“About three weeks ago some men came into our courtyard and noticed the sign on the house saying a Jewish architect designed the building,” says Malgorzata, a former teacher from the Polish city of Krakow. “They said: ‘Oh, it’s a Jewish tenement house. Jews live here, but they won’t live here much longer.’ That stung me. This anti-Semitism has crawled out. Before it was timid, but now it is on the streets.”
Malgorzata is not alone in her concerns. This year, Poland’s government introduced a legal change that makes it an offence to attribute Nazi crimes to the Polish nation or state, punishable by up to three years in prison. The legislation triggered a furious row between Poland and Israel — and in turn sparked an eruption of anti-Semitic language in Poland that has left many Jews in the country feeling deeply unsettled.
Although Polish leaders such as President Andrzej Duda and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, head of the conservative ruling Law and Justice party, have repeatedly condemned anti-Semitism, the Israeli embassy in Warsaw, Poland’s capital, has received a surge in hostile messages in recent weeks, and similar sentiments have been aired on Polish television. Indeed, as Mr Duda weighed whether to sign the bill last month, a far-right group held a demonstration outside the presidential palace, brandishing a banner with the slogan: “Take off your yarmulke, sign the bill.”
The furore over the law — which Law and Justice’s leaders say is needed to protect the country from slander, but which critics fear could limit free speech and be used to whitewash history — has driven relations between Poland and Israel to their lowest ebb in a generation. It has also frayed the country’s traditionally strong ties with Washington, at a time when Warsaw is already at loggerheads with the EU over reforms that critics say threaten the rule of law.
Yet many in Poland’s Jewish community fear that the most enduring consequences could be domestic, and that the bitter dispute threatens a 30-year renaissance of Jewish life in the central European country, once home to the majority of the world’s Jews.
“This is the first time since 1989 that Polish-Jewish relations have experienced such an earthquake,” says Anna Chipczynska, president of the Jewish Community of Warsaw. “It was first seen simply as a political crisis . . . but it has also revealed anti-Semitism of an enormity unprecedented in recent years. To repair the trust will take years. Like many other people, I sadly admit I keep asking myself: ‘Were we living in an illusion that things were going so well?’”
The new law has its roots in the anguished debate about the suffering of Jews and Poles during the second world war. In all, about 6m Polish citizens, or 20 per cent of the prewar population, lost their lives. About 3m of those were Polish Jews — roughly 90 per cent of Poland’s prewar Jewish community.
Timeline
Jewish history in Poland
10th century AD
First Jewish merchants arrive in the territories of modern Poland.
1264
Prince Boleslaw the Pious issues Statute of Kalisz, which grants Jews unprecedented rights in Europe, including the freedom of religion, legal protections and trading rights.
Mid-16th to mid-17th century
The golden age of the Polish Jewry, with flourishing Jewish communities across the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. By the middle of the 16th century, Poland is estimated to have been home to as much as 80 per cent of the world’s Jews.
1795-1918
Following the Third Partition, Poland’s territories are divided between Prussia, Russia and Austria, until it regains independence after the first world war.
1939-1945
The second world war begins with the German invasion of Poland. Around 3m of the 3.3m Jews living in Poland before the war are killed during the Holocaust.
1967
Poland severs diplomatic ties with Israel following the Arab-Israeli war. The following year more than 10,000 Jews leave Poland following an anti-Semitic campaign by the Communist regime.
1990
Following the collapse of Communism, Poland and Israel restore diplomatic ties. In the following years a revival of Jewish life in the country begins.
2001
Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski apologies for the 1941 Jedwabne massacre.
2018
Warsaw passes law on historical memory, making it illegal to attribute Nazi crimes to the Polish nation or state.
Many died in concentration camps such as Auschwitz and Treblinka, which, although located on Polish soil, were built and operated by the Nazis after Germany invaded and occupied Poland in 1939. Since 2004, Poland has fought against the use of the phrase “Polish death camps” to describe them, arguing that the phrase wrongly implies Polish complicity in the Holocaust.
Advocates say the legislation — in the works for more than a year — will give Warsaw a tool to correct such inaccuracies, which, given the scale of devastation wreaked on Poland by Nazi Germany, provoke visceral reactions among many Poles.
