Polish-Jewish Relations: 1,300 Keyword-Phrase-Indexed Book Reviews (by Jan Peczkis)

The Legacy of Polish Jewry 1919-1939, by Harry Rabinowicz. 1965

The Untruth of Overall Jewish Poverty. Jewish Apartheid Self-Imposed. Proffered Civil Rights a Hindrance To, Not a Condition For, Jewish Assimilation. JUDENRAT Collaborationists Morally Responsible

In common with all too many books of this genre, Rabinowicz dwells on (what else?) Polish anti-Semitism. Yet in spite of himself, he makes some interesting points.

JEWISH SELF-IMPOSED APARTHEID: WHY POLES RECOGNIZED JEWS AS THE “OTHER”

Rabinowicz is unambiguously clear as he writes, “Despite a continuous history of nearly ten centuries, the Jews were isolated from their fellow-citizens by religion, by culture, by language, even by dress. The Polish Jew had his own educational system, his own communal organization, his own youth movements, his press, theater, his party politics…Not only were there invisible walls between Jew and Pole, but there were even barriers between Jew and Jew. On the one side were the ultra-Orthodox Chassidim; on the other side were the Bundists who substituted Das Kapital of Karl Marx for the Torah of Moses.”(p. 148). (Parenthetically, this confirms that the Bund, a mainstream Jewish socialist political party, overlapped significantly with Communism.)

The Jews’ hostility to Poland was not only passive. Israel Zangwill, for instance, referred to Poles as “beggars on horseback”. (p. 183).

Bundists were not the only anti-assimilationists. So were many leading Zionists, notably Max Nordau:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/antiassimilationist-jewish-advocacy-nordau/

JEWS ACTUALLY PREFERRED TO PROTECT THEIR SEPARATISM THAN TO ACCEPT FULL CIVIL RIGHTS WITH POLES!

There is a common belief that Poles forced Jews into ghettos, when in actuality it was the WWII German conquerors who walled off the Jews. Prewar Jewish isolation was actually nonphysical in nature and self-imposed in origin. Thus, Rabinowicz describes this Jewish self-segregation, “Although there were no specific ghettos, the Jews invariably clustered together, building their fragile defenses against menacing neighbors. Differences of morals and mores set them apart from their non-Jewish neighbors and they fought to preserve their identity. IN GENERAL, THEY WERE DETERMINED NOT TO PURCHASE CIVIC EQUALITY AT THE PRICE OF ASSIMILATION…” (p. 11; Emphasis Added).

This is counterintuitive, to say the least! We are usually given the excuse that Poland was too “hyper-Catholic” for Jews to assimilate to, and that Jews did not want to assimilate as long as they were denied full equality with gentiles. Rabinowicz makes it clear that it was the other way around, and that the anti-assimilationist Jews (the majority) wanted to keep it that way.

For further confirmation of the fact that Jews wanted to live in self-imposed apartheid rather than accepting proffered civil rights and assimilation, see:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/jewish-civil-rights-spurned-for-jewish-separatism-biale/

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/jewish-civil-rights-spurned-for-jewish-separatism-heschel/

JEWS AND COMMUNISM

Rabinowicz (p. 43) attempts to discount the Zydokomuna by citing estimates of no more than 10% of 1918-era Jews being Bolsheviks. But this percentage is many times that of the corresponding Polish percentage, and it does not factor the many Jews in influential positions in Communism that came out of this 10%.

THE JEWISH ECONOMIC HEGEMONY OVER POLAND: AN IDEA OF ITS SCALE

The reader may understand why Poles sought to limit Jewish influence, through formal and informal discriminatory policies, once one remembers the competition for scarce opportunities in poverty-stricken Poland combined with the very lopsided Jewish presence in many fields of endeavor. At 10% of the population, Jews constituted a staggering 74% of those engaged in trade and commerce (p. 70). Also, according to Rabinowicz, “Some trades, such as grain and timber, were almost exclusively developed by Jews. Jews supplied 40 percent of all shoemakers, 35 percent of all bakers, more than 33 percent of all glaziers and 75 percent of all barbers. They controlled 95.6 percent of all the leather and fur industries, 25 percent of the metallurgical and chemical works, and 40 per cent of the printing industry.”(p. 67). Just before WWII, Jews accounted for 53% of all lawyers (p. 76) and a declining range of 55.5 percent through 35.8 percent of all physicians (p. 75). In the early 1920’s, before the numerus clausus, 24.6 percent of all university students were Jews, and the percentage was much higher in some departments. Using modern parlance, formal Polish discriminatory policies (e. g., the numerus clausus, state monopolies, etc.) can be thought of as manifestations of affirmative action, designed less to constrain the Jews than to expand the opportunities for Poles in Jewish-dominated fields. This can also be applied to informal discriminatory polices (e. g., economic boycotts), which can be framed in terms of “Support your fellow Polish merchant” rather than “Don’t buy from a Jewish merchant.”

THE 1937 SCHECHITA LAW IN POLAND WAS NOT DIRECTED AT JEWISH RELIGION

Rabinowicz (p. 179) sees government-sponsored anti-schechitah legislation, ostensibly for the humane slaughter of animals, as being actually motivated by the desire to reduce the degree of Jewish dominance of the meat and cattle trade. However, it is interesting to note that the method pressed by the Polish government (stunning of animals before cutting their throats) is the very procedure that is almost universally used today by developed nations.

YES, JEWISH-NAZI COLLABORATORS CAN BE RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR ACTIONS

Rabinowicz quotes Rabbi Samuel Solomon and his denunciations of WWII Jewish collaborators: “‘Whoever treads the lintels of the Judenrat [the Jewish council appointed by the Nazis],’ he warned, ‘will forfeit both worlds, for they are aiding the Nazis in the extermination of the Jews.'”(p. 140).