Semitic Violence: Poland's Jewish Past in New Polish Narratives: Poland's Jewish Past in New Polish Narratives (Reading Trauma and Memory) 1793636699, 9781793636690
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Philo-Semitic Violence

Reading Trauma and Memory Series Editors: Aimee Pozorski, Central Connecticut State University and Nicholas Ealy, University of Hartford Reading Trauma and Memory offers global perspectives on representations of trauma and memory while examining the tensions, limitations, and responsibilities that accompany the status of the witness. This series attempts to bridge the gap between trauma studies and new directions in the fields of memory studies, popular culture, and race theory and seeks submissions that closely read literature and culture for representations of traumatic wounding, the limits of memory, and the ethical duty to depict historical trauma and its effects. Given its breadth, this series will appeal to scholars in a number of interdisciplinary fields; given the specific angle of trauma and memory, it will capture those who see ethics and responsibility as key factors in their scholarship. Such areas include: Holocaust studies; war trauma and PTSD; illness and disability; the trauma of migration and immigration; memory studies; race studies; gender and sexuality studies (which has recently had a resurgence with the #MeToo movement); studies in popular culture that take up television and films about witness; and the study of social and historical movements. We are seeking projects that question how to honor the past through close readings of literature focused on trauma and memory—which would necessarily take on international perspectives. Examples include a consideration of literature, justice, and Rwanda through a postcolonial and trauma lens; recent thinking on the phenomenon of “American Crime Story” and the resurgence of interest in the OJ Simpson trial that parallels the narrative of the Black Lives Matter movement; readings of the attempts of popular culture to address issues of historical injustice as exemplified by 12 Years a Slave and HBO’s Westworld.

Recent Titles in This Series Philo-Semitic Violence: Poland’s Jewish Past in New Polish Narratives, by Elżbieta Janicka and Tomasz Żukowski Trauma in 20th Century Multicultural American Poetry: Unmuted Verse, by Jamie D. Barker Ethics of Witness in Global Testimonial Narratives: Responding to the Pain of Others, by Kimberly A. Nance The Latinx Urban Condition: Trauma, Memory, and Desire in Latinx Urban Literature and Culture, by Crescencio Lopez-Gonzalez Literary and Visual Representations of HIV/AIDS: Forty Years Later, by Aimee Pozorski, Jennifer J. Lavoie, and Christine J. Cynn Occupying Memory: Rhetoric, Trauma, Mourning, by Trevor Hoag

Philo-Semitic Violence Poland’s Jewish Past in New Polish Narratives

Elżbieta Janicka and Tomasz Żukowski

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www​.rowman​.com 6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL, United Kingdom Copyright © 2021 The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. Anka Grupińska, Ciągle po kole. Rozmowy z żołnierzami getta warszawskiego [Still around the circle. Conversations with Warsaw ghetto soldiers], foreword Paweł Szapiro (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Książkowe “Twój Styl,” 2000), 30. Władysław Szlengel, “I beg your pardon / Bardzo przepraszam,” in What I read to the dead / Co czytałem umarłym, trans. Marcel Weyland, foreword John Kinsella (Blackheath: Brandl & Schlesinger, 2012), 125, 127. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Janicka, Elżbieta, author. | Żukowski, Tomasz, 1969- author. Title: Philo-semitic violence : Poland’s Jewish past in new Polish narratives / Elżbieta Janicka and Tomasz Żukowski. Other titles: Przemoc filosemicka? English Description: Lanham : Lexington Books, [2021] | Series: Reading trauma and memory | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021018606 (print) | LCCN 2021018607 (ebook) | ISBN 9781793636690 (cloth) | ISBN 9781793636706 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Jews in popular culture—Poland. | Poland—Ethnic relations. | Poland—Social conditions—1989Classification: LCC DS134.55 .J36513 2021 (print) | LCC DS134.55 (ebook) | DDC 305.892/40438—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021018606 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021018607 ∞ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Contents

List of Figures

vii

Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Philo-Semitic Violence Elżbieta Janicka and Tomasz Żukowski

1

1 Interception of a Document: Po-lin by Jolanta Dylewska (2008) Elżbieta Janicka and Tomasz Żukowski

11

2 Correction of the Reality: Reenacting the Destruction of the Będzin Ghetto (2010) Tomasz Żukowski

57

3 The Object and Subject of Nostalgia: I Miss You, Jew, and The Burning Barn by Rafał Betlejewski (2010) Tomasz Żukowski

93

4 Purification through Separation: The Commemoration of the Warsaw Ghetto Bridge (1996, 2007–2011) Elżbieta Janicka

125

5 A Freudian Slip: The Keret House at Żelazna Street in Warsaw (2012) Elżbieta Janicka

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Bibliography241 Index261 About the Authors

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List of Figures

Cover: Frame from Archival Footage Shot in Poland by Jews from the United States Visiting Their Hometowns—Zaręby Kościelne, 1930. From the Archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York. Frame from Archival Footage Shot in Poland by Jews from the United States Visiting Their Hometowns—Kałuszyn, 1936. From the Archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York.

10

Historical Reenactment of the Destruction of the Będzin Ghetto— Będzin, 2010. Photo by Anna Musiałówna.56 Slogan “I Miss You, Jew” by Rafał Betlejewski While Whited Out—Warsaw, 2010. Photo by Dariusz Borowicz / Agencja Gazeta. BOR120628_020005 © Dariusz Borowicz / Agencja Gazeta.

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Symbolic Reconstruction of the Warsaw Ghetto Footbridge over Chłodna Street by Tomasz Lec—Warsaw, 2011. Photo by Franciszek Mazur / Agencja Gazeta. CHLODNA_KLADKAMAZ06 © Franciszek Mazur / Agencja Gazeta.

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Keret House by Jakub Szczęsny (2012) at Żelazna Street—Warsaw, 2012. Photo by Elżbieta Janicka.

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Acknowledgments

Our warmest thanks go to those who believed in the project from the very beginning. Mikhal Dekel encouraged us and showed us the publishing path that we wouldn’t have found on our own. Jonathan Brent noticed the book right after its Polish publication. He was the first to imagine its publication in the United States then kept us company every single day solving countless problems from major to minor. Without his indefatigable commitment we wouldn’t have been able to overcome any of them. Mikhal and Jonathan recommended our work to the publisher. Jan Tomasz Gross also gave us recommendations every time we needed. However, we remain his debtors for much, much more. Our translators were Paulina Chojnowska, Katarzyna Kaszorek, and Katrin Stoll, a dear friend who worked on the translation in the name of friendship and intellectual urgency, with the assistance of Michael Fitzpatrick. Saryta Rodriguez was an editor as relentless as enthusiastic. The American text owes her a lot. At any moment we could rely on the attentiveness and care of the staff of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York City. The American version of this book couldn’t have been accomplished without the trust and generous support of two anonymous YIVO sponsors. Dear All, without you this book wouldn’t have come into being. We express our deepest gratitude to you. Elżbieta Janicka, Tomasz Żukowski

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Introduction Philo-Semitic Violence Elżbieta Janicka and Tomasz Żukowski

NARRATIVE SHOCK The year 2000—which saw the publication of Neighbors by Jan Tomasz Gross—appeared to herald in Poland a breakthrough in thinking about the attitude of the Polish dominant majority toward the Jews, anti-Semitism in general, and the Holocaust in particular.1,2 In the Polish reality, it was a second narrative shock, following that caused by Claude Lanzmann’s film Shoah (1985), the case of the Carmelite convent in Auschwitz (1985–1993), and Jan Błoński’s text Biedni Polacy patrzą na getto (Poor Poles Look at the Ghetto) (1987). The narrative shock of the mid-1980s rendered impossible the perpetuation of the belief that the Poles were the only, or main, victims of the Second World War. It is the Jews who were the main victims, both in occupied Poland and in occupied Europe. While that shock failed to produce a new narrative consensus, the issue of the attitude of the Poles toward the Jews, anti-Semitism, and the Holocaust was constantly present in mainstream public debate in the 1990s. This was due to Michał Cichy’s text about murders of Jews committed by the Home Army (Armia Krajowa, AK) during the Warsaw Uprising (1994), the fiftieth anniversary of the Kielce Pogrom (1996), the installation of religious symbols in the field of ashes in Birkenau (1996–1997), and the erection of the “papal cross” on a gravel heap in Auschwitz (1998–1999). It was precisely in this state of narrative disintegration and never-ending tensions, if not symbolic wars, that the second shock happened. Gross recounted the 1941 live burning by the Polish neighbors of the entire Jewish population of the Jedwabne town, noting that this was not an isolated incident. With the book’s publication, a fact that could no longer be ignored came to the fore: The Poles were neither passive nor helpless witnesses to the 1

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Holocaust. They were co-conspirators at best, and sometimes direct perpetrators. In their mass, they co-determined the fate of Jewish citizens. As such, they bear co-responsibility for the course and result of the extermination of the Polish Jews. The shock of 2000 initially appeared to be a constructive shock—a crisis leading to overcoming, an ending that results in a new beginning. Both the allPolish debate about Jedwabne and the establishment of the Polish Centre for Holocaust Research at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences gave rise to unprecedented development of research into the Holocaust in occupied Poland. The historiography of the Holocaust was no longer written solely abroad. Simultaneously, on an unprecedented scale, representatives of the humanities and social sciences began to address the history of the Polish Jews and anti-Semitism. This resulted in innovative analyses, inspired re-interpretations, and poignant questions posed to culture and society. ANALYZED CORPUS We were intrigued by the question of to what extent, and in what forms, knowledge developed by researchers manifests itself into social awareness. To what extent is it ignored? To what extent is it reflected in the awareness— either directly or indirectly—as a positive or negative point of reference? Is it worked through? Does it translate into sociocultural change? If yes, how, and to what extent? Among important means of both expression and shaping collective awareness are culture texts, classified as cultural and artistic events due to the fact that they evoke a response and stimulate emotions of a wider audience consisting of members of various social and economic demographics. Mass popularity enables us to discuss these events as phenomena that are at least characteristic, if not representative, of the majority culture. We were interested in phenomena observed and discussed in public debate as a sign of change in social awareness and “new opening in the PolishJewish relations,” or a new narrative about the past. Three criteria determined the selection of events to be analyzed: a declaration of non-aggression toward “critical historiography” and thus also toward the new historiography of antiSemitism and the Holocaust, a broad social response, and the positive character of emotions declared by authors and evoked in the audience. As a result, the following events were analyzed: Jolanta Dylewska’s documentary Po-lin. Okruchy pamięci (Polin. Scraps of Memory) (2008), the historical reenactment of the liquidation of the Będzin ghetto (2010), Rafał Betlejewski’s all-Polish socio-artistic project entitled “I Miss You, Jew” (Tęsknię za tobą Żydzie) (2010), the symbolic reconstruction of the ghetto footbridge over

