“Veni, Vidi, Deus Vicit:” Jan Sobieski Day, September 12
by Bill Levinson
Jan Sobieski Day, September 12
- The Moslem troops panicked at the sound and fury of the heavy mounted, winged Polish Hussars’ avalanche, and frantically fled off the field of battle. On October 9 at Parkany, Hungary, Sobieski won the decisive battle. Never again did the Islamic military attempt to subjugate Europe.
Coffee:A Polish Gift to Civilization? Polish American Journal, April 1994 by Anthony K. Podbielski, Lt. Col. Aus. Ret.
Adam Zamoyski’s The Polish Way (page 3) reports, “Then the Husaria broke into a wild gallop and the heavy mass of men and horses cascaded over the Turkish ranks, bowling over the first, slicing through the second… The Grand Vizir leapt on to a horse and made his own escape moments before the winged riders thundered up to the tent and the banner was struck.” The reference adds that the Crimean Horde fled from the field without striking a single blow, thus showing that there was at least one way to avoid total disaster from a fight with Polish cavalry: fast horses and a good head start. Afterward, Sobieski proclaimed, “Veni, vidi, Deus vicit:” “I came, I saw, God conquered.”
While infantry and artillery–the highly mobile Polish guns were almost the only European ones that could actually be brought into action–played a major role in clearing the Turks from the foothills of the Kahlenberg Mountain, it was Poland’s Husaria–the most fearsome cavalry to ever ride the earth–that struck the decisive blow.
Winged Hussar by W.T. Benda (World War I recruiting poster)
The last thing that thousands of Islamic Supremacists saw on 12 September 1683.
(Recruiting poster for the First World War by W.T. Benda, public domain due to age)
The unusual wings had two possible purposes. The first was to make a hissing or rattling noise that terrified horses that were not accustomed to it, and the second was to defeat the lariats that were sometimes used by the Tartars. The leopard or tiger fur also was probably quite menacing to horses that were unaccustomed to their appearance or odor. The highly innovative Poles doubtlessly realized that, once they frightened the horse, the man on its back became irrelevant to any subsequent proceedings.
Polish Husaria by Józef Brandt (1841-1915).
Unlike medieval knights, the Husaria adopted an “all or nothing” doctrine for armor. Although the legs and forearms were not protected, the breastplate was in fact capable of stopping musket fire. They also employed an amazing lance (kopia) whose five or more meters outreached infantry pikes, with the result that winged hussars could split Swedish pike and shot formations like ripe melons. The lance’s secret was that it was hollow, and this kept its weight manageable without sacrificing much strength. Henryk Sienkiewicz’s The Deluge describes its effect on the arguably best European infantry–remember, this military instrument had been developed by Gustavus Adolphus–of the mid-17th century.
- There was a huge sound of a collision then, like a toppling mountain, and then a vast ringing as if a thousand blacksmiths were beating on their anvils. We looked again and—dear God alive!—the Elector’s men were all down and trampled like a wheat field scoured by a hurricane, and they… the husaria… were already far beyond them, with lance pennons flickering…
Next they struck the Swedes. One regiment of Reiters went down like grass before a scythe. Another went under. …They charged the Swedish infantry. They broke them. They shattered them. Everything fled before them, scattering like chaff! Everything was tumbling back, running and recoiling! The whole Swedish army split apart before them and they charged down that gaping avenue like an avalanche. Nothing could stop them! They cut through half of the enemy’s battle line. And then they ran into the Swedish Horse Guards where Carolus [King Charles Gustav] and his staff were standing… And, I tell you, it was as if a windstorm had whirled in among those Guardsmen and carried them away…!
Henryk Sienkiewicz, The Deluge (Kuniczak translation), pp. 815-816
Henryk Sienkiewicz won a Nobel Prize in literature, and his Trilogy (With Fire and Sword, The Deluge, and Colonel Wolodyjowski) are among the best epics that have ever been written.
