Anne Frank and Marek Edelman

Even though the memory of Anne Frank has been prostituted to serve Zionism, I have little doubt that she would have joined pro-Palestinian activists to oppose the state of Israel if she had survived the WW2.

Here is some footage of Anne Frank that has recently surfaced.

To find out more information, click here.

Marek Edelman, who like Anne Frank is strongly remembered for his role in the Holocaust, has just died.

I am intrigued that the English language obituaries fail to mention Edelman's anti-Zionism.

Compare Warsaw ghetto uprising leader dies with Mort de Marek Edelman, commandant de l'insurrection du ghetto de Varsovie.

Here is a letter that the eminent historian Norman Davies wrote to Commentary in 1987 and that mentions Marek Edelman. Everyone involved in the struggle against racist Zionist Jews on campus should read it carefully. (I don't remember the original Commentary article to which Davies is replying, but I believe that he is referring to the H. Bruce Franklin case.)

To the Editor:

It is not for me to descend to the levels of good humor displayed by Lucy S. Dawidowicz in her article on Marek Edelman and myself. I rather doubt whether anyone who knows me, or who has actually read my books, will give her much credence.

However, Mrs. Dawidowicz has unwittingly drawn attention to a state of affairs which many Americans find too embarrassing to discuss. Many of us were brought up to think of Jews as the natural allies of civil liberty and of intellectual tolerance. Mrs. Dawidowicz's performance can only fuel the opposite impression, namely, that, in a number of controversies relating to Jewish interests, the crudest examples of intolerance and indeed belligerence are emanating nowadays from the Jewish side, especially in America.

With regard to Polish-Jewish relations, this is a time in the U.S. when a distinguished task force is at work to foster dialogue and understanding. In England, an Institute of Polish-Jewish Studies, with its journal Polin. has recently been founded for the same purpose. In Poland, the regime seems to have modified its former hostility to Jewish topics, while a marvelously self-critical, and frequently philo-Semitic, debate is being conducted in both the Catholic and the underground press. In Israel, academic contacts are being renewed with Polish universities, and a major conference is in preparation for January 1988 in Jerusalem. Yet COMMENTARY, which is published by the American Jewish Committee, does not hesitate to give Mrs. Dawidowicz a platform for the most discordant sentiments.

Indeed, one must seriously wonder whether Mrs. Dawidowicz has any intention of contributing to the contemporary debate. As an ex-leftist, who is now the adherent of an ultra-chauvinistic, right-wing faction among the broad streams of Zionism, she may well have flipped from one extreme of the political spectrum to the other; but she shares the hallmark of all Communist polemicists, namely, the habit of trying to destroy her opponents' reputation, without examining their ideas. If such attitudes were ever allowed to prevail, we would soon find that anyone who chose to dissent from Mrs. Dawidowicz's version of the truth would be promptly hounded from the media and from academic life in general.

It is revealing, I think, that Mrs. Dawidowicz's silly bull of anathema against Marek Edelman and myself does not actually say what the source of our offense is supposed to be. One suspects that it has less to do with the rights and wrongs of Poland's unhappy past than with the defense of a political dogma. Marek Edelman, though one of the greatest living Jewish heroes, does not happen to believe in Zionism. He has called the state of Israel “a historic failure,” whose fate will be sealed as soon as American foreign policy changes tack. Norman Davies, though sympathetic enough to the broad-minded traditions of Israel's founding fathers, is not happy with the nationalistic trends of the last twenty years, and disagrees, in particular, with his subject, Polish history, being expounded in terms of American Jewish mythology and collective guilt. So, when Davies writes a favorable review about Edelman, Mrs. Dawidowicz takes double offense. Unable to brand Edelman an anti-Semite, she implies that he is psychologically unstable. Unequipped to cope with Davies's line of thought, she tries to suggest that his scholarship is worthless.