Introduction

3

Chłodna Street in Warsaw, designed by Tomasz Lec (2011), and the Keret House in Warsaw, designed by Jakub Szczęsny (2012). RESEARCH QUESTIONS We were interested in whether one really has to do with a new narrative. We asked about integrated history: history that takes into consideration the experience of all groups that inhabited Poland—in this case, people who, in various ways, defined themselves as Jews; as well as those who were included in the category against their will by the dominant group, which turned to symbolic and physical forms of violence in order to enforce such classifications. We were curious as to whether, and to what extent, the conditions of the Polish historical narrative have changed, together with the collective imaginarium contributing to the sociocultural frame that gives sense to experience and organizes subject knowledge. Have the self-opinion of the dominant majority and its attitude to its own past and present changed? If so, how? Has the redefinition of the community happened in the face of the fact that its ethnic and religious definition, and the hierarchical and collectivist character of relations within the community, caused and legitimized violence toward the minority? What was the scope of this redefinition, if at all? We sought to investigate whether, and on what conditions, the inclusion of the voices of all those who were formerly subjected to anti-Semitic exclusion happens. How freely is the narrative about the Jewish experience, of the Holocaust and the place of the dominant majority in it, expressed? To what extent is the status of the minority voice autonomous, and to what extent is it compelled to conform to conditions imposed by the majority? PHILO-SEMITIC VIOLENCE In search of answers to the above questions, we have observed that the voice of the minority, even if introduced into the audibility sphere, is still subject to restrictive requirements, pressure, and hierarchies, which in turn are deceptively similar to the old forms of discrimination. Furthermore, definitional oppression toward the members of the minority, which transforms a subject into an object, has been neither deconstructed nor subjugated. Quite the opposite: It is alive and well. It consists in philo-Semitic violence. We define philo-Semitism as impetuously positive feelings of the majority toward a collective imagined object identified as “the Jews.” In this sense, philo-Semitism, although utilizing the opposite emotional

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vector, is structurally similar to anti-Semitism. Both originate from a common allosemitic matrix, whose functioning was described in the 1980s by Artur Sandauer.3 Philo-Semitism is, as is any objectification and negation of the subjectivity of another entity, a form of violence. In this sense, “philoSemitic violence” is a term that is, to some extent, tautological and redundant. Our intention was, however, to emphatically isolate and name this still under-recognized phenomenon. Symptoms of philo-Semitic violence in Poland form a social phenomenon of impressive proportions. Recognizing that fact was a point of departure for our research. The main subject of the analysis is the way in which the imagined object of “the Jews” is constructed. “The Jews” is a phantasm, an image created in response to the deficiencies and demands of its admirers— the dominant group, meaning the Polish majority. Our research indicates that first on the list of its mental, emotional, and moral demands is concern for its own image and self-image. The issue of anti-Semitism—particularly the position of the Polish majority within the structure of the Holocaust—remains the central issue for the image and self-image. For this reason, addressing anti-Semitism and the Holocaust arouses the strongest emotions. PHANTASMAL “JEWS” AND THE POLISH IMAGE-AND-IDENTITY TANGLE On the one hand, the collective “fixation on the Jews,” in which the Polish image-and-identity tangle is expressed, stems from the fact that the phantasmal “Jews” are a constitutive Other, based on whom the majority determines its identity. In the reality of a community that defines itself ethnically (the Polish community) or in ethnic and religious terms (the Polish-Catholic community), the phantasmal “Jews” organize the system of distinction, just as they did in the conditions of the pre-national religious community (the Christian community): The benefit from classification, that is a sense of security resulting from the strengthened sense of identity, is felt most deeply precisely when the personification of distinction is indicated. In the course of Polish history, that function has always been served by the Jews, who have been the organizer of the Polish system of distinction since the Middle Ages. [. . .] Polish political reclassifications in the 20th century always used the Jewish key (the First World War, 1918, the war in 1920, the Sanation (Sanacja), the Russian troops’ arrival, the German troops’ arrival, the return of the Russians, the Communist government, October 1956, the year 1968, etc.); today, too, repair slogans of the authorities, even if far from anti-Semitism (for example fight against corruption or the “new history

Introduction

5

politics”), are being confused with a different, dangerous type of organization based on identity hysteria and nationalism.4

On the other hand, the dominant identity of the majority group is based on an idealized image to such an extent that it appears to be exhausted in it. This does not mean that qualities like individual and collective subjectivity, readiness to acknowledge the subjectivity of different entities, sovereignty, or awareness of the consequences of one’s choices—and responsibility for them—are unknown in Polish culture. However, these qualities do not enjoy comparable sociocultural validity. They remain dispersed, and do not create an alternative to an identity based on image that is clear and has broad appeal. They have only negative mobilization capacity, which means that they are exhausted in individual, minor reactions to revealed acts of violence and do not translate into systematic reflection about culture—which could, in turn, result in a change in social practices. Critical thought does exist, but it is devoid of continuity. It does not transform into a clear and permanent canon or corpus that could be systematically verified or falsified. Furthermore, the defendants of the Polish image invariably consider each analytical undertaking to be a threat that originates from or is inspired by the outside. Geneviève Zubrzycki, a researcher into the Polish majority identity and Polish symbolic wars, analyzes the dominant majority’s fascination with everything that is considered Jewish in Poland; but she does not probe into the construction of the imagined “Jew.” Nor does she measure the phantasm created by the Poles up against the realities of the Polish-Jewish and the Jewish-Polish history. Based on the statements of the Polish participants of the “Jewish revival,” she draws a conclusion that it is a “replacement phenomenon”—a socially and culturally allowed form of expression of one’s longing for a pluralistic society.5 Our research indicates that the phenomenon includes an element that goes beyond many divisions—an element that is deeply harmonizing. The image of Poland and the Poles remains the primary symbolic stake of “the Jews,” including its most sensitive point: the Poles’ attitude toward the Jews in general and during the Holocaust in particular— because, sooner or later, the question of the Holocaust will inevitably be asked. THE WORKINGS OF THE MECHANISM What serves a crucial role in philo-Semitic violence is something that may be easily described as a proof of change: good feelings of the majority toward “the Jews”—an utterly unprecedented phenomenon. The phantasmal “Jews” are thus constructed in such a way that they become likeable, sometimes to

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such an extent that one could identify with them. The aim can be achieved in two ways. First, by describing issues that do not involve the context of the dominant culture, such as religion and traditional customs: the Torah, Hasidim’s tales, music, cuisine, paper cutting, and so forth. Second, by following the method of decontextualization of everything that indicates the dominant culture’s aggression. This is why prevailing Polish narratives about the Holocaust either completely evacuate the Polish majority to the outside of the represented world or rely on Hilberg’s triad:6 A clear differentiation between perpetrators, victims, and bystanders, in which victims and bystanders are separated by foreign violence. The anti-Semitism of the dominant group does not appear in this field of vision. Should it make itself known, however, it must remain unanalyzed, marginalized, or considered something already subjugated and thus unworthy of attention. It can be presented, for instance, as an excess of individuals or a separated group. It cannot, however, be described as a constant sociocultural norm, morally legitimized by both the dominant religion and customs considered to be natural and self-evident. Thus, decontextualization conditions a liking for the object of the representation (the phantasmal “Jews”). It organizes the field of representation and is generally obeyed by everyone who enters it. The requirement concerns the Jewish voice, too. How does it work? It verges on psychological improbability that a real person, having encountered an avalanche of the best feelings toward their inadequate image, states, “You mistake me for someone else.” It is even less probable that they reveal the rules of the game in such a situation, saying, “You instrumentalize me, acting in your own interest at my expense.” The liking for the imagined Jews de facto serves as a gag or a tool of blackmail. For the object of positive feelings usually tries to return the kindness instead of demanding that explanations be offered, and accounts be settled. Such a demand, just as a claim to equal rights and agency of the subject, would make a liking for the subject impossible. In the perspective of the dominant culture, it would put the subject in the position of the archetypal insolent, ungrateful or perhaps even revengeful “Jew.” In accordance with this principle, the liking in question eliminates the opportunity of expressing the Jewish experience in its entirety; an entirety that also determines its differentia specifica, which is the stigma created and imposed by the majority together with all of its consequences. The cultural events under analysis constitute different versions of the narcissistic self-staging of the dominant majority. It espouses such opinions about the “Jews” as confirm its own self-image. In this way, seemingly contradictory weals are reconciled and secured: the idealized image of the majority (“The Poles have never had a problem with anti-Semitism”), and a myth of progress (“Poland has changed for the better with respect to anti-Semitism”).

