Konstanty Gebert is unquestionably one of the most prominent figures of the “Jewish revival” and of the discussions on Polish-Jewish relations in the democratic Poland of these last twenty-five years. Very present in public debate, a journalist and writer, the author of a dozen books, he embodies above all the relationship — at times conflictual and ultimately one of solidarity — between two movements of differing scope: the democratic awakening of a people, continuous since the late 1970s, and the reaffirmation of Polish Judaism in a frank relationship with non-Jewish Poles.
A psychologist by training, a teacher at the medical school, he committed himself very early to the KOR, that group for the defense of workers sanctioned for a strike in 1976, which had transformed itself into a social opposition; he took part in the vast liberating movement that was Solidarność. After the coup d’état of General Jaruzelski, he led an opposition group and became one of the pens of the free clandestine press, under the pseudonym David Warszawski. In that capacity, moreover, he was accredited as a journalist at the “Round Table” between the communist authorities and the representatives of the democratic opposition, in the spring of 1989. After the fall of the regime, he took part in the creation of the daily that issued from Solidarność, directed by Adam Michnik, Gazeta Wyborcza. An editorialist and a great reporter, he has weighed in on numerous subjects at the heart of the great transformation under way, particularly on the wars in the Balkans and the Middle East. He even took on responsibilities, being part of the mission entrusted by the UN to the former Polish Prime Minister, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, on the crimes in the former Yugoslavia. He remains today one of the most listened-to voices of that newspaper.
Born in 1953 into a family of old communist militants, he wondered, from his first critical commitment, about the meaning of his Jewish origin. A high-school student during the crisis of March 1968, he was shocked by the violence of the repression against the students, but above all by the antisemitic campaign launched by the communists under cover of “anti-Zionism” and of condemnation of the State of Israel after the Six-Day War. This questioning led him to found, with a small group of friends, on the margins of the clandestine opposition university, a “Jewish flying university,” in fact a consciousness group interested in the discovery of this identity. They met for more than two years, until the martial law of December 1981. It was the cradle of this slow and difficult revival, and of the reaffirmation of a free Jewish identity in Poland. From then on, Konstanty Gebert was part of all the debates on Polish-Jewish relations that have regularly shaken public life, and he set himself to restoring a social and religious life to the community. He founded, with his friends, a first Jewish primary school; they published a monthly magazine, Midrasz, with real success. A member of the Council for Dialogue between Jews and Christians, a participant in the very numerous cultural, political or religious initiatives of these last twenty years, he is henceforth an actor and a Jewish intellectual who is listened to — sometimes contested, of course. But influential in Poland.
It was therefore entirely justified to engage this conversation with him. We met him at the end of August 2014, at his home, in Warsaw.
Jean-Yves Potel
Have Jewish intellectuals left their mark on Poland’s recent history?
Yes, there are many of them. In fact Polish modernity was built with an active participation of Jewish intellectuals. I could mention Polish socialism with Feliks Perl (1871–1927), who was one of the founders and one of the great figures of the socialist party, or else intellectuals who reflected on Polish culture, such as Wilhelm Feldman (1868–1919), for example, not forgetting the great writers of the twentieth century that were Julian Tuwim (1894–1953), Bolesław Leśmian (1877–1937), Antoni Słonimski (1895–1976) and many others still — historians, artists, communist cultural officials, some of them later becoming dissidents, and so on. Whatever the domain, one finds Jewish intellectuals. With this qualification, however: it is only now that we give them this label without being accused of being antisemites. They themselves, in the overwhelming majority, considered themselves Polish intellectuals. Were they of Jewish origin? Yes, but whose business was that? Leśmian mocked those who denied his Polishness. Tuwim said he was wounded when reproached for not being sufficiently Polish.
And the Zionist intellectuals?