Mrs. Dawidowicz singled out my use of one quotation from Edelman, about the Poles being “a tolerant people” which she delicately suggested could be grounds for a suit of historical malpractice. Needless to say, she was making a mountain out of a molehill. But having explained the point at some length in my recent exchange with Abraham Brumberg (New York Review of Books. April 9, 1987), I see no need to repeat it here.

Mrs. Dawidowicz also writes that I am “well known” for my “virtuosity in erasing anti-Semitism from Polish history.” It is odd that a hundred or so specialist reviewers, whose competence in the field is somewhat broader than that of Mrs. Dawidowicz, have all failed to notice such a spectacular feat. It may be that I sometimes use phrases such as “ethnic hatred” or “inter-communal antagonism,” simply because I consider the conventional term, “anti-Semitism,” to be greatly overworked. But that does not mean that the subject itself has been ignored. Let your readers judge for themselves! If the “computer error” which kept the paperback title out of the U.S. Books in Print has been rectified, God's Playground: A History of Poland (Columbia University Press) should be readily available from all American bookstores.

As the recipient of so many favorable reviews—see, for example, the New York Times Book Review, August 15, 1983—I may have become complacent about my book's ability to pander to all the political interests which Polish history stands to offend. But I am not unaware of its shortcomings. Nor can I fail to notice that generous critics have applauded perhaps the first anti-nationalist history of Poland which gives Polish Jewry (and other ethnic minorities) a prominent and honorable place in the narrative. To date, the only people to express their dismay have been the old-fashioned Polish nationalists—a group with whom Mrs. Dawidowicz seems to have a strong generic affinity.

Like Abraham Brumberg, Mrs. Dawidowicz is adept at railing against statements that were never made. She says, for instance, that “according to Davies, anti-Semitism . . . was an invention of the Zionists.” Davies has never written anything remotely like that. She says that Davies “proceeds to assert repeatedly that there was good reason to dislike the Jews”—Davies has never asserted any such thing, even once—“who, being Communists, ‘did much to launch the popular stereotype of the Zydokomuna.’” On that subject, Davies wrote something entirely different. If space permitted, I would be glad to expose each of these apparently willful misreadings in detail.

Space permitting, I would also take issue with Mrs. Dawidowicz's version of Jewish life in prewar Poland, which must strike many informed readers as defective. For one thing, it is obsessively Judeocentric, bypassing entirely the distress and exploitation of all other nationalities and social groups. For another, it is peculiarly slighting to the memory of the Polish Jews themselves, who for all their problems prior to the Nazi Holocaust, had great dynamism and achievements to their credit. By eternally harping on Polish anti-Semitism, Mrs. Dawidowicz paints a picture where the Jews in Poland appear as nothing more than pathetic, downtrodden victims. One would never guess that prewar Poland had its Jewish generals, its Jewish sportsmen, its Jewish film stars, its Jewish tycoons, its famous Jewish professors, musicians, senators, writers, and actresses.

Mrs. Dawidowicz talks as if discrimination was something experienced only by Jews, for example in higher education. True enough, in the late 1930's there were some ugly anti-Semitic events, including the attempt to enforce a numerus clausus. Yet one has to recognize that in several prewar Polish faculties, especially in law and medicine, the Jewish student body formed an absolute majority. How many leading American universities can honestly claim that a numerus clausus has never operated on their campus? How many leading American universities, even today, can boast that ethnic minority students make up over half the entrants?

In all these matters, the main difference between Mrs. Dawidowicz and myself is one of proportion. Mrs. Dawidowicz seems to think that anti-Semitism is the main, if not the only, worthwhile theme in Polish history. I hold that anti-Semitism is one theme among many.

Without the least attempt at substantiation, Mrs. Dawidowicz dismisses my chapter on “The Jewish Community” in Poland for being “replete with errors, misconceptions, misrepresentations, and prejudices.” Any freshman who made such bald assertions would be told to go away and do some homework.

