A crucifix hangs on the back wall of the classroom at the Franciscan school. Beneath it stands a menorah — an unusual sight in devoutly Catholic Poland.
The Higher School of Hebrew Philology, located in Torun, Poland, is a new three-year private college that opened last October. It’s making history, offering a program of study that is unique in Poland. Founded by a Franciscan monk, the school’s purpose is to instruct Poles in Jewish subjects that include Hebrew, Yiddish and the history of Judaism. There are no Jewish students in the school, as there are few left in the country. But its Polish students are brimming with enthusiasm for their subject.
Two miles away, a starkly different message is broadcast daily throughout Poland. On the other side of the Vistula River, which runs through this north-central city halfway between Warsaw and Gdansk, is Radio Maryja, an ultra-conservative Catholic radio station listened to, according to one survey, by an estimated 15% of the country’s adults. Other researchers put the number lower, but large enough to have a major effect on national elections. Its broadcasts demonize Jews and gay men and lesbians, and oppose Poland’s membership in the European Union. The radio station, which is run by the Rev. Tadeusz Rydzyk, a Redemptorist priest, has been broadcasting its signal across Poland for 17 years.
Torun, it seems, is a city of two tales. A medieval town of 200,000 and the birthplace of the astronomer Copernicus, it exemplifies in many ways the juncture at which the country as a whole stands today: poised between an identity that is xenophobic and defensive about its past, and another that is more open to the world and willing to explore some of its own most difficult and sensitive historical corners.
It is in Torun that both of Poland’s political faces are most vividly on display.
Radio Maryja appeals to older Poles, the rural and less educated, and others who feel left behind by Poland’s rapid post-communist transformation.
Its programs exploit listeners’ fears that Poland’s new capitalist democracy undermines their traditional Catholic way of life. Jews and Masons are demonized as threatening outside forces. In 2007, Polish president Lech Kaczynski considered a potential government compensation deal on confiscated property that would benefit, among others, Jews and their heirs who lost property during the Holocaust. Rydzyk swiftly denounced the president as a “fraudster who is in the pockets of the Jewish lobby,” according to the Anti-Defamation League.
“Having an enemy unifies them,” said Szymon Spandouski, a reporter for the Torun newspaper Nowosci.
Despite its claim to uphold traditional Catholic values, Pope Benedict XVI has criticized Radio Maryja for meddling in politics. Stanislaw Dziwisz, the cardinal of Krakow, has called on the nation’s bishops to replace Rydzik with a new governing board for the station to avert “a dangerous crisis in the church.” But the badly divided Polish bishops have failed to act. Many support Rydzik.
Antisemitism continues to exist in Poland. Yet for all that, in Torun there is little support for Radio Maryja, especially among the 40,000 predominantly liberal students at Nicolaus Copernicus University. Jacek Holub, a reporter who covers Torun for Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland’s largest newspaper, told me that some graffiti inscriptions in town read, “Torun apologizes for Radio Maryja.”
Some see the establishment of the Higher School of Hebrew Philology as countering this negative image. But Father Maksymin Tandek, its founder and director, says that was not his intention. He emphasizes instead the positive impact he hopes his school will have in Poland.
Tandek, 43, explained that the school had its genesis in 2000 when, in realization of a lifelong dream, he received permission to study at a Franciscan school in Jerusalem for three years.
“When I stood on the rooftop of our school in the Old City, I fell in love with Israel and did not want to leave it,” he told me as we sat next to a fireplace on a cold, rainy day. “I felt honored that I could touch the roots of our religion and our cultural identity when I was in the Holy Land.”
Tandek returned to Poland, determined to find a way to share his love for Israel with young Poles. He wanted to teach them the importance of dialogue between Christians and Jews in the hope that this would prevent bigotry in Poland.
Most of the students at the school have had minimal contact with Jews, mainly because there are so few, only 15,000 left today in this Catholic country with a population of 38.5 million.
Before the Holocaust, there were 3.3 million Jews in Poland. Some 3 million perished in the Holocaust, and most of the survivors left. Many fled after the postwar pogrom in Kielce on July 4, 1946, when Poles murdered more than 40 Jews. Others emigrated when the Communist Party pressured them to leave in 1968. Only two Jews remain in Torun.
