“I’m not anti-Semitic, but I just don’t trust Jews.”
I was sitting in a bar with an American friend and a Polish acquaintance when the Pole, in utmost seriousness, said that. He could not be made to see the inherent contradiction in what he’d said.
“I don’t really know many Jews, but I don’t like them.”
Thus said another Pole to me, explaining a situation he’d had earlier that week in Krakow with someone who was “obviously a Jew.” He too maintained he’s not anti-Semitic.
Jews in Poland occupy a strange position. Before the Holocaust, “Poland’s Jewish community numbered 3.5 million, which represented 20 per cent of world Jewry and 10 per cent of the pre-war Polish population.” (Source) Today, Jews number less than twenty thousand in the whole country. Most people in modern Poland have never even met a Jew.
There were so many Jews in Poland thanks to Casimir the Great’s opening the borders and accepting Jews in the Middle Ages when they were being expelled from many other countries in Europe. When they began prospering, the Poles began resenting them and their success.
Contemporary anti-Semitism in Poland is fueled by far-right parties like “Liga Polskich Rodzin” (“The League of Polish Families”) and the populist party “Samoobrona” (“Self-Defense”), both of which overtly and covertly blame Poland’s present economic woes on Jews. They deny that there are only about sixteen or so thousand Jews in Poland, and with some on the fringes insisting that President Kwasniewski himself is of Jewish descent.
Others blame the Jews for the Second World War, saying that Hitler was particularly brutal to Poland because of the large number of Jews here. The “logic” there is baffling, but I’ve personally heard the argument at least once.
Anti-Semitism is not just a problem in Poland, though. Jean Marie Le Pen’s surprise success in the French elections some time ago showed that nationalism and rabid xenophobia find fertile ground even in supposedly liberal France.
Anti-Semitism is on the rise in Europe. A supposedly suppressed UN report that blamed “a new wave of Antisemitism on Muslim youth and on anti-globalization activists” (Listen to the NPR Report) shows that it’s not just right-wing, neo-fascists who are spreading the ancient, illogical hate of Jews.
People talk of how to reduce anti-Semitism and other forms of xenophobia, but anti-Semitism seems like a hydra. It’s been around for so long and taken so many forms that it seems always to be changing.
- Anti-Semitism in Christianity has a long history. Jews are still “blamed” for having killed Jesus, as the recent outcries over Mel Gibson’s brutal Passion showed.
- Hitler magnified a “racial” dimension to anti-Semitism that had been brewing in Europe for at least a hundred and fifty years. Instead of being a religious-ethnic group, Jews became a different race. Indeed, a different species.
- Contemporary liberals sometimes blame Jewry as a whole for Israel’s sometimes-excessive dealings with Palestinians.
- Even the super-nutty fringes are not immune. Take a look at Freedom Press and it won’t take long to find a connection ultimately between Jews and aliens (?!?) through the supposed conspiracies of theIlluminati.
Anti-Semitism is, indeed, everywhere, and has been for ages. And despite our “enlightened” times, it appears we might be heading toward another wave of increased anti-Semitism.
Over a hundred years ago, my great-grandfather grew up in a wealthy area of Warsaw. His family were non-practicing Jews. This was a fact they tried to keep on the down-low, in order for his brother, who was deaf and blind, to attend a prominent Catholic school for those with similar disabilities. (He became an excellent artist and created beautiful wood carvings.)
Most of my family emigrated, but I know I have two distant relatives that worked for the Polish Underground during the war. And if whoever was left emigrated, who could blame them?
It seems the more things change…
PS Someone scrawled a swastika on a door near a school in the town where I live. I have to walk by it twice a week, and it breaks my heart everytime I see it. Not because I’m a quarter Jewish, but because there is still so much unnecessary hate in this world.