ANDRZEJ BRKY
.. a tragedy so great that it is understandably human and proper that
those who survived should be anxious . . . and that they are gnawed
by their consciences ... You are calm, you are not afraid. But not me.
I know ... that in this matter it can never be proved that we could not
have done more.
233
In
a long interview, Krajewski, in turn, brought out some harsh truths:
Jews see Poland as a forsaken place where Jewish culture flourished a
long time ago, then it got worse and worse, it all ended in tragedy, and
there is now only painful absence.. . . With Germans the situation is
straightforward. They murdered the Jews. They do not deny that.
Both sides can talk about that openly. Poles and Jews have not
reached that stage, although the Poles did not annihilate the Jews. . . .
The Poles are defensive. To accept . .. that the fate of the Jews was
different from that of the Poles during the war is difficult to articulate.
The Poles look at themselves as victims of history. It is difficult for
them to bear the thought that someone could suffer more.. . . They
think that they could not inflict any harm on the Jews because the
victim cannot victimize. .. . But there are myths on both sides. I see
my role as trying to dispel them, to make the Poles realize the Jewish
experience, to make the Jews understand that anti-Semitism is not the
essence of Polishness.
Turowicz, in his response to the discussion, rejected numerous myths he
believed were still accepted by many Poles: the equation of the fate of the
Jews with that of the Poles during the war, of Jewish "passivity," of the
widespread availability of help for the Jews. He took issue with anyone who
claimed that anti-Semitism before the war was not strong, adding that its his–
tory in Poland had to be unhesitatingly faced and responded to by Poles for
the sake of their collective conscience.
The discussion in
Tygodnik Powszechny
reverberated in the govern–
ment press as well, and here the responses - mainly negative - were varied.
Some tried to be objective, some clearly showed, despite disclaimers, their
anti-Semitism, some treated Poland as a "besieged fortress" and viewed re–
marks like Blonski's as providing arguments to the enemies of Poland.
In
the
underground quarterly
Krytyka,
in a widely-reprinted exchange in 1987,
Solidarity leaders Wiktor Kulerski and Adam Michnik tried to articulate some
of the methodological problems. Kulerski stated, "Contemporary Polish anti–
Semitism is a painful distortion in Polish social life and testifies to indifference
towards the Jewish plight during the Holocaust." Michnik, mentioning that he
was ofJewish origin and that he thought it proper to make this known, dis–
agreed:
