Why Poland? Part 2: Commemorating Auschwitz (Introduction)

By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, April 18th, 2012
Concentration camp Auschwitz II Birkenau © Hynek Moravec | Wikimedia Commons

To skip this introduction and go directly to the full In-Depth Analysis, click here.

This is the second in a three part “In-Depth” post reflecting on the relationship between Jews and Poles in the relatively recent past, as I have observed this relationship over the last forty years. In the first part, I reflected upon the circumstances that led me to engage in Polish cultural and political life and upon my initial experiences during my research there in the 1970s. In this post, I address the conflicting collective memories of Poles and Jews, particularly as they worked to remember together in a ceremony marking the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz in August 1995.

I observed the event from a distance in New York, reading newspaper accounts from The New York Times and other foreign sources (from which the non-digitized quotes in the account are drawn). Viewing the event from the outside emphasized my ambiguous connection with the memory conflicts. As an American Jew, with many relatives who viewed this with little or no knowledge about the Communist experience, I understand their dismay about apparently insensitive things said and done by the Polish authorities. But as a scholar engaged in Polish affairs for much of my adult life, I realize how difficult it is to respectfully remember the Shoah when its existence was systematically underplayed, distorted and even silenced by the Communist authorities, and, in addition, when much of the Western world hasn’t recognized the degree of Polish suffering at the hands of the Nazis. I noted that even people of good will under these circumstances have great difficulty getting beyond their own limitations and reinforce misunderstandings and worse.

In my next “Why Poland?” post, I will explore what happened when all of this exploded out in the open, in controversies over Jan Gross’s book, Neighbors. It is a difficult book with a very difficult central finding, the Polish Catholics in a small Polish town, Jedwabne, killed their Jewish neighbors in mass, on their own, without Nazi direction. The . . .

Read more: Why Poland? Part 2: Commemorating Auschwitz (Introduction)

April 18th, 2012 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Why Poland? Part 2: Commemorating Auschwitz

By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, April 18th, 2012

The anger and recrim­ina­tions between Poles and Jews in the days leading up to the commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz threat­ened to over­shadow their shared commemora­tion of their common suffer­ing. Fundamental­ly conflicting memories led to offense and fed hatreds. For the Jews, the meaning of Auschwitz is summa­rized by the notion of the Holo­caust, the Shoah. It is the symbol of the project of Jewish annihilation. While it is clear that people of a vast array of ethnic, cultural, sexual, national and reli­gious back­grounds suffered in Auschwitz, the Jewish suffering has special signifi­cance. The death camps were con­structed to exterminate Jews. This was the culmination of Jewish persecution in Christian Europe.

Poles, that is, Polish Catho­lics, see things differ­ent­ly. Nearly twenty percent of the Polish population died during the war. Seventy five thou­sand Polish (Catholic) lives were lost in Auschwitz; a high per­cent­age of the survi­ving inmates of the camp were Polish. The memory of Polish losses is one of close experi­ence. From the Polish point of view, the inter­na­tion­al commun­ity has failed to recog­nize the depth and exten­sive­ness of Polish suffer­ing. For Jews and for many others in the West, the immensity of the Nazi crimes has been summarized by the figure six million, six million Jews from throughout Europe consumed by the Nazi death machine. In Poland, the number has been remembered in a different way: six million Poles killed during the war (half of whom were Jewish, but this conventionally is not noted).

It was with this background that the fiftieth anniver­sary of the liberation was marked. Many Jewish organi­zations and individuals found the Polish plans for the ceremony wanting, and many Poles viewed their objections with suspicion. The World Jewish Con­gress threat­ened to boycott the commemoration entirely. In its judgment, the Polish authorities were trying to trans­form the ceremo­nies into a Polish event. At times, the rhetorical con­flict over the planning of the event became very tough. Michel Fried­man, a leading Jewish spokes­man and member of the German Chris­tian Democratic Party, complained that equal represen­tation of Polish Christian and Jewish victims presented a gross misrepre­senta­tion of history. He declared: “If I recall the history precise­ly, I have to say that the . . .

Read more: Why Poland? Part 2: Commemorating Auschwitz

April 18th, 2012 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,