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

Moral Philosophy and the Holocaust, edited by Eve Garrand and Geoffrey Scarre. 2003. Ashgate Publishing, Hunts, U. K.

Kielce Pogrom: Its Kidnap Had a Real Basis in Fact

According to the prejudicial standard narrative on the Kielce Pogrom, the Poles, steeped in medieval superstition, imagined the truth of rumors (or statements made by agent provocateurs) that the Blaszczak boy had been kidnapped by Jews. It turns out that such things really happened, and the Kielce Pogrom: Its Kidnap were not the imaginations of Poles.

In elaborating on the postwar period, author Daniel Statman writes, “This, I believe, is evident from the fact that most of the Gentile parents handed the children to the various Jewish agents voluntarily. Only in a small minority of the cases were they forced to do so by threats, deceit, legal measures, or, in very rare cases, actual kidnapping.” (p. 187. Emphasis in original).

So here is a clear admission that Jews indeed had used force (including kidnapping) to take children from Poles that they considered to be rightfully theirs. Statman’s statement also affirms the fact that, contrary to the usual Polonophobic Holocaust lore, Poles were typically willing to give back to the returning Jews what was rightfully Jewish.

For more on the postwar child custody battles between Poles and Jews, which validated Polish fears of Jews kidnapping Polish children, see:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/kielce-pogrom-jews-steal-children-factual-basis-wiacek/

KIELCE POGROM: ITS KIDNAP. THE RIGHTFUL OWNERSHIP OF JEWISH-DESCENT POLISH-RAISED CHILDREN?

This is not a black-and-white issue. Statman writes, “The children under discussion were born Jewish, but brought up as non-Jewish by their adopting parents. Many of them, who were babies or toddlers when separated from their biological parents, were totally ignorant of their Jewish roots, an ignorance which played a crucial role in keeping them alive. So according to their own self-perception, they were not Jewish. Often they were not Jewish in the eyes of the surrounding Gentile population either, not even in the eyes of (step-) siblings. Thus, we may well ask, were they Jewish? Can their removal from Gentile homes to Jewish institutions be considered as returning them to where they, in some significant sense, really belonged? Can we make sense of the claim that Jewish children (=children with Jewish ‘roots’) who grew up as Catholic-Polish, for example, were not really Catholic (by religion) or Polish (by nationality), because they were Jewish?” (p. 170. Emphasis added).

“SO FEW POLES RESCUED JEWS”: AN IRONY

Author Statman, instead of blaming everything on the Poles as is usually the case, realizes that Jewish separatism played a decisive role in the fact that “so few” Jews were rescued. He comments, “Needless to say, such options of rescue were extremely rare and were available to a very limited number of Jews. Most Jews had no non-Jewish friends or connections, or, at any rate, had no practical way of getting to them.” (p. 169).

NOT “GREED” OR (WHAT ELSE?) ANTISEMITISM IN POLES WANTING MONEY

Poles are usually berated by the likes of Jan T. Gross, Jan Grabowski, and Barbara Engelking for requiring money in order to save Jews. Author Statman knows better. He comments, “In the months immediately following the end of the war, on their own initiative, some Polish guardians asked for no compensation. Only later, when it became known that these organizations were willing to pay for the children, did the Polish caretakers ask for money.” (p. 197).

So much for Kielce Pogrom: Its Kidnap. Will the media ever tell the full truth?