Someone like Ozjasz Thon (1870–1936) in Kraków — a Zionist, a liberal rabbi, a deputy in the Polish parliaments of the interwar period, editor-in-chief of the Zionist newspaper in the Polish language Nowy Dziennik — first fought in 1918 for the Jews to be recognized as full Polish citizens. A co-founder of the Institute of Jewish Studies in Warsaw and of the Tarbut cultural association, he was a man-institution, embodying the Polish Zionist ideal. His speeches in the Sejm aroused the envy of his antisemitic opponents, jealous of his oratorical mastery of Polish.
Consider Menachem Begin as well. He considered himself just as Polish, very Polish even, with a somewhat romantic vision. Recall the episode of the oath, on his arrival in Palestine in 1942. He was a corporal of the Polish Army Corps reconstituted in the Soviet Union by General Anders. When the clandestine fighters of the Irgun asked him to join them, following the arrest of several leaders by the British, he replied to them: I cannot, I have sworn an oath to the Polish army! And the leadership of the Irgun had to make contact with the command of the Polish Corps, to ask it to “release” Begin from his oath of loyalty. We need him here, and without that he will do nothing. Anders no doubt looked favorably on the departure of the Jews from his army, where antisemitism was not lacking, and Begin was informed unofficially of his “release.”
After the genocide, attitudes evolve
Of course, after the war all that changes. On the one hand, certain intellectuals decide to be Polish and therefore not to be Jewish. This is the case with many communist militants such as Jakub Berman (1901–1984) or Hilary Minc (1905–1976). A great poet, Mieczysław Jastrun (1903–1983), one of the best specialists in Mickiewicz, refused until his death the very idea that one might consider him Jewish. To this were added those who looked “too Jewish.” Gomułka’s wife, herself Jewish, did the sorting: she would tell such and such a comrade that he had better stay in the background, in the wings; this was the case with Leon Kasman (1905–1984), editor-in-chief of Trybuna Ludu, the organ of the Party, who never appeared in public. On the other hand, a few tried to reconnect with this identity. I am thinking of the novelist Kazimierz Brandys (1916–2000), or of others, rare but very important, such as Julian Stryjkowski (1905–1996), who claimed to be Jewish, and even the custodian of a murdered tradition. The reading of his work requires a good knowledge of Jewish traditions and legends; he recounted them while implicitly saying to his Polish readers: this is what you let be destroyed.
In reality, after the war, there were almost no longer in Poland any “Jewish-Jewish” intellectuals who addressed the Jewish people. What remained of that people was leaving the territory, or else preferred not to be spoken to about the Jews. So the figure of the Jewish intellectual, master thinker of the Jewish people, in the image of a Yitskhok Leybush Peretz at the beginning of the century, after the Shoah hardly exists anymore. I could cite a few poets, intellectuals such as Szymon Datner (1902–1989) at the Jewish Historical Institute, or the Yiddish writer Dawid Sfard (1905–1981) who directed the literary journal Yidishe shriftn, but most of them disappeared after 1968.
At the time of the Kielce pogrom, in July 1946, some did nonetheless speak out.
Yes, as liberal, humanist intellectuals. One had to have a strong capacity to throw down a challenge to reality, or else a great love for the people of Israel, to proclaim oneself publicly a Jewish intellectual in the Poland of 1946.
And Marek Edelman?
I don’t know whether one should count him among the Jewish intellectuals. It all depends on definitions. In any case, Marek was the living proof of the impossibility of making a past disappear. He was a Bundist,1 he said he was Jewish, a qualifier he refused to the State of Israel. I am Jewish, he said, one of the last of the murdered people. That has nothing to do with the Israelis.
One can also cite the chief rabbi of Łódź, Zew Wawa Morejno (1916–2011), who maintained, despite the reluctance of the Jewish establishment, his position as rabbi — he was the last chief rabbi of Poland under communism. He made rabbinic declarations on the acceptability or otherwise of certain behaviors. He irritated everyone, and ended up being expelled from the country after 1968. They destroyed his apartment and his entire library. I was told how his books were thrown out the window, then transported to a factory that made them into paper pulp.