Without citing any single example, Mrs. Dawidowicz charges me with the “peppering,” and the editor of the New York Review of Books with the publishing, of “anti-Semitic tidbits.” That sounds like a common slur.

Mrs. Dawidowicz sees fit to bruit it around that others have been “bruiting around” the activities of “Zionist cells.” Clearly Mrs. Dawidowicz would not have repeated the unfounded rumors if she had not wanted them to be believed.

Yet these slurs, smears, and insinuations come from a woman who also wants to talk about “scholarly standards.” Fair-minded readers will recognize Mrs. Dawidowicz's standards for what they are.

In which light, one begins to recognize the vocabulary. “Scholarly standards,” it appears, are reserved for those whose opinions coincide with the chosen ideology. “Partisanship” is the word for opinions which are disliked but cannot be contested. “Uncritical,” “unscientific,” or “unscholarly” are the words for discrediting people who fail to follow the ideological line.

To anyone who knows Eastern Europe, such tricks are all too familiar. A colleague from Poland now in the West once explained how, during the vicious anti-Semitic purge of 1968, the party contrived to dismiss virtually all the Jewish professors of Warsaw University. The victims were simply told that their work was “unscholarly,” and were advised that their contracts would be terminated. They were denied all means of demanding an explanation, then warned to keep quiet, and told to leave the country as soon as possible. In a Communist state, where the same party clique controls the courts and the media, as well as the universities, there was no way either to publicize the fraud or to fight it. Fortunately, in the U.S. things are not yet so bad.

With regard to the Stanford lawsuit, I have repeatedly refrained from comment. However, since Mrs. Dawidowicz has not shrunk from using COMMENTARY's pages to pass judgment on a case about which she cannot properly possess any inside information, I feel obliged to offer some clarification. (If, on the contrary, Mrs. Dawidowicz does claim to be authoritatively informed, my lawyers would be happy to make arrangements for receiving her evidence.) It is important to recognize that I am not challenging the right of a great American university to decide on its own appointments, even in those instances where the decision may be based on ignorance and incompetence. Nor do I challenge the principle of confidentiality as properly applied to academic appointments. Least of all am I suggesting that the numerous Jewish faculty and officials at Stanford were mobilized into some sort of vast Semitic cabal. The suit is based on other considerations. Among the various causes of action, headed by misrepresentation, the suit has emphasized Stanford's departure from normal academic procedures: Stanford's failure to honor its contractual obligations; Stanford's admission of nonacademic criteria into an academic appointment; Stanford's acceptance of secret accusations concealed at the appropriate time even from the search committee; Stanford's subsequent publication of bogus and unsubstantiated criticism of the candidate's scholarship and teaching; Stanford's public manipulation of confidential references; Stanford's defamatory press releases concerning my “pernicious” and “egregious” self; Stanford's formal denial to an academic employee of the standard provisions for grievance and appeal.

Recourse to the law was necessary, not because Stanford's own hearing of the case produced unsatisfactory results, but because Stanford ruled out any sort of internal hearing whatsoever. It is difficult without going into great detail to explain what exactly is involved. But many who know university procedures will rightly suspect the academic equivalent of insider-trading.

When the time comes to discuss the case fully and openly, I have no doubt that it will be quickly resolved. I am confident that the people who come to my assistance will include both courageous Jewish colleagues from California, and specialists in the field from the United States, from Europe, and from Israel.

In their different ways, both Poles and Jews are traumatized nations; and it is not surprising that memories of World War II in Poland still provoke pain for all concerned. Since some three-quarters of Jews in the world today can trace their origins to historic Poland, it is only natural that American Jews should have strong feelings about Polish history. All one asks is that the subject be approached with restraint, and with respect for a variety of honest differences of opinion. If Americans were only better informed, they might find that Poles and Jews have much more than suffering in common, and that each side has much to admire in the other.

Norman Davies

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