Introduction

7

This is how philo-Semitic violence works: It enables resistance to reject the basic pattern of exclusion on a social scale and, simultaneously, constitutes its new form. Under its cover, anti-Semitism—unthreatened in its foundations, construction, and mechanisms—can last and reproduce, just as illustrated in the case of Poland after 1989.7,8,9

QUESTION ABOUT CHANGE The absence of social change manifests itself on the level of the definition of the community, which is still founded on the ethnic or ethno-religious criterion. Such a definition has an aggressive character that is both offensive and defensive. This was explicitly proven by the debate about refugees (2015). Confronted with the refugee crisis, the European Union decided to direct the arrivals into each of its member-countries. This triggered a bottom-up and top-down hate campaign in Poland (and Hungary, for that matter). One of Poland’s political parties (Law and Justice, i.e., Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, or PiS), supported by the Catholic Church, based its anti-refugee campaign on anti-Semitic patterns that were characteristic of Nazi propaganda. The campaign propelled PiS to victory in the presidential and parliamentary elections of 2015. Jan Tomasz Gross—who protested the countrywide explosion of hatred, deeming it a result of cultural and societal refusal to address Poles’ and Eastern Europeans’ involvement in the Holocaust10—was both stigmatized by his right-wing adversaries and ostracized by his lifelong friends from the liberal democratic mainstream (represented by the Gazeta Wyborcza daily newspaper). Poland has received no refugees. Thus, the sociocultural framework organizing experience and knowledge does not change. Neither does the dominant narrative—even if, on the level of detail, new elements appear within it. There was a time, however, when knowledge and experience appeared to gain an advantage and crack the hermetic image-and-identity shell. It happened in the period from 2000 to 2004, between the debate about Jedwabne in 2000–2001 and Poland’s accession to the European Union in 2004, followed by the election victory of the camp of the “new historical politics” in 2005—which, contrary to popular belief, is not limited to one political party. Thus, the question arises as to whether the events of the years 2000–2004 were dictated solely by concern for Poland’s image under the banner “What will they think about us abroad?” Were they determined by conviction that the ability to take responsibility for one’s own country and its history is a kind of distinction—a ticket to a better world, in which one can forget this responsibility once they arrive? Or perhaps it was a potential for change that

Elżbieta Janicka and Tomasz Żukowski

8

manifested itself in the four-year crack? We wish to believe that it was at least the latter. In our analyses, we describe mechanisms through which social energy finds an outlet not in actual change but creating and preserving the appearance of change. The semblance of change not only enables the avoidance of true change, but also serves to block or deactivate potential for change. The image, not the actual state of affairs, remains the supreme value and an end in itself. As long as collective identity is based on image, a vicious circle of denying both one’s own status as a subject and that of others ensues. This also perpetuates image-panic, which has been and probably will continue to be based on refusal to confront the reality of the Holocaust and the place of one’s own group in that reality. This ritual has occurred in Poland incessantly since 1942, if not 1941, and has not met with opposition from any cultural institution—be it the home, the school, or the Church. It can be threatened solely by emancipation of individuals as social beings who feel and think—that is, entities who are responsible for themselves and the network of relations in which they remain. Today, however, this prospect seems even more distant than in the times when the projects whose analytical balance is presented in the book were undertaken. Spring 2016

NOTES 1. Jan Tomasz Gross, Sąsiedzi. Historia zagłady żydowskiego miasteczka [Neighbors. The history of destruction of a Jewish town] (Sejny: Pogranicze, 2000). 2. Jan Tomasz Gross, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001). 3. Artur Sandauer, O sytuacji pisarza polskiego pochodzenia żydowskiego w XX wieku. Rzecz, którą nie ja powinienem był napisać . . . [On the situation of the Polish writer of Jewish descent in the twentieth century. A text someone else should have written . . .] (Warszawa: Czytelnik, 1982), 9–12. 4. Joanna Tokarska-Bakir, Légendes du sang. Pour une anthropologie de l’antisémitisme chrétien [Legends of blood. For an anthropology of Christian anti-Semitism], trans. Małgorzata Maliszewska (Paris: Éditions Albin Michel, 2015), 632, 634. 5. Geneviève Zubrzycki, “Nationalism, ‘Philosemitism,’ and Symbolic BoundaryMaking in Contemporary Poland,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 58, no. 1 (January 2016): 66–98. 6. Raul Hilberg, Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe, 1933–1945 (New York: HarperCollins, 1992). 7. For survey research from 1992 see Ireneusz Krzemiński, ed., Czy Polacy są antysemitami? Wyniki badania sondażowego [Are the Poles anti-Semites? Survey results] (Warszawa: Oficyna Naukowa, 1996).

Introduction

9

8. For survey research from 2002 see Ireneusz Krzemiński, ed., Antysemityzm w Polsce i na Ukrainie. Raport z badań [Anti-Semitism in Poland and Ukraine. Research report] (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Scholar, 2004). 9. For survey research from 2012 see Ireneusz Krzemiński, ed., Żydzi—problem prawdziwego Polaka. Antysemityzm, ksenofobia i stereotypy narodowe po raz trzeci [The Jews—a genuine Pole’s problem. Anti-Semitism, xenophobia and national stereotypes: third attempt] (Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 2015). 10. Jan Tomasz Gross, Eastern Europe’s Crisis of Shame, September 14, 2015, https​:/​/ww​​w​.soc​​ialeu​​rope.​​eu​/ea​​stern​​-euro​​pes​-c​​risis​​​-of​-s​​hame.

Frame from Archival Footage Shot in Poland by Jews from the United States Visiting Their Hometowns—Kałuszyn, 1936. Source: From the Archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York.

Chapter 1

Interception of a Document Po-lin by Jolanta Dylewska (2008) Elżbieta Janicka and Tomasz Żukowski

POSTHUMOUS INCLUSION? In Historia antysemityzmu (History of Anti-Semitism), edited by Léon Poliakov, Paul Zawadzki states: In some milieus, one can even get the impression that the sign of value attributed to Jews has changed; anti-Semitism has been replaced by some kind of philo-Semitism. [. . .] Everything indicates that after a physical death during the Shoah, a symbolical death with the exile in 1968 and a metaphorical death with the fall of Communism, the Jews, or at least their ashes, will be included in the pantheon of Polish culture.1

The idea of posthumous inclusion needs to be carefully examined. It is, for example, associated with the question of to what extent one can disregard the fact, as well as the causes and circumstances, of the death of the object of inclusion, since this inclusion is performed by the living upon the dead. Moreover, it is performed by the majority on the minority: by the group that has hitherto been exclusive onto the group it has definitively excluded. We are interested in the conditions under which posthumous inclusion in question develops. We have analyzed practices by which these conditions are defined. Noting these, we realize that wherever violence against a minority is both deeply rooted in and preserved over time by the dominant culture, rejecting models that reproduce and consolidate discrimination proves incredibly difficult. The previous forms of subordination are replaced by new ones— sometimes in defiance of the best intentions. We would like to examine this process via Jolanta Dylewska’s film from 2008, Po-lin. Okruchy pamięci (Polin. Scraps of Memory). We treat it as a 11

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testimony of inclusive intentions and practices, which are not an isolated case in present-day Polish culture. The film was received enthusiastically. It received the following awards: Golden Teeth—Audience Award of Chicago Polish Film Festival (2008); 3rd Feature Film Award of the Film and Art Festival Two Riversides in Kazimierz Dolny (2008); Krzysztof Kieślowski Beyond Borders Award of New York Polish Film Festival (2009); Golden Phoenix—Grand Prix of “Jewish Motifs” International Film Festival in Warsaw (2009); Golden Filmstrip—Award of the Film Literature Circle of the Polish Filmmakers Association (2009). Po-lin was construed both as a remedy for anti-Semitism and an invitation to join the discussion about the history of the Polish Jews on entirely new terms. It was underlined with recognition that Jolanta Dylewska had adopted a radically different standpoint from the perspective presented by Jan Tomasz Gross, who revealed the structural violence and exclusion underpinning the attitude of the Polish majority toward minorities—Jews in particular—prior to the war. In reviewers’ opinion, the director proposed a language which presents the issue in a new light, “omitting the matter of guilt, mutual grudges, anti-Semitism and anti-Polonism.”2 The anti-Semitic motif of “mutual guilt” between the Poles and the Jews before, during, and after the war is very popular in Poland and would require separate study. As examples of the “Jewish guilt,” Katyń and Stalinism (or Communism in general) are evoked.3 One of the most significant instances of such a symmetrical discourse was the statement by the Primate of Poland (head of the Catholic church) concerning the revelation of the Jedwabne massacre.4 In March 2001, Cardinal Józef Glemp announced, “It somewhat resembles the massacre in Katyń,”5 and then asked about the reason for the massacre in Jedwabne that had occurred a year later.6 As his logic was based on the anti-Semitic myth of Judeo-Communism,7 he suggested thereby that Polish crimes against Jews were a kind of a retaliation, if not self-defense.8 Back to Dylewska’s Po-lin, the same reviewer of the center-left weekly magazine Polityka, complimented the director: “Her moving film is almost all composed of meticulously restored fragments from amateur recordings, which present ordinary behaviors, fleeting carefree moments and happiness.”9 Writing for the professional monthly Kino “about neighbors who suddenly disappeared,” a celebrated cinema critic, stated: In black-and-white films, the world, which we know from Kawalerowicz’s Austeria at best, revives. [. . .] And if anyone bandies around slogans of Polish anti-Semitism, he should see the film. [. . .] Images preserved in the film, meticulously reproduced sounds, mood music by Michał Lorenc. Filled with nostalgia and tolerance, this wise film should be included in the canon of films for school students.10

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And so it happened. A reviewer from liberal democratic Gazeta Wyborcza daily newspaper observed accurately yet failed to notice the hidden meaning of his own words: “They are smiling. They do not blame anybody or want anything from us. It is we who need them for some purpose.”11 We shall now examine this picture of harmonious coexistence. COMMUNICATIVE SITUATION: QUID PRO QUO The film Po-lin is composed of accounts that belong to two communicative universes: Jewish and Polish. The same texts and pictures have different meanings in each of them. However, Jolanta Dylewska managed to create the effect of harmony by obliterating these differences. A radical change in the receiving situation escapes our attention, as do its consequences. Distortion is the price: gestures and words spoken by the Jews to the Jews have the function of a message sent by the Jews to the Polish audience—this message serves as a basis to draw conclusions about relations between the Polish and Jewish neighbors. Dylewska uses documentaries shot by the Jewish emigrants, who in the 1930s traveled from the United States to visit their relatives in Poland. These materials are family mementos. Amateur filmmakers shot them for close relatives and friends who had emigrated. The residents of Jewish towns were acquainted with the people behind the camera and knew to whom the registered images would be directed. This determined the behavior of the amateur filmmakers as well as the characters. The conventions of commemorative photography defined the subject: What registered was not so much everyday life as the atmosphere of holiday, which was the visit of long-lost relatives, friends or acquaintances, who were generally perceived as those who succeeded. Hence, the behavior of the filmed people: They show a kind interest in the camera and are well-disposed toward the cameramen. A cheerful mood affects them. Smiling, they are greeting those who will watch them across the Atlantic. They want to make a good impression; holiday mood is not favorable for thinking about problems and cares. This seemingly carefree attitude can even be observed in photographs in which the poor, beggars, or local outcasts appear. Smiling at the cameraman from the same community is one thing; but, in Dylewska’s film, this smile changes its meaning. It becomes a greeting, which the minority sends to the majority. The director does not provide archival shots with any contextual or analytic commentary. On the contrary, she seems to strengthen the communicative misunderstanding. At the beginning of the film, an inter-title appears, informing that the footage is archival. We can read, “Due to the course of history, amateur materials, shot by an unskilled hand of very often unknown authors, preserve for us scraps of the

