Roger Cohen, who was so stirred by Tehran, is now moved by Polish history to imagine a different Middle East. His teaching re "victimhood" is aimed at those of us who harp about "justice" in Palestine in historical terms. And I think it's a good teaching, poetical, but it would be more meaningful if Cohen would go to Palestine and observe existing conditions and explain who is responsible for them (asscovering parens: Maybe he has; I'm not aware of it). Agency in history is a difficult issue; but the ongoing creation of Jim Crow in Palestine is Israel's achievement, with the active complicity of the American Jewish leadership. (Also, when all was said and done, Poland got Poland back...) Cohen:
Poland should shame every nation that believes peace and reconciliation are impossible, every state that believes the sacrifice of new generations is needed to avenge the grievances of history. The thing about competitive victimhood, a favorite Middle Eastern pastime, is that it condemns the children of today to join the long list of the dead.
For scarcely any nation has suffered since 1939 as Poland, carved up by the Hitler-Stalin nonaggression pact, transformed by the Nazis into the epicenter of their program to annihilate European Jewry, land of Auschwitz and Majdanek, killing field for millions of Christian Poles and millions of Polish Jews, brave home to the Warsaw Uprising, Soviet pawn, lonely Solidarity-led leader of post-Yalta Europe’s fight for freedom, a place where, as one of its great poets, Wislawa Szymborska, wrote, “History counts its skeletons in round numbers” — 20,000 of them at Katyn.
It is this Poland that is now at peace with its neighbors and stable. It is this Poland that has joined Germany in the European Union. It is this Poland that has just seen the very symbols of its tumultuous history (including the Gdansk dock worker Anna Walentynowicz and former president-in-exile Ryszard Kaczorowski) go down in a Soviet-made jet and responded with dignity, according to the rule of law.
So do not tell me that cruel history cannot be overcome. Do not tell me that Israelis and Palestinians can never make peace. Do not tell me that the people in the streets of Bangkok and Bishkek and Tehran dream in vain of freedom and democracy. Do not tell me that lies can stand forever.
Thanks to Irek.
Good piece overall, just one thing bothers me.
Cohen tells of “Christian Poles” and “Polish Jews”.
Why does he not write “Christian Poles” and “Jewish Poles”?
Jewish should be the adjective. All Poles were Poles, not Poles plus Jews.
Cohen’s wording smells exactly of this mindset which Shlomo Sand tries to debunk with his “Invention of the Jewish People”. It smells like the “Gentiles vs. Jews”, “Jews must stand apart from their fellow countrymen” mindset. It’s dangerous and wrong.
Justice Please, you wrote:
“Cohen tells of “Christian Poles” and “Polish Jews”.
Why does he not write “Christian Poles” and “Jewish Poles”?
Jewish should be the adjective. All Poles were Poles, not Poles plus Jews.”
Ralph Slovenko, “On Polish-Jewish Relations,” The Journal of Psychiatry & Law, vol. 15 (Winter 1987): 597–687 may answer your question:
“In Poland, … there was little question: Jews were Jews. With some exception, Jews neither considered themselves nor were they regarded by others as Polish or Polish Jews. As is well known, Jews in Poland were allowed to have their own laws and institutions. They were a nation
unto themselves and they maintained their nationhood in Poland. From the time of their arrival and through the centuries, they sought to protect their way of life. They were not merely a separate
religion but a tightly-knit community, leading life largely separate from Poles. They had their own customs, culture, dress, schools, courts, community government, and language (in the 1930 census
almost 80 percent declared Yiddish as their mother tongue). Menachem Begin’s father refused to learn Polish. In a word, the vast majority of Jews were unintegrated socially and culturally in the fabric of the larger society. They shared little or no national sentiment or common allegiance with the Poles. They and the Poles were almost strangers. They avoided association with the vast majority of the population, the Polish peasantry not wanting to live like, or with, them.
Yiddish author and Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer wrote under the pen-name Icchok Warszawski:
Rarely did a Jew think it was necessary to learn Polish; rarely was a Jew interested in Polish history or Polish politics. … Even in the last few years it was still a rare occurrence that a Jew would speak Polish well. Out of three million Jews living in Poland, two-and-a-half million were not able to write a simple letter in Polish and they spoke [Polish] very poorly. There are hundreds of thousands of Jews in Poland to whom Polish was as unfamiliar as Turkish. The undersigned was connected
with Poland for generations, but his father did not know more than two words in Polish. And it never even occurred to him that there was something amiss in that.