More recently, I would cite Hannah Krall (born in 1937), a journalist and writer. She is Jewish in the manner of Marek Edelman, that is to say in a personal capacity and with a stance apart. She is not part of the Jewish establishment, she is a citizen of her stories. Or else, in another genre, Szymon Szurmiej, the director of the Jewish Theater who has just died at 92. He had maintained a kind of Yiddishist oasis when the leaden weight had fallen on what remained of Polish Judaism after 1968, all the while being a great collaborator of the communist regime. Thus he signed denunciations of Israel that the communists presented to him, including those that compared the Jewish state to the Nazis — something the previous leadership of the Jewish Socio-Cultural Association, communist though it was, had always refused! He was also the creator of a kitsch Jewish style, at least a Polish version of it, which dominated the Yiddish theater for thirty years.
Let us come to these last forty years. Within the Polish intelligentsia that maintained a certain distance from the regime and the political powers, democratic currents gave birth to a genuine political opposition which, beyond Solidarność, made possible the fall of the regime, then was an obvious political actor in the construction of a new Poland, a member of the European Union. Within that intelligentsia, there were Catholic or secular personalities, but also intellectuals who displayed and claimed themselves Jewish. You were one of those. How did you perceive your role as a Jew?
As Jews, we did not realize, at the time of Solidarność, that we could have a social role, or that some perceived us as bearers of a particular mission. We were too occupied with our individual experiences. It is astonishing, because as Polish intelligentsia we were entirely conscious of our function, we even knew how to analyze and criticize it. We became aware of it with the fall of communism. Then I understood, in a personal capacity, that if, as a political militant, I had obligations toward the people who trusted me, the fact of being perceived as a Jewish intellectual had a significance not to be neglected. Today this may seem strange: there was no reason for recognition to be different on the Polish side and on the Jewish side. To tell the truth, I didn’t think about it.
And yet you wrote in the clandestine newspapers under the name David Warszawski, a pseudonym you kept at Gazeta Wyborcza.
It was to annoy the cops, and the antisemites. My reference was more folkloric than Jewish: I took “Warszawski” out of local patriotism, and “David” in reference to the one who defied Goliath. Afterward, I noticed its Jewish connotation. So much the better! But that was not the original idea.
I am also thinking of the “Jewish flying university” (ZUL) at the end of the 1970s. It did not bring together only Jews, but it was a place of collective reflection on identity.
We were so focused on ourselves. To say in public “I am Jewish” was such an extraordinary, astounding experience that, frankly, at the beginning the reflection did not go beyond that. This group, as you know, also came out of a psychotherapeutic context of young people in an identity crisis. We had, to be sure, adopted a name that referred to the parallel University of the opposition, where one really studied, and whose mission was to educate, but we transmitted no knowledge. We were, moreover, quite ignorant of Judaism. Things evolved when I began to write on Jewish themes in the clandestine press of the 1980s. I was able to measure the difference between my ignorance, which was fading, and that of our readers: it was such that I realized I had obligations. During the debates on the anniversary of the ghetto uprising, on Lanzmann’s Shoah, or around Błoński’s text,2 debates in which the clandestine press actively participated, I understood that we Jews had a certain knowledge of the past that others did not have — the others, that is to say the Poles — and therefore a responsibility.
Then, at the beginning of the 1990s, you began to tell yourself that the Jews had a collective future in Poland.
Yes, I changed my opinion when the parents of the children of the Jewish nursery school we had created came to see us, the few visible Jewish activists. Their offspring had grown up and entered the public school. They thought that these young people were now deprived of their right to a Jewish education. It took my breath away! I imagined that when one sent one’s kid to a Jewish school, one personalized oneself as Jewish. Yet these parents displayed no formal Jewish identity. They claimed only this right for their children. At that moment, I said to myself: there is a people. Now, I was still very attached to the romantic vision of Marek Edelman, according to which there was only the murdered people, of which he was the spokesman, and we his second deputies… It was beautiful and romantic. But there I had to admit it: the people was not dead. The romantic vision was completely false. These people who want a Jewish school for their children, they are Jewish.