“Now, after the Holocaust, Jews and Poles know even less about each other,” said Spandouski, who often writes about Jewish-Christian relations.
Tandek’s school is helping to close this gap for the generation of young Poles that has come of age since the collapse of communism in 1989. This generation is the first in the postwar period to learn about Poland’s rich Jewish history and to learn the unvarnished truth about the decimation of this population during the Holocaust. The former communist government fed the Polish people a distorted version of this history.
Upon his return from Israel, Tandek launched a campaign to establish the school he envisioned. His project had the blessing of the both the Vatican and the Polish Catholic Church. He also secured the support of the Torun City Council. The school receives funding from the city of Torun, the EU and private contributors.
Rivka Halperin, a middle-aged Israeli scholar, is the school’s director of Hebrew language and literature studies. A petite woman who moves around the classroom with the same vigor as her much younger students, Halperin easily switches back and forth between Hebrew and Polish, the language she spoke as a child with her Polish parents, who immigrated to Israel.
Halperin is motivated to teach at the school because a Catholic family in Warsaw hid her mother during the Holocaust. She has kept in touch with the family that saved her mother’s life. She hopes her work will help young Poles learn more about Poland’s Jewish past.
“This renewal of interest in Jewish culture is close to my heart,” Halperin said, noting the widespread interest in Poland’s Jewish history among young people. She said that they keep asking: “If there is a Jewish history, what happened? Where are the Jews?”
Her students spoke with me about their Jewish education when I visited their classroom.
“I felt that I was missing something in Christianity, and I wanted to go back to its roots,” said Anna Turczanik. “Now I am beginning to understand Christianity’s connection to Judaism, and I am finally seeing my religion’s beginnings in Judaism.”
Veronika Klimova, a student from neighboring Ukraine, said that learning about Judaism has better equipped her to respond to the antisemitism rife in her homeland. “Much bigotry is based on ignorance,” she explained.
Paulina Przyziolkowska wants to be able to translate Yiddish stories that were written during the Holocaust into Polish.
“A whole Jewish culture disappeared from this country during the Holocaust,” a male student observed. “It is our obligation to find out why.”
At the moment, makeshift quarters in the monastery can accommodate only 20 students. The school will soon move into a newly constructed building that is on the same property and able to accommodate many more students interested in Christianity’s Jewish roots and the rich 1,000-year history of Jews in Poland.
“Tandek shows that some Polish churches offer progressive ideas that differ from those that come from the other side of the Vistula,” said Jan Wyrowinski, who is a friend of the monk and is also a senator who represents the region in the Polish Sejm, or Parliament, in a nod toward the neighboring broadcast signal sending its message across Poland.
Contact Donald Snyder at feedback@forward.com
The Forward welcomes reader comments in order to promote thoughtful discussion on issues of importance to the Jewish community. In the interest of maintaining a civil forum, the Forward requires that all commenters be appropriately respectful toward our writers, other commenters and the subjects of the articles. Vigorous debate and reasoned critique are welcome; name-calling and personal invective are not. While we generally do not seek to edit or actively moderate comments, the Forward reserves the right to remove comments for any reason.
When Hank Greenberg Met Jackie Robinson
Reconsider Decision on Rabbis and Intermarriage
Ultra-Orthodox Men Ditch All-Black Attire as Fashion Trumps Tradition
Israel's Shas, Right-Wing Kingmaker Party, Takes Sharp Turn to Left
Is Steven Hawking’s Decision To Boycott an Israeli Conference Boon to BDS?
Copyright © 2013, Forward Association, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
You've successfully signed up!
The Poles' acts of kindness for their Jewish neighbors during the war? Let's give the benefit of the doubt and say that here were thousands (to say even that number makes my mom's skin crawl... she insists that most Polish "acts of compassion" lasted only while the Jew could pay. The minute the money ran out they were thrown out or killed). Of the thousands, what percentage of the Polish population did that represent? Less than one!!! I grew up in Canada with stories from family and family friends that told of the Polish soil being thoroughly infected with anti-semitism. Anywhere in History where there were poop people and a strong Catholic Church, there was anti-semitism. Excuse me then when I find it hard to believe that there is a change in the attitudes of any Poles, most of them that disagree with the radio station are probably protecting the gays far more than the Jews. It is obvious that the Church is still at least turning a blind eye to the overt anti-semitism that they have been fostering for these thousand years of their existence.
