Journalism and Jews Hamerow

Remembering a Vanished World: A Jewish Childhood in Interwar Poland, by Theodore S. Hamerow. 2001

Crushing Peasant Poverty Explains Polish “Greed” For Post-Jewish Properties. Why Jewish Influence on Polish Culture Was Seen as Harmful

Although Hamerow left Poland when he was ten years old, he manages to recreate pre-Holocaust Poland through the experiences of quite a few older Holocaust-surviving relatives. Both of his parents were involved on the Yiddish stage. (pp. 66-67, 82). This, in addition to the frequent travels of his parents, provides a unique perspective on the Jewish community in prewar Poland.

POLISH ACQUISITION OF JEWISH AND POST-JEWISH PROPERTY

Recently, Jan T. Gross and his neo-Stalinist colleagues have blamed (what else?) Polish “greed and anti-Semitism” for their acquisitions of post-Jewish properties in the wake of the German-made Holocaust. Hamerow’s experience, though occurring before the war, sheds true light on Polish motives. An electrical fire had destroyed the opulent family home, and valuables were strewn all around. He comments (quote) The sight of household furnishings, kitchen utensils, articles of clothing, and wall ornaments and decorations lying about on the ground unattended was too much of a temptation. Hungry and impoverished, they [Polish peasants] began to grab whatever they could. And who can blame them? To them, the fire was a stroke of good luck, almost a godsend. (unquote)(p. 148). Of course, during and after the war, Polish hunger and poverty were even more acute.

ASSIMILATED POLISH JEWS WERE UNCOMMON, MARGINALIZED AMONG POLES, AND EVEN MORE MARGINALIZED AMONG JEWS

The author elaborates on the many different strains of Judaism then current in Poland. He considers the assimilationists a small, fringe group–one that carried even less weight among the Jews than among the Poles. (p. 11).

THE SELF-ATHEIZATION OF POLAND’S JEWS: CARDINAL HLOND WAS RIGHT

Although Hamerow does not mention Polish Cardinal August Hlond and his much-quoted and much-condemned 1936 statement on “Jews as freethinkers” and a threat to morals, he does present information that makes it possible for the reader to see where Hlond was coming from.

Poland’s Jewish community was undergoing an incremental abandonment of religion. Hamerow writes, (quote) That conflict had begun much earlier, during the 1880’s, and had then continued with increasing vehemence until 1939. It was a result of the gradual decline of the religious faith that had served as the unifying cultural force of East European Jewry. And that decline in turn led to a quest for some alternate central principal or belief that could serve as the foundation for a new sense of community. (unquote)(p. 4).

Hamerow adds that, (quote) For that matter, those pious rites and ceremonials which continued to be observed increasingly reflected habit and custom rather than any profound religious faith. (unquote)(p. 12). Hamerow’s family largely consisted of freethinkers (Hamerow’s term), and they observed the Passover SEDER as a family and community tradition, devoid of even a nominal belief in God. (p. 113).

As for breakdown in morals in the Jewish community, Hamerow cites this as an outcome of the severance of traditional ties as Jews moved to large cities. (p. 5). He adds that (quote) The big cities of eastern Europe became a breeding ground for Jewish pickpockets, burglars, extortionists, prostitutes, and pimps. The pious and respectable preferred to look the other way, to pretend that the problem of mass demoralization did not really exist. (unquote)(p. 7).

THE ABANDONMENT OF MORALITY IN YIDDISH THEATER: IMPLICATIONS FOR JEWISH JOURNALISM AND OTHER FORMS OF JEWISH INFLUENCE ON SOCIETY AT LARGE

The author inadvertently clarifies those Endek writers who had criticized the indecent, morality-mocking, and anti-religious tendencies of popular Jewish entertainment. Hamerow refers to itinerant groups of players, storytellers, musicians, and dancers, as he comments, (quote) Indeed, in the Jewish communities of Poland such wandering companies of entertainers continued to appear before lower-class audiences until the outbreak of the Second World War. They would present funny sketches, tell off-color jokes, perform vaudeville acts, and do risqué parodies for a public whose daily life rarely provided an opportunity for amusement. Without realizing it, they became pioneers of the Yiddish theater, continuing to the end to provide a sizable part of its standard repertoire. The entertainment offered by these migrant players would typically include some irreverent scenes poking fun at the pious and respectable. (unquote)(pp. 14-15).