The Turkish Grand Vizier, Kara Mustafa, was in such haste to flee that he broke a jeweled stirrup from his horse’s tack, and Jan Sobieski captured it as a gift for his wife. The Poles meanwhile cleaned out the Turkish camp, where they found not only the usual prizes of war but a large supply of coffee. An enterprising Pole opened a coffee shop in Vienna: the ancestor of Starbucks and Barnes & Noble’s coffee shops. The modern crescent pastry is reputedly modeled on the captured Turkish battle standards.
Sobieski at Vienna, by Jan Matejko
Jan Sobieski at Vienna, by Jan Matejko (1838-1893). “I came, I saw, God conquered.”
Note the red flag with the white Polish Eagle. The man at the left is stacking the captured Turkish flags. The wings of the Polish Husaria are visible in the background, as are their extremely long lances. The dead woman in the foreground was probably a slave of the Islamic supremacist besiegers, who murdered their captives once they realized that defeat was inevitable.
So there we have the TRUE significance of September 12. It is not merely the day after the most vicious crime to have ever been perpetrated against the United States, and it is certainly not an “Interdependence Day” for “world citizens.” It is the anniversary of one of the most decisive battles in history: a battle that may well have saved Central Europe from an ideology similar to the one responsible for 9/11.
Think of where we would be had this not happened.
I never heard a remark against the Jews when I was growing up, but I heard “Pollack jokes” all the time, deriding the Poles as stupid. My step-father was Polish, and it’s nice to see something good said about them for a change.
Q. what is the shortest book ever written?
A. The book of polish War Heroes !
What relevance does this thread have to do with us in Israel?
Question: How do you stop a Polish army on horseback?
Answer: Turn off the carousel.
Oat
I had Polish relatives as well killed by poles in one of their thousands of pogroms against Jews. Why do you think most of the concentration camps were built in Poland? My ex in laws, viewed the Poles far worse than the Nazis. They came from Poland The worlds largest Jewish graveyard
Seems you are a real mongrel.
Leave the Poles alone, the one’s who commited those atrocities are dead, modern day Poland is pro-Israel and Jewish friendly, stop bringing up the past.
NoBrain: for your information: http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:wuN495GSzrsJ:www.humanityinaction.org/docs/Maki,_Dybka__Gogol,_PL_2006.doc+anti+semitic+acts+in+Poland+today&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=7
“Sometimes I tell jokes about Jews, but I don’t think that they are based on anti-Semitism,” explains Jarek Kubiak, a Polish student involved in a Jewish youth organization, who prides himself on his own activism. He lives in Lodz where he often witnesses anti-Semitic graffiti and hate speech that slanders Jews. He explains that using the phrase “‘you are a Jew,’ is like calling someone an asshole, but worse.” When asked about the relationship of such utterances to anti-Semitism he quickly responds “they are not connected,” as if to clarify any possible confusion. Defining himself as different from individuals that use anti-Semitic rhetoric in public discourse, he goes on to describe how opposing football clubs attempt to brand each other with the term “Jew” to put down the opposing team. “By calling your opponents ‘Jews’ you are saying that they are stupid and part of the lowest class of society.” Every year, Jarek and others involved in the youth organization canvas Lodz to first photograph and then cover up anti-Semitic graffiti. The photos are then displayed publicly at a number of local schools and elsewhere to increase public discourse on the topic of anti-Semitism. At one such exhibition a man approached Jarek; pointing to one of the photographs the man explained that the graffiti was his work. During their conversation, Jarek later discovered that the man had never met a Jew.
NoBrain?, what are you a child? Your such a rude little troll. I do not care about what you say, I know the Polish government, so shut up yamit, most people on here do not like you, so do us all a favor and stop posting.
Not all
No just most you overly semantic ass, the Poles suffered under Communism because the United States betrayed them, they have had enough hardship, and by the way yamit, when Bland was talking about people with no cojones, he was describing you, because you talk tough online, but you would never have the guts to be so rude in person.