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Elżbieta Janicka and Tomasz Żukowski

non-existent world of the Polish Jews” [emphasis by E. J., T. Ż.].12 The word “us” means the Polish film crew, Polish viewers, and—evidently—Polish people in general. This motif returns in the conversation with the director held by the journalist from Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper, “Katarzyna Bielas: The people who appear in amateur home movies shot before the war [. . .] approach the camera with a smile on their faces, looking us in our eyes [emphasis by E. J., T. Ż.]. We are struck by a friendly and cheerful atmosphere. Jolanta Dylewska: I had the same feeling when I was watching these films for the first time in various archives in the world, and it is exactly this feeling I wanted to preserve for future viewers.”13 The created message has become an important element of discussion, which has lasted in Poland incessantly since the publication of Jan Tomasz Gross’s book, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland (2000; English translation 2001), and which was initiated by Jan Błoński’s article, Biedni Polacy patrzą na getto (Poor Poles Look at the Ghetto, 1987). The creators of this film intentionally spoke in a public debate, calling the Jews from the archival materials as witnesses. This is a fact of serious consequences. The intergroup “act of reconciliation,” which is so willingly described by the reviewers, proves to be based on the lack of communication between the two groups. The original context of sending and receiving excludes completely the question of relations with Polish Christians. From the footage used by Dylewska, we are told nothing about opinions that the Jewish residents of shtetls held of their Polish neighbors. The creators of this film omitted this question and thus distorted the meaning of Jewish messages. Creating the illusion of dialogue while simultaneously depriving minority members of permission to speak (as Po-lin does) is just one form the message-distortion can take. Contemporary material, which surrounds the Jewish archival footage, makes the Jews seem to speak; however, they say what is put in their mouth by the Polish director, who at the same time saw to it that they could not express their actual opinions about the dominant group. The film images of shtetls and messages included in them become a part of the whole, which is absolutely controlled by the Polish narrator. The Jews become incapacitated, instrumentalized. THE HARMONY OF MEMORIES AND ITS CURATOR-HANDLER The distortion goes deeper, beyond the receiving context. The paramount perspective of the dominant group has been inscribed in the structure of Po-lin.

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We see the Jewish world through the eyes of “witnesses”—that is, Poles who knew their neighbors and who are remembering them. The archival footage does not appear immediately. The story begins with those Poles who remember the Jews, who are talking about their “disappearance” and the void they left. Dylewska introduces the archival material with the following contemporary sequence: one of two Polish women says that she does not dream about Jews anymore, although they used to return in her dreams. Then, she asks her companion about her dreams. The camera zooms in on the face of the other woman. With vacant eyes, she is staring at something distant, as though from the other world. The image follows her look. In a close-up, architectural details appear; first, they are blurred, yet a moment later they gradually become sharper. We can see doors, gates of houses, walls. Only people are absent, although the Jewish-style music, the murmur imitating the sounds of the Jewish street, and Piotr Fronczewski reading reminiscences about the Jewish residents of the town excerpted from Jewish “memorial books,” can be heard coming from off-screen. As far as the choice of the lector is concerned, the director succumbed to the persuasion: Initially, the commentary was to be read by a woman. I was thinking about Maja Komorowska [Grotowski’s and Wajda’s actress—E. J., T. Ż.], but unfortunately it happened that she was busy at that time. It was the producer who suggested Piotr Fronczewski. He said, “Jola, do you realize that the most important texts in the history of humanity were always read by men?” I did not know what to say.14

With its timbre and intonation, the actor’s cavernous, haunting voice resembles the bass voice of Anatoly Kashpirovsky, a popular Russian hypnotist and healer-celebrity. Finally, they appear: the Jews, summoned from nothingness. Approaching the camera, they are approaching “us.” They emerge from the back of the scene, timid smiles on their faces. Polish “witnesses,” in turn, are filmed in two conventions. Dylewska primarily uses documentary style: She presents the Polish characters in the places where they live and work, in a casual conversation with the reporter standing behind the camera. When she interviews them and records their memories and emotions, however (moments that are crucial for the narration), she switches to the style of a psychological film, using close-ups that fill the whole frame and having the camera focus squarely on the subject’s eyes. In an interview given to the online magazine Stopklatka, the director said, “Having finished conversations, cameraman Józek Romasz and I placed the camera in front of them and I asked them to look in the lens and think about a dear Jewish neighbor from that period. Indeed, I believe

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Elżbieta Janicka and Tomasz Żukowski

that the lens can convey more than that which is seen.”15 With this image, Dylewska deliberately suggests a “spiritual depth” and elevates the Polish interlocutors. In addition, the director anticipates—or more accurately, establishes—the equality of Polish and Jewish memories. In her presentation, the archival footage shot by the Jewish amateur filmmakers proves to be both a materialization and a guarantee of authenticity of the Poles’ memory. The past is supposed to last in the “witnesses,” who are symbolically placed on the same side as the victims. We’ve already noted that the confirming smiles of the Jews from the 1930s footage are not addressed to “us.” Still, the Polish curator-handler knows better. When, in the Stopklatka interview, a question about anti-Semitism is asked, we are told that it was not—and still is not—a marginal problem. However, Dylewska underlines that in Polish accounts: There were more good deeds. Of course, there were also pogroms. But first of all, I made this film to bring back the Jews to collective memory. On the other hand, I made it also for those who survived the Holocaust. I thought that maybe they would be happy to hear someone—for example Józefa in the film—saying that without them, it had become empty and sad. In my opinion, it was important to let them hear these words.16

We may observe here the director’s conscious choice. Dylewska decides that she will show “that which was good.” At the same time, she implies that what she shows was a decisive factor influencing the atmosphere in Polish-Jewish towns. “Bringing back the Jews to collective memory” is thus occurring on special terms. Smiling Jews “legitimize” the director’s decision. They “approve” the Polish narrative that erases everyday violence and exclusion on the part of the dominant group. The impression of Polish-Jewish harmony of memories is strengthened by the juxtaposition of two nostalgias. The Polish nostalgia is created by Dylewska herself, and her filming technique. It consists of picturesque footage of remnants, psychologizing portraits of interlocutors, and the removal of anti-Semitic signs. The Polish nostalgia is all the easier to create, so because it does not require any revision of habits and allegiances. Dylewska’s interlocutors know that they are safe in this regard: The Polish majority ensured that the possibility of real meeting and communication between Poles and Jews was averted. A few Jews who survived ran for dear life. Those who were killed are gone forever; they do not want anything from the Poles, they do not say a word, being only a projection of those who are recollecting them. At the end of the film, one of the Polish characters repeats with melancholy,

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“Everything passes away.” This is universal wisdom, absolute truth. One can only agree with it. Panta rei. Tempus fugit. Où sont les neiges d’antan! The Jewish nostalgia is, above all, the nostalgia of “memorial books,” which were published by Area Associations (established by the Polish Jews who emigrated from Poland).17 They were created by survivors for survivors. The authors described for themselves and each other the murdered Jewish world, in which the Polish neighbors, actually, did not appear. While in the parts related to the interwar period, one finds relatively few details about the contacts with the Christian population, in the parts related to the war and post-war period, one finds significantly more pieces of information, which describe various [euphemism meaning “anti-Semitic”—E. J., T. Ż.] attitudes of the Poles. [. . .] The reading of Jewish memorial books can be very enlightening for the Polish reader, who will often be surprised by a disparate perspective or the harshness of judgments presented in the included texts. It must be remembered, however, that the majority of books were written soon after the war when the Jewish community in Poland, having experienced a lot during the Holocaust, was additionally hurt by the wave of anti-Semitism, which would culminate in the Kielce pogrom in July 1946.18

Contrary to what the above passage suggests, Dylewska doesn’t seem enlightened by her reading of Jewish memorial books. She chooses from them fragments that almost resemble a fairy-tale. This style is additionally emphasized by the ponderous and hieratic reading by Piotr Fronczewski. The fairy-tale describes “the good old days,” conveniently omitting the fact that they were good not because of the Polish majority’s kindness or decent living conditions, but simply because everyone was still alive. In Po-lin, these two nostalgias are juxtaposed, which gives the impression that they meet. However, neither of these stories crosses the boundaries of its own community. It is especially important to observe what is happening on the Polish side: While talking about the minority, the dominant group also creates the image of itself. Thus, the most important feature of this documentary about the Jews is the image it renders of the Poles. VIDEO AND AUDIO FAMILY ALBUM Dylewska inscribes the Jewish archival shooting into Polish narration about the Polish community. It has already been mentioned that this archival material appears on the screen as an illustration of the content of memories recalled by the Polish “witnesses.” The films shot by the Jewish amateurs are thus granted a special status.