“My grandfather weighed 46kg when he came out of a labour camp [in Germany]. My mother was conceived in one, and was born underweight, covered with blisters and sores and suffering from pneumonia,” says one Polish official. “She was given penicillin from one of the first consignments to arrive in Poland after the war. But because she was injected with antibiotics so young, she has heart problems to this day. In Poland pretty much everyone has a story like this, and then we hear that we are responsible? Fuck that.”
Both Israel and Germany have affirmed that the phrase “Polish death camps” is wrong. But critics say the new law is so broadly drafted that it could be used to smother darker episodes in Poland’s history, even though it contains exemptions for artistic and academic work. Some fret that it could even prevent descendants of Holocaust survivors from telling their stories.
“I understand why people get offended by the phrase ‘Polish death camps’, and the term is inaccurate. But this law goes quite far beyond that issue,” says Rafal Pankowski of the Never Again Association, a Polish anti-hate crime group. “I understand the controversy, but I think that this . . . is now secondary to this bigger problem. The whole situation has activated prejudice and anti-Jewish stereotypes that I think are unprecedented since the late 1960s.”
The 1960s were a nadir for Polish-Jewish relations. Like the other members of the Soviet bloc, Poland broke off relations with Israel in response to the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. In the wake of an anti-Semitic campaign by the Communist regime the following year, more than 10,000 people left the country, reducing its Jewish community to a few thousand.
With the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, the job of rebuilding shattered links began. Poland and Israel re-established diplomatic ties. Jewish life in Poland slowly began to revive, with numerous Jewish organisations springing up around the country, and festivals being held in Polish cities. Historians began to explore parts of Poland’s second world war history, which had been ignored under the Communist regime.
The Polish government never surrendered to the Nazis, and despite the fact that the Germans imposed the death penalty on any Pole caught helping Jews, thousands still chose to do so. The Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial centre in Israel recognises 6,706 Poles — more than any other nation — for their bravery in saving Jews.
But historians also began to investigate cases where Poles killed Jews. In 2000, Jan Gross, a Polish-born US academic, published a book which documented the role played by Poles in a massacre of Jews in the town of Jedwabne in 1941, touching off a furious debate. “Jan Gross destroyed the consensus,” says Anita Prazmowska, a professor of international history at the London School of Economics. “[His book] opened up the subject in a way that you could not pretend that it was not there.”
The following year, Aleksander Kwasniewski, Poland’s then president, apologised for the killings in Jedwabne. Although the apology provoked controversy in Poland, many saw it as an important moment in rebuilding ties with the Jewish community and Israel.
“Kwasniewski’s apology was an enormous step forward. It opened the basis for discussion. Before that, you could talk as long as you like, but if you didn’t mention Jedwabne or the Kielce pogrom, [where about 40 Jews were killed in 1946], there was nothing to talk about,” says one former Polish diplomat.
Another breakthrough, he adds, was the building of the Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews, which was opened in 2013 in Warsaw, having been supported by Mr Kwasniewski and his successor, Lech Kaczynski. “For the first time Israeli kids [on visits] learned not just about the Holocaust, but also about the 1,000 years of common history that we share. That was one of the best ways to build relations. Lech Kaczynski understood this very well,” says the diplomat.
Beyond headline-catching initiatives, and the work of leaders such as the late Pope John Paul II and former Polish foreign minister Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, ordinary Poles also played an important role in the post-Communist reconciliation, says Jonathan Ornstein, director of the Jewish Community Centre in Krakow. “It hasn’t necessarily been a top-down government policy, it’s been very much the will of the Polish people,” he says, “who have demonstrated their desire to have the Jewish community in Poland among them, and to work hand in hand and help us rebuild Jewish life.”
Yet in the face of the storm whipped up by the new law, many in Poland’s Jewish community — which today numbers about 10,000 — wonder if those gains can be preserved. Ms Chipczynska says some have even begun to ponder their future in the country. “I ask myself questions, whether we have a future here. Many parents do the same,” she says. “Many people are asking themselves, ‘can I still be so open about my Jewishness?’”