Really? How do you know them? Levinson is a Polifile, Oat has one of his myriad of relatives and ancestors, a pole, so whats your story?
http://web.israelinsider.com/Articles/Briefs/8814.htm
How about Poland returning the billions of dollars of Jewish communal property back to the Jewish community or compensation?
What about all of the private Jewish property stolen from the Jews by the Poles, Government and the Church? Jewish unclaimed art, Bank accounts, unclaimed insurance policies etc. etc. Restitution , admitting their part in history of murdering Jews, would be a good start in normalizing relations. The Israeli government is no moral barometer for excusing or not excusing the Murder and out right theft from their victims, which included some of my relatives.
The Past is Prologue:
Yamit, I agree with the other commentaries who see you for what and who you are. Yoiu are a person so full of hate that you don’t approve of anyone and you use your literary ability to put others down.
My parents came from Poland and I admit that much of what you said was true, but that was from an era long past. Even though we must remember what atrocities perpatrated there, the bastards are all dead. The current Polish government strongly support Israel. One cannot hold others responsible for the crimes of another. Isn’t that guilt by accociation?
Also remember, if Russia attacks, Poland along with Israel will be the first.
NoBrain, what’s the difference between a redneck from Texas and a redneck from Israel? It isn’t lipstick
I don’t consider speaking the truth being rude why do you? I am exactly in person as you perceive me in written form and I do have cojones, a Glock and a ww2 Browning 45 cal, in perfect working order.
after a thousand years of taking crap from poles why should I shed a tear or a kind thought for what they might have suffered under the commies.
Yesh din veh yesh dayan!! there is judgment and there is a judge!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2V-BAnlBJk&feature=related
Yamit, maybe some day you will grow up and not feel the need to use childish insults like NoBrain you ignorant little yutz. By the way you would never have the nerve to talk to me like that in person, because your a spineless coward who insults people over the net whereas if you ever did get the courage to try it, I would beat you into a bloody pulp.
You do not speak the truth yamit, you spout off opinion not based on facts act like it is true, you obviously do not know the difference but then I would not expect different from a guy with no life who goes around insulting people over the internet and is so smug he thinks he is the Almighty.
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Yamit82 wrote,
First, with regard to Israel–Poland handled the Islamic supremacists the way Israel and the U.S. ought to handle them.
The Poles are among the bravest people on earth. They have, on more than one occasion, fought for their country the way Jews fought for Israel in 1948. Poland also shares with the United States the distinction of being among the few countries that do not surrender when they lose their capitals. The British took Philadelphia (then the capital) during the War of Independence, and Washington in 1812, and the United States kept fighting. The Swedes took Warsaw in 1655, and the Nazis took it in 1939, and the Poles kept fighting. Did you know that Poland, unlike France, never surrendered to Hitler? Poland also liberated ITSELF from the Swedes without the aid of outside powers, a truly unique achievement.
If the Polish cavalry caught you in the open, i.e. where it could maneuver, the only things that could save you were (1) fast horses and a head start or (2) a tabor, or circled wagon fortress similar to that used by the Hussites–and the Poles might just bring up some of their highly mobile horse artillery (introduced perhaps a century before Frederick the Great thought of it) to blow the tabor apart. If you had neither, you had to hope that the Poles felt like taking prisoners that day. The muskets of that era couldn’t shoot quickly or accurately enough to stop them, and pikes didn’t stop them either. There is also a “Polack joke” about Poles using lances on Nazi tanks in 1939. The Polish horse cavalry actually BEAT a Nazi army, not by charging with lances, but by moving men with machine guns and similar weapons to advantageous positions. Polish pilots shot down a lot of Nazi airplanes before they were finally beaten by superior numbers. Many of them escaped to England, got into English planes, and outperformed British pilots in shooting down even more Nazi airplanes.
