What a strange and uncomfortable business it is, this
six-decades-late apology by the president of Poland, Aleksander Kwasniewski,
for the raw and unprovoked murder of the 1,600 Jewish men, women and children
of Jedwabne by their Christian neighbors. It’s no surprise that this apology
angered the local priest, as well as Cardinal Józef Glemp, who raised the ugly
question of the extent of Jewish collaboration with the Soviets as the Germans
moved in. (Why wouldn’t Jews collaborate with the Soviets? They weren’t trying
to exterminate them.) Protesters and objectors across Poland were wounded in
their pride, believing in their nationalist hearts that their suffering under
the Nazis has been diminished and that they have been falsely dishonored. The
apology is an odd and not-entirely-wanted thing. It appears to me as if a skunk
has entered my house, and I am as afraid of it as it is of me.
The work of historian Jan T. Gross seems to have clearly
brought us the facts surrounding the 1941 massacre. German soldiers were in the
town, but they didn’t participate in the rounding up and burning of Jews in a
barn or the brutal beatings of those who tried to escape. This was done by
Poles. This comes as no surprise to most of us; we have long known that Polish
anti-Semitism ran wild in those years. When the German planes first flew over
Warsaw, unruly crowds of Polish youth rushed to the Jewish sections of town,
beating anyone they found. When Jews released from Auschwitz returned to their
town, Kielce, in 1945, they were killed
by Poles who didn’t want them to reclaim their homes. Polish
anti-Semitism grew in the space between the rich landowner, his Jewish manager
and his peasants. It grew because the church taught it to generation after
generation. It was there in the 16th century, when Poles believed that Jews had
brought the plague to their towns, or that Jews were murdering Christian boys
in order to make matzo for the Passover ceremony. There is no news in this
story.
It is also true that there were Poles who risked their lives
to save Jews. Some hid them. Others turned them in to the Gestapo. It is true
that some fought in the resistance and rescued Jews who had fled into the
forests to become comrades in arms. Other members of the resistance found Jews
in the forests and handed them over to the enemy. Jews who were hidden or
existing on false papers during those years were afraid of all Poles. Some were
friends, but many were not.
The president of Poland was careful to say that he didn’t
believe in collective guilt, but then he announced: “For this crime, we should
beg the souls of the dead and their families for forgiveness. I ask pardon in
my own name and in the name of the Polish people whose consciences are shocked
by this crime.” The problem is that Mr. Kwasniewski didn’t do it. Neither did
most of the Poles now living in Jedwabne. It is a stain on the national name,
but it is not a stain on the souls of the Poles who weren’t born yet, or those
who helped Jews, or those who suffered acutely from the German occupation. And
besides, you can’t apologize for someone else’s act any more than I, as a Jew,
can forgive it. It is only for the dead to forgive, and only for the ones who
poured the gasoline, the ones who took a child and smashed her against the
ground, to apologize. And if we imagine that apology-“I’m so sorry that I
locked the door and lit the match”-we see clearly that there are no words, no
apology, no forgiveness possible.
Adam Michnik, the Polish dissident writer, has both written
an essay in The New York Times and
published a letter to Leon Wieseltier in The
New Republic in which he argues for the many Poles who behaved righteously
in hard times. He points out that Jews acted as police inside the ghetto,
collaborating with the Germans in the extermination of their own kind. Mr.
Wieseltier replied that there were many more Poles who didn’t lift a finger to
save their erstwhile citizens. He states that there is a stain on Polish
identity that is not so easy to erase, and that ignoring or denying it will not
serve any desired end.
The Jewish view (and there is always more than one) is that
the Poles know exactly what we know. There is no debate that Poles suffered in
the war. Poles were rescuers, and if only more of them had tried, more Jews
might have survived. There is also no debate that the Jewish community of three
million souls was virtually wiped out and that Polish anti-Semitism helped
serve the Nazi purpose. The populace continued to ride the merry-go-round
outside the ghetto walls as the Jews starved within. It is no coincidence that
the camps were placed within Poland’s borders. The Polish priests who for so
long saw Jews as Christ-killers (which they are not and were not) did not
denounce from the pulpit what was happening before their eyes.
But I don’t want an apology. I don’t believe in collective
guilt. If I did, then I would be guilty for slavery and the slaughter of the
Native Americans and the deaths in My Lai. I, too, am connected to my country
and want to be proud of all its people, but they are far too diverse-our
history too long, our beliefs too different-for me to take responsibility for
everyone else’s actions. I am not the Ku Klux Klan, and I am not the Aryan
Nation, and I am not a toxic dumper or Baruch Goldstein. I believe it is
important for the Poles to know what happened and who among them turned beast
when the hour permitted. I do not believe it is important or sensible to
collect apologies from state dignitaries.
When we make other people feel guilty, they get very nasty.
They would much prefer to be victims than victors. Those who were harmed by the
Nazis certainly feel angry. The rescuers of Jews are bruised, as if their acts
didn’t matter. Look how even the decent Mr. Michnik feels called upon to talk
about Israeli misdeeds as if they were equal to Holocaust crimes. Guilt seems
to be something that people will squirm any which way to avoid. In this matter,
the Poles are just like everyone else, as I suspect they are in all
matters-which is not to say much for them at all. History should tell the story
as best it can so that the myth-makers and wishful thinkers are pushed to the
margins. But we cannot expect the Poles to beat their breasts because many of
them were brutal when allowed to be so. Since they so value their national
pride, they should build it on solid ground. They should never harm another Jew
or Gypsy or human soul for the next 10,000 years. In the meantime, my anger is
not sated by “I’m sorry.” My anger breathes with my breath, and nothing changes
that.