Mori, like you, I too grew up in Canada, the son of a Polish Jew whose family was decimated by the Holocaust. My father lost 200 members of his family, his own sister shot to death before his own eyes. He too talked much of the anti-Semitism of the Poles. He could not ever even bring himself to go back and visit Poland once he left after the war. But I think we have to be thankful and grateful for those, especially of the younger generation of Poles, who stand in opposition to their predecessors who hated Jews and perpetrated acts of anti-Semitism. We need to encourage the younger set. We need to be able to have compassion and forgiveness ourselves. It would be wrong for us to begrudge them a little kindness or our appreciation. Else, we would be no better than the perpetrators ourselves.
I will be going to Poland myself in the Spring. This will be my first time ever. I will visit Auschwitz. I will also be going to honor and serve the few Holocaust survivors still left there. But I am not going with hate. Hate destroys those who give it a place and foothold in their lives and hearts. Our God causes the rain to fall on the righteous as well as the unrighteous. God delights not in the death of the wicked, but, rather, that all would come to Him in repentance.
My mother was barely saved by TRUE Christians ("Righteous Gentiles") in Poland, but the rest of her family, including her four year old child, my grandmother, her two brothers, first husband were all slaughtered by the nominal "christians." But we must never forget that were it not for a number of truly brave and righteous Christians, barely a Jew in Eastern Europe would have escaped alive to tell about it. We must remember the thousands of righteous gentiles who put their lives on their line to save Jews, and did so not primarily for promise of repayment, but also to try to live up to the Christian dictum "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." It is easy to be cynical about those Christians and others who did put their lives, and the lives of their own families on the line to save Jews, and got precious little in return for doing so afterwards. So I personally give what charity I can to the JFR, or Jewish Fund for the Righteous which still distributes some help to the handful of such Righteous Gentiles still left in Poland and Eastern Europe. Cynicism leaves nothing but bitterness. I do not believe the Poles were any more antisemitic than anyone else, including present day Americans. But Jews constituted 10% of Poland's prewar population, so that is where half of all Jews were to be found, tortured and massacred.
We must also remember that some Leftist Bolshevik "Jews" did some extremely nasty things themselves in the prewar years particularly in the Ukraine under orders from Stalin. If is unfair to paint any one group all white or all black. Many Jews had blood on their hands as well during the Stalin's Ukrainian holocaust of the early 1930s. So we must also remember to give homage to the Righteous Christians who saved Jewish lives and not only castigate the vast majority who either did nothing, or directly participated in the crimes. It was a horrible time with a checkered history, and it was not all just black and white. There were many shades of grey as today.
My mother was barely saved by TRUE Christians ("Righteous Gentiles") in Poland, but the rest of her family, including her four year old child, my grandmother, her two brothers, first husband were all slaughtered by the nominal "christians." But we must never forget that were it not for a number of truly brave and righteous Christians, barely a Jew in Eastern Europe would have escaped alive to tell about it. We must remember the thousands of righteous gentiles who put their lives on their line to save Jews, and did so not primarily for promise of repayment, but also to try to live up to the Christian dictum "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." It is easy to be cynical about those Christians and others who did put their lives, and the lives of their own families on the line to save Jews, and got precious little in return for doing so afterwards. So I personally give what charity I can to the JFR, or Jewish Fund for the Righteous which still distributes some help to the handful of such Righteous Gentiles still left in Poland and Eastern Europe. Cynicism leaves nothing but bitterness. I do not believe the Poles were any more antisemitic than anyone else, including present day Americans. But Jews constituted 10% of Poland's prewar population, so that is where half of all Jews were to be found, tortured and massacred.
We must also remember that some Leftist Bolshevik "Jews" did some extremely nasty things themselves in the prewar years particularly in the Ukraine under orders from Stalin. If is unfair to paint any one group all white or all black. Many Jews had blood on their hands as well during the Stalin's Ukrainian holocaust of the early 1930s. So we must also remember to give homage to the Righteous Christians who saved Jewish lives and not only castigate the vast majority who either did nothing, or directly participated in the crimes. It was a horrible time with a checkered history, and it was not all just black and white. There were many shades of grey as today.