Because Hitler’s agenda included the extermination of Polish Gentiles as well as Jews to create living space for his so-called Master Race. Of the six million Poles whom the Nazis murdered, half were Catholics. Hitler is on record as saying that he planned to exterminate the Polish race. Nazi policy was meanwhile that Polish children were not to be taught to read or write, at least not more than necessary for a slave laborer.
I am sure there were Poles who collaborated with the Nazis (just as some collaborated with the Swedes in 1655), but not to the extent of the Vichy French. The Vichy French delighted in turning Jews over to the Gestapo, and they also turned in Maquisards (French Resistance). Today, you will find people who call themselves Jews in the International Solidarity Movement, whose agenda is the destruction of Israel. You will find Americans who say that we got what we deserved on 9/11. Every barrel has its bad apples.
There was admittedly anti-Semitism in Poland after its partition by Russia, Austria, and Prussia. It was almost certainly imported from Russia, like the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. Russia was no friend to the Poles either, and it once made every possible effort to destroy Poland’s national identity. I suspect strongly that today’s Poles would not be proud of sticking with an ideology that was imported from Russia. Very few Poles have any use for Russia, whether Tsarist, Communist, or Putinist.
Poland is the world’s largest Jewish graveyard because 3 million Jews lived there when Hitler overran it. The reason that 3 million Jews lived there was because Poland was once among the few countries that welcomed them (along with Protestants, Calvinists, and even Muslims) when the rest of Europe was running Inquisitions and other persecutions.
Re: #7 we had a girl of Polish ancestry who (allegedly) spray painted swastikas on a synagogue in Wilkes-Barre. This just shows how ignorant she is, because the ideology that goes with a swastika had no use for people whose names end in “ski” or “wicz.” There are equally ignorant Poles and other Slavs who try to fit in with the Stormfront White Nationalist Community, where Hitler is idolized, even though Hitler regarded all Slavs as subhumans to be enslaved or even killed. I would certainly hope, meanwhile, that people wouldn’t judge all Jews on the actions of the National “Jewish” Democratic Council, Michael Lerner’s Tikkun.org, Noam Chomsky (aka Chumpsky), and A Jewish Voice for Peace. We should accordingly not judge all Poles on the actions of the lowest and most ignorant classes of their society.
And yes, the Poles and other Eastern Europeans could probably say things about the United States because of the Yalta agreement–another wonderful achievement by Franklin Roosevelt, who shipped Jewish refugees back to Germany and put Japanese-Americans in concentration camps.
Bill Levinson:
You wrote:
And I certainly hope people do not judge all Jews by the words of fringe- extremist, right-wingers who have a deeply ingrained streak of racism and intolerance.
Bill; Polish interchangeable jokes (could be Italian or many other ethnicities) was meant to be just that a silly not politically correct take on Poland today vis a vis seeming ingrained cultural and religious antisemitism. Jews initially went to Poland at Poland’s request before Christianity had taken firm hold and were considered desirable economic asset to the pagan rulers. the thousand years of Jewish life in Poland had like in every other country in Europe its ups and downs from periods to tolerance and prosperity to periods of desperate hostility and repression, like most other countries where Jews resided in the diaspora. My contention is that Poland today with few visible Jews is as antisemitic as when about 10% of the population were Jews. That makes antisemitism in Poland pathological. my second point is that I do believe in collective guilt which is Applied to peoples and nations as opposed to individuals mainly Jews in this respect. That said I don’t oppose having normal country to country relations and trade with Poland or even Germany although I would never knowingly set foot on German soil or purchase anything made in Germany. This is personal and I don’t advocate Israelis boycotting German or Polish, products. You are always using and sophistic arguments culminating in the principles of relativism. Does it really matter much if France totally capitulated or whether Poles fought even bravely and were overrun in a couple of weeks by superior forces? Maybe it does to Poles certainly based on results history here gives no medals for valor then or now. For the Jews it didn’t much matter did it?
