SHOAH Lanzmann Polonophobia Confronted Shahak

Life of Death: An Exchange, by Israel Shahak. 1987

Iconoclasm of Lanzmann’s SHOAH: Jewish Polonophobia Confronted By a Courageous Polish Jew (a Holocaust Survivor and Subsequent Israeli Human Rights Activist)

The article in question, “The Life of Death: An Exchange”, is published in THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS (volume 34, number 1, pp. 45-49), which is dated January 29, 1987. Author Israel Shahak, unlike historian Garton Ash and Claude Lanzmann, actually went through the Holocaust and Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Shahak later emigrated to Israel and became a human-rights activist.

CONFRONTING CLAUDE LANZMANN AND HIS POLONOPHOBIA

Shahak tells it like it was. He takes Lanzmann’s SHOAH to task as he comments: “Lanzmann simply heard what he wanted to hear, that Poles are such and such and that Jews are a chosen people whose behavior should not be investigated.” (p. 45).

THE POLONOPHOBIC MEME OF THE CAROUSEL ON KRASINSKI SQUARE (CAMPO DI FIORI)

One common theme of Holocaust materials is the portrayal of Poles enjoying themselves (such as going on the carousel while the Warsaw Ghetto burned nearby), and that this implies a hostility or disrespect towards Jewish suffering. It does no such thing.

Israel Shahak points out that living a semblance of normalcy during tragic times is done by all peoples, including the Jews. For instance, in the Warsaw Ghetto in late 1942, after most of the Jews had already been deported to their deaths, “…the pitifully small residue of the Ghetto that remained also returned to some level of `normalcy’ with some entertainment and card-playing or other kinds of parties.” (p. 45).

POLISH DENOUNCERS AND COLLABORATORS JUST LIKE JEWISH DENOUNCERS AND COLLABORATORS

Shahak puts the Polish blue police (POLICJA GRANATOWA), some of whom collaborated with the Nazis in the identification of fugitive Jews, and the szmalcowniki (Polish blackmailers), in perspective. He writes: “But who of the Jewish survivors does not know (and certainly Garton Ash should know) that there were also Jewish blackmailers, some of them even quite famous by name, outside the ghetto, who were neither better nor worse than the Polish ones, and also Jewish policemen in the Ghetto whose duty in the first weeks of the extermination of summer 1942 was to deliver, each of them, a specified number, Jewish victims to `be sent’ to extermination.” (p. 46).

THE POLISH BETRAYALS OF FUGITIVE JEWS IN CONTEXT

The author also alludes to the desperate circumstances that encouraged Poles to resort to making money by blackmailing fugitive Jews, and the marginalization of these szmalcowniks in Polish society. He came across a conversation of hungry Polish workers. One of them mentioned the large sums of money made by the extortionists. When asked if he would do it, another Pole replied that he couldn’t do it because he could not then look himself in the mirror. (p. 47).

DO NOT CONFUSE POLISH ENDEKS WITH GERMAN NAZIS

The desire of many Poles for a Jewish-reduced or even Jewish-free Poland should in no way be equated with Nazi German attitudes and policies, as noted by Shahak: “Can one, even when condemning `a solution of emigration’ for `a problem’ of ANY human group, as I do, and as I presume Garton Ash does, do a sort of `quantum jump’ and make a necessary connection between such an attitude, however wrong, and a tendency to approve or to participate in a mass murder?” (p. 46).

POLES CHEERING AT JEWISH DEATHS?

This Polonophobic meme was especially driven home by Schindler’s List (Swindler’s List), seen by over 120 million Americans), in the form of Poles throwing mud at the soon-to-die Jews, and a Polish girl giving the Jews a sarcastic farewell. [Resee the scene on YouTube].

Shahak did come across some Poles who verbalized approval of Jewish deaths, yet added: “But in justice it should be pointed out that on many, perhaps most, of those occasions, there was also a verbal opposition to such a statement.” (p. 47). Shahak also describes his eyewitness account of a certain outspoken Pole who said that he wanted to help erect a statue to Hitler in Warsaw in gratitude for the freeing of Poland from the Jews. Left out in many accounts is the reaction of the Polish crowd. They were silent, except for one Pole, who thus spoke up: “‘Fear God, Sir! They are human beings too!'” (p. 47).

Finally, individuals who express satisfaction at the deaths of others are not limited to any one nationality, as Shahak notes: “…I heard completely similar statements made by Israeli Jews in the summer of 1982, when again a minority (but a greater one I am sure than in the conquered Poland of 1943) expressed delight in every report of the death of Palestinians and Lebanese.” (p. 47).

DO NOT BLAME EVERYTHING ON CHRISTIANITY

Shahak takes an excursion into medieval Jewish-Christian relations. He notes that Jews were never persecuted nearly as severely by the Church as were heretics, witches, etc. (p. 47). He also finds uncomfortable parallels of the past forced ghettoization of the Jews in Christian Europe with the calls of certain Orthodox rabbis, in modern Israel, for non-Jews to be forbidden to sell or rent properties to Jews, or even to be allowed to live in Israel at all (especially in the case of Christians). (p. 47).

HOLOCAUST SUPREMACISM REPUDIATED

Finally, Shahak rejects the premise that the Holocaust was unique. He compares it with several other genocides in the past. He also realizes that, had the Germans won the war, the Slavs would’ve faced a fate similar to that of the Jews. (p. 48).

CONCLUSION

I wish that there was more Jews like the late Israel Shahak. The course of Polish-Jewish relations would be completely different.