Read Online The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945 by Saul Friedländer - Free Book Online Page A

published in the Catholic press was that all attempts to ease the conflict between Poles and Jews were unrealistic. There were even proposals to abandon the existing policy that recognized Jews as equal citizens, with the same rights as Poles. The Catholic press warned against treating the situation lightly: “There could not be two masters ( gospodarze ) on Polish soil, especially since the Jewish community contributed to the demoralization of the Poles, took jobs and income away from Poles, and was destroying the national culture.” 82 Once such a premise was accepted, the only diverging views dealt with the methods to be used in the anti-Jewish struggle. While part of the Catholic press (and hierarchy) advocated fighting “Jewish ideas,” rather than the Jews as human beings, others went further and advocated “self-defense” even if it resulted in Jewish loss of life. 83
    The press incitement was but the reflection of the church hierarchy’s attitudes during the interwar period (and before). Even if one disregards the most extreme anti-Jewish attacks stemming from the Polish clergy, those of one Father Stanislaw Trzeciak, for example, the episcopate’s voice was threatening enough. Thus, in 1920, during the Polish-Soviet war, a group of Polish bishops issued the following statement in regard to the Jewish role in world events: “The race which has the leadership of Bolshevism in its hands has already in the past subjugated the whole world by means of gold and the banks, and now, driven by the everlasting imperialist greed that flows in its veins, is already aiming at the final subjugation of the nations under the yoke of its rule.” 84
    In a pastoral letter issued on February 29, 1936, Cardinal August Hlond, the highest authority in the Catholic Church in Poland, tried to restrain the growing wave of anti-Jewish violence: “It is a fact,” the cardinal stated, “that Jews are waging war against the Catholic Church, that they are steeped in free-thinking and constitute the vanguard of atheism, the Bolshevik movement and revolutionary activity. It is a fact that the Jews have a corrupting influence on morals, and that their publishing houses are spreading pornography. It is true that the Jews are perpetrating fraud, practicing usury, and dealing in prostitution…. But let us be fair. Not all Jews are this way…. One may love one’s nation more, but one may not hate anyone. Not even Jews…. One should stay away from the harmful moral influence of Jews, keep away from their anti-Christian culture, and especially boycott the Jewish press and demoralizing Jewish publications. But it is forbidden to assault, beat up, maim, or slander Jews.” 85
    The most extreme and militant Polish anti-Jewish political organization, the National Democratic Party (the Endeks), established in the 1890s by Roman Dmowski (who led it until the late 1930s), first and foremost demanded the exclusion of Jews from key positions in Polish political, cultural, and economic life. It rejected the possibility of Jewish assimilation (arguing that such assimilation was not real or “in depth”); it identified Jews with communism (coining the term Zydokomuna —Jewish communism) and, eventually came to consider mass emigration (or expulsion) of the Jews from Poland as the only solution of the Jewish question. 86
    During the 1920s, apart from pogroms in the immediate postwar period, anti-Jewish attacks were kept under control first by the postwar democratic governments and then by Marshal Józef Pilsudski’s autocratic regime. 87 But, after Pilsudski’s death, mainly from 1936 on, anti-Jewish aggression grew in all domains. Widespread physical violence, economic boycott, numerous clashes in the universities, and church incitement were encouraged by successive right-wing governments. Thus, as the war started, the largest Jewish community in Europe, already badly bruised by surrounding hostility, was caught in the Nazi net. 88

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