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

Making Holocaust Memory. Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry Volume 20, by Gabriel Finder, Natalia Aleksiun, Antony Polonsky, and Jan Schwarz (eds.) 2008. Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, Oxford, Portland

Promoting Holocaust Supremacism: Attempts to Control Collective Memory

As with most volumes of the POLIN series, this one is a mile wide and an inch deep. It repeats things that have been said many times before, and there is the usual undercurrent of blame for Poland not falling more in line with Jewish ways of thinking. I focus on one issue.

COLLECTIVE MEMORY: ONGOING ATTEMPTS TO JUDAIZE POLAND’S EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM

Much of this book shows a thinly-veiled hostility to Polish patriotic traditions, especially to Poland’s so-called heroic narrative. For example, Robert Szuchta writes, “Widespead ‘Polonocentrism’ still reigns and dictates that Polish schools should mainly teach the heroic and martyrological past of the Polish nation and only subsequently discuss ethnic minorities. In this view, the current trend towards an introduction of Jewish history into the Polish school system is an attempt at indoctrinating Polish youth.” (p. 314).

Exactly.

THE JEWISH CHARACTER OF THE HOLOCAUST, AND HOLOCAUST SUPREMACY, ARE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS

Jonathan Huener also alludes to Poland’s heroic narrative as he writes, “Despite its appeal and effectiveness, this Polish-national martyrological paradigm was limiting, as it was difficult to reconcile with the element of Auschwitz history that would, in the years to follow, define the site of collective memory of most of the world, the Holocaust. Although the mass extermination of Jews was not denied in the public presentation of Auschwitz in the early post-war years, Jewish genocide was seldom upheld as a unique phenomenon.” (p. 154).

That’s just it! The Shoah is supposed to be above all other genocides. The Holocaust establishment is trying to force Poland to bow down to the Holocaust supremacism that dominates much of the western world. Polish achievements and Polish sufferings must step aside.

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POLAND’S SOVIET-IMPOSED COMMUNIST PUPPET GOVERNMENT CATERED TO THE JEWS

In recent years, there have been curious arguments advanced about the new Communist government not caring about justice for Jews, and about doing its best to facilitate the forgetting of Poland’s Nazi-German-murdered Jews. If anything, it was just the opposite. Gabriel N. Finder writes, “The Warsaw ghetto monument was unveiled on 19 April 1948, the fifth anniversary of the uprising, to full military honors before thousands of spectators, including Polish parliamentary officials and Jewish dignitaries from Israel and the Diaspora…Throngs of Jews from throughout Poland, including Zionist groups, waving banners emblazoned with the Star of David, attended the unveiling of the monument…Near the end of the ceremony several Jewish resistance fighters received military medals, including Mordechai Anielewicz posthumously.” (p. 14).

This pro-Jewish act of the Bierut puppet government was so obvious that even some Communists raised objections to it. Finder comments, “After the unveiling of the monument, Polish communists expressed their displeasure with its inscription because it made no reference to Poles. Soviet officials, too, were of the opinion that a Jewish monument should not precede a Polish one.” (p. 15).