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PARTISAN REVIEW
wrong. The subject of the Jew 'Joins" other histories (especially Polish-Soviet
relations) which Poles are trying to disentangle from the mass of distortions
and lies that have pervaded communist versions of history.
Discussions about the Polish-Jewish past started with the founding of
Solidarity but did not proceed rapidly. Claude Lanzmann's film,
Shoah
-
al–
though it was a selective portrayal- shattered the complacency of public
opinion in Poland. The film was characterized in the government press as
"anti-Polish." But when it was shown in Poland in 1985, indignation gave
way to reflection.
It
provoked a wave of thoughtful articles in the official as
well as the independent press.
A long review was published by J erzy Turowicz, editor of
Tygodnik
Powszechny,
the independent Catholic weekly in Krakow, which has enor–
mous prestige in Poland. Turowicz, a leader of the antitotalitarian intellectual
movement after the war and a member of one of the very few prewar
Catholic groups,
Odrodzenie,
which fought anti-Semitism, argued correctly that
Shoah
was not objective and reflected the common Western practice of
stereotyping Polish-Jewish relations. Yet, sensing the problem of the modern
Polish consciousness, he added: "Anti-Semitism cannot be squared with
Christianity. The Church condemned anti-Semitism. We have the right to be
apprehensive that this teaching has not been accepted yet by many Catholics.
Polish Catholics who were the witnesses of the tragic fate of the Jewish
nation, seeing what anti-Semitism could lead to, should have conducted a deep
soul search as far as the sin of anti-Semitism was concerned. I say it ... with
pain that such settling of accounts ... has not been done yet." He wrote that
the accusations of Polish collaboration with the Nazis were slanderous. Anti–
Semitism in Poland, however widespread before the war, had nothing to do
with the annihilation of the Jews. The racist anti-Semitism of the Third Reich
was a leap into murder, the dimensions ofwhich the traditional Christian anti–
Semites were psychologically and morally unable to enter.
Yet Turowicz made a confusing qualification: "In Poland . . . all
manifestations of Polish anti-Semitism [of) the last forty years had a clearly
political character and had no Christian character." Turowicz was not totally
convincing. Discussion of the issues accelerated. An argument about estab–
lishing a Carmelite cloister in Auschwitz erupted. The case got publicity
through an appeal from a Catholic organization in the West, The Church in
Need, which began to collect money for the cloister. Two elements of the
appeal especially angered Jews: the hint that the Jews needed to be con–
verted and the presentation of the cloister as a testament to the triumph of
Christianity. The latter claim was particularly offensive because the Holo–
caust could be seen as the inadvertent culmination of an anti-Semitism that
also
flourished in the Catholic Church.
Two Polish-Jewish intellectuals writing in
Tygodnik Powszechny,
Josef
Lichten and Stanislaw Krajewski, noted the insensitivity of the appeal, but
