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

Wczoraj i Jutro: Biblia Narodowego Radykalizmu, by Jan Mosdorf. 1938, 2012. Capital Book, Warszawa

Jan Mosdorf: Dealing With the Jewish Problem in Pre-WWII Poland: Expulsion of Jews Recommended

YESTERDAY AND TODAY: THE BIBLE OF NATIONAL RADICALISM is the title of this work written by an ONR leader.

Author Jan Mosdorf was clearly a deep intellectual, and this is shown by the many philosophers with whom he interacts. He gets into the Bible, Aristotle, St. Thomas Aquinas, Karl Marx, etc., and cites Smith’s Homo oeconomicus and Freud’s Homo sexualis. (p. 184). I focus on Mosdorf’s proposals concerning the Jews.

This book is timely for a number of reasons. Nowadays, the Jews-can-do-no-wrong attitude is expansive. Everything once done to Jews, whether big or small, whether justified or unjustified, is vaguely connected to Nazism and the Holocaust. This serves to heighten the sense of Jews as perpetual victims, and serves to dilute German guilt for the Holocaust. It must be resisted.

The author frowns upon liberalism. We hear slogans about freedom, but this is not about freedom to be productive. It is about freedom to be exempt from duties. (p. 253).

NATIONALISM IS NOT FASCISM

Nowadays, leftists in academia and media automatically equate nationalism with fascism. In addition, and as mentioned, history is made to run backward, and any opposition to Jews is automatically connected to Nazism and the eventual German-made Holocaust. Lewaks (Polish leftists) have a field day in trying to equate the ONR with fascism and Nazism. Let us set the record straight.

At no time does Mosdorf ever praise either Italian Fascism or German Nazism. And, when advocating measures to rein-in the privileges of Jews of Poland, Mosdorf never once calls on Poles to emulate the anti-Jewish policies of next-door Nazi Germany.

Alluding to Nazism, Mosdorf rejects biological nationalism and pagan nationalism. (p. 150). He notes the conflict that German Catholics have with regards to their loyalty to Nazism. (p. 151).

Whenever Mosdorf mentions fascism, it is in a decidedly negative manner. He considers fascism snobbish (p. 222), and calls Stalin a fascist. (p. 59). Finally, he explicitly warns Poles against aping foreign movements, specifically any form of fascism or Nazism. (p. 172).

THE JEWS

Mosdorf quotes Roman Dmowski, who faulted Poles for their passivity. (p. 63). Mosdorf also praises Dmowski as one who made Poles less naïve about Jews than they had been for centuries. (p. 143). However, he does not blame everything on the Jews: He notes the fact that too much of Polish industry is foreign-owned, and not just Jewish-owned. (p. 216). So much for the Jewish scapegoat narrative.

Jews only cared about making a profit. During the days of the PROPINACJA (liquor dealing), Jews forced Polish peasants into drunkenness. (p. 97). Mosdorf frowns on the past practice of easily ennobling Jews, a process that was much more difficult for Polish peasants. (pp. 179-180).

THE JEWISH MIDDLEMAN

A disproportionate fraction of Jews is wealthy, but even poor Jews, which are commonly middlemen, are a burden on Poland. He quotes Stachniuk, who estimated that Poland has more than 150,000 middlemen than she needs. This is especially acute in the Kresy. (pp. 243-244). An unhealthy economy exists that is shackled by credit. (p. 244). Mosdorf also complains that British and American Jews keep Poland’s Jews afloat (p. 244), and that existing Polish laws favor the Jewish economic hegemony. Jews do financial speculation, and this is associated with corruption. (p. 228). For more on the Jewish middleman, see:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2026/08/07/poland-too-subservient-jewish-middleman-gone-jews-must-emigrate/

THE ONR DID NOT OPPOSE ALL OF POLAND’S MINORITIES. BUT JEWS ARE PERPETUAL FOREIGNERS, AND MUST BE EXPELLED

Nowadays, the ruling buzzwords are tolerance, diversity, and inclusion. Nationalism is automatically faulted for being anti-minority. In actuality, the ONR accepted Poland’s Belarussians and Ukrainians, and Mosdorf suggested that these peoples can contribute to Poland in much the same way that the Scottish peoples contributed to Great Britain. (pp. 258-259).

Not so with the Jews. They are incurable perpetual foreigners. (p. 259). Nor is this view limited to the Endeks and the ONR. For a candid Jewish view of Jewish self-imposed apartheid in Poland, see:

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

Pressures on Jews to emigrate exist, but the process is far too slow. Mosdorf figures that, at most, 1.5 million Jews could emigrate in the next 15 years, all the while many more Poles will be seeking employment, thus leading to greater poverty. (p. 245).

Mosdorf does not beat around the bush. He advocates the complete expulsion of Jews. (p. 259, 279). Note that this does not make the ONR “Nazi”, any more than the scores of nations that had expelled their Jews, in centuries past, were thereby “Nazi”.