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Elżbieta Janicka and Tomasz Żukowski

Edited from the 1930s footage, the first sequence consists of scenes in which the filmed Jews are approaching the camera from a distance. This gesture of openness and friendship is repeated as many as six times, with different Jewish characters. They perform trust and devotion while walking toward the lens, which additionally expose them to violence imposed by those who will take possession of the exposed films and use them for their own purposes. Dylewska did not perceive this danger. She abandoned the image of the minority to the majority’s mercy. The following four scenes are family frames. The elderly and the children are standing next to each other, as if posing for a photograph. The narration of Po-lin suggests that these photographs will be given to “us.” They will be included into the collection of family mementos kept by “witnesses” and then given to the film crew and the audience. The meaning of these photographs is determined by whomever owns the collection, as is the case for every family album. An album seems to be a document par excellence, since the photographs included in it are a mechanical recording of reality. However, the situation is not that simple. A collection of photographs is a cultural fact, a story which cannot be told without direction and sometimes even manipulation. Photographs define family and friend circles and, more importantly, determine the status of the album owner, who uses it to create a narration about himself. In general, it is the narration, which suits him the most and to which he aspires. It is constructed of variants of cultural clichés of status and attitudes, be it a view of a white manor house, shots from holidays in Nice at the beginning of the century, or photographs with famous personages. A family album may consist of photographs of real family and friends, yet this is not necessary. Under the banner of “Buy yourself ancestors!” more than one archive of old photographs is waiting for a new owner.19 Regardless of authenticity, the principle remains the same: The one who possesses the photographs becomes an administrator of their meanings. That person creates their own genealogy and identity on that basis. In the case of the collection presented by Dylewska, there are three important interconnected aspects of the presentation. First, the archival footage is dominated by the majority-determined narration. Second, it fits into identity clichés that are essential for this narration, such as “Polish hospitality.” Finally, it is fabricated in such a way so as not to ‟resist” curator-handlers. In Po-lin, a commemorative family photograph in the neighbors’ album seals a friendly alliance. Irrespective of their own intentions, the Jews are forced to appear in the Polish family saga about Polish origins, identity, and uniqueness in comparison with Europe: a saga of Paradisus Iudaeorum. From behind the senses squeezed into the archival footage by the Polish story, a fundamental status of the films from the 1930s in Dylewska’s Po-lin

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emerges: the status of subordination and availability. The director—a new owner of the archive—takes control over images through the act that should be called interception, if not theft. As a result, the majority obtains what it likes the most: likeable and pleased Jews who accommodatingly accept the Polish version of events. It becomes impossible to see the vast emptiness that refers to the Holocaust in (originally silent) historical footage once it is co-opted and manipulated in this way. Moreover, the shock—which forces us to recognize the mechanisms of crime and cope with its real social fact in order to “arrange [our] thoughts and actions so that Auschwitz shall not repeat itself, so that nothing similar shall happen,”20 as Adorno expressed it—vanishes in carefree self-affirmation of the Polish community. The shots in which the reality before the Holocaust is contrasted with present-day images of the same desolate places are immediately intercepted by an overriding story that is harmonious and, formally, overwhelming. To obtain an effective interception of images, the audience cannot be left alone with the footage the way the Jewish authors and owners left them. The viewers’ intellect and senses are instead continually managed and formatted. The footage from the 1930s was supplemented with a soundtrack, which is composed of all possible noises related to the specific frames. Watching the street, we can hear footsteps and the babble of distant conversations. When a horse is walking on the screen, the clatter of hooves and a neigh arise. When a railway station appears, the blast of a locomotive’s siren and the sound of a departing train emerge from off-screen. Black-and-white photographs have all of the characteristics of amateur archival material: They are fuzzy, with scratches here and there, and the film grain is large. Compared to the archival footage, the sound strikes with technical perfection. It is hyper-realistic, hyper-polished, and hyper-processed. Because of this contrast, the soundtrack stands out, becomes independent and focuses attention as a separate work that is an authorial construct. The sound “revives” the images. Reviewers noticed that Dylewska “reconstructs in detail” the world of pre-war Jewish towns.21 Tadeusz Sobolewski stressed, “Indeed, [. . .] one has the impression of direct contact with a true reality.”22 Piotr Śmiałowski wrote that: [Dylewska] decided on the technique, which is probably the best idea of Po-lin: old films are played in somewhat slow motion. They are underscored with sounds, which to some extent are harmonized with scenes on the screen. These sounds, however, are not ordinary. They are reverberant, but also a little bit deformed. [. . .] With all these elements, one can have the impression of listening to some kind of folk story, and the film itself corresponds to the images, which we create in our minds while having our eyes closed.23

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Elżbieta Janicka and Tomasz Żukowski

The added soundtrack constitutes a part of the “regaining the past” operation. Similarly, the slow-motion archival footage and close-ups of individual characters are important features of this operation. All of this calls attention to the assiduousness of the Poles who made the effort. The film creators’ technique connects them, as well as the audience, with the Polish “witnesses.” “We,” for whom the archival material was saved, “revive” together the Jewish world; we recover it from the dark and bequeath it to future generations. Here, the majority stages itself. The problem of people remaining silent on the screen also disappears. The impression of communing with the Jewish voice is intensified by a commentary read by Piotr Fronczewski. At the beginning of Po-lin, the following information is presented, “Those who survived, wrote MEMORIAL BOOKS—SIFREI ZIKARON. Due to these books, the commentary for this film was created.” The impression is compelling: Here, the Jewish victims receive their voices back and, together with the Polish “witnesses,” talk about the land of Po-lin. The commentary is invariably maintained in the present tense. In an interview to Stopklatka, Dylewska describes why that grammatical tense was chosen: Hanna Krall [. . .] made a brilliant correction, fundamental for the film. She asked, “How come? Why [it is written] in the past tense if they are still alive?” Due to this change, the audience may have the impression that this world still exists. Because of the present tense, these people are more alive. Maybe some viewers will have the impression that this world can be saved. From my point of view, it could be the viewers’ important emotional input to this film.24

The director’s comment reveals some problems related to memory as an instrument to make others present. Memory (the subjective) is validated by a mechanical image (the objective). Dylewska seems to think that this technique achieves objectivity, which is the past recalled in its real shape. However, the act of recalling the bygone world is, at the same time, the act of creating it. The authors of historical narration dictate the principles of this creation.25 This phenomenon was exhaustively described by Hayden White, who emphasized the crucial role of narrative conventions through which culture, society and historians perceive and organize facts. In White’s opinion, historical narrative is not so much a simple reflection of the past as a creation of its image.26 In the case of the relationship between the dominant group and the minority, the problem becomes more complicated—especially when the reconstruction takes place after the extermination of the latter, under “the Holocaust’s long shadow,” as Feliks Tych termed the post-war anti-Semitism.27

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In Po-lin, making the past “present” is an attempt to somehow put the Holocaust in parentheses. When memory gets stuck in the times before the extermination, lullabied with the belief that they can be revived, the extermination itself ceases to be a crucial turning point. The tone shifts from the necessity of reflecting on the mechanisms of genocide and behaviors of the dominant group toward the exterminated to the cultivation of memories of the Jews before the catastrophe—or, more precisely, images of them nurtured by the dominant group. This process does not require any amendment of behavior or beliefs of the majority. Dylewska is aware that she also participates in the act of “regaining” the murdered world, and she suggests that the audience has a similar role; yet she does not see this process as problematic. As a result, the characters are not protected against the power of the film’s curator-handler. Memory is used in the film to create images of the absent that conceal their prototypes and separate the audience from reality. In consequence, an illusory sense of communing with the dead arises. It is all the easier and more reassuring because they are exposed to the narration created by the majority, and do not try to question it in any way. When the story is told in the present tense, its characters may seem “more alive.” However, it is difficult to understand what this expression is supposed to mean with reference to the Shoah victims. In any case, it doesn’t change the fact that they are irreversibly killed. Memory turns here into a fetish around which a false consciousness of the dominant group crystalizes. CREATING POLISH “WITNESSES” AND “GUARDIANS OF MEMORY”: PERPETUUM MOBILE At first glance, it may seem that Po-lin takes into account traces of that which is different, Jewish. Nevertheless, it is the relationship connecting the Poles and traces left by the Jews that is important. Jolanta Dylewska defines it in one of the opening sequences about a “post-Jewish” house. It begins with close-ups of windows, doors, and walls. Then, the camera stops at doorknobs and locks. It enters the house, investigates a room with a painting on the wall. Although depth of focus causes the viewer to direct their attention to a door frame and a mezuzah affixed to it, one can guess that there is an oleograph with the Blessed Virgin Mary on the wall. The Polish owner’s voice can be heard off-screen: “In this house, the Jewish blessing remained. It was affixed to every door frame, yet only this one has survived. This is the token of this house and that has to be.” We can hear a ticking clock, which appears in extreme close-up in the frame. In the background, there is a painting of the Black Madonna of Częstochowa on

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a family altar—sharply visible now, emphasized with a change in depth of focus. The frame is in warm colors. The Black Madonna’s face is covered with blurred shapes of flowers—the essence of a “Polish house.” The voice of Piotr Fronczewski, which a moment before was reading from Jewish “memorial books,” announces solemnly, “These are the last of dozens of generations of Poles who have lived near the Polish Jews for several hundred years. They are the last witnesses who connect us with the life of Jewish people. The last.” On the screen, the intent faces of the Poles appear. Close-ups. Clocks are ticking. In just a moment, the “witnesses” will start talking about their memories. Dylewska plays with icons of identity. The trace of murdered Jewish owners and residents of the house—the mezuzah affixed to the door frame— coexists in harmony with an archetypal sign of “Polishness”: the family altar and the image of the Black Madonna of Częstochowa. The filming technique reinforces this alleged harmony. The transition is smooth, and the image is kept in an intimate and amiable mood, undisturbed. We are supposed to discover the essence of Polish attitude, manifested through preserving traces left by the deceased. The poetics used to describe such traces (“It was affixed to every door frame, yet only this one has survived”) remind us of opinions expressed by experts on prehistory (“Only fragments of Archaeopteryx skeletons have survived to our times”). Thus, the question as to what happened to the Jews and their property (movable and immovable) expires. Just like that, there was a cataclysm—which we have nothing to do with—and it claimed them. Therefore, it is a credit to the Poles that, of their own free will, they take care of terribly ransacked Jewish remnants. On the one hand, Dylewska does not mention that even in poor houses, mezuzot were usually silver; thus, they were “tasty morsels” for the Christians who plundered Jewish houses. On the other hand, we know people who are marginalized, if not ostracized by their own community because, for example, of their position as the guardians of the keys to a Jewish cemetery. Their stories are not soothing. The object of our analysis, however, is the construction of the film Po-lin. This care seems to be accepted and consecrated by the Jewish dead. The sentence, “In this house, the Jewish blessing remained” is ambiguous. On the one hand, it refers to a piece of parchment with verses from the Torah; but it can also be understood as the blessing given by the former owners—or Jews, as such—which still protects the house and its new residents. The latter interpretation is confirmed by the soundtrack. Piotr Fronczewski, who lends his voice to the Jewish community, states (to some extent, on its behalf) that we are confronted with the “guardians of memory” of the murdered Jews. “This

