We were out of town for the commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and we missed the opening of the new Jewish History Museum.
But this week I was invited to the Collegium Artes Liberales "spring open seminar" about the Holocaust and Ghetto Uprising, and it was fascinating.
Among other things, I learned that the first person to use the term "Polish Concentration Camp" was Zofia Nalkowska, the Polish fiction writer. And she was referring to the location of the camps, not to who invented them. If only President Obama had been able to cite this fact a few months ago when he got into trouble with the Poles for his own comment.
I also learned that it was Mircea Eliade who began to use the term Holocaust to describe Hitler's gas chambers. It's a problem. Should we use the "Holocaust," or does it have the wrong connotations? The word comes from the Greek and refers to animal sacrifice, thus some find it offensive.
Regardless, it's catching on in Russia. Apparently in Russia today "Kholokost Studies" are spreading across the country. One guest of the seminar was Prof. Ilya Altman of the Russian State Humanities University in Moscow, who is also the co-chairman of the Russian Research and Educational Holocaust Center in Moscow. He told the seminar that over 80 universities in Russia now have courses in "Kholokost Studies," and even in primary and secondary schools across the country, the Holocaust is beginning to be commemorated. In Ekaterinburg, for example, cultural fora took place this year and school was canceled.
But the date that gets commemorated is 27 January -- the date of the liberation of Auschwitz -- by the Red Army.
That's interesting, especially in terms of the relationship of the Soviet government to the Jews, in the 30s, the 40s and 50s, in the 70s... According to Prof. Altman, there was timely press coverage of Hitler's plan to exterminate the Jews; certainly by 1943 they knew, and even earlier Izvestiia, Krasnaia zvezda and other newspapers were writing about "Hitler's Terror in Warsaw." Coverage of the Ghetto Uprising included one paragraph in an article in the magazine Bolshevik in December of 1943, but that essay did not mention the death camps or the underground and made the uprising seem like some kind of elemental, unplanned event.
Educating Russians about the Holocaust may be an uphill battle. Among other things, a new made-for-television film by the journalist Leonid Mlechin blames the Poles for the destruction of their Jews and claims that they were standing by to "drive the Jews into the gas chambers." This kind of outright fabrication, alongside vast oversimplification, is partially a symptom of our sensationalism-driven news cycle, and partially due to the decline in use of real historical consultants on programs like these, but the results might be truly dangerous for the future. (Surely the viewers won't really believe that the Poles kept Jews from escaping the Ghetto and were "grateful to the SS"? We can hope they have more sense, or at least will do a little research themselves into the more outrageous claims...)
One of the seminar guests was Marian Tursky, b. 1926: a journalists and historian, Chairman of the Council of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, among other things. He is also an Auschwitz survivor. He told an anecdote that I think reminds us to be careful when we judge the actions of others during wartime.
Marian was still pretty strong when he arrived at Auschwitz from the Lodz ghetto in 1944, and instead of heading for the gas chambers, he was sent out to do labor. His work crew left the gates every day and worked with some Poles on the outside, including a young man about his age named Janek. The workers began to talk to Janek, and to try and convince him to help them escape. "All we need is some clothing and weapons, and we will join the underground and help you fight the Nazis," Marian told Janek. Janek agreed -- but then the crew noticed that for several days he was holding himself apart, not coming over to them where they were working. When they finally were able to speak with him, Janek explained that his superiors in the underground were afraid for their networks; they wouldn't have time to train these Auschwitz prisoners, and the escape might endanger the work they were doing.
So Marian did not escape. And he reminded us that every decision made during the war depended on many other factors. Some Poles did not help hide Jews, or feed them, or help them escape. Others did. And it's hard for us to know from this distance what the various factors and motives might have been.
Listening to Marian Turski and seeing his kind face, I was awed by how generous he could be almost seventy years later. As we continue to explore the Holocaust and all its repercussions -- and as the survivors from both sides of the ghetto wall near the end of their lives -- we need to listen that much harder, separate out the nonsense from the truth, and keep a record of everything we learn.
It has also been documented that the term "Polish camps" was first used by the West German intelligence agency in the 1950s in an effort to improve Germany's reputation on the world stage by shifting the blame onto Poland.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Yvonne. It certainly feels like Poles have had to - and often have felt like they need to - take responsibility for what happened on their soil. A difficult moral historical problem.
ReplyDeleteI respectfully disagree. Poland was a victim of Nazi Germany, not a perpetrator of the Holocaust. The first people sent to the camps in occupied Poland were Polish Christians, including my relatives. Ultimately, the Germans killed equal numbers of Polish Christians and Polish Jews. Contrary to some unfounded theories, Nazi Germany established their killing fields on pre-war Polish territory because one third of European Jewry already lived there, and not because the Germans believed Poles would be complicit.
ReplyDeleteReferring to the German camps in German occupied Poland as "Polish" is in line with Soviet and Communist propaganda which sought to undermine Polish aspirations for a free Poland by associating non Communist Poles with German Nazi crimes, and may be continued by the post Communist Russians who still feel it might be in their interest to undermine Poland's position, as Poland has been an adversary for centuries. It would be still continue by the Communist movement which likes to refer to non Communists as fascists, which we saw with the Occupy Wall Street movement along with their red flags. It is a factor in the negative way "Communist" Hollywood depicts Poles, and the anti Polish slant of left leaning University circles where past Weather Underground terrorist Communists are employed and openly wear their past criminal conduct as badges of honor without fear of being fired. This would be in line with the negative portrayal of Poland by left leaning publications, or ones who might still have connections to the KGB, such as the two El Diario, (a spanish language news publication,) employees who were arrested with Ms. Chapman for being Russian spies. It is no secret that the Soviets spent a ton of resources, at the cost of the quality of life of their own citizens, on developing spies, agents, informants and dupes, to push their varied list of propaganda objectives through front organizations and the media. That is one perspective to view the Melchin movie.
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