Poland's antisemitism now: 12-28-11

My interest in Poland has been quite acute since I went there a few years ago to do interviews for the book Rabbi Jacques Cukierkorn and I wrote, They Were Just People: Stories of Rescue in Poland During the Holocaust.

So I was intrigued to read this piece in the current issue of The National Catholic Reporter. Written by a former NBC news producer, it describes how Catholicism is losing a bit of its grip on the country.

But the intriguing part of the story to me was what it said about the current state of antisemitism in Poland. The country has long had a deserved reputation for antisemitism, but that reputation sometimes has been worse than reality.

For instance, as we note in our book, Polish non-Jews helped to save Jews from the Holocaust at a rate at least equal to what non-Jews did in other countries, based on the size of those country's populations. And the punishment in Poland for helping Jews was harsher and more swiftly carried out.

Poles also sometimes get blamed for the six death camps that operated in Poland in World War II when, in fact, it was the Germans who built and operated them. Indeed, the Germans, in addition to murdering many Jews in the Polish death camps, also murdered quite a few of the Polish intelligentsia there.

As the NCR story points out, there's an interesting new twist to antisemitism today in Poland. What's described as a "socially egalitarian and explicitly anticlerical party," the Palikot Movement, has gained political strength in the country. Among other things, Palikot is committed to fighting antisemitism in Polish society.

Good. Right?

Well, it's more complicated than that.

It turns out that antisemites view Palikot as a Jewish-led attack on the Catholic Church, so the more Palikot denounces antisemitism the more some people think it's just Jews pushing against Catholicism.

What I found reassuring, however, was the information that Poland's Foreign Ministry, according to the NCR piece, "is proactive in its campaign to counteract such bigotry and to promote tolerance."

Antisemitism seems to be the hatred that refuses to die. Still, it's up to all of us to continue to stand against it wherever it shows up, whether in Poland or in our own families.

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SALVATION FOR THE PLANET?

Across religions, it turns out, there is much consensus on the need to be environmentally responsible so that we care for the Earth. Even religious folks who used to dismiss ecological concerns today are much more on board.

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P.S.: My latest National Catholic Reporter column now is online. To read it, click here.