When Poland rediscovers its Jews

In Poland and the Jews, everything has been said and its opposite: it is the country where the largest Jewish community in Europe is flourished before 1939, but it is also a fundamentally anti -Semitic country, where an anti -Semitism without Jews has reigned since their extermination during the Second World War – Extermination which has taken place in Poland for a large part. How this country, twenty years after the fall of communism, does it manage the heavy heritage of a millennial Jewish presence and its extermination, but also its position as a witness during the war, with the responsibilities which result from it ? It is to these questions that Jean-Yves Potel confronts, who knows Poland well for having often stayed there, from the time of solidarity, then between 2001 and 2005 as a cultural advisor at the French Embassy in Warsaw, and for having conducted many research and reports on this country.

Places of Jewish memory

The work is built as a trip to the country, meeting known places of Jewish memory (Auschwitz and the Ghetto de Warsaw for example), as well as others more surprising (the łódź-Dragedast station from which the first convoys of Jews and Gypsies for Chełmno) left, out of the will to be forgotten by the Jew of the places they live. Jean-Yves Potel reports on the maintenance of the premises where the Polish Jews lived-like the Jewish district of Kazimierz in Krakow-or perished-in ghettos and extermination camps-, historical research, cultural and artistic festivals or educational actions. His book is also a meeting with people who, in Lublin, Cracovie, but also in the villages of Włodawa Or near the forgotten camp of Poniatowa, actively work to make known places and a forgotten story, through often original and innovative initiatives. Thus, for a few years, in Lublin, the Brama Grozdka center – from the name of the door that separated the Jewish and Christian districts from the city – commemorates the start of the liquidation of the ghetto every March 16 in 1942, having extinguished the lights of the city on the side “ Jewish ». While, on the other side, life continues without change, photos of the pre-war district are projected on the walls on the dead side and the names of Jewish residents of Lublin disappeared are read aloud (p. 73). Chapter after chapter, the author takes care to recall the history of these places, in a style that is both clear and precise. Its recipient is clearly the general public, but the documentation is deepened and the references to find out more.

According to Jean-Yves Potel, this reappropriation of his Jewish past by Poland experienced an accelerator after the great debate which surrounded the publication of the book by Jan T. Gross, Neighborsin 2000. The general public then discovered that part of the Polish company had not been only a victim of the war, or even only a witness, but had participated in the crime against the Jewish neighbors, in the village of Jedwabne in July 1941, and also elsewhere, in various forms. The political authorities took note of this, with the speech of the President of the Republic of the time, Aleksander Kwiaśniewski, asking for forgiveness “ In the name of all Poles whose consciousness is affected by this crime ».

Break with the “ Obsession with innocence »»

However, it should be emphasized that the reflections on Polono-Jewish relations during the war and on the Jewish presence in Poland in a country that has become de facto Almost monoethnic and homogeneous since 1945 had their first tremors in the circles of dissidents of solidarity and, from the 1980s, with liberal Catholic intellectuals. In 1987, an article by a recently disappeared literature teacher Jan Błonski drew attention to the fact that the Poles were not “ co-guilty But co -responsible for the Shoah, by their position as witnesses often indifferent, if not taking advantage of the destruction of the Jews.

The fall of communism precipitated the opening of the archives and the freedom recovered made it possible to debate subjects so far taboo or manipulated by the regime. A new generation of young researchers-Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska, Alina Cała, Barbabra Engelking-Boni, Jan Grabowski, Jacek Leociak, Dariusz Libionka, Bożena Szaynok and many others-seized these delicate questions, learned Hebrew or Yiddish and broken with this “ Obsession with innocence If characteristic of the vision of the national past in Poland. The debate on Jedwabne only made public issues hitherto confined to the narrow circle of intellectuals or specialists in public circle. ; In this sense, he has prepared the Polish company to better welcome initiatives aimed at publicizing the country’s Jewish past. The publication of Neighbors was therefore a “ real thunderbolt “, As the author shows by taking up the observation of historian Andrzej żbikowski, vice-director of the Jewish History Institute in Warsaw ; But a thunderclap which comes after slower developments, which have prepared the intellectual environment to discuss and disseminate these new challenges.

