Bieganski: The Brute Polak Stereotype in Polish-Jewish Relations and American Popular Culture (Jews of Poland) Review

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(More customer reviews)Among other things, the Talmud records edited discussions between rabbinic scholars on legal and literary-interpretive topics. Two particular rabbi-scholars frequently appear in tandem, commenting and responding to each other's opinion. These two are named Rava, and Abbaye. One day in Talmud class my Talmud teacher, a devout Polish Jew, commented that "Rava and Abbaye go together like ham and eggs". I saw the jaw of one of my classmates literally drop, nearly hit the floor. "But Rabbi", he stuttered, "what do you know of ham and eggs?". My teacher replied "I never tasted them, but I've heard they go together well". So too Poles and Jews. They seem to go together. Poles and Jews. Jews and Poles. But this taste is bitter, complicated, with a lingering confused finish on the palate.
At least they used to go together. These days, Jews and Palestinians are edging their way into the spot traditionally reserved for Poles and Jews. Israel and the Zionist lobby are making sure of that. Where were Poles will be Palestinians. And some day, sadly, tragically, someone will have to write a book about Jewish-Palestinian relations, stereotypes, etc., and that writer will be called names, variously and such as "anti-Semite", "self hater", "Jew lover", "Zionist spy", "traitor", etc., names such as Danusha Goska will be called for writing "Bieganski".
In "Bieganski" Goska writes a serious book, treading on sacred, crushed bone-, ash- and gold teeth- filled ground, and our journey with her, not surprisingly, is frequently unpleasant. The sites she guides us to in the courageous "Bieganski" are illuminating, and shocking: amazing quotes from current newspaper articles, from the New York Times and Washington Post etc., quoting esteemed, mostly WASP American scholars and commentators saying the most outrageous, nasty things about Poles, Bohemians, Hungarians, 'Bohunks', describing them as brutish protohumans who can only be assumed of eating their own while smacking greasy bulging lips with stupid, sated Slavic simian smiles. Goska points us, with sniper-scope accuracy, to the systematic, disgusting, and pervasive anti-Polish bias in contemporary Hollywood film, literature, and popular major media outlets, television, and newspapers.
But the stuff we read in "Bieganski" is not esoteric; this racism is as mainstream as ham and eggs, as ordinary as Rava and Abbaye doing their intellectual joustings across the centuries of Talmudic discourse. Yet we can barely keep our breakfast down; we want to vomit up that ham, those eggs in disgust. Revulsion. How could we accept such trayf, such unkosher hatred?

And Jews, how do Jews feel about Poles? "Bieganski" incorporates unusual interviews Goska personally conducted with American Jews, speaking off-the-cuff about their stereotypes of Poles. Jews? Poles? We feel what we were taught, and what has been reinforced and encouraged by our WASP overlords and by our Jewish, anti-Polish dayschool teachers; Poles are subhuman, they are fed antisemitism in their mother's milk, we are superior to them. We go to visit modern Poland to see how poor and stupid and undeveloped the Poles are, and to see the Nazi death camps on Polish soil, and we know that the Poles are undeveloped and poor and stupid in cosmic punishment for the so-called "Polish Holocaust", which was a Nazi Holocaust conducted on occupied Polish soil, and which targeted Catholic Poles as much as it targeted Jews. But of course the Poles are to blame. And the mass murder of Poles, Polish Catholics, by Nazis from the west, and by Soviets from the East, is completely ignored, relegated to the ash heap of history, irrelevant, unworthy of mention.
So why will author Dr. Goska likely need to hire a bodyguard now? Why, for writing "Bieganski" will she be reviled, by Jews, by Poles, by African Americans? Why is it that no mainstream publisher would touch her book "Bieganski" for fear that they might lose support from generous financial backers? Why will Goska now be labelled, variously, as an "anti-Semite", a "Polish apologist", a "right-wing whacko", a "racist", a "self-hating Pole", a "Jew lover" and a "Zionist spy", all at the same time?
You'll just have to read the book and figure it out for yourself. It will be an exhilarating ride, eye-opening, jaw-dropping, intellectually rich and deep yet smooth as a Cuban cigar with a glass of dark, dark rum. "Bieganski". Mark my words. This one's a keeper. You'll be talking about it with your friends for years. "Bieganski". An exploration of the brute within.


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In this controversial study, Goska exposes one stereotype of Poles and other Eastern Europeans. In the ''Bieganski'' stereotype, Poles exhibit the qualities of animals. They are strong, stupid, violent, fertile, anarchic, dirty, and especially hateful in a way that more evolved humans are not. Their special hatefulness is epitomized by their Polish anti-Semitism. Bieganski discovers this stereotype in the mainstream press, scholarship, film, in Jews' self-definition, and in responses to the Holocaust. Bieganski's twin is Shylock, the stereotype of the crafty, physically inadequate, moneyed Jew. The final chapters of the book are devoted to interviews with American Jews, which reveal that Bieganski and Shylock are both alive and well among those who have little knowledge of Poles or Poland.