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is the token of this house and that has to be,” says the resident of the “postJewish” estate, establishing the status of all Poles who appear in the film as people who undertook to save the memory of Jewish neighbors and who are fully aware of their mission. The introduction of such categories as “guardian of memory” and “witness” suggests that there is a Polish-Jewish community, and that the Poles in the film were granted permission by the Jews themselves to guard their mementos, hence showing loyalty to the former neighbors. The Poles turn out to be legitimate inheritors of the Jewish heritage. Now, we can understand why that which is Polish and that which is Jewish coexist in complete harmony. Despite all differences, both communities are united by the same mission: the preservation of memory, which is subject to the passage of time. Clocks are ticking. The Blessed Virgin Mary’s gaze embraces the mezuzah with concern. The image of the Polish community and Polish-Jewish relations is constructed upon the concealment of basic facts and questions. We are looking at the “post-Jewish” house. However, we do not learn anything about the circumstances under which the house passed into the new owners’ hands. On the social scale, these circumstances are extremely important, even if Jolanta Dylewska’s interlocutors are thoroughly honest people. In the story about the Jewish world before the war, the Holocaust, and the attitude of the “Aryan side” toward the exterminated Jews—as well as the attitude of the Poles toward the Jews after the war—cannot be omitted. They cannot be omitted especially when the term “guardians of memory” is used to describe those people who live in “post-Jewish” houses. Dylewska circumvents this problem. The issue of Polish violence toward the Jews appears on the margins of the story and is not developed. First, Zionists are mentioned in the part related to social and self-help organizations established by the Jewish communities: “Since anti-Semitic feeling is increasing, Zionist scout organizations are preparing the youth for emigration to Palestine.” With the following sequence, the audience travels to Kolbuszowa. One of the residents assures, “The coexistence of Poles and Jews was perfectly normal before the war. Just look at the coat of arms of the town: it represents two clasped hands, Polish and Jewish, as well as the Star of David and the cross.” The issue of anti-Semitism arises again in the description of a market. Piotr Fronczewski declares, “From time to time, Polish nationalistic hit squads turn up unexpectedly, knocking over [stands] and beating [people].” Due to the music, a sullen mood is created. We can see present-day close-ups of bread, garlic, and carrots in the shadow. That is all. After a while, the lively, cheerful klezmer music returns and the story continues. Avoiding discussion about the Holocaust, Dylewska nevertheless raises this issue. In the contemporary language, the word “witness” constitutes one

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of the most basic terms to describe the experience of Jewish survivors. The original word proposed by Raul Hilberg for designating non-Jewish actors of the events was “bystanders.”28 However, in the Polish translation “bystander” was illegitimately rendered as “witness” (świadek), as if the position of Jews and Poles face to the Holocaust was identical.29 What is more, Dylewska uses the category of Polish “witness” with reference to the times before 1939. Polish reviewers of Dylewska’s film praised this appropriation: Avoiding pathos, one may state that the documentary Po-lin delights and attracts because it is an attempt to show the life, which used to exist. [. . .] On the other hand, the film is homage to the figure of witness [. . .]. Dylewska’s Polish witnesses are living examples of the past, the already mentioned “scraps of collective memory,” who, due to the director, return to their childhood through the archival footage in order to present their testimony.30

Dylewska is recalling the signs of the Shoah, which are objects left by the murdered. When in the “post-Jewish” house the mezuzah coexists with the icon from Jasna Góra, it means that during the war, nothing disturbing happened on the Polish-Jewish social border. In fact, the taking of Jewish property by the Poles—to use this euphemistic expression—was a massive, widespread phenomenon. It occurred in such a way that there is no room for the Poles to claim collective witness status. This makes it impossible to consider the Polish community the “guardian of memory” without additional explanations. A witness is a person who observes an incident, yet neither participates in it nor has any influence on what is happening. Applying this label to the Poles fails for three significant reasons. First, the life or death of the Jews, who were trying to save themselves, depended on the attitude of the “Aryan side,” on how much active support non-Jews would or would not lend to the Jews. Above all, however, the Jews expected passivity from the non-Jews, due to which it would have been possible for Jews to become invisible to the Germans in Polish surroundings. As Maria Nowakowska, a survivor, recounts: Those Jews who managed to get out from the ghetto as well as those who received the “Aryan” documents and had a place to live in should have survived. After that, they could lead a peaceful life, and should have done so, to the extent that Poles-not-Jews, Poles-Christians, were still alive [. . .] Why having seen a Jew, those Poles, who did not intend to denounce or blackmail him, could not keep this fact secret? [. . .] Everything you wanted from them was this silence; you wanted them to stop whispering to each other’s ear as well as to those who were favourably inclined towards Jews and would continue whispering; in the end, this whispering reached the Gestapo. [. . .] If they had been passive, almost

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all refugees from the ghetto would have survived. [. . .] After all, none of the Germans differentiated a Jew from a Pole-Slav.31

As a rule, passivity was not present. For the Jews in hiding, Polish villages and streets were deadly. Christians did not refrain from revealing them. Blackmail, theft, turning Jews in to Polish or German police stations as well as murder, or battues (acts of surrounding or cornering Jews) organized in the provinces—were common practices. Those who decided to give shelter to the Jews needed to hide them primarily from the neighbors—not foreign, occupying forces. The courage of the Righteous consisted, above all, in the opposition expressed to the norms established in their own Polish and Catholic community. The prevailing attitudes of the Polish majority contributed to the implementation of the “final solution.” A Jewish author who didn’t survive, Calel Perechodnik, wrote about a practical “tacit agreement” between the Germans as the “editor responsible” for the Holocaust and the Polish community, which made a contribution to it and profited from its consequences.32,33,34 This very community that did not allow the Jews to hide on the “Aryan side” and, at the same time, profited from their death can define itself neither as “witnesses” nor “guardians of memory.” Second, the attitude toward the Jews presented during the war did not emerge from a vacuum. It reflected the Polish cultural code, which had developed earlier. The extermination of Jews, understood as a possibility, was included in the structure of both pre-modern35 and modern anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism was legitimized by the moral sanction established by the majority’s religion. Formulated in Poland before the war, the phantasms of liquidation had prepared social imagination for that which would happen in the 1940s.36 Even children had been aware of them. Criticizing the idea of the triad “perpetrators—victims—bystanders,” Elżbieta Janicka described thorough initiation into and involvement of these alleged “bystanders” of the Holocaust in the “Jewish question”—die Judenfrage—produced by and emblematic of anti-Semitic attitude and consciousness:37 With reference to this situation, the third link of Hilberg’s triad does not function. [. . .] I would suggest the term “initiated active participating observation” since “active participating observation” is not enough. It would take place in thought, word and deed as well as through negligence. In this category, I think, there is room for plurality and nuances of signs. And maybe, it also helps to understand that it was about the overwhelming majority—a majority who was decisive and who did decide that “the whole of Poland was the ghetto.”38

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These last words refer to Jan Karski’s comment, It was not that difficult to go out [from the ghetto—E. J., T. Ż.] and come back. It was difficult for the Jews for other reasons. [. . .] Let’s say that a Jew fled from the ghetto and then what? [. . .] The whole of Warsaw was the ghetto. The whole of Poland was the ghetto.39

The third reason that the “witness” label cannot accurately be applied to the Poles is that violence perpetrated by Poles against the Jews was a reason for which the latter emigrated from Poland on a mass scale after the war, after 1946 then 1956. Joanna Tokarska-Bakir uses the category of ethnic cleansing to refer to this phenomenon.40 In 1968, in the name of the State and the law, it also provoked the expulsion of between 10,000 and 20,000 citizens, for which it was enough to qualify them as Jews. Po-lin completely disregards the fact that it was not the Holocaust itself but its continuation, by the Poles, that put an end to the Jewish presence in Poland. A series of postwar pogroms, the Polish underground killing of Jews on trains after the liberation, and the not-so-unusual murders of people trying to return to their houses and elucidate the faith of their close relatives all stemmed from the fact that Jews were fundamentally unwelcome in Poland. The Holocaust was generally accepted,41 just as its material consequences were accepted. Having taken over Jewish properties, the Poles did not wish to return them—just as they did not wish for their true owners, the Poles’ Jewish neighbors, to return. Concealment is another factor due to which Po-lin is not a story about the Polish Jews, but a self-representation of the dominant group, presented as though staring nostalgically at the traces left by their former neighbors. In consequence, one can observe here a perpetuum mobile: Melancholic poetics produces innocent “witnesses” and “inheritors,” whereas innocent “witnesses” and “inheritors” produce melancholic poetics. Endlessly, we are moving in a vicious circle of images of ourselves, having no need of confronting the reality. PROCESSING THE HOLOCAUST Beyond History (Myth Making) Jolanta Dylewska consistently fails to notice the Shoah. The film starts with an explanation: “Running away from Germany, from pogroms and the plague, the Jews came to Poland. They met with hospitality and a kind reception. They said PO-LIN in Hebrew, we will rest here, and this way gave