My mother was barely saved by TRUE Christians ("Righteous Gentiles") in Poland, but the rest of her family, including her four year old child, my grandmother, her two brothers, first husband were all slaughtered by the nominal "christians." But we must never forget that were it not for a number of truly brave and righteous Christians, barely a Jew in Eastern Europe would have escaped alive to tell about it. We must remember the thousands of righteous gentiles who put their lives on their line to save Jews, and did so not primarily for promise of repayment, but also to try to live up to the Christian dictum "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." It is easy to be cynical about those Christians and others who did put their lives, and the lives of their own families on the line to save Jews, and got precious little in return for doing so afterwards. So I personally give what charity I can to the JFR, or Jewish Fund for the Righteous which still distributes some help to the handful of such Righteous Gentiles still left in Poland and Eastern Europe. Cynicism leaves nothing but bitterness. I do not believe the Poles were any more antisemitic than anyone else, including present day Americans. But Jews constituted 10% of Poland's prewar population, so that is where half of all Jews were to be found, tortured and massacred.
We must also remember that some Leftist Bolshevik "Jews" did some extremely nasty things themselves in the prewar years particularly in the Ukraine under orders from Stalin. If is unfair to paint any one group all white or all black. Many Jews had blood on their hands as well during the Stalin's Ukrainian holocaust of the early 1930s. So we must also remember to give homage to the Righteous Christians who saved Jewish lives and not only castigate the vast majority who either did nothing, or directly participated in the crimes. It was a horrible time with a checkered history, and it was not all just black and white. There were many shades of grey as today.
It's best if the Jews forget about Poland and its people. The Poles like the rest of Europe were anti semites then and they are anti semites now.The Jews should only live in the Holy Land and no where else.
The Roman Catholic church is not your friend... It's not even a church... It's a torture and murder organisation which brutalized Europe for a thousand years... A gang of criminals like Al-Qaeda.
I am a Pole from Warsaw, for at least 3 years now I have been studying the Holocaust with particular emphasis on the Warsaw Ghetto from 1940-43, but also things happening to Jews in other cities like Lodz, Bialystok etc, I have read some 50 books on the issue of the Polish - Jewish relations before, during and after the 2. WW, I have seen at least 10 documentaries (Shoah was one of the most important among them) and bearing that in mind I am always surprised how easy it is for some people to criticize others even whole nations of nasty and inhumane and anti - Jewish behaviors during the war. I am always very careful when sharing my views about the happenings of that time, mostly because this was the most unusual, tragic period of our history so far, people had not been prepared for such unusual things to happen, people fought for their own lives everyday which is impossible for us to imagine. It is therefore unfair to judge others, and streach the whole criticizm over the whole nation, as in that way we are omitting the righteous and fair, who endangered their own lives by helping those in need. I also think people should learn as much as possible about this terrible time, but also events before and after that, so we are at least able to understand some cause and effect relations - hatred and murder is present in today's world as well, it just moved to different locations.
Isn't ironic that the country most often quoted by Israel as posing an "existential treat" to it is Iran? After all, research by Israelis themselves has shown that Iran was one of the countries that allowed free passage to Jews during WWII without asking for money. And Persia officially asked Germany to grant immunity to Iranian Jews in Europe (a request that was granted). And Jews continue to live in Iran to this day.
This is what makes the posturing between Iran and Israel so tragic. They have every reason to get along. Iran ain't no Poland.