From then on you consider that as a Jewish intellectual you have a particular role for this people.
It’s more complex. I have a reluctance, even today, to define myself in those terms — not out of false modesty, for I accept being considered an intellectual in society in general. It is perhaps because of the fact that I arrived at this identity late, that my Jewish knowledge is incomplete, that I hesitate to see myself as someone who would know more or better than other Jews, who have nonetheless followed the same path as me. The young people of today are so much better educated; they don’t need me. Such is my reluctance. I don’t have enough intellectual legitimacy to be a Jewish intellectual with a position in Polish Jewish society.
And your book of commentaries on the Torah?3
We needed such a book in Poland. In a short preface, I specified that one would not find in it THE Jewish point of view, but 50 commentaries among others. I was aware that my competences might be called into question. Moreover, for the most part, I did not have the impression of being original. It was an updated presentation of traditional Jewish knowledge, of which I am not the owner. I considered myself more the editor than the author of these commentaries. A bit like when I was editor-in-chief of Midrasz.
Let us speak, precisely, of Midrasz, that “Jewish magazine” you created in 1997 and directed until 2000. One can define it as a Jewish voice that addresses the Jews and the non-Jews of Poland. Is this not a way of collectively assuming this intellectual mission?
Yes, the collective was fundamental for Midrasz. We knew what we did not want, without necessarily having the same vision of the future of the community in Poland. We shared very deeply a refusal of what we called the “holy Jewish trinity”: Shoah, antisemitism, fiddler on the roof. We were afraid of the reconstitution of a Jewish identity in Poland founded on these three landmarks. Thus we did not accept the idea, very widespread in the diaspora and in Israel, that the Shoah was the central point of reference. Of course, it is a historically incomparable event, and every human being living after the war must refer to it. But we are a religion of life, not a religion of death. We keep alive the memory of our martyrs by studying texts and by making children who grow up Jewish. I have a very great resistance to an education concentrated on the Shoah, which ends up saying to our children: be Jewish, because if you had been Jewish at the time, the Germans would have killed you. What a fine reason to be Jewish! Moreover, by polarizing on the Shoah, one ignores thirty-five centuries of Jewish intellectual and spiritual life. An extraordinary richness that requires years to learn, to appreciate, to interpret, to continue. The Jews do not spend all their time being Jewish, we have several identities, so “Jewish time,” in my view, is better occupied studying the Talmud — or contesting it — than devoting oneself to every detail of the history of the horror. There is, for example, an abuse of this identity in the simplistic message of the “March of the Living” organized by Israel, according to which living in the diaspora necessarily leads to Auschwitz while Israel is the only alternative: one comes to Poland to see death, then one goes to Israel for the resurrection. It has all the appearances of a civil religion.
As for antisemitism, Sartre’s formula according to which the antisemite fabricates the Jew has always seemed to me far-fetched. One could even find it antisemitic. In fact, as a Jew, antisemitism is not part of my problems, it concerns the non-Jews. For them, it is serious. It is up to them to combat it. On the other hand, racism or xenophobia among Jews challenges me and troubles me deeply. Understand me well: I do not underestimate the danger of antisemitism in all its forms. I do not deny the virus, but I do not build my identity on this peril. And ultimately, I recognize myself in the brilliant formula of Karl Kraus, that assimilated Jewish intellectual of interwar Vienna, who said: antisemitism? It’s a disease of the gentiles, fatal for the Jews. And it’s true! Antisemitism is a reality that concerns me rather as a democrat than as a Jew.
