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PARTISAN REVIEW
resistance. When the Home Army headquarters gave orders to rescue de–
portees, and the fighting units - with heavy casualties - liquidated the Ger–
man guards of the transports, the Jews being transported did not want to
escape. So the AK stopped attacking the transports ... the organized fight
began only in the final state of the liquidation of the ghettos." In the high
school textbooks, the author gives a fantastic number ofJews saved by Poles
- 200,000. The number given in the eighth-grade textbook, 100,000, is
closer to the truth. The standard history textbook for university students
devotes little space to the fate of Polish Jews during the war or the subject of
Polish-jewish-relations, repeating many cliches. Recently, under the Solidarity
government, there has begun a thorough revision of the school textbooks,
and
all
of these distortions are being thrown out.
My textbook survey prompted me to conduct a poll in 1987 among
children in selected primary and secondary schools in Poland and among
students of institutions of higher learning. The poll was taken in two towns,
Warsaw and Krakow. Although not exhaustive, it may give a partial answer
to what Polish youths think abut the Holocaust. The first question I asked
concerned the fate suffered by Poles and Jews during the occupation. Among
the primary and high school students, about eighty percent stated that the
fate of the Jew was unique and incomparable to the Polish fate. Ten percent
discerning the difference qualified it by "rather, yes," "in principle, yes," and
so on. Ten percent answered "no," with the comment that the Poles were
the next to be killed. Among university students, only one (out of about five
hundred) equated the fate of the Jews with the Polish fate. The rest were
aware of the difference between the situation of the Poles and the Jews.
The second question: "What was the attitude of the Polish population
towards the Jews?" brought more diverse results. Below the college level,
about seventy percent reflected the standard view very much visible in the
textbooks, that the Poles helped the Jews as much as they could, despite the
deadly dangers. Close to thirty percent stated that Polish attitudes were not
uniform, without elaborating. Among the college students, about
fifty
percent
stated that the Poles helped the Jews as much as they could; about forty
percent answered that the attitudes varied; that some helped, some betrayed
the Jews; that the majority of Poles were indifferent. About ten percent
stated that the mood of the Poles was unfavorable towards the Jews, without
explaining further.
The next item raised was that of "the attitude of the Jewish population
towards the Germans." The results here did not differentiate the primary (
school children from the rest. About eighty percent stated that the Jews re–
sisted and fought the Germans with
all
the means possible; ten percent stated
that there was a desire to survive at all costs; the rest answered that the
Jews were passive and did not resist.
The last question was: "In your family, have you heard recollections
