Undemonizing Dmowski Phillips

The New Poland, by Charles Phillips. 1923

Undemonizing Dmowski: Seldom-Told Facts About the 1912 Duma Elections. Judeopolonia. Jewish Disloyalty in the 1920 War

The author had been a member of the American Red Cross Commission to Poland. Every imaginable aspect of Polish life is featured in detail in this volume: History, details of Poland’s exploitation and WWI-era devastation, lore, music, the then-new Scouting movement, struggles for freedom, education, politics, women in Polish life, geography, religion, saints, national habits, fascinating facts, and much more. Did you know, for instance, that storks and windmills were common in Poland as well as Holland? (p. 233).

Charles Phillips comments on Polish theater: “Never have I seen the Jew ridiculed or offended on the Polish stage.” (p. 210). Phillips has a way with metaphors: Piotr Skarga had been the Polish Savonarola (p. 23), and Juliusz Slowacki had been the Polish Shelley. (p. 324).

JEWISH ECONOMIC HEGEMONY AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

Economics has long divided Polish Jews and gentiles: “The first trade of the Jew in Poland was the slave trade. Money lending and the subleasing of State revenues next developed…then tavern-keeping and the liquor traffic, which became in time almost exclusively a Jewish business; finally, a general trading and brokerage in all commodities…Money-lending, in the days when such business knew no regulations and the profits were unlimited, naturally led to extortion and usury; and out of it all grew inevitably that bitter feeling which such trade always engenders between lender and borrower–in this case between Jew and Pole.” (p. 288).

UNDEMONIZING DMOWSKI: JUDEOPOLONIA (A JEWISH TERM), THE 1912 DUMA ELECTIONS, AND THE ENSUING BOYCOTT

Dmowski’s 1912 anti-Jewish boycott (see next two paragraphs) is nowadays presented without proper context, and always in a blame-everything-on-Poles approach. Phillips, by contrast, understands the crucial nature of Polish representation in the Duma [Russian parliament]: “But then had come the Russo-Japanese war and the establishment of the Duma, with Poles sharing in the newly-won constitutional privileges of the Empire. These privileges, extremely limited though they were, had revived the political impulse of the Pole.” (p. 52). “But Russia still feared the subject State. Within two years, practically all the blood-bought concessions of 1905 had been repudiated. Poland’s Duma delegation of thirty-four was reduced to twelve…” (p. 101).

Continuing this theme, Phillips elaborates on the overt Jewish separatism as follows: “The newcomers, especially those from Lithuania and Russia, the `Litwaki” [Litvaks], brought with them as counteractants against assimilation not only a rigorist Talmudism…but they added the embittering factor of political Judaism, which they immediately backed up with the foundation of the Jewish Press…It was at this period that the Poles, now literally inundated with the Jewish flood, heard perhaps for the first time the cry of `Polish Judea’ raised in their midst. `Judeo-Polonia!’–Poland was henceforth to be Zion…The Rabbinical extremists welcomed this new political strength…The Jewish masses, wholly ignorant except for their Talmudic training, fell completely under the spell of the new `Judeo-Polonia’ [Judeopolonia] power, which spoke so efficaciously to them in terms of political ambition that by 1912, in the election for the Russian Duma, the Jews of Warsaw–40 percent of the city’s population–were able to secure majority enough to send their own representative to the Assembly at Petrograd as the spokesman for the Polish capital. If he had been simply a Jew–that is, if he had been merely a Polish citizen of the Mosaic religion–it would have been one thing. But he was a radical internationalist socialist, pledged to every policy and ideal abhorrent to Poland and to democracy. The complete cleavage of Pole and Jew dates from this time.”

It was then that Dmowski launched his much-condemned boycotts of Jews. Phillips sees the 1912 decision as not so much a boycott as “a protest of the Poles against political Zionism” (p. 305), and continuation of the positive goal whose end had been the economic emancipation of Poles: “The co-operative movement in Poland did not owe its origin to anti-Jewish politics, but was a natural outgrowth of the country’s agricultural and economic progress. The realization among Poles that Jewish trade was becoming a dangerous monopoly did, however, give enormous impetus to the idea….” (p. 305).

THE MINORITIES TREATY WOULD HAVE LOCKED JEWS IN MEDIEVAL-STYLE ISOLATION

Polish resentment of the Minorities Treaty stemmed in part because it had been forced on them. (p. 64). Ironically, had it been fully implemented, it would have backfired on the Jews. Phillips quips: “He [the Polish Jew] cannot, in fact, afford even to take advantage of the artificial rights and special privileges allowed him in the Minorities Treaty if he desires to progress.” (p. 304).

JEWISH DISLOYALTY TO POLAND IN THE 1920 POLISH-BOLSHEVIK WAR

The Zydokomuna (Jewish-Soviet collaboration) has long alienated Poles from Jews. “`While it does not follow that all Jews are Bolsheviks’, says deputy Armand Libermann, a Jewish member of the Polish Sejm [Parliament], `the fact remains that a large number of Jews play a dominant role in the Communist movement.'” (p. 296). “At Kielce, three hundred Jewish youths marched through the streets shouting `Viva Lenin! Viva Trotsky! Down with Poland!'” (pp. 297-298). During the 1920 Polish-Soviet War: “Though Jewish individuals often suffered bitterly for their misplaced confidence in Trotsky’s hordes, on the other hand, in innumerable cases–in the generality of cases–Jews were rewarded with power and became active workers of the Red regime. Jewish commissars in the Bolshevik armies were quick to find their own in the invaded towns…” (p. 297).
Author Phillips notes armed local Jews fighting on behalf of the Soviets at places such as Hrubieszow, Siedlice, Wlodawa, Bialystok, Minsk, and Vilna [Wilno, Vilnius]. (pp. 297-299). Members of the Danish legation made a sworn statement in which they affirmed seeing Jews firing on Polish troops at a railway station in Wilno. (p. 299). The ensuing Polish execution of the Jews responsible was then misrepresented as a pogrom.

General Jozef Haller organized the “Miracle Army” and threw it against the 1920 Bolsheviks. (p. 166). With Warsaw surrounded, Father Ignatius Skorupka, a volunteer chaplain, rallied and inspired the discouraged Polish troops at suburban Radzymin, reversed the Red advance, and gave his life. (pp. 223-225). Poland was saved.

GERMAN SUPREMACISM AND GERMAN POLONOPHOBIA

“For ten centuries the German has pressed eastward; for ten centuries the Pole has held his ground.” (p. 11). Phillips believes that German putdowns of Poles (e. g., Polnische wirtschaft, Polish `racial femininity’, Polish `incapacity of self-government’) are actually German envy of the fact that they could never subjugate, Germanize, or exterminate the Poles. (p. 312).

THE POLISH-UKRAINIAN WAR, 1918-1919

The 1918 Ukrainian separatist war in eastern Galicia had been a German-paid and Austrian-paid anti-Polish intrigue (p. 57, 327-328). It had minimal support among the local Ruthenian (Ukrainian) population. (p. 328). After the Ukrainian separatists had seized Lwow, the local Poles organized an army of 6,000 volunteers, including many women, in a matter of hours, and took their city back. (pp. 149-151).