Jews in Poland: A Documentary History
by Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski
Book Summary Information
Author: Iwo Cyprian PogonowskiEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 1997-09
ISBN: 0781806046
Number of pages: 425
Publisher: Hippocrene Books
Book Reviews of Jews in Poland: A Documentary History
Book Review: Polish-Jewish Mutual History, The "Kielce Pogrom", Much Little-Known Information, etc.
Summary: 5 Stars
This review expands an earlier one, and refers to the 1998 paperback edition. This latter edition contains several articles not found in the original hardback edition. The authors trace many mischaracterizations of Polish-Jewish history in the American press. The informed reader can appreciate how little has changed since then. For example, the recent publications of NEIGHBORS and FEAR by Jan T. Gross have resurrected many old Polonophobic canards that should have been, if nowhere else, laid to rest by this 1998 edition.
Pogonowski shows, in detail (pp. 296-297) how the pro-German Zionists formed the Zionist Association in Germany in 1897, and how they opposed the resurrection of the Polish state. Instead, Max Bodenheimer, its president, proposed the creation of a German Protectorate out of the western parts of formerly Russian-ruled Poland. (The German-ruled and Austrian-ruled parts of Poland would remain the same). The new German protectorate would be German-Jewish ruled; the latter facilitated by the Germanophillic orientation of many Jews living on Polish soil, the abundance of Jews in influential positions, the affinities of Yiddish to the German language, etc. For a time, famous Jewish existentialist philosopher Martin Buber supported this plan. The reader can clearly see that the concept of Judeopolonia (Judeo-Polonia) was not simply an anti-Semitic fantasy: It had some basis in fact.
This work contains an extensive expose of the so-called Kielce Pogrom--A Soviet-staged event (pp. 403-422). The Soviets wanted to discredit a free Poland in the eyes of the west, and to terrorize the remaining Jews into fleeing to Palestine. Other anti-Jewish actions in Hungary and Czechoslovakia got little press in the west, probably because anti-Communism had been relatively weak in those countries.
In Kielce, the tale of the blood libel had been spread by agent provocateurs (p. 414). The Jews were shot by Communist police, and club-wielding fake "steel workers" also took their toll. Other Communist police involved in the so-called pogrom had been dressed as goons or priests. There is the fantastic myth of the 15,000 to 75,000 cheering Polish onlookers (p. 406), a myth recently repeated by Gross in his FEAR. The actual number of Polish onlookers, most of whom were probably motivated by curiosity, didn't ever exceed several hundred at its peak. After the "pogrom", inconvenient eyewitnesses met their deaths. The Kielce files themselves were burned in November 1989, shortly before the Communists left power.
Pogonowski makes clear that the Communist anti-Jewish policies of 1968 were not Polish. They were plainly Soviet-dictated (pp. 30-31).
The atlas itself is chock-full of useful information. The reader soon learns that, despite the frictions and mutual prejudices which sometimes developed between Poles and Jews, Poland was historically one of the most tolerant nations in the world for Jews. If the fact that 80% of the world's Jews, at one time, made their home in Poland does not prove this fact, then what does? This book makes it clear that Poland had been centuries ahead of others in terms of human rights and religious tolerance.
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