought
to assure today's residents of the little town of Jedwabne, themselves hardly guilty of
anything, of pastoral care and support. Unfortunately it does not seem, if the January 23
article in Wprost is anything to go by, that the local priest will be of much help
in this regard.
Looking back on the past century from the perspective of a new millennium, it should not
come as any surprise to us that neighbors murder each other. We know full well that no one
has a monopoly on savagery, because the list of societies where the moral brakes have
failed in one set of circumstances or another is a very long one. We shall not be judged
by the deeds committed by our grandfathers-some of our grandfathers-in moments when they
went berserk, but rather by whether or not we have managed to discern and give a name to
their bloodthirsty madness, and to make use of it for spiritual transformation. The
genocide committed in Jedwabne is a challenge to us for the present day, and not merely an
old bill that has suddenly fallen due. There is a great deal that we can accomplish here.
It is up to us either to bear this burden and, along the way, to recover faith in
ourselves and credibility "under western eyes," or to sink into a defensive
gesture of confused embarrassment, deeply convinced that everyone is against us anyway.