Finally, we call “the fiddler on the roof” all that kitsch in bad taste, sentimental and saccharine, which idealizes the life of what was called before the war the “ghetto,” that is to say the shtetl. Martin Buber’s vision of the Hasidim has something to do with it. I am willing to admire the wisdom of the Hasidic masters, but not to forget how much that world of the shtetl was also hard, poor, ignorant; it was a black hole, an atrocious way of life that many fled, when they could. The idea of turning it into a metaphor, of mythologizing it and adoring it, of telling Jewish jokes with it, and of singing the good klezmer tunes — no, that doesn’t suit me. That said, all these elements have a legitimate place in Jewish identity and life. It’s a bit like “good old France”; every culture produces this kind of folklore.
But then how did you define your proposals in Midrasz? I can see clearly what you were against, but the for? What were you for?
The for? Several considerations come into play. First, we did not have a Jewish newspaper, it had to be done, because there was after all this Jewish people. There existed two other newspapers that above all did not want to be noticed as Jewish. That is why we decided to do something in color, very flashy, that proclaimed itself Jewish and that one could read on the tram or come across by chance at the dentist’s. Something that would say: it’s Jewish and it’s normal, with the same place as any other intellectual product. I wanted it to be a monthly that Madame Rappaport would want to subscribe to, even if she doesn’t read everything, and that her daughter could walk around with. For our non-Jewish readers, it had to be a point of reference. So many elementary questions were put to us that we wanted to provide them with a reliable source, with clear answers, from which the Jewish readers could also benefit.
Do you place religious practice at the center of your “Jewish commitment”?
For me, yes. For others at Midrasz, no. There exist non-religious, even anti-religious, Jewish identities that are just as authentically Jewish as my religious identity. I would have preferred to meet all these people at the synagogue, and to quarrel there with them, but that won’t happen anytime soon! I can regret it, but not contest the Jewish authenticity of these other identities. Most of the editors of Midrasz are fiercely secular, which does not prevent them from having an appreciation and a knowledge of the religious tradition, which I respect and which sometimes I admire. In fact, Jewish identity is always plural.
How does all this influence your specifically political action? You were in the democratic opposition, then there were free elections, a government issued from Solidarność which you supported, the birth of the great daily Gazeta Wyborcza in which you naturally invested yourself. You contributed personally to all this process, you were very close to the new power. Did you ask yourself what your mission might be as an intellectual? You could have stood for election, become a deputy, a senator, even a minister. In the midst of such an upheaval, how did you define your relationship to politics?
I will go back a little further. In 1980, I was one of the founders of the free trade unions at the medical school where I taught, unions that then joined Solidarność. I was against the idea of a single great union, because I told myself, a bit stupidly, that we had already won, that we had to learn democracy and that this would not happen in an organization comprising millions of members, so I did not formally join Solidarność. No one had noticed. My participation in the union was so obvious that when a representative had to be elected to the Solidarność Council of the medical school, militant friends asked me not to stand. They told me: Listen, you are very popular, you will surely be elected, but you are Jewish; it will make our adversaries’ task so much easier! And here I must admit, with shame, that I agreed with them. I had no intention of standing, but I agreed with their line of thought. Which is rather improper! In 1989, I also refused. I was offered to be a candidate. I said no, without explanation. It would have been difficult at the time to set out my reasons clearly, but I knew absolutely that I wanted nothing to do with a political responsibility. The basic idea was: we have reconquered normality, I can be a journalist, a psychologist — a profession I practiced for years — I can be a commentator on politics, but professional politics holds strictly no interest for me. I can do useful things, but to enter the machine, no.
A bit like Adam Michnik, who decided to direct Gazeta?
No. Adam made a political choice. A calculation even. He thought he would be much more politically useful, in realizing his vision of Poland, at the head of Gazeta than as a deputy from Silesia (which he was in parliament, elected in 1989). My choice is different. I did not want to participate in politics. To comment on it, yes. To change society by carrying out local actions, by founding an association or a newspaper like Midrasz, yes.
Is it a question of temperament?