Monuments and festivals: the “ Jewish tourism »»

From this overview of the different ways of approaching this Jewish past, we can retain two major concerns. The first focuses on the posture of Pays-time that is Poland and a witness people that are the Poles, faced with the extermination of their Jewish neighbors. As we have seen, recent debates-to which we could add that of January 2008 on the anti-Jewish violence of the immediate post-war period committed by Poles-raise the question of the responsibility of society, but also of the Church. Historians, but also designers of exhibitions or artists, ask this question in their work. In these initiatives, it is a question of integrating contemporary Polish society into this past, and not of presenting a world apart. The monument erected on the site of the Krakow ghetto, in the Podgórze district, testifies to this (p. 117). In the central square arranged by two young architects, some chairs scattered here and there. They symbolize the precipitation with which the Jews were forced to leave their home by taking what they could. But they are integrated into the landscape, near the tram stop, and you can sit on it: it is not a cold monument, but a sober aesthetic which has taken into account the opinion of the inhabitants of the district who open their shutters every morning on this square.

The other concern readable in these different projects is of course the knowledge of the missing Jewish people. Here, the feelings of fascination, nostalgia and sometimes idealization mix and are very perceptible in the interviews carried out by the author. Thus, the revitalization of the Jewish district of Kazimierz in Krakow and the Jewish Culture Festival which has met there for almost twenty years a growing success sometimes flirt with folklore or artificial. Can non-Jews revive a disappeared past ? Is there no place on the contrary for creation, from this Jewish past ? Jean-Yves Potel skillfully illuminates the ongoing debates on the specificity of the Jewish heritage after the Shoah, which cannot be treated as a tourist attraction-and which nevertheless becomes. However, we feel that he approves these initiatives, even when they are a little awkward, but he takes care to justify his point of view and their merits.

The author does not forget to give the point of view of the little Jewish minority of Poland, by devoting a moving chapter to these “ Jews and Polish (Chap. 15) To complex identities and their love for their homeland, often not paid in return. He has made it one of the essential actors in the Polono-Jewish dialogue for the past twenty years, at the risk sometimes of overestimating the role of these intellectuals, some of whom, such as the novelist Agata Tuszyńska, journalists Anna Bikont and Konstanty Gebert or the professor of philosophy Stanisław Krajewski, have gone from a forced identification or hidden Positive, cultural and sometimes even religious Jewish.

Anti-Semitism and anti-anti-Semitism

Of course, the painting of relations between Poland and its Jewish past is not as pink, and the author does not mean to describe the persistence of a “ hate tongue »(Chap. 12) with a fairly stable group of the population (15 to 20 %), traditional religious anti -Semitism declining in favor of anti -Semitism “ modern Associating Jews with their supposed influence in economics, politics or the media. However, the Jewish presence in Poland is limited to a few thousand souls for 40 million inhabitants. The Jew is therefore imagined and the conservation of archaisms, which unconsciously persist in contemporary popular expressions, seems to be facilitated by the virtual absence of this minority.

For Jean-Yves Potel, however, this phenomenon must be counterbalanced by that of anti-anti-Semites-those who fight against this discrimination and more generally all the others-, the number of which has doubled for ten years, to form an equivalent group in proportion to that of convinced anti-Semites. Anti-anti-Semitism is a member of a model of European and progressive citizenship, which almost all actors in the “ Jewish renewal In Poland interviewed by Jean-Yves Potel. They are touching, if not a little naive, in the great ambitions displayed by the foundations or various programs they are dealing with, all of which have the mission of “ Promote the values ​​of an open civil society “(Jewish Culture Center of Krakow), develop” a deep meaning of local identity and tolerance vis-à-vis others “(Center Brama Grodzka) or” European values “(Foundation for safeguarding Jewish heritage). But we understand that the interviewer likes-perhaps a little too much-see in them the future and the model of the management of the Jewish past in Poland. Consequently, of these local, innovative and multiple initiatives, we would like to see the standard ; Of these young, dynamic and hyperactive actors, the dominant mentality of contemporary Polish society. However, it is not sure that this is already the case in 2009.

The end of innocence is an essential reading to better understand the developments of Polish society in the face of its Jewish past and the multiple efforts undertaken to integrate it into Polish national history. Sometimes fishing by optimism without pouring into angelism, this book has the immense merit of emphasizing the vitality and innovation readable in these different initiatives and thus to break with the rebounded speeches on the supposed visceral anti -Semitism of the Poles as soon as a controversy arises. The book also provides essential information concerning the most recent work-especially in the Polish language-on Polish Jewish history, memory issues and Polono-Jewish reports, which lacked in French, even if relegation in football notes and not at the end of the volume of the rich bibliography makes its use less easy. It is an excellent complement to the collection of recently published articles, which takes stock of the latest Polish and French historiographical research on these questions. The absence of illustrations – which can be regretted – can only invite to come and check the path traveled on the spot.