This is why Jewish writers write of Polish Jews and not of Jewish Poles.
it is doubtless an offense that could provoke banning to give voice to this thought that formed after reading first, Phil’s article, then, Eva’s comment:
Perhaps Poles have achieved peace and stability because there is no longer a community of Jews in Poland who are treated differently from Poles.
PG: Perhaps Poles have achieved peace and stability because there is no longer a community of Jews in Poland who are treated differently from Poles.
Do you think there was something inherently irreconcilable about the differences between Jews and non-Jews in pre-war Poland?
Eva,
thanks for the history. I can certainly understand why one would view the past as a situation where Jews were massively segregated in Poland, as your quote describes.
But I was speaking of the contemporary angle. Couldn’t any writer, Jewish or not, with the advantage of hindsight say that “well Jews were segregated in Poland, but slowly we realize (through Sand and others) that Jews should not stand apart, that they should not be viewed as per se different by Gentiles and Jews alike, that Jewish is just an attribute like Christian, and therefore I am writing of Jewish Poles instead of Polish Jews”?
Maybe Cohen does this in other writings which are not about history, and maybe there are better instances to utter this post-segregationist sentiment than Polish history, but I hope that Elliot Abrahams/Dennis Ross etc. are extremists, not consensus.
Phil,
Roger Cohen has been to Israel and to Palestine far more than you.
Do you think Roger Cohen is a proponent of BDS?
Maybe he doesn’t buy Caterpillar or United Technologies products. I don’t either.
I’ll bet he does talk to Israeli professors and Israeli artists and filmmakers, maybe even inviting them to speak in public.
If the academic boycott were actually applied, Rashid Khalidi would not get to invite Akiva Eldar to speak at the U of Chicago.
Do you not understand how the academic boycott actually works, or are you simply deliberately trying to mislead people about it?
I know it works by arbitrary selective orchestrated shunning.
In the name of free speech, the left compels that opinions that differ from their own can’t be heard, while leftist Israeli academics are invited.
It feels fascistic in practice. It feels to me to be exactly what is rationally criticized as Israeli censorship of dissenters.
Good, so now we’ve established that you do not in fact, have a clue about how it works.
Well, Chaos? A simple explanation of how you think it works would be in order.
oh, I do hope you never step foot in an Otis elevator, or fly in an airplane, or cool your residence with a Trane a/c, Witty; those acts would be patronage of UT.
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Perhaps the main change in the transition in Poland is the revising of historical myths. In many ways Polish and Jewish histories are analogical. We’re two nations that have their myths of martyrdom, and those myths help us survive in times of troubles. In Poland, during the 19th century, WWII and the communist era, the feeling of eternal victimisation was carefully nourished. It’s what helps Poles to cope with oppression, provide clandestine education, unite in times of trouble, or hold the Polish moral code over the one imposed by the oppressor. In other words it’s a very important factor when one needs to survive.
However, as soon as Poland regained independence, it was recognised that a self-governing nation doesn’t need to see itself as a victim. Moreover, it really harms rather than helps. What Poland needs is to be a self-confident country that is a serious partner on the international arena. It doesn’t mean that Poles ceased to care that they used to be victims for the past two centuries, but they shifted their focus in history to earlier times that are better suited to the new situation. In case of Poland it’s the period up to the late 18th century when there was the nobles’ democracy, parliament, elected king, state reforms, the second codified constitution in the world, tolerance proclaimed by law, freedom of conscience, and even freedom of sexuality (e.g. homosexuality wasn’t criminalised), and peaceful cohabitation with many nations, including Jews, but also the Germans for example, who used to live in Poland for ages.
Naturally it’s not like suddenly everyone began to see oneself and one’s country in a new light, but the shift was quite significant, and today youtube is full of short movies about the knights and such. It also helped that in the meantime Norman Davies wrote the history of Poland, which is now the school textbook. Otherwise we’d be stuck with communist propaganda. Davies, a Brit, saw our history with a greater distance than we did, and also from a broader, European, perspective. There are things that were strongly criticised by Polish authors at times when it was proper to do so in view of our politics, but that should be seen in a kinder light in historical perspective. There are others that Poles romanticised, while Davies’s opinion was more sober.