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Sparks Amidst the Ashes: The Spiritual Legacy of Polish Jewry Review

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(More customer reviews)Whether or not one agrees with everything he says, one can feel enlightened and uplifted by Sherwin's refreshingly-different and generally-balanced analysis of Polish Jewry and Polish-Jewish relations. He writes: "Indeed, the contemporary view of Poland as a land endemically inhospitable to Jews runs sharply counter to much of historical experience." (p. 55). And, it turns out, contrary to the claims of Jan Thomas Gross, far from all Poles attempted to erase all memories of Jews: "The Jews of Makow are gone...The cemetery was destroyed by the Nazis. The tombstones were used for construction. Remnants of these tombstones still pave parts of the road near the bus depot. After the war, the Poles of Makow salvaged what they could of the shattered tombstones and built a monument to the Jews of Makow." (p. 76).
Sherwin soundly repudiates the common notion that Poland is little more than a giant cemetery of Jews (p. 6). His travels throughout Poland uncover a surprisingly-large remnant of Jewish artifacts. Much of his book consists of detailed descriptions of the achievements in philosophy and religion of past Polish Jews, especially by the Hasidim. His entire work has a flavor of mysticism.
Rabbi Sherwin believes that most of American Jewry has turned to a lachrymose view of history (p. 87), forgetting this rich tradition and replacing it with poor substitutes: "The `myth' of death/rebirth, Holocaust/Israel tends to replace belief in God as the foundation of Jewish faith...Concerning American Jews, a number of Jewish scholars have observed that faith in Israel and in the Jewish people has replaced or superseded belief in God...The ideology of survivalism, coupled with the dual dogmatic pillars of Jewish civil religion of Holocaust-destruction and Israel-rebirth, folded nicely into an increasingly secularized Jewish self-identity." (pp. 85-86). Sherwin goes as far as suggesting that American Jewry is in danger of eventually self-destructing through the neglect of its heritage (p. 87, 90, 100).
Sherwin repeatedly stresses the reciprocity of Polish-Jewish prejudices, mentioning, for example, the Jewish belief that Christians are idol worshippers (p. 18). He also comments: "Perhaps the Jewish stereotype that Poles are anti-Semites was as problematic as the Polish stereotype that Jews are atheists and communists." (p. 32). But why do Polish anti-Semitism and Jewish Polonophobia persist? Sherwin believes that both Poles and Jews retain unexamined views of each other that have been handed down two or more generations from their ancestors, and usually without personally knowing anyone of the other group (pp. 129-130).
Sherwin freely acknowledges what many Poles had long suspected: "In the popular American and Israeli understanding of the Holocaust, the Poles all but replace the Germans as the perpetrators of the Holocaust, as the archenemies of the Jews throughout the thousand-year Jewish presence in Poland." (p. 84). He cites a visit to Auschwitz (p. 82) during which Israeli students were all but told that Poles were co-responsible with the Nazi Germans for the Holocaust, and suggests that this was being done not with the direct intention of denigrating Poles but for the forging of a post-Holocaust Jewish identity. (Even so, the outcome is identical.)
Sherwin criticizes what he considers the exaggerations of Polish aid to Jews during the Holocaust, but unfortunately makes no attempt to analyze the extent of this help. He also elaborates on the seemingly-paradoxical fact that prewar Polish anti-Semites often played a major role in the wartime rescue and hiding of Jews (p. 129).
Sherwin addresses the reality and limits of the Zydokomuna (Jewish Communism): "In this regard, it must be admitted that both for idealistic and self-serving reasons, proportionately more Jews than non-Jews were involved with the communist powers. But the popular Polish perception that Jews outnumbered non-Jews in the party or the state apparatus is patently false."(p. 136).
Sherwin recognizes the fact that contemporary Jewish attitudes may actually give rise to what may be called "secondary anti-Semitism": "However, to be sure, the pervasive Jewish stereotype of all Poles as anti-Semites may well encourage young Poles initially devoid of anti-Jewish sentiments to become anti-Semites." (p. 135). He also writes: "While the `competitive martyrology' of Jews and Poles results in nothing except the amplification of tensions, few Jews have acknowledged the devastating impact that the Nazi occupation had upon the non-Jewish population of Poland. (p. 133).
Sherwin includes various tidbits of little-known information, including the strongly philo-Semitic orientation of Kosciuszko (p. 143), and the fact that Hasidic dress is actually modified Polish clothing (p. 101). Rabbi Moses Isserles of Krakow once taught that philosophy originated with the Jews, and was only later copied by the Greeks (p. 37).
While not written for this purpose, some old rabbinical teachings discussed by Byron L. Sherwin find correspondence to Christian thinking. For example, the teachings of the Rabbi of Kotzk (Kock?) on the good works produced by genuine faith (p. 122) recount the Reformation teachings of good works as a fruit of genuine faith. Musar's warnings against an excessively mechanical obedience to the Law (p. 120), and that to the detriment of moral and ethical virtue, are reminiscent of the teachings of Jesus Christ against the Pharisees. And, contrary to the common view that the Jewish conception of God is one where He is less personal than in the Christian conception of God, Sherwin cites some Hasidic teachings (p. 114-115) that point to a very intimate human-God communion, even using such terms for God as "our little Father", "my darling", and God being not in heaven as much as "In our guts." A superb book!

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For hundreds of years, Poland served as the epicenter of Jewish life. As a result of the Holocaust, though, Poland has become a "Jewish Atlantis." Yet, the majority of Jews in the world today have their genealogical roots in the historical lands of Poland. In this book, Sherwin demonstrates how the unprecedented works of intellect and spirit produced during the Jewish "Golden Age" in Poland can provide contemporary Jews with the spiritual and intellectual resources required to ensure Jewish continuity in the present and future. Sherwin introduces us to the vast range of mystical speculation, evocative stories, talmudic dialectics, theological ideas, and social realities that were muted by the destruction of Polish Jewry during the Holocaust. Sherwin critiques the tendency among contemporary Jews to disregard the precious legacy bequeathed by Polish Jewry, and presents a plan for re-creating Jewish life after the Holocaust that draws from the wisdom of the spiritual magnates and from the communal experience that characterized Jewish life in Poland. Sherwin concludes with a controversial proposal for the future of Polish-Jewish relations.

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