Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Author Leon Poliakov was once asked why he decided to write The History of Anti-Semitism. He replied, "I wanted to know why they were out to kill me." In our post-World War Two world, anti-Semitism remains a painful and deeply problematic subject. In particular, much has been written about Poland's alleged collaboration with the Nazis, with stories of Poles willingly handing over Polish Jews and often profiting from it in the process. Such assertions have led to a widespread and ongoing stereotype that Poles are a deeply, inherently anti-Semitic people. In fact, Adam Michnik argues, while there are certainly anti-Semites among Poles as anywhere, resistance to anti-Semitism is deeply rooted in the culture. The essays he has gathered in this unique and significant anthology-with contributions by some of Poland's most renowned writers and intellectuals across the decades-both testify to and elaborate on that premise.
Michnik traces the history of anti-Semitism opposition to it in Poland, methodically laying out and confronting the four most widespread myths that do continue to permeate Polish thought: that in the eastern territories occupied by the USSR between 1939 and 1941, many Jews collaborated with the occupying authorities; that Jews were only delivered into German hands by Polish criminals; that after 1945 Jews formed the core of the Department of Security and therefore bear the blame for the suffering of the Home Army soldiers in communist Poland; and finally, that anti-Semitism in Poland today is so marginal as to be almost exotic.
A prologue by poet Czeslaw Milosz, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, analyzes the trends of the first third of the twentieth century-the period of crisis before the outbreak of World War II. The essays that follow, including works by, among other leading figures, Maria Dabrowska, Leszek Kolakowski, and Jan Blonski include writings from the years leading up to World War II, and draw from periodical and newspaper articles in addition to scholarly essays across the twentieth century. Provocative, sincere, and undeniably important, Against Anti-Semitism contextualizes Polish anti-Semitism and in the process reflects upon the full story of Poland's history and its role in the Holocaust and beyond.
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Synopsis
Poland's relationship with its Jewish population has long been a subject of often agonizing debate. In September 1939, there were approximately 3.3 million Jews living in Poland, the largest population in Europe. In May 1945, between 40,000 and 60,000 remained. Most of the Nazi death camps had
been located on Polish soil. The intertwined issues of wartime complicity and victimhood haunt Poland to this day, complicated by the unavoidable fact that anti-Semitism in Poland existed well before the outbreak of the Second World War, and has existed long after it. The deadly Kielce Pogrom in
July 1946 appalled the world, since its victims were precisely those Jews who had miraculously survived annihilation. And while with the years physical violence against Jews diminished-if only because there were not many at whom to direct it-anti-Semitism has remained no less virulent, emerging as a
force in Polish politics, religious life, and in society at large. A study undertaken in 2002 determined that one in nine Poles believed the Jews collectively responsible for the crucifixion of Christ. One in four claimed that Jews were secretly plotting to rule the world.
Is anti-Semitism integral to Polish identity? Nowhere has this question been more the cause of soul-searching than in Poland itself. In this volume, Adam Michnik, one of Poland's foremost writers and intellectuals, and Agnieszka Marczyk have brought together the most significant essays of the
twentieth century written by prominent Poles on Polish anti-Semitism, including by such writers and intellectuals as Czeslaw Milosz, Leszek Kolakowski, Jerzy Andrzejewski, and Tadeusz Mazowiecki. Taken from a three-volume original Polish edition, 3,000 pages in length and containing 320 entries, the
essays, most of which have been translated into English here for the first time by Marczyk, resonate with Michnik's central argument-that anti-Semitism is not a given of Polish culture. It has been consistently challenged and rejected.
Taken together, through their collective courage and wisdom, expressed even in moments when reason seemed lost, these essays and their authors remind readers not only of the destructive and self-destructive elements of anti-Semitism, but of the necessity of combatting it in all of its forms. Even
some of the darkest parts of Polish history have produced moments of illumination.