Endek complaints about frequent sexual licentiousness, among Jewish entertainers, also have some basis in fact. This is what happened when Hamerow’s mother wanted to be united with his eventual father, (quote) There she found out where my father was staying, went there, and offered to share his life on the basis of “free love”, without the restricting bonds of formal marriage. My father was taken aback. Not that unconventional unions of that sort were unusual in the world of the Yiddish theater. Far from it. (unquote)(p. 60).

POLISH ANTI-SEMITISM AND JEWISH POLONOPHOBIA

The hostility that the boy Hamerow experienced from Poles was verbal in nature. Interestingly, he, a high-class Jew, feared getting beaten up not by Polish boys but by low-class Orthodox Jewish boys. (p. 116).

Pointedly, Hamerow realizes that accounts of impending Polish malevolent acts against Jews were not necessarily factual. Consider, for example, the rumor of a group of fifty Polish boys organizing to kill some Jewish boys. It could have been the tale concocted by a Jew with a vivid imagination and craving for attention. (pp. 129-130). How many other Polonophobic tall tales, though written down as facts, have similar origins?

The prejudices Poles had against Jews were mirrored by Jew-on-Jew prejudices. For instance, Jews from Wilno [Vilnius, Vilna], derisively called Litvaks (Litwaks), included Hamerow’s own father, and were not seen favorably by Jews from central Poland. (p. 60). Other prejudices are obvious in the thinking of Hamerow’s grandmother, who preferred to move back to Poland rather than remain in Germany, as described by Hamerow: (quote) The poor woman found Berlin even less to her liking than Warsaw. At least in Warsaw there were Jews, even if they did speak a funny Yiddish and you had to watch your purse when dealing with them. At least in Poland there were in-laws, even if they were uppity and stuck-up. (unquote)(p. 74). Jews, when heatedly arguing with other Jews, would refer to such things as Jewish hooknoses, Jewish greed, and Jewish unscrupulousness–if only because they were internalizing the anti-Semitism around them. (pp. 141-142).

The author realizes that Polish-Jewish prejudices fully went both ways, as he comments, (quote) Hostility bred hostility; prejudice on one side fostered prejudice on the other. Many Jews regarded the Poles with the same resentment which many Poles displayed toward the Jews. This resentment was partly rooted in religious exclusiveness or intolerance. (unquote)(p. 135).

Hamerow provides a brief lexicon of unflattering Jewish epithets about non-Jews: (Quote) Ethnic prejudice could be found just as easily in Yiddish, the everyday language of the Jewish masses. The word “GOY”, for example, meant more than a gentile. It carried overtones of ignorance, vulgarity, dissipation, and mindless pugnacity. To describe a Pole who did not conform to this stereotype, some modifying adjective would generally be added. That is, so-and-so was a “decent goy” or an “educated goy”…Similarly, “SHIKSE” had implications extending beyond its literal meaning of a young woman who was not Jewish. It carried a suggestion of immodesty or coarseness, even promiscuity…By the same token, “SHEGETZ” meant more than simply a boy who happened to be a gentile. It also had connotations of rudeness, belligerence, and dissipation…Polish-Jewish hostility was thus as common in daily speech as in daily conduct. (unquote)(p. 136).

These epithets came into play in Hamerow’s experience. His free-spirited grandmother was excoriated by a delegation of rabbis for riding her bicycle, in shorts, in a religious-Jewish neighborhood on the Sabbath. Such behavior was expected from shameless SHIKSES, but was totally unbecoming of a Jew. (p. 97). Likewise, Hamerow, if known by Hasidic boys, would be considered by them as worse than a SHEGETZ. After all, a SHEGETZ was born in the wrong religion, and was not fortunate enough to know the true one. Hamerow was Jewish, but had turned himself into a renegade. (pp. 155-156).

Religious Jews thought themselves, and Jews in general, too elevated to be caught up in gentile vices such as sexual misconduct. (p. 37). When a Pole got drunk, it only accentuated his base instincts: When a Hasid got drunk, it only furthered his religious ecstasy. (p. 156).

OPEN JEWISH DISLOYALTY TO POLAND

Sometimes, Jews openly attacked the Polish nation that had hosted them for so many centuries. Hamerow remembers Jewish pupils at his school singing a mockery of Poland’s National Anthem. They twisted the lyrics into “Poland is not yet lost,/But it soon will be”. (p. 136)