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32
FRIDAY, JANUARY 5, 1990
Poland Begins Seeking Ways
To End Bitterness With Jews
HELEN DAVIS
Foreign Correspondent
p
oles drink in anti-
Semitism with their
mothers' milk," ac-
cording to Yitzhak Shamir.
The Israeli Prime Minister,
who was born in Poland and
lost most of his family dur-
ing the Nazi firestorm,
should know.
With Poland and Israel
likely to resume diplomatic
relations early this year, it
was certainly an un-
diplomatic utterrance by
Israel's leader. But most
Jews would still support the
proposition that Poles and
anti-Semitism seem in-
divisible.
The view of Poland as an
accursed land soaked in
Jewish blood, has scarcely
been challenged since the
Holocaust.
Locked away behind the
Iron Curtain, Poland was
visited by few Jews. And
those who did visit concen-
trated on the sites of the
most horrifying milestone in
Jewish history. Most came
away convinced that Jews
must wash their hands of
Poland forever.
But that impulse is now
being challenged. Poland
has re-entered the communi-
ty of nations as a sovereign
state. And Jewish issues
were among the first items
on the new government's
crowded agenda: relations
with Israel and Diaspora
organizations, the Carmelite
convent at Auschwitz and
Polish anti-Semitism.
It is little wonder that
Shamir's remark outraged
those striving to promote
better Jewish-Polish rela-
tions.
The new Solidarity-led
Ministry of Education is
drawing up a curriculum for
teaching Jewish history and
the Holocaust in Polish
schools. Courses in Jewish
subjects are already
available, some taught by
Israeli and Diaspora lec-
turers. Hebrew and Yiddish
classes have waiting lists of
more than three years. And
Polish newspapers and
magazines now regularly
examine relations with
Israel and the Jews.
Poland and the Jews are
interacting once again. The
question is whether they
will overcome the hatred,
traumas and stereotypes
that poisoned the past and
continue to form attitudes
today.
Two dominant voices are
heard above the tumult.
The voice of mutual
recrimination and hatred
was raised during the
Auschwitz convent con-
troversy and in anti-Semitic
graffiti, jokes and sen-
timents which surfaced as
the Communists lost control.
In addition, intellectuals in
Poland and the West are ex-
ploring Polish-Jewish
history. But that purely
academic exercise has been
transformed into an attempt
to drain the swamp of bit-
terness that divides the two
peoples.
Professor Antony Polon-
sky, an international
historian at London Univer-
sity and president of the In-
stitute for Polish-Jewish
Studies at Oxford Univer-
sity, says that Jews cannot
simply write off Poland.
"Poland is vital to us,"
says the South African-born
Jew of Lithuanian ancestry.
Modern Jewish civilization,
he asserts, is grounded in
the history and culture of
"Polish Jewry" - meaning
the Ashkenazi communities
of Poland and its historic
eastern provinces of
Lithuania, Byelorussia and
the Ukraine.
By the end of the 18th cen-
tury, when Prussia, Russia
and Austria divided up the
Polish Lithuanian Com-
monwealth, an estimated 75
percent of world Jewry lived
within its borders.
"Today, an overwhelming
majority of Jews has its roots
in Polish Jewry," says
Polonsky. "When I visit
Poland I feel very much at
home. The food, the land-
scape, the concerns are all
somehow familiar. The con-
nections run very deep."
Jewish interest in Polish
Jewry is matched by that of
many non-Jewish Poles who
realize that their past
cannot be divorced from
Jewish history.
Dr. Wladyslaw T. Bar-
toszewski, an anthropologist
and historian at Oxford
University, says the first
stirrings of interest among
young Poles in things
Jewish was an act of de-