The Catholic Church and Anti-Semitism by Ronald Modras Karski by E Thomas Wood and Stanislaw M Jankozvski
Fisher, Eugene J
POLAND'S DOUBLE-LIFE The Catholic Church and Anti-Semitism Poland, 1933-39 Ronald Modras Harwood Academic, $48,429 pp. Karski How One Man Tried to Stop the Holocaust £ Thomas Wood and...
...It is forbidden to beat up, maim, or slander Jews...
...Not even Jews...
...In major statements issued in 1991 and again on the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz in 1995, the Polish bishops' conference began the painful process of confronting the Polish church's past and moving toward reconciliation and change for the future...
...The distinction between economic and racial anti-Semitism made by Polish Catholic literature in the interwar period is not one that can be countenanced today...
...But just when today's reader may be tempted to write off the Polish church, Hlond strikes a note that also reflects teachings in La Civilta Cattolica and attitudes expressed even more strongly by Pope Pius XI...
...It is contrary to Catholic ethics...
...But at the same time we can recognize that it is, historically, of a different character from Nazi anti-Semitism...
...In Hlond's pastoral, as in so much of the Polish-Catholic literature of the period, the anti-Jewish appeals are cultural, economic, and secular, not at all religious in character...
...Herein lies a surprise and a challenge for traditional views of anti-Semitism as a direct outflow of medieval Christian anti-Judaism...
...He condemns anti-Semitism: "I warn against the moral stance, imported from abroad, that is basically and ruthlessly anti-Jewish...
...It was worse than he imagined it could be...
...Modras's book contains numerous insights that will enrich and complexify scholarly understanding of anti-Semitism and Polish Catholicism...
...The results reveal a disconcertingly high level of what today can be called anti-Semitic attitudes, stereotypes, and prejudices, even to the extent of vocal church support for the anti-Jewish economic boycott that spread through Europe in the 1930s...
...When divine mercy enlightens a Jew to sincerely accept his and our Messiah, let us greet him into our Christian ranks with joy...
...Ronald Modras, a professor of theological studies at Saint Louis University, painstakingly surveyed the entire range of Polish Catholic publications in the years preceding the German invasion...
...Declared a righteous gentile by Yad Vashem in Jerusalem for his efforts on behalf of the Jews, Karski was made an honorary citizen of the State of Israel on May 12, 1994...
...Insofar as it saw a "Jewish problem," it offered the solution of conversion, or, for some Catholics, political support for the cause of Zionism...
...Karski How One Man Tried to Stop the Holocaust £ Thomas Wood and Stanislaw M. Jankowski John Wiley & Sons, $2435, $1635 (paper), 316 pp...
...After the war, with the Communists having taken over his homeland, Karski settled in Washington, D.C., where he became a distinguished professor at Georgetown University...
...One may love one's own nation more, but one may not hate anyone...
...At one point Karski is caught by the Germans and tortured...
...The narrative woven by Wood and Jankowski is highly dramatic...
...Hlond points to Jewish involvement in Masonic "freethinking," "atheistic communism," "spreading pornography," and "practicing usury...
...Karski began as a courier taking information out of occupied Poland to the Polish government in exile in London...
...He did...
...He was to emerge from the war an authentic hero...
...He was invited into the Warsaw ghetto and into a concentration camp to see for himself what went on there, so that he could bring word of it by personal witness to the West, which knew more than it wanted to believe about what was going on...
...Hlond repeats anti-Jewish allegations common at the time...
...Karski's contacts with the Polish underground led him into contact with the Jewish underground...
...Although he admits that "not all Jews are this way" and that "there are very many who are believers, honest, just, kind, and philanthropic," with a "healthy, edifying sense of family," he concludes that Jewish support for such causes as separation of church and state amounts to "waging war against the Catholic church," so that "it is good to prefer your own kind when shopping, to avoid Jewish stores...and especially boycott the Jewish press...
...The biography of one Polish Catholic, Jan Karski, will enrich and edify anyone who reads it...
...The predominant Polish-Catholic attitude illustrated by Cardinal Hlond may have given support to a boycott of Jewish businesses, but, left to itself, it could not have led to genocide...
...Eugene J. Fisher Hast year marked the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II and the liberation of Auschwitz...
...Modras, himself a Polish-American, presents these results with admirable candor and thoroughness...
...One should love Jews as human beings and neighbors, even though we do not honor the indescribable tragedy of that nation, which was the guardian of the idea of the Messiah and from which was born the Savior...
...The condemnation of "anti-Jewish violence," on the other hand, is theological in nature, appealing very directly to the New Testament and church teaching for its moral force...
...The Polish church was not only aware of but strongly and consistently condemned Nazi racialist anti-Semitism and, indeed, any form of violence toward Jews...
...Modras notes and illustrates at some length that these same allegations were commonly found also in the "influential Rome-based journal," La Civilta Cattolica, lest the reader conclude that such attitudes were unique to Poland...
...A classic example of the ambivalent attitude of the Polish clergy of the period is found in the oft-cited pastoral letter of the primate, August Cardinal Hlond, issued on February 29, 1936...
...Two recent books shed light on the Catholic community of Poland before and during Nazi occupation...
...His thoughtful analysis of the data, however, provides challenges and surprises for those who may wish to classify Polish culture and Polish Catholicism as simply "anti-Semitic/' Modras finds, for example, relatively few appeals in Polish Catholic literature to the traditional theological categories of medieval Christianity that French historian Jules Isaac so aptly called the "teaching of contempt...
...The story of Karski's valiant but largely futile attempts to convince Allied leaders, including British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden and American President Franklin Roosevelt, to believe what was happening to the Jews, and to do something about it, is compelling and filled with moral lessons for today...
...Karski was a young Polish officer with aspirations for a career as a diplomat when the Nazis began World War II with their surprise blitzkrieg attack on Poland...
...He escapes and returns to Poland...
...Modras, noting that the passage on "the Jewish question" is "usually quoted only in part," provides it in its entirety...
Vol. 123 • April 1996 • No. 7