Strach: antysemityzm w Polsce tu? po wojnie: historia moralnej zapa?ci (“Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland shortly after the war: the history of a moral fall”). In the book, Gross explores the issues concerning incidents of post-war anti-Jewish violence in Poland, with particular focus on the 1946 Kielce pogrom. Fear has received international attention and reviews in major newspapers; it has also been the subject of criticism, especially in Poland.
Gross estimates that 250,000 Polish Jews returned home at the end of the war. In his chapter “The Unwelcoming of Jewish Survivors,” Gross describes how returning Polish Jews were subjected to a wave of violence and hostility, with up to 1500 murdered either individually or in pogroms. Often they would find their property occupied by their non-Jewish Polish neighbors or taken over by the communist government, which nationalized much of the Polish economy. According to Gross, the expropriation of Jewish property continued a trend that occurred throughout the war years, with non-Jewish Poles acquiring the property of Polish Jews who were sent off to extermination camps, and in some instances, (such as the Jedwabne pogrom), carrying out the killings themselves. Gross describes how the looting of property extended to digging through the ashes of Treblinka for gold fillings.[1] He discusses the alienation, hostile atmosphere, and violence experienced by some Jews and the inability of Polish elites to prevent it. Gross makes additional claims about the Kielce pogrom, arguing that the crime was initiated not by a mob, but by the police, and that it involved people from every walk of life except the highest level of government officials in the city.
According to a Piast Institute’s online summary, Gross concludes by writing that some Poles, especially in rural areas, participated in the Nazi wartime effort to annihilate and despoil the Jews, and this was the cause of postwar anti-Semitism in Poland. The fear of punishment for their own crimes, according to Gross, was what drove them to continue attacking Jews after the war.
The Polish version of Fear differed from its English language original because Gross assumed that his Polish readers were familiar with the tragic history of wartime Poland. The first chapter of the English version was replaced by a chapter documenting Polish awareness of the Nazi genocide of the Jews.
The Piast Institute, a Polish-American think tank, published an analysis of Fear and its reception. The Piast Institute was critical of the book itself. The Piast Institute also criticized some of the reviews in popular press: “reviewers in major newspapers such as the New York Times, The Baltimore Sun and the Los Angeles Times, none of whom has any expertise in Polish or East Central European history, have reacted to the book with uncritical acclaim and considerable anti-Polish rhetoric. As such, it is clear already that Fear will have a serious and negative effect on Polish-Jewish relations.”
David Margolick writing in New York Times Book Review, takes issue with Gross’ thesis that the murders of Jews in post-war Poland was inspired by feelings of guilt on the part of Poles, positing instead that perhaps “through their own state-of-the-art anti-Semitism, the Germans emboldened many Poles to act upon what they had always felt,” taking as credible “Nazi accounts of Judenjagd, or ‘Jew hunts,’ [which] detailed how Poles pitched in to find any stray Jews the Germans somehow managed to miss.”
Thane Rosenbaum, reviewing Fear for the Los Angeles Times, wrote that the book “should inspire a national reflection on why there are scarcely any Jews left in Poland.
Deborah E. Lipstadt wrote in Publishers Weekly that Gross “builds a meticulous case.” in contrast to other Polish historians who have either ignored or attempted to the anti-Semitism described in the book.
NonameDenton:
I will be in Dallas in the near future, I will supply you with my address when I get there, so you can try to carry out your threat, if that is convenient for you?
NoName!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rvwh9_HsUmU&NR=1
Yamit: All these months I thought you had me on top of your hate list; now it so happens you detest Noname even more.How do you think I feel now? Just as if you care.You are just like all the others. A two-timing S.O.B. And should you travel to Texas( Cowboy country),
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5QGDzRbQbI
Re: #19 “Often they would find their property occupied by their non-Jewish Polish neighbors or taken over by the communist government, which nationalized much of the Polish economy.” Yes, the Communist government, which was run by the Soviet Union–the same country that so many Jewish “refuseniks” wanted to leave so badly. You will not hear me defend Tsarist Russia or the USSR with regard to their treatment of Jews (or Poles for that matter).
