Bad Poles Good Poles Like Bad Jews Good Jews Magal

From Miracle to Miracle: A Story of Survival, by Alicia Fleissig Magal. 2011

Good Poles, Bad Poles, Good Jews, Bad Jews

This short book is written in an unusual format. It involves an adult daughter eventually acquiring an interest in her mother’s experiences, and then, upon interviewing her, comparing the two lives side-by-side. For instance, the daughter, Alicia, described learning how to ride a bike when she was six with that of her mother, Nika, learning how to ride a bike when she was fifteen. The latter fell, broke her hip, and had to endure decades of a skeletal deformity before its correction by surgery.

The family originates from Wieliczka (near Krakow, Poland), famous for its salt mines. The book has a moving account, complete with a photo, of a family heirloom (a late 19th century silver Kiddush cup) brought from Poland. It had been buried, eventually recovered by a cousin, and brought to America, where it is now used by the family for Shabbat and holidays.

This book is biographically oriented. Not more than a month after the 1939 German-Soviet conquest of Poland, the Germans were already forcing Jews to wear the Star, and barring both Poles and Jews from attending the theater, where an opera was being conducted. (p. 9).

In time, Nika endured hunger during the Poles’ 1944 Warsaw Uprising, about which she comments, “The Poles were too proud to allow others to liberate their city, their people.” (p. 43). It is unclear if she means pride in a positive or negative (vainglorious) sense. Later, using historical sources, Alicia clarifies the nature and goals of the Warsaw Uprising. (pp. 103-104).

NO DIALECTIC BETWEEN POLES AND JEWS

When asked what people could learn from her experiences, the mother offered an answer that repudiates the polarization commonly seen in current Holocaust-related thinking. She commented, “I learned that one cannot generalize: I was once endangered by a nasty Jewish woman, who sent a policeman to arrest me to free herself. I met a number of Christians who saved my life when they could have turned away. So there were good people and bad ones. In tough times, one discovers the truth about people, and it has nothing to do with religion.” (p. 93).