It is important, because in the times of oppression Poland appeared as a raped woman. Quite literally, there are many paintings and poems to this end. A raped woman lives in a trauma all her life. She’s never able to recover fully. Moreover, she doesn’t have any control over her life and body. Things are done to her. What we needed instead, was a picture of a reasonable and steady man, who perhaps isn’t always perfectly behaved, but can take his fate in his own hands and responsibility for his own actions, and, speak to others from the level of an equal. If we didn’t make the change we’d become over-emotional, paranoid and self-pitying. While I’m sure such feelings still aren’t far from the surface, at least as long as we’re not provoked they’re in check.
Additionally, looking again at our attitude towards others, the Ukrainians or Jews for example, made us see that we weren’t always fair. Victims are innocent and helpless, while seeing oneself as guilty of misconduct requires taking responsiblity for others. In a way it helped us grow up, because we began to be the older brother.
I think that Jews also have this kind of history in the Early Modern period in Poland. Centuries of self-governing, skilful lobbying, resourcefulness and cooperation. That history was abandoned virtually everywhere outside of Poland. The Zionist story begins in the late 19th century, with everything before being a simplified picture of continuous oppression. But, it seems that more and more Jewish scholars rediscover the rich Jewish past in Poland. Academics meet and discuss the developments, write new books etc. It’ll take some time before Jewish people begin to read them. It’d help if they were read at school. But I think that they will read anyway, simply because they’ll be curious about their ancestors. Such an old nation like the Jewish one cannot have such a short and miserable history, can it?
I recommend “Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century: A Genealogy of Modernity” by Gershon David Hundert. I had some complaints about the book. I wished it were longer and more detailed, and also I thought that the complex developments around the May 3 Constitution weren’t shown at all. But perhaps the author doesn’t know them well himself. After all it requires learning the history of two nations. Still, I learnt many new things from the book, which is always a good thing, and, what’s more important, I didn’t cringe throughout it. Other books I read showed so little understanding of Polish history that I lost patience and respect for the authors.
Generally, Hundert argues that till recently Western historians made the mistake of interpreting the Jewish community via the history of the Western Europe, while in fact Jews were only tiny minorities there, with their rights severely restricted. He says that since the vast majority of American and Israeli Jews trace their roots to Poland, it is that community and its developments that should be seen as the basis for their today’s attitudes. He also makes an argument, which I loved, that Jews in Poland cannot be seen as a minority. Indeed, all other Western movies and books I saw seemed to suggest that Poland was a country of Poles with a large Jewish minority. In fact the largest minorities in Poland were the Poles and Ukrainians. There was no one majority. There were much smaller minorities than the Jews too. The Protestants, Muslims, Armenians or Karaites for example. He also shows that since Jews often lived in communities where they were actually a majority, they couldn’t have seen themselves as a minority. That all, plus their status in Poland, separate religious customs, the general lack of any uniformity in the Polish society (i.e. one wasn’t different by being different), and collaboration with the nobles contribute to how Jews view themselves today.
Hundert has an excellent grasp of the workings of the Old Poland’s society, which was peculiar in many ways, and very different from the West. He can _think_ the way people then did, by that recognising with ease what was or wasn’t beneficial to Jews. I truly think that every Jewish person should read the book.
Unfortunately he ends abruptly with the end of the 18th century, but I hope someone will take his book to illustrate how the Jewish past translated itself into the many ideas that emerged at the end of the 19th century along with the rise of national feelings in the former Polish territories. Zionists, Seymists, Bundists or the Ultra-Orthodox Jews, all based their ideas on the Early Modern structure.
For another interesting source, here’s a link to the materials from a workshop at the Wesleyan University:
link to jewishhistory.research.wesleyan.edu
If you follow the links at the bottom you’ll find many interesting papers and movies where scholars discuss various issues. I especially enjoyed Adam Teller’s papers. He displays a great sentiment for the past Jewish community in Poland, whether referring to good or bad things. With a great confidence, he takes them as they were, and clearly enjoys the effect.
Of course, to fully understand Poland, one should read Norman Davies’s God’s Playground.