It is easy to believe that many Poles participated in Jew-hunts because the punishment for hiding a Jew was death. (Of course, Nazi ideology said that the punishment for being a Pole was death or at least enslavement.) According to Wikipedia’s entry on “Polish Righteous among the Nations,”
The entry confirms that you are 100 percent right that some Poles did abuse and even help to kill Jews.
Here is a Pole for you, from the list:
The entry on collaboration with the Nazis said that Poland had one of the lowest numbers of collaborators relative to other occupied countries.
Peskin: Why must we all be privy of your tacky romancing. Keep your love life off Israpundit. It should be kept strictly private.
Bill, I have no idea why you choose to be an apologist for the poles then and now? I think you have an agenda here somewhere maybe even a polish personal interest but you seem to be one of the few Jews and only one I know except for Denton and Peskin here that seem supportive of Polish antisemites.
Your arguments are highly selective and not characteristic of the general populace in Poland then and now. There is just too much data not supporting your contentions. Israel made a deal, to not pursue claims, against Poland and let Polish history remain there for closer relations. That’s realpolitik not history , truth or moral.
I do recommend the Books by Prof. Gross Fear and Neighbors Both are well researched and only the Poles are critical! I wonder why? Reviews:
[book] FEAR
Anti-Semitism in Poland After Auschwitz
by Jan Gross
JUNE 2006. RANDOM HOUSE
Poland suffered an exceedingly brutal Nazi occupation during the Second World War. Close to five million Polish citizens lost their lives as a result. More than half the casualties were Polish Jews. Thus, the second largest Jewish community in the world-only American Jewry numbered more than the three and a half million Polish Jews at the time-was wiped out. Over 90 percent of its members were killed in the Holocaust. And yet, despite this unprecedented calamity that affected both Jews and non-Jews, Jewish Holocaust survivors returning to their hometowns in Poland after the war experienced widespread hostility, including murder, at the hands of their neighbors. The bloodiest peacetime pogrom in twentieth-century Europe took place in the Polish town of Kielce one year after the war ended, on July 4, 1946.
Jan Gross’s FEAR attempts to answer a perplexing question: How was anti-Semitism possible in Poland after the war? At the center of his investigation is a detailed reconstruction of the Kielce pogrom and the reactions it evoked in various milieus of Polish society. How did the Polish Catholic Church, Communist party workers, and intellectuals respond to the spectacle of Jews being murdered by their fellow citizens in a country that had just been liberated from a five-year Nazi occupation? Gross argues that the anti-Semitism displayed in Poland in the war’s aftermath cannot be understood simply as a continuation of prewar attitudes. Rather, it developed in the context of the Holocaust and the Communist takeover: Anti-Semitism eventually became a common currency between the Communist regime and a society in which many had joined in the Nazi campaign of plunder and murder-and for whom the Jewish survivors were a standing reproach. Jews did not bring communism to Poland as some believe; in fact, they were finally driven out of Poland under the Communist regime as a matter of political expediency. In the words of the Nobel Prize-winning poet Czeslaw Milosz, Poland’s Communist rulers fulfilled the dream of Polish nationalists by bringing into existence an ethnically pure state. For more than half a century, what happened to the Jewish Holocaust survivors in Poland has been cloaked in guilt and shame. Writing with passion, brilliance, and fierce clarity, Jan T. Gross at last brings the truth to light.
Writing in the Washington Post on June 25, Elie Wiesel spent three pages on this book. “…A professor at Princeton now, Gross is a Polish Jew who knows his subject. Neighbors — a book of high moral quality — described the massacre of Jews at Jedwabne as not carried out by Germans but by native Poles. Published in English in 2001, it had formidable impact in America and elsewhere. One can easily predict a similar effect and success for his new work, Fear . You read it breathlessly, all human reason telling you it can’t be so — and the book culminates in so keen a shock that even a close student of the Jewish tragedy during World War II cannot fail to feel it. Bitterness, envy, murderous rage: Everything that is low, primitive, vile and ugly in the human animal is laid bare and analyzed on these pages. Reading this book — repugnant and revolting as it can be — one is seized by an impulse to close it and say: No. It is not possible for so many human beings to have loosed their savage hounds on fellow human beings — men, women, children, all of them innocent and defenseless in a place that was just waking from a long nightmare.