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Poland its Jewish name. That is what a 13th-century legend says.” When the inter-title changes, we read, “There were 3,500,000 Jews living in Poland at the outbreak of the Second World War, which constituted ten percent of the residents of the Republic of Poland.” The story behind the “sudden disappearance” of the Jews, as a reviewer of the film said in Rzeczpospolita newspaper,42 is presented from a particular perspective. It is the thirteenth century, and the Jews are fleeing from Europe when they find hospitality in Poland. We recognize the image and ourselves in that image. It is the well-known and popular figure of Paradisus Iudaeorum: Jewish paradise. In the majority self-representation, the figure of Paradisus Iudaeorum serves important functions. Psychologist and psychotherapist Łukasz Biedka interpreted it in the following way: The Poles wish to see their country as an oasis of tolerance over the centuries, a country without stakes. (The fact that it was a country with much fewer stakes is not enough: it has to be “without stakes,” as we were taught at school.) Because of its name combined with the anti-Semitic content on the foundation Paradisus Iudeaeorum website, we receive a clear message: Poland was a haven for the ungrateful Jews, and the Poles served as angels in it.43

In Dylewska’s film, nothing disrupts this belief because we do not learn anything about the 700 years of the Jews’ life in Poland. The use of the paternalistic discursive figure of hospitality, otherwise completely ahistorical, could suggest something is wrong here; but, in the Polish majority discourse, it goes hand in hand with the topos of Paradisus Iudaeorum and, as such, is not considered suspicious. As a matter of fact, the formula of “hospitality” is an element of a nationalistic and exclusionary, xenophobic discourse whereby the state is to be considered the property of the dominant ethnic group.44 After the Jedwabne debate the word “hospitality” is used with reference to Polish-Jewish relations by otherwise reserved historians in an ironic function. For instance: “Much worse, [. . .] [the] list of ‘helpful Poles’ includes even one Michał Kozik who [. . .] was said to have saved ten Jews. In fact, Kozik sheltered three Jews, whom he killed with an axe, in the late fall of 1944, when they ran out of money to pay for their shelter [in the Polish original: for his hospitality].”45 The film’s narration, however, convinces the audience that the image emerging from the archival documentary photographs and the recollections of the “witnesses” reflects a centuries-old harmonious coexistence between guests and hosts. It is Europe, the violence of which has manifested itself in the form of Germany from the beginning, that destroys the idyll.

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Far Away from Here (Extra-Territorialization) The inter-titles that familiarize the viewers with the Polish-Jewish history contain hidden constitutive assumptions on which Dylewska’s story is based. Violence against the Jews in Poland is of an external character. Poland and the Poles have nothing to do with it; and, in this sense, they stand apart from Europe. They are an exception to the anti-Semitic norm incarnated by Germany, which has been hostile to the Jews since the times of the Crusades. Therefore, one could conclude that what happened after 1939 was an instance of interference in the world of neighborly coexistence—an instance of alien violence that did not match the local reality. There is even more. The text read by Piotr Fronczewski contains a legend about Rabbi Elimelech, which reads as follows: In the 1760s, a young Elimelech and his brother Zushya were traveling from town to town as beggars in order to learn humility according to the then Hasidic custom. They came to a small town. Although they were hungry, they could not eat. Although they were exhausted, they could not sleep. They were overcome by a feeling of unspeakable fear and the deepest sadness. They left the town in the middle of the night and never returned. The name of the town was [dramatic pause] Auschwitz.

The Jews were deported from all of the shtetls that we see in Po-lin; a considerable number of them were killed on the spot. At the same time, the Polish environment performed terrible acts; we know about them from testimonies of the survivors and recollections of some Poles. However, Jolanta Dylewska reduces the Holocaust to one symbol: Auschwitz. This leads to territorial restriction of the extermination. That holy men did not feel fear in other places and could eat and sleep in them implies that nothing disturbing was to happen in these other towns. The monstrosity is restricted to a strictly German place—one that is both culturally separated from its Polish surroundings by a German-sounding name and geographically separated from the places that are mentioned in the film. The odium by no means concerns the Poles; in a story constructed in such a way, the role of “witnesses” is reserved for them, being someone who is physically and symbolically separated from the crime. The viewers, and today’s inhabitants of the “post-Jewish” towns, can rest easy. Fate and “Sudden Disappearance” (Predestination) The story about Elimelech and Zushya is a part of a larger whole. Dylewska inscribes her tale into the rhythm of nature (the day, week, and season) and into the natural cycle of human life. The narration about shtetls, after

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the introductory recollections of the Poles about their Jewish friends and neighbors, starts with the beginning of the day. The towns come to life. We observe their everyday existence in several ways. The end of the week and the Sabbath are coming. Everyone stops working. The rhythm of the year means the rhythm of holidays: Hanukkah, Pesach, Rosh Hashanah, and Yom Kippur. The story ends with the topics of dusk, winter, death, cemeteries, and eternal life. However, the signs of the Holocaust have already appeared. They appear for the first time in the story about Moishe Fuksman. An “ardent follower of the zaddick from Lubavitch,” he was “surrounded by an aura of sanctity.” “Both the Jews and members of the Orthodox and the Catholic Church” were coming to him for a blessing. The story ends with the following sentence: “Only ten years and ten months more.” We can hear gusty wind in the background. The motif returns three times afterward; memento mori will be repeated in the very same form when the film mentions misfits. Finally, the ending of the part devoted to holidays includes material from the 1930s, presenting children walking in single file. The narrator talks about their future. He mentions their names and ends with the following words: “They have ten years more ahead of them.” The thrice-repeated announcement of the catastrophe suggests a decree of fate looming over the people in the archival photographs. The sound of the wind, as if taken from the Gothic poetics of eeriness and fear, makes the viewers involuntarily feel cold. Simultaneously, it places the Holocaust within the range of meanings connected with nature: with natural disasters, such as a whirlwind; or with winter, as the time of death. The Shoah is put on a par with events whose causes lie beyond the human world, in the sphere ruled by forces neither individuals nor whole societies can influence. In Divine Order (Trivialization) Dylewska adds one more context: the religious—or to be precise, the Hasidic—one. The parable of Elimelech was placed inside a story about great zaddicks and cemeteries. The world of Hasidim is the world of communion with God and the dead. Saint zaddicks are intermediaries: they are halfway between God and people. Death only increases their power, as it brings them closer to heaven; but, at the same time, it does not take them too far away from humans. We see ohelim built over their graves and scraps of paper with requests and intentions (kvitlech) left there. The narrator assures us that “no one left a zaddick unheard.” Death, including the Holocaust, becomes a part of the divine order, allowing it to diverge even further from definite social facts. Those two ranges of meanings overlap in the story about Rabbi Elimelech. We hear the wailing of

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the wind, see stumps of grubbed-out bushes in the neglected Jewish cemetery, and the camera focuses on the ash left after a burned-out bonfire. Elimelech and Zushya sense the Shoah in a metaphysical way, as an excess of the supernatural evil written in God’s plans. The next sequence is devoted to cemeteries. The Jewish understanding of death is supposed to be summarized in the following words: “On hearing about someone’s death, they pronounce a special blessing ‘Blessed be the just judge!’ When they talk about the dead, they say, ‘they rest in the world of truth.’ They call the cemetery ‘the house of life,’ ‘a good place,’ and consider it a sacred place. Apart from people, they bury old, torn books and leaves from holy writ there.” The narrator refers to Ester Chaja, who talked to the dead. We can see contemporary pictures of Jewish cemeteries maintained in a sophisticated and picturesque style. The wind is wailing. The cemeteries at which we look refer to two orders. First, they talk about the natural death of those who died before the Holocaust. Second, they are signs of the extermination and traces of the community that is gone. In Dylewska’s film, this difference is blurred. If the legend about Elimelech places genocide in the supernatural order, the religious understanding of death is extended to the Shoah as well; but, in the context of gas chambers, it is impossible to accept the quoted words, “Blessed be the just judge!” It is likewise impossible to adopt a perspective that treats death as a gate leading to a new, better life; or that it is just a stage in the sequence of generations. This is made all the less bearable by the persistence of a Polish voice in control of the narration. Out of Context (Universalization) The religious and supernatural context allows definitive abstraction of the Holocaust from social facts. The image of the melancholically beautiful and picturesquely abandoned cemeteries moves the Shoah into the sphere of universal transiency. It is summarized by one of the Polish “witnesses,” as follows: “It looks as if one has taken a nap, woken up, and there is nothing left. Those years, it seems that it was a year ago, and it is already . . . everything passes away terribly and forever. [The camera films a toil-worn, restless hand.] Everything forever gone.” It is difficult to argue with that; but the Polish Jews in Poland “passed away” differently from “everything.” The difference between the dominant group, even if only considered as witnesses, and the exterminated is so dramatic that it is impossible to reduce Jewish deaths to the common denominator of universal transiency. This difference must be ignored if the Polish community wishes to avoid questions about its own behavior. The threat of searching for the truth about what happened on the boundary of the ghetto and the “Aryan side,” and about what

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it means for “us” today, is averted. Instead, Po-lin offers an ostensible, false confrontation. The way in which the universalization mechanism works can be explained with the history of Rachela Szemesz. One of the Polish women says, “During the occupation, I was working in the post office . . . in Kolbuszowa. I remember that I was going to work one day and saw a . . . a handicapped Jewish woman led by Twardoń, that is the then Kolbuszowa County governor. [. . .] And I just felt he was taking her to die.” A canonical scene from the ritual of catching the Jews and leading them to execution—in broad daylight, and on public display. The woman from Kolbuszowa describes precisely what historians term ritual, scheme, scenario, or routine of murders and executions.46 Dylewska’s interlocutor is very moved. We can see that she touches upon her most painful memories; but she is not allowed to end her story. The director consistently avoids the topic of Polish anti-Semitic violence as a phenomenon or even social ritual surrounded with numerous instances of rationalization and justification. The excerpt about Twardoń is by no means connected to a censored mention of the pre-war anti-Semitism. Dylewska does not ask whether there is any relationship between Polish-Jewish relations in the times about which she talks and the later death of Rachela Szemesz. Instead, she shows us the Kolbuszowa coat of arms. Then we move to films from the 1930s. The ghostly voice of Piotr Fronczewski asks, “Will it be Rachela Szemesz? Rachela Sun?” The scene ends with one of the three memento mori mentioned in Po-lin: “She is still standing here.” A close-up of part of the archival photograph is accompanied by the sound of the wind. Dylewska does not ask who Twardoń was. The Polish-sounding name of the executioner does not make her suspicious, and it is not explored in the film’s narration. The theme that would have destroyed the harmonious tale is immediately lost because the event was shown in the context of fate—not that of human agency. “WE DREAM ABOUT THEM SMILING”: FRIENDSHIP UNTIL DEATH, FRIENDSHIP AFTER DEATH In the part about death, Dylewska again places the Polish “witnesses” in direct proximity to the victims. On the one hand, she confirms their role of the “guardians of memory,” while on the other, she introduces them as those who are watched over by dead Jews. The description of Yom Kippur ends with an image of a rabbi who blesses men and women. The narrator says: “And remembering that the Book of Life and the Book of Death have just been opened in heaven, they repent their sins and ask God Most High to forgive