Unlike in other European countries, such as France, which have seen a surge in anti-Semitism in recent years, Polish Jewish leaders say they are not aware of cases of violence against Jews. But the darkening public discourse has prompted Poland’s Jewish community to take greater precautions.
“For years we were terribly proud that whereas in western Europe the best way to identify a synagogue was to look for the tank parked in front of it, here security was a fuddy-duddy who asks to look at your bag if he remembers,” says Konstanty Gebert, a columnist at the newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza. “Now we’ve got slightly more serious about security.”
Polish diplomats and leaders are scrambling to find a way out of the diplomatic crisis. Although Mr Duda signed the bill into law he sent it to Poland’s constitutional tribunal for clarification, a step which could pave the way for change. In a further important gesture, Mr Duda on Thursday expressed “profound grief” at the 1968 expulsions, and asked for forgiveness. A Polish delegation has visited Israel for talks. The US has also been putting pressure on Warsaw to reach a resolution.
However, that will be difficult to achieve given the inflamed emotions in both Poland and Israel.
“[Poland] is going in two opposite directions at equal speed and at equal strength,” says Michael Schudrich, the country’s chief rabbi. “Part of the population would be very happy to destroy the relationship. But there is another half that’s fighting very hard to return the relationship back to where it was, fighting very hard for rational discussion . . . Many people from within the government want to ensure that this relationship stays a positive one.”
Yet even if Poland’s leaders can find a way to defuse the dispute with Israel, many observers fear the position of the country’s Jewish community will take longer to restore. “On the surface, everything will be patched up. Everyone is interested in ensuring that the situation doesn’t escalate. But this history of trust that was built over the past 30 years will be extremely difficult to rebuild,” says the former Polish diplomat.
“Making friends is about making lots of small steps. It’s not spectacular . . . It is done with perseverance. [During the past 30 years], there were a lot of small steps on a personal basis. A lot was done, which is now being ruined, and the next generation will have to rebuild, just like we did after 1968.”
Backlash as new law used for first time
Poland’s new law on national memory has provoked a backlash far beyond the country’s borders, and not just in Israel.
The ripples from the law’s introduction have reached South America, after the Polish League Against Defamation (RDI), a non-governmental organisation, said that it had filed a complaint in the Regional Court in Warsaw against an Argentine newspaper, Página 12, in what would be the first use of the new law.
The RDI, which subsequently said that the case was a civil, not a criminal one, is demanding an apology from Página 12 over an article on the massacre of Jews in Jedwabne in 1941 with an accompanying picture of “murdered Polish soldiers who had been fighting with [against] Communist occupiers after World War II”. The complaint accuses the publication of “manipulation” for using the image and conflating the events of 1941 and 1950.
The law has also prompted an uneasy reaction in Kiev because of a provision that makes it illegal to deny that Ukrainian nationalists and members of Ukrainian formations collaborating with the Third Reich committed crimes against Poles between 1925 and 1950. Kiev’s parliament has condemned the bill for violating democratic values and friendly relations.
“We do not need to be told which Ukrainian heroes we should respect and which not . . . just as we don’t advise anyone who Poland should respect or not,” said President Petro Poroshenko two weeks ago. “Politicians should look towards the future, leaving the past to historians . . . all will be good if we uphold this concept.”
In Israel, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned against attempts to “change history”, and politicians have demanded Poland’s new law be changed. There has also been a rise in anti-Polish sentiment. Police are investigating one incident, when swastikas were daubed on the Polish embassy in Tel Aviv.
“The way the discussion has developed, it really hasn’t been a discussion, it’s almost a screaming match,” says Mr Schudrich, Poland’s chief rabbi. “I’ve heard things . . . in Poland said about Jews, and I’ve heard things in Israel said about Poles that I haven’t heard for a long time. It’s tragically coming from both sides.”
The US, traditionally one of Warsaw’s most important allies, has also been critical, warning that the law could undermine free speech, and putting pressure on Poland to amend it. Last week, Polish officials denied media reports that the US had banned high-level meetings because of the dispute. James Shotter and Roman Olearchyk
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