No doubt. I was also repeating the error of 1980. I told myself: the revolution is done, now we have to administer, and that doesn’t interest me. I would not have put it that way in 1989, because everything was to be built. But that was the bottom of my thinking.
That did not prevent you from taking very firm political positions on a great many subjects, including Jewish ones (the Carmel of Auschwitz or relations with Israel).
Yes, I take positions in an individual capacity, by virtue of what I consider to be my knowledge and my experience; I wish my influence to be founded on the quality of my arguments, on my own credibility. I would find it unjust to have behind me the authority of an institution.
And Bosnia? You took part in the missions of Tadeusz Mazowiecki as UN rapporteur on the crimes in the former Yugoslavia at the beginning of the 1990s. It was a commitment at the heart of a conflict. What did this experience bring you?
Bosnia changed my life. It was my first lived war — I ended up spending a year, over several stays, in besieged Sarajevo. I felt an immense Jewish solidarity with the Bosnians, who were being slaughtered for what they weren’t even sure they were. Henceforth, when people want to sell me the Judeo-Christian character of European identity, I feel very Muslim. I also saw the indifference and the powerlessness of the outside world, and I understood that if it happened to us, in Poland, the reaction would hardly be different. I think a lot about Bosnia right now, as I follow the events in Ukraine.
And how did you situate yourself with respect to the Jews outside Poland? I am thinking of the diaspora and Israel.
Things have evolved. For the diaspora, we were Martians. At the beginning, people rejoiced at the existence of survivors in Poland, but they had to be evacuated! The fact that we did not consider ourselves survivors but living, that we did not want to leave, that on the contrary we hoped for help to strengthen ourselves in Poland, was generally very ill-regarded. There exists a Jewish narrative of postwar Poland in which the existence of Jews living there because they want to, feeling good and identifying with this country, is obscene. I was called a “judenratnik” by an Israeli, a very important personality, moreover, who never repeated it after my reaction. That said, we also met with a good reception in certain circles of the diaspora. I am thinking particularly of the Lauder Foundation, which played an inestimable role from the 1990s onward. It had immediate confidence in the vitality of Polish Judaism. I am immensely grateful to them, as well as to the Taube Foundation, or to figures like Zygmunt Rolat, philanthropist and man of culture. They brought money — that was very important — knowledge and, above all, confidence. They told us: what you are doing is good. It’s Jewish, and it’s good. We had an immense need for this type of confirmation.
The State of Israel was paradoxically less decisive, because the Poland of after 1989 showed itself, in general, pro-Israeli. It had a fairly legitimate feeling of guilt following the policy of communist Poland during the Six-Day War and afterward. The new Poland felt it owed something to Israel. The Israelis took a long time to understand it. They were at first delighted to see these Poles being nice to the Jews, all the while keeping a profound misunderstanding of the mechanism of the Polish position. That changed at the beginning of this century. Now, Israel admits that the Polish policy of sympathy for Israel is a choice, not an obligation. A choice that Poland pays for, moreover, within the European Union. So the initial policy — “it’s the least we can do after all they did to us” — proved a dead end. On the contrary, Israel now has obligations toward Poland, such as that of changing the content of the “March of the Living.” It is amusing to observe how each Israeli ambassador changes on contact with the country. All of them, midway through their stay in Warsaw, become ambassadors of Poland in Israel.
That is not really the case with the French diaspora. Despite recent developments, it remains mistrustful, little inclined to cooperate with the Poles. Does it accept you better as Polish Jews?
This reluctance is understandable. The Polish Jews established in France fled Poland, and they had good reasons for doing so. Very often, their image of Poland remains frozen around those reasons of 25, 50 or 70 years ago. A few years ago, I gave a lecture at the Medem Library in Paris. I was speaking of today’s Poland, then an old gentleman stood up and said to me: yes, your talk is interesting, but frankly, it’s nonsense. There certainly existed a great Jewish period before the war and even after the war in Poland, but past 1948, it’s over. There is nothing left. I ask him: you, sir, when did you leave? In 1948!, he replied.
