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

“We Were Slaves” by Magdalena Ruta. 2021. JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW 111(1)130-153.

Jewish Poles Oxymoron: Jews Not Identified With Poles, Even in Extreme Situations (Gulags)

This article provides excerpts from some Yiddish-language writings of Polish Jews that had been deported into the interior of the USSR (1939-1941) and had slaved away in the gulags. I focus on some revealing information. It upends the common Orwellian formulation of “Jewish Poles and non-Jewish Poles.”

THE POLISH VALUATION OF SELF-SACRIFICE FOR ONE’S NATION

Author Magdalena Ruta makes these comments, “…according to Nagy, the greatest factors that shaped the image of Polish Gulag literature included a Polish tradition strongly rooted in religion (Catholic moral standards); literary myths from the Romantic era (especially the concept of Polish Romantic messianism); and national mythology (the myth of reckless struggle against tsarist Russia for Poland’s national independence, for which Poles were being deported to Siberia as early as the first half of the nineteenth century). This literature therefore tends to martyrize Poles and mythologize their Soviet experience by reading it in the context of Poles’ centuries-long history of oppression by Russia. These narratives often present prewar Poland and Soviet Russia in the categories of heaven and hell, and they contrast Catholic Poles with Soviet citizens. (p. 147).

JEWISH POLES OXYMORON: SCANT JEWISH APPRECIATION FOR POLAND’S STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE

Ruta contrasts the foregoing with Zak, one of the Soviet-exiled Polish Jews. She writes, “Zak’s memoirs, published in 1956, at the height of the Cold War, also have a very strong anti-Soviet (but not anti-Russian) theme. However, this is where ideological similarities end. Zak does not allude to the romantic myth of Poland’s struggle for national independence (popular among Poles), the vision of Poland as the messiah suffering for the good of other European nations, or the ideal of the Polish state as the bulwark of Christendom. He does not prioritize the Polishness of the inmates, himself or others; and in his more democratic rendering, the sacrifices made in the Soviet forced labor camps by Poles and Polish Jews were seen to share in equal measure the pain suffered by other nations, including the Russians.” (pp. 147-148).

The latter is especially instructive. It fits with the notion of the Jew-as-cosmopolitan that has no real attachment to the nation in which he lives.

JEWISH POLES OXYMORON: MOST JEWS ALOOF TO POLAND’S AGONY

Ruta realizes that Zak’s attitudes should be generalized. She writes, “It seems understandable that, since Jews constituted the majority of the prisoners in Zak’s camp, he made friends mainly with them. When these Jews discussed Poland and Poles, their ambivalence toward them becomes clear, revealing a considerable distance from their fellow countrymen. Their sense of geographical and cultural association with Poland as their homeland and a country belonging to the Western European civilization is striking; this, however, is not accompanied by a sense of belonging to the same social, political, or cultural community with Poles.” (p. 150. Emphasis added).

JEWISH POLES OXYMORON, BUT POLAND WAS MUCH BETTER THAN THE SOVIET UNION FOR JEWS

Author Ruta writes, “In the narrator’s reflections, as well as in his conversations with Russians (fellow inmates and representatives of the camp authorities), the Soviet reality is critically assessed and contrasted with the Polish prewar reality. In such comparisons, the Polish state appears as a friendly environment, offering its citizens higher salaries, lower prices, and easier access to goods and services, in contrast to the Soviet Union, where poverty, terror, scarcity, and hypocrisy were the norm.” (p. 148).

JEWISH POLES OXYMORON, BUT THE HORRORS OF THE COMMUNIST GULAGS ARE RECOGNIZED

Ruta comments, “According to Zak, the existence of Soviet forced labor camps is a disgrace not only to the mendacious communist [Communist] regime but also to ‘the entire civilized world who idly watched this terrible barbarity.'” (p. 136).