Fear is a word we use often in reference to dictatorships and totalitarian regimes; it is, for want of a better term, employed inadequately to speak of the Holocaust. In a dark time, on a continent overcome by the din of triumphant Nazism, fear gripped the occupied countries and all nations in Germany’s shadow; but, mostly, fear gripped the Polish people, whom Hitler wanted reduced to slavery, and the Jewish people, singularly destined for isolation, humiliation and total extermination. Had these last two communities acted logically, they might have understood that they faced a common enemy and worked to combine their strengths to help each other. Unfortunately, that was not to be. Gross describes how Warsaw’s onlookers watched young Jewish fighters throw themselves from burning windows during the pathetic yet glorious ghetto uprising in 1943, then applauded when German soldiers set upon them below. But in this strongly sourced work, another fear emerges. It is that felt by Jews, not during Poland’s occupation by the Nazis, but afterward, even as the country was being liberated by the Red Army.
Based on official documents as well as numerous testimonies, Fear recounts events as they unfolded in 1945-46. The most heinous and outrageous cruelties, it appears, were inflicted by civilians, soldiers and policemen on a benighted population of Jewish survivors from hells near and far, who were returning sick, poor, wounded — orphans beyond hope.
To put it clearly: Like many of us, they had thought all too naively that antisemitism, discredited 6 million times over, had died at Auschwitz with its victims. They were wrong. Only the dead perished at Birkenau; antisemitism itself survived in most places, and mostly in Poland. This is, in sum, what Jan Gross reveals in a style that is at once sober and overwhelming in its very bluntness. There were manhunts, public humiliations, insane acts of brutality. The rare escapees who thought themselves fortunate to return home found their property occupied by strangers who chased them away with scornful cries: “What, you’re still in this world?” Eventually, they were made to regret their very survival. Trapping a Jew was reason enough to beat him senseless. Discover another, and pelt him with stones…..”
This antisemitic blight, all too insidious and thorough, infected every level of the population. There were those who killed Jews in order to steal from them; others who coveted their stores and homes; others, to avenge the Jews’ mythical power in communist secret circles; and then there were those who killed for the simple pleasure of it. There was the official version: Authorities minimized the tragedy’s Jewishness. Even as they commemorated the dead, they forgot to mention that they were Jews. And the public version: Jews were barred from civic life — from schools as well as public office. Traditional antisemitism, too, lived on, fueled by ancient religious prejudices as well as individual and collective hatreds.
Then there were the pogroms. First in tiny villages, followed by those in the big cities. Gross’s reader is suddenly thrust into the Middle Ages. In Krakow and in Kielce, those thirsting for Jewish blood didn’t hesitate to maim or murder. In these two towns, it began with that old canard claiming that Jews slaughtered Christian children to use their blood for the ritual preparation of Passover matzos. In Kielce, it was rumored, Jews had lured a Polish boy into a cave so that they could murder him. Little did it matter that there was no cave in the local Jewish Committee’s building at 7 Planty Street. Little did it matter that, for centuries, the highest authorities of the Catholic Church had repudiated and condemned these accusations as stupid and malicious lies. The Polish population clung to such myths to feed their hatred and rage against the Jews, who were guilty of nothing more than having survived Treblinka and Auschwitz. And more: The Polish clergy in towns and provinces, almost to the last man, chose to guard its silence.
