Cardinal Hlond Correct Jewish Atheism Shandler

Awakening Lives: Autobiographies of Jewish Youth in Poland before the Holocaust, by Jeffrey Shandler. 2002

Jewish Separatism, Hostility Towards Poland, and Movement Towards Atheism and Communism

As might be expected, this book is entirely Judeocentric. Everything is written from the viewpoint of how Polish conduct affects Jews, and never once do the various 1930s Jewish authors even consider how Jewish conduct affects Poles.

ANTI-ASSIMILATIONIST, SEPARATIST, AND CONDESCENDING ATTITUDES AMONG POLAND’S JEWS. ENDEKS CORROBORATED

Author Esther commented, “Naturally, I cherished the Beys Yaakov school more than ever. I didn’t consider the public school to be ‘ours,’ even though we were taught by Jewish men and women. Since they didn’t observe the Sabbath and always spoke Polish, as far as I was concerned they were ‘unfortunate people.’” (p. 322).

When author Esther did acquire some interest in Polish matters, she was quickly corrected, “Father stopped eating his dinner and declared that under no circumstances was I to read any Polish books.” (p. 323).

Author Ludwik Stockel felt that Poland’s Jews were unassimilable, and that Jews would give up too much that is essentially Jewish even if they could feasibly assimilate. He said, “Assimilation cannot be the solution to the problem, since there are certain essential differences in the way that we and the Catholics live, which make assimilation impossible. In this case, it would be a diminution of one’s own worth.” (p. 172). [Dmowski and the Endeks had mirror-image attitudes, but only they nowadays are blamed for having them.]

ASSIMILATION DOES NOT TRANSFORM A JEW INTO A POLE

Author J. Harefuler complained about wanting to be a Pole, and not being welcomed by Poles as one. (pp. 377-378). Ironically, however, he was the first to admit that his Polonization was hardly synonymous with becoming a Pole. He wrote, “I am not doing this study, yet I believe that a Jew, for example, is different from a Pole, not only superficially, but also internally. I am a Jew! This I feel today. Once I believed deeply in this. Then, I called myself a citizen of the world and did not believe at all in nationality; more recently, I ‘was’ a Pole. [quotation marks are Harefuler’s]. But today I know that I am a Jew and that I am far from calling myself a Pole. I’ve become convinced, by being somewhat assimilated—I write and read Polish, I know Polish history, and so on—that I characterize myself as a true, twentieth-century Jew of the diaspora.” (p. 345).

Harefuler’s testimony corroborates the Endeks. They had contended that large-scale Jewish assimilation is not feasible, and moreover assimilated Polish Jews can be just as separatist, and aloof to essential Polishness, as their anti-assimilationist cousins. The Jewish soul and the Polish soul are fundamentally different. Moreover, this Jewish essentialism can be virtually immutable.

THE SELF-ATHEIZATION AND COMMUNIZATION OF POLAND’S JEWS

In 1936, Polish Cardinal August Hlond made a statement about Jews as freethinkers and vanguards of Bolshevism. Virtually every book on Polish-Jewish relations has since attacked him for it—all the while failing to inform the reader about the reality of what Hlond had been saying.

Quite a few of the authors describe their drift away from religion, and how this was true of Poland’s Jews in general. The author who calls herself Forget-Me-Not describes how she “got back” at God during the Sabbath. She would hide in in a corner, and light one match after another, based on the premise that lighting a fire on the Sabbath was the worst sin against God. (p. 126).

The Yiddishist (Bundist) movement was a major factor in the atheization of Poland’s Jews. This drew warnings from religious Jews. Author Esther quipped, “Polish books, they argued, didn’t have the direct power to make a Jew less pious, but Yiddish books, written by godless heretics, were filled with made-up stories that cast aspersions on innocent, pious Jews.” (p. 341).

Atheism became common among young Jews in general. Author Hanzi, while in a Tarbut Hebrew GYMNASIUM in Vilna (Wilno; Vilnius) told of being mocked by her classmates when they found out that she was religious. (p. 208).

Now consider Communism. Several of the authors described themselves as revolutionaries, or made other pro-Communist statements. Perhaps the most egregious example of this was A. Greyno, who sang the praises of the Soviet Union, saying [Get the air-sickness bags], “This is the Soviet Union, the only country in the world that belongs to the workers and peasants. The Soviet Union shows us, teaches us: See how people can and should live, when workers and peasants come to power!” Yeah, right. Ironic to Greyno, modern leftists now tell us that the USSR was never a worker’s state.

THE BIAS IN YIVO ARCHIVES

YIVO was a left-wing operation, and this also shows up in the editorial parts of this book. For instance, the editors repeat the falsehood that the ONR and Falanga were fascist. (p. xlix). They also mention the detention camp at Bereza Kartuska (where a dozen or so people died) while being silent on the Soviet Gulags (BTW, which were largely directed by Jews), and in which millions of people died.