You see, everyone has their date of departure — 1948, 1956, 1968 — and after that there is nothing more. I cannot blame these people who fled pogroms and murderers, and who kept a negative image of Poland. And yet! When one begins to discuss in more detail with them, their vision proves more complex, more nuanced. The problem comes rather from their children, sometimes from their grandchildren, who have inherited only this negative image. They have generally not had the opportunity, or the will, to confront it with reality. The little they know — March 1968, Radio Maryja or the antisemitic graffiti — confirms them in their prejudices. Now, of those, I ask more. I think the Jews cannot afford the luxury of clinging to received ideas; our will to live obliges us to be a little smarter, to ask ourselves questions and to go and look a little more closely. At least, to admit the possibility that one might be mistaken. I know it isn’t easy. There is a reluctance in France, but I also sense a good will. Sometimes within one and the same person, I encounter this mistrust and the hope that perhaps something can still happen. I find this timid good will extremely moving.
So it is evolving in the right direction?
Yes, because if one takes an interest, one ends up learning things: the debate on Jedwabne, the books of Gross, the festivals of Jewish culture, the great discussions, and so on. A whole series of facts that one is finally confronted with. The result is of course complicated, but that is what is interesting.
With a painful relationship to Poland that endures…
Yes, it cannot be otherwise.
To conclude, what does a Jewish intellectual say in the Poland of today, faced with the disorder of the world? We are ending the summer of 2014, which does not bode well, with the wars in Gaza, in Iraq/Syria, and in eastern Ukraine.
It is immensely complicated, it goes off in every direction, and it is not obvious that we know what we are witnessing. I will not launch into this analysis, even if I observe that in Poland, as in the rest of Europe, a new antisemitism is beginning to appear under cover of anti-Zionism — a disguise we nonetheless know very well since 1968! We had two demonstrations in front of the Israeli embassy this summer, linked to the Gaza war. One organized by neo-Nazi groups with slogans of the type “We do not ask forgiveness for Jedwabne,” to signify either that we are not responsible — the Germans are the only culprits — or that there is nothing to apologize for: killing kikes is quite normal. Another slogan was, moreover, clearer: “We will make soap out of you.” The second demonstration, organized by leftist groups that had condemned the antisemitic slogans of the previous one, shouted “Warsaw, Gaza, same struggle,” but without a word against the rockets of Hamas. Too little for me! These demonstrations were very much in the minority, because the Poles are not interested in the Middle East and do not understand it. They are more affected by what is happening next door, in Ukraine. But I fear that in Poland the partisans of Hamas may become more numerous than those of Israel.
More generally, I would say that the twenty-five years since the fall of the Wall will be seen, in retrospect, as one of the best periods of European history. Of Poland, certainly. It has been centuries since we knew such a historic opportunity. Now, henceforth it is over. We are walking toward an uncheering future. The wars are becoming once again an element of European reality. That Europe took so long to understand their stakes, that we could not avoid them, is for me, after Bosnia and its 120,000 dead, of an incomprehensible stupidity. Bosnia and Croatia proved to us that war was indeed still a citizen of Europe. What is announcing itself is not joyful. I believe we will be facing a groundswell, of a violence to which we are not accustomed, and the European reaction does not promise to be a pretty sight.
Notes
A survivor of the command of the Jewish Combat Organization (ZOB) that launched the uprising of the Warsaw ghetto on April 19, 1943, Marek Edelman (1919–2009) was a member of the Polish Jewish socialist party (BUND).↩︎
Following the publication, in 1987, in a liberal Catholic weekly, of an analysis of two poems by Czesław Miłosz by the Catholic literary critic Jan Błoński, stigmatizing the responsibility of the Poles as indifferent spectators of the genocide, a great polemic stirred the Polish intelligentsia.↩︎
54 komentarze do Tory, Austeria, Kraków 2004.↩︎