Does it follow that all of Poland was to blame? Today, a new generation will assume responsibility for its history. And yet there is this:
Con”t
Con’t:
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. [Signature]Reviewed by Deborah E. LipstadtRarely does a small book force a country to confront some of the more sordid aspects of its history. Jan T. Gross’s Neighbors did precisely that. Gross exposed how in 1941 half the Polish inhabitants of the town of Jedwabne brutally clubbed, burned and dismembered the town’s 1,600 Jews, killing all but seven.The book was greeted with a terrible outcry in Poland. A government commission determined that not only did Gross get the story right but that many other cities had done precisely the same thing. Now Gross has written Fear, an even more substantial study of postwar Polish anti-Semitism. This book tells a wartime horror story that should force Poles to confront an untold—and profoundly terrifying—aspect of their history. Fear relates, in compelling detail, how Poles from virtually all segments of society persecuted the poor, emaciated and traumatized Holocaust survivors. Those who did not actually participate in the persecution, e.g., Church leaders and Communist officials, refused to use their influence to stop the pogroms, massacres and plundering of the Jews. The Communists used the anti-Semitism to consolidate their rule. Church leaders justified the blood libel charges. Even Polish historians have either ignored or tried to justify this anti-Semitism. Gross builds a meticulous case. He argues that this postwar persecution is “a smoking gun,” which proves that during the war Poles not only acquiesced but, in many cases, actively assisted the Nazis in their persecution of the Jews. Had they been appalled by Germany’s policies toward the Jews or tried to help the victims, Poles could never have engaged in such virulent anti-Semitism in the postwar period. Gross notes that when the Germans were trying to put down the Warsaw ghetto uprising, Poles—including children—not only cheered as Jewish snipers were spotted and killed but gleefully showed the Germans where Jews were hiding. Those Poles who helped Jews were often persecuted or even killed by their neighbors.I am troubled by references to “Polish death camps.” They were not Polish death camps but camps the Germans placed in Poland. I have taken even stronger issue with the opinion voiced by many Jews that the “Poles were as bad as—and maybe worse than—the Germans.” I argue that while there was a strong tradition of anti-Semitism in Poland, Poles never tried to murder Jews in a systematic fashion. After reading Fear, the next time I hear someone say the Poles were as bad as the Germans, I will probably still challenge that charge —after all the damage wrought by the Germans cannot be compared to what the Poles did—but my challenge will be far less forceful. I may even keep silent. 8 pages of photos. (July 4)Lipstadt is director of the Rabbi Donald Tam Institute for Jewish Studies at Emory University and the author of History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving.
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From Booklist
Professor Gross’ widely acclaimed Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland (2001) described the slaughter of Polish Jews by their fellow Poles as the Nazis watched approvingly. Now Gross illustrates with eloquence and shocking detail that the bloodletting did not cease when the war ended. Contrary to most expectations, many Polish Jews who survived the Holocuast wished to remain in Poland. After all, Jewish and Gentile Poles had generally coexisted peacefully, if not harmoniously, before the war, and many Polish Jews viewed themselves as staunch patriots. But when Jews attempted to return to their hometowns and to reclaim their property, tensions reached the boiling point; the explosion came in the town of Kielce, when the disappearance of an eight-year-old boy sparked the old blood libel of ritual murder. As the slaughter of Jews began, police and military officials either joined in the outrages or refused to intervene. In succeeding years, with the complicity of Communist authorities, the position of the remaining Polish Jews continued to deteriorate. By 1949, the goal of the Nazis had been achieved: Poland was essentially free of Jews. This is a masterful work that sheds necessary light on a tragic and often-ignored aspect of postwar history. Jay Freeman
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I would love to.
Yamit-NoNameDenton: Please let me know when you both arrive in Dallas and at what location. You will need someone to hold your coats. I’m your man for the job. It will be my pleasure and I shall do it at no cost.
Peskin: Why is it at any fight there is always some character holding the coats? Why is it always you who is that character?
This is a re-run.
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Yamit, you surprise me! since when have we lowered ourselves to petty threats…. So what if no-name has a bigger dick!
I think its time to move to another site.
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