1930s Poland AntiJewish Discrimination Necessary Steven

The Poles, by Stewart Steven. 1983

Polish Jewish-Restricting 1930s Policies Clarified: Boycotts, Discrimination, Numerus Clausus at Universities. Dmowski Never Said Remove All Jews. Left-Wing Mythology Unmasked

Like Norman Davies, Steven is an Englishman who is married to a Polish woman. Unlike Norman Davies, Steven is not a historian. He is a journalist. Nevertheless, he packs in a great deal of Polish history into one volume, supported by a comprehensive bibliography.

Steven begins with a brief overview of early Polish history. He then (p. 276) discusses the 1920 Polish-Soviet war. He quotes D’Abernon, who called the Battle of Warsaw (referred to by Poles as “The Miracle on the Vistula”) the eighteenth most decisive battle in the history of the world.

THE 1930s POLISH POLICIES DISCRIMINATING AGAINST JEWS WERE DONE ONLY TO REDUCE JEWISH ECONOMIC HEGEMONY, NOT TO CAUSE GRATUITOUS MISERY TO JEWS

In contrast to the usual one-sided portrayal of Poland’s treatment of her prewar Jews, Steven provides some balance: “In the depression years as Poles sought to discriminate against Jews in an attempt to alleviate Polish poverty and unemployment, so did Jews discriminate against Poles. They did business only with each other, employing only other coreligionists. As one Israeli friend born and brought up in Krakow told me, ‘It is true that the Poles did have the government on their side, which sometimes made things difficult for us. On the other hand, we had tradition on our side. In the big cities Jews tended to have significant trading advantages for the simple reason that they had been at it longer…It is also true that though my father was assimilated, all the executives in his factory and ninety percent of his workers were Jewish.’”(pp. 313-314).

What Stewart Steven does not mention is that, having constructed their economic hegemony over then foreign-ruled Poland in the 19th century, Jews commonly engaged in the foregoing-cited practices to ward off nascent Polish competition and thus to protect their hegemony. The much-discussed Polish boycotts, designed to alleviate this hegemony, did not come until later.

DMOWSKI DID NOT CALL FOR THE EXPULSION OF ALL OF POLAND’S JEWS

Steven (p. 312) recognizes the fact that Roman Dmowski called for a reduction of Poland’s Jews, by emigration, from 10% to about 2% of the general population, not the complete removal of all Jews.

DEMYSTIFYING THE NUMERUS CLAUSUS

The numerus clausus did not attempt to bar all Jews from prewar Polish universities. It only restricted them to the same percentage (10%) as in the general population (p. 313). There is even room for irony in Steven’s thinking: “And among Jews, few remarks are more calculated to earn one lasting enmity than to suggest, as I once did, that an anti-Semitic Pole is likely to be friendlier to the Jews than a pro-Israeli Englishman.”(p. 310).

POLAND GETS THE LAST LAUGH FOR HER PERFORMANCE IN THE 1939 WAR

Steven recounts the historical come-uppance against the performance of the Polish Army in September-October 1939:”At the time the Poles were given little credit for their conduct in defense of their homeland…The British Army’s Chief General Ironside summed up this view when he said to the head of the British Military Mission in Warsaw: ’Your Poles haven’t put up much of the show, have they?’…It took the Germans, with help from the Russians, thirty-five days to conquer Poland, and thirty-five days to sweep the floor with Holland, Belgium, France, and a formidable British Army. The Poles seem to have put up a pretty good ‘show’ after all.”(pp. 287-288).

THE POLOKAUST GIVEN DUE CREDIT

In stark contrast to nearly all modern Holocaust materials, Steven recognizes the fact that Poles were victims of genocide in WWII: “When the Germans completed their conquest of Poland, their first target for extermination was not the Jews at all, but the Polish intellectuals…Contrary to what I imagine that 99.9 percent of the world believes, Auschwitz was originally built to house and murder Poles and not Jews. Riechsfuehrer-SS Himmler’s ‘General Eastern Plan’ allowed for the virtual extermination of the Polish nation once the war was won, and he began on this policy the moment Poland was occupied, leaving the fate of European Jewry far less sharply defined, at least during those early stages.”(p. 317).

LEFT-WING MYTHOLOGY EXPOSED

Steven unmasks the common myth of Communism being a working-class movement: “Lenin was absolutely opposed to creating a mass movement…His Party would be a tight group of people at the vanguard of revolution, not tagging along behind…the Party with its ‘correct’ theoretical consciousness embodies the proletarian consciousness, irrespective of what the real, empirical proletariat may think about itself or about the Party. The Party knows what is in the ‘historical’ interest of the proletariat, and what the latter’s authentic consciousness ought to be at any particular moment…”(p. 17).

This fact is also true of other left-wing movements. For instance, feminists portray themselves as a “women’s movement.” What they actually are is a set of “enlightened” ideologues who arrogate to themselves the wisdom of knowing what is best for women (for example, unrestricted abortion rights, and working outside the home instead of being “just housewives”), regardless of what most women actually think or want.

REPRESSION IS PART AND PARCEL OF MARXISM

Steven also deftly demolishes the myth of Communist totalitarianism being only a temporary phase: “The mistake made by many liberals in the West—but not by many people in Poland—is to consider that the modern practice of Communism is an aberration of the teachings of Marx and Lenin, which had been perverted by Stalin. If the socialist countries could get back to first principles, then all would be well. In fact, experience shows the contrary to be true—that repression is the sworn handmaiden of Communism.”(p. 18).