As a Pole with Jewish roots, I would like to add a voice of moderation to some of the bitterly anti-Polish and unjust comments above. While there is no doubt that before the war, during the war and after the war there were many anti-Semites in Poland, one should take into account that there were and still are anti-Semites in all other countries too. Poland 's government cannot be blamed. On the eve of World War II Poland admitted thousands of Jews from Hitler's Germany. But America and Canada refused to take in Jews from the St. Louis and forced the ship with refugees to sail back to Europe. Let us remember that Poland had the greatest Jewish population of all European countries. No wonder that statistically there were many anti-Semitic acts. But during the war, Poland was the ONLY occupied coutry that had a clandestine organization, called ZEGOTA, controlled by London-based Polish government in exile, devoted to helping and saving Jews. While the percentage of Righteous in Poland relative to the entire Polish popualtion may be small, the numeber of Righteous from Poland is the highest of all occupied countries. Not everyone knows that Poland was the only occupied country where aiding a Jew was punishable by immediate death to the entire family, including children. Each country has its share of good and bad, honest and crooks. You cannot expect an entire country to be heroic. The majority of Poles were paralyzed by fear. The occupation in Poland was extremely cruel. The country lost over 6 million of its citizens, of which roughly half were Jewish and the other half gentiles. Many people gave ear to post-war propaganda blaming Jews for communist terror. While there were many cruel communists with Jewish backgrounds there was an equal, if not bigger number of Poles in the UB secret police system. Today, so many years after the war, it is surprising that we rarely, if ever hear about anti-semitism in the country which started and carried out the Holocaust but all too often read and hear about "Polish concentration camps". The Poles, too, have their sensitivity. Such expressions are both false and unjust. Poles wer only victims in these camps. While in today's modern and democratic Poland there is a radio station in Torun spewing hate propaganda, (in the USA the KKK operates legally too) there are also numerous organizations fighting racism of all kinds, including anti-Semitism. I myself, who has experienced some anti-Semitism in my life, must honestly say that in today's Poland the young people, open to Europe and the world, are in the overwhelming majority free of all prejudice. This is a new Poland and even those Jews who left the country with horrific experiences many years ago should realize that this is a different society today. Poland also has excellent relations with Israel. More youth exchange is needed to overcome any remaining prejudices and I know that both sides are working to achieve just that.
My parents who were Polish and survived the death camps would always tell me the Poles were as bad as the Nazis. I was just in Poland where the property my grandparents owned, I never met them because they were murdered by the Nazis, is now the parking lot for the municipal building. There is rampant ant-Semitism in all of Europe. Things have not and will not change. The reports of a Polish revival of Judaism is positive. But how long will it last. Poland was once the Jerusalem of Europe.
As a Jew, it makes me sad and angry to read many of the comments here. Most of the commenters are as anti-Polish as they claim the Poles (non-Jewish Poles) are anti-Semitic. It reminds me of when Shylock says in "The Merchant of Venice" that "I hate him (Antonio) for he is a Christian." With this he forfeited much of the moral high ground he would otherwise have had over Antonio and the other Christians who mistreated him. The only difference between him and them was that being a member of the minority group (the Jews), he didn't have as much opportunity to act on his hatred as the Christians did.
I would suggest that those who are so hostile toward Poland read Gunnar Paulsson's book "Secret City: The Hidden Jews of Warsaw, 1940-1945." Paulsson makes a strong case that far more Poles helped Jews during the war (both actively and passively) than participated in the Holocaust.
I do not have to read the" Secret City ," I have first hand testimony. It is laughable to believe that far more Poles helped Jews than participated in the Holocaust. Ask Polish Jews who survived.
With all due respect, Rabbi, I don't think you have enough objectivity to judge this issue fairly when you refuse to even consider reading a a book with a different point of view. And subjective impressions, even of survivors or others who experience something--even if that something is the Holocaust--is not the same thing as an objective investigation.
Poland was an anti-Semtic society in the years just before and after World War II. It was a common perception that Poles were indifferent to Jewish suffering or glad that the Jews were being destroyed. The Poles at best were passive witnesses and took on a type of bystander guilt and complicity. In l946 ,42 Jews in Kielce were massacred by a Polish Mob. .Catholic Poles were taught Jews killed Jesus
There has been a great uproar in Poland over a book Titled "Fear. Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz" by a Princeton professor Jan T. Gross.
I would like to point out that while there are anti- Pole remarks one cannot compare them to the anti Semitism witnessed in Poland. How many non- Jewish Poles did the Jews murder during and after the war? I certainly agree that the current situation in Poland is one which should be applauded and I only hope it continues. I do not blame the young Polish people for what happened during the Holocaust any more than I hold the children of the Nazis responsible.I look forward to an era of mutual love and understanding.My fear is that if we have learned anything from history it is that anti-Semitism raises its ugly head during recessions and depressions and that history repeats itself. I certainly agree with Lee that we should all do our best to foster love for each other.Yes, I intend to read "Secret City." As a holocaust teacher and scholar I must always read material and research all avenues of interest.