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them their weaknesses and failings and write their names down in the Book for a good, new year.” Archival photographs disappear; the camera fixes on a window. The windowpane reflects the trees. Cut. There are people glancing at us from the archival tapes as if they were looking at the window that we saw a moment ago, waiting for something. A matzevah with the motif of an open book appears together with the last phrase about the Book of Life. The camera focuses on it, and we can see cracks on the stone and a finger of the hand that holds the book. In the next take, one sees a Polish woman who recalls her Jewish friend and then next “witnesses” in a similar role. One of them talks about a friend he dreamed about. In his dream, “he was smiling, content.” “So, I say, perhaps he’s smiling,” he ends. With the faces of the “witnesses” and archival photographs arranged alternately, the audience has the impression that they are vivid images from the speakers’ retrospection. A Polish woman talks about a poor Jewish girl. We see a poor Jewish girl—most probably a different one—waving to the viewers from an archival film. Just like one of the friends mentioned by the “witnesses,” a talented violinist. It appears that the Polish “witnesses” constitute the Book of Life for which the Jews were praying on Yom Kippur. According to the “witnesses” in Po-lin, they dream of victims of the Shoah surrounded by an optimistic atmosphere. Jolanta Dylewska emphasizes this message even more with the construction of the film. Dreams about the murdered are rarely pleasant. This way, the Poles enjoy a considerable privilege. First, because Polish and Jewish neighbors were on such friendly terms that the “sudden disappearance” of the Jews did not change anything. Since the “witnesses” were their friends—and still maintain their friendship as the “guardians of memory”—the dead express their gratitude to them. Second, death is no longer such a horrible event in the religious image of the world, immersed in the story about Hasidim and presented as the Jewish point of view. If the dead now live “in the world of truth,” and if the Jews call the cemetery “the house of life” and “a good place,” the Holocaust can be rationalized and accepted. Hence, the assumption that the murdered friend is “perhaps smiling” on the other side. The view is expressed outright by another “witness,” who states: “I know that those souls know about us, see us and remember us. And that they still live, in a better world.” The “better world” absolves this world. Faced with eternity, everything that happened here—in the victims’ lifetime, just before their death, and after their death—is pushed into the background. The statement about the “better world” summarizes the part about Hasidic saints, who now take the Polish community under their care. In the perspective adopted in Po-lin, within the boundaries of narration created by the dominant group, the dead Jews give their Polish neighbors the best reference. This

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is why contemporary photographs of Jewish cemeteries may, or even must, be so sophisticated and beautiful, impeccably arranged and filled with warm light. It is the image of the dominant group—not the Jewish tragedy—that is their main topic. In Po-lin, one sees a disturbing image of a zaddick’s ohel standing on something like a parking lot and maneuvering area. A trained eye will notice that it has taken the place of a Jewish cemetery or actually that the cemetery is still there (because the dead remain where they have always been), only without its external signs. A non-forewarned—or skillfully anaesthetized— eye will not understand or even record the view. We use the medical category of anaesthetization not without reason. In his work about the buildings of old synagogues transformed into factories, warehouses, or pubs, Wojciech Wilczyk pointed out that the category of the innocent eye is a misunderstanding in the case of Polish society and culture.47 Jan Bułhak recommended taking photographs of roadside crosses: “This is how our native photography will teach us how to begin with material, artistically perceptible things and gradually reach further to find the soul of the earth and the soul of man.”48 Polish native photography (polska fotografia ojczysta) was the exact copy of the German Heimatphotographie advocated by Paul Schultze-Naumburg and embraced by the Nazis as part and parcel of the state aesthetic propaganda. In Jolanta Dylewska’s work, emphasis is placed on matzevot blended into trees, which are strikingly similar to crosses blended into trees in Krzysztof Hejke’s photo album Polesie (Polesia).49 Poles receive an image of the Polish land taking in the Jewish dead, which is an image of their own selves presented in a way in which they would like to see themselves. This imagining also allows the Polish audience to disregard the social phenomenon of postwar devastation of Jewish cemeteries, accompanied by the ingenious utilization of stolen matzevot. 50

JEWS AS THE MYTHICAL “JEW” Relocation to Reservations (Separation and Folklorization) Who are the Jews of whom the Poles have such fond memories? In Po-lin, constructing the image of the Jews begins with music. Composer Michał Lorenc employs motifs that are culturally recognizable as signs of traditional “Jewishness”: the klezmer fiddle and dulcimer, for instance. Music in Po-lin is illustrative and emotional. It suggests moods to the audience and makes affirmative reception easier than a critical one. The soundtrack places images in the sphere of folklore, treating them as icons of identity. “Jewishness” is thus closed in a field of cultural otherness that is reserved especially for it.

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Familiarization with Jews includes marking a separate place and forming a boundary between that which is Polish and that which is Jewish. Acceptance of otherness goes hand in hand with separation. Tightly bound with religion, folklore is perceived as the basis of Jewish understanding of the world, social rules, and, most of all, identity. The Jewish community is thus left outside history, adopting an invariable essence. Its life circles around religion and traditional jobs. This directs our attention to the inside of the ethnic and religious community. The world of trade, craft, and services does not actually cross the boundaries of the minority subculture found in shtetls. The Jews create a separate universe, which has little in common with the rest of society and the changes it undergoes. The above happens at the cost of an escape from historical and sociological facts. The image of the Jewish community is uniform and stereotypical. We fail to recognize the complexity and diversity of the pre-modern Jewish world. We lose sight of most phenomena connected with modernization, including the functioning of the Jews within a modern society. As members of a homogeneous and separate community, the Jews do not present any demands to the Polish majority, since they do not try to enter the public sphere—where one could not avoid questions about equal rights. The conviction that the majority has a tolerant attitude can remain intact because there is no mention of injustice against minorities inside the sphere considered by the majority to be its own. The end of the nineteenth century brings with it the birth of Jewish political parties and new emancipation movements. The old world and its social beliefs are shaken by the Revolution of 1905 and the October Revolution. The 1918 creation of nation-states in Eastern Europe accompanied by pogroms in Poland, the 1920 recognition of the anti-Semitic Yid-Communism myth by the Polish state (see official propaganda and internment camp for Jewish volunteers during the Polish-Bolshevik war), the 1922 Warsaw pogrom and assassination of the first Polish President Gabriel Narutowicz as a “Jewish president,” the 1924 reforms, the 1926 coup d’état, and the 1935 death of military leader Józef Piłsudski are among important turning points that concern the Jews and other national minorities of the Polish Republic much more than they do the dominant group. The 1930s bring the end of shtetls in their traditional form. The modern market and the State create a sphere in which business entities and citizens are at least formally equal. As a result, people develop aspirations that reach beyond the boundaries of traditional communities. This is where the issues Dylewska does not wish to discuss are situated. In the 1920s and 1930s, anti-Semitic acts of violence were common and increasingly intense. The Polish state pushed the Jews to the position of at best second-class citizens. It used increasingly overt methods to remove

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them from politics, economy, and culture. The appearance of the Jews in any sphere of public life was commonly considered “overrepresentation” by the non-Jews. Anti-Semitic aggression stemming therefrom was indicative of the struggle over the shape of the society, its consciousness, and its identity. An increasing number of Jews did not see any reason not to participate in the common sphere on equal terms, and strived to do so as lawyers, physicians, political activists, party members, workers, scientists, public intellectuals, performers, athletes, and more. Dylewska decides not to notice the sphere in which the Poles and the Jews meet—and in which Polish culture reveals its attitude to Jewish citizens of Poland. The director creates an image that sanctions boundaries marked for minorities by the dominant group. The Jews remain colorful residents of an “exotic world” and do not try to be present in places reserved for the Poles by the Poles. This happens despite archival materials, in which modernity can be clearly seen. It is proved by the authors of the footage—that is, emigrants themselves. Those people were leaving in search of upward mobility, which was impossible in Poland due to anti-Semitism.51 The perspective of the oppressor, unproblematized in Po-lin, may be illustrated with an external statement by an excluded who adopted the point of view of the majority (in his case, the non-Jewish Polish intelligentsia) and discovered a different world after he had been forced to leave Poland: “I had contact with many professors at American universities and, much to my surprise, found out that many of them were Jews and either they themselves or their parents were born in Pińsk, Białystok, Rymanów, Włocławek or other similar Polish town or city. It shows how great, completely unrealized intellectual potential was hidden in provincial masses of the Polish Jews.”52 The reactions of the residents of shtetls also tell us about their aspirations: they are happy about the incomers’ prosperity, look at their fashionable clothing with surprise and consideration at the same time and imitate their lifestyle themselves. One notices a difference between the generation of grandparents (traditional clothes, bearded men, women in wigs) and their children and grandchildren, who clearly aspire to the new cultural patterns and, as a result, to equality promised by modernity. “Nice” Reverse of Anti-Semitic Cliché Polish collective memory, recorded and reproduced in Po-lin, goes beyond sectioning off a special area for the Jews in both the Poles’ imagination and in physical settings; it also constructs a special description of “the Jew.” The image of the minority is, first and foremost, a result of beliefs and practices of the dominant