I have just read in "Rzeczpospolita" an excellent "Short History of the Jews in Poland", describing the tragedy of one of the most significant ancient cultures which survived till our times. It happened so that the Jewish nation, persecuted by VARIOUS SPIRITS OF THE TIMES, found several centuries of peace in Poland, located in Central Europe. 

Due to that fact, since the 11th century it had been developing, along with one of the Slavonic tribes, an interesting culture of the contemporary Poland. Reading the text of Stefan Bratkowski I remembered another text from the correspondence of Jerzy Stempowski (Hostowiec) with Jerzy Giedroyc, published by Czytelnik in 1998. As I was reading it, I was fascinated with the live HISTORY, not distorted by historians, politicians, ideologists and journalists. Let me quote some of the fragments from the first volum (pp. 134 - 154) of the correspondence of "Prince" Giedroyc with one of the most interesting, most open minds of the 20th Century, educator of several generations of Polish humanists, Jerzy Stempowski. It was in the 1950s:  

"Bern, July 18, 1957 
The biggest danger for the Jews is their own extremity and intolerance, eventually effecting everybody and the hardest for the helpless and the innocent. I don't see any remedy for this. Jewish community is too fragmented, too diverse, to find a recipe that would satisfy everybody".

ANTI-SEMITISM is ready to attack each and everybody, it's an unbearable boorishness of feelings and thoughts".                        
                                               "It is a feeling for more private use."

"Between 1904 and 1930 there occurred irreversible changes among the Poles as well as among the Jews. On the Polish part, those were the results of the nation-based state concept of the National Democracy party (Endecja). That concept effected the whole period between the two world wars.
The changes on the Jewish part were equally deep. In 1904, did anybody see Jews shooting their guns, escorting prisoners with guns in their hands or training granade throwing? NO. Nobody would even believe such a possibility. And in 1917-1918 those strange scenes became reality at the whole area engulfed with the soviet revolution and penetrated the imagination of not just Poles but other people as well."  

"Those changes should be completed with the anti-Semitism of the West, why not mention it? With a few exceptions, it were not the Polish people who helped Hitler to exterminate Jews.
It was done by England and America, doing a campaign and watching that nobody escapes the net. It was done by their parliaments, approving the policy and passing laws when everybody knew what it was all about.

Even the American Jews were passively watching it, apparently they believed that the slaughter of the Jews in Europe is a lesser calamity than their massive migration to America.

And Palestine? I think the leaders and participants of the project did not neglect anything to create conflicts, which cannot be resolved. All the powers of the West contributed to that situation but their citizens did not intend to live in Palestine. All these events were unthinkable in 1904 but they dramatically altered the basic components of the so called "Jewish issue."

Don’t you think we should ask here whether the American zealousness to explain the complex aspects of the Polish-Jewish conflicts is not aimed at distracting the world attention from their own (American), not too impressing, attitude to the holocaust? 

What did Uncle Sam and robust Churchill do with the reports of Jan Karski, what did IMB built its power on, what did the American newspaper say about the „Jewish plot”, what were Roosevelt’s and Churchill’s views of the “Jewish issue”? 

In 1920s and 30s in the United States, just as in Poland,  there were limitations in acepting Jewish candidates to study medicine and numerus clausus at the Columbia University as late as 1950s; for most part quoted after "Rzeczpospolita", Krzysztof Maslon. (Years ago I had an opportunity to talk with an American psychologist who was not accepted to the Columbia University in late 40s because he had filled out the university questionnaire). 

                                                                      
It is not so much an apology as a piece of shameful evidence of the so called extravagancies of the "TIME SPIRIT".
 

"Bern, October 27, 1957
The first thing that I noticed after I had come back was a note from the last page of Le Monde of October 26 - on the banquet at Cerle militare to commemorate the 30^th anniversary of the Szwarcbard’s trial”.
"I hoped the Jewish community would not come back that infamous episode which, like a micro-universe, focused all the human meanness and filth of our times. Nothing was missing there: neither collaboration with GPU and the Jewish nationalists, nor distorting historic facts for the purpose of propaganda - the history of the Ukrainian independence movement written for that occasion by Jewish journalists must have been a model for Stalin - nor the revolt of the mob, animated by politicians, against the elite of the Jewish society which has never really recovered from that defeat".

"Since the Jewish organizatons in the U.S. did not get scared by the driven hunt and refused financial support, all the costs of the world campaign against the Ukraine were covered from the contributions of the poorest Jewish people in Poland, who were enticed into collective hysteria by the political leaders who were allied with National Democracy (Endecja) and were trying to reach marshal Pilsudski in that way".

"In order to understand that game I had a long discussion with Grunbaum, the chase leader, before the trial. I remember that discussion very well. In hysteria, demagogy and sick inclination toward blood and violence, Hitler resembled Grunbaum most, the scope of available means being the only. Grunbaum and oter Jewish Nazis had to persecute and bully somebody - just like Hitler, it was the meaning of their lives - and they found a victim to correspond with their means, totally defensless."

Don’t you think that in this critical moment of our thinking about ourselves and about those who, since 11th century, have been building the HISTORY and CULTURE of this Central European land, we should pull out these three letters written half a Century ago by a mason, Jerzy Stempowski, alias Hostowiec, the mentor of Polish intellectuals?

Don’t you think that those whom Finkelstein recently called the "holocaust industry", and to whom the simpletons refer as "disneyland" ... would then happily retire bestowing the collected funds on the legal owner, Country of ISRAEL; glad that they have managed to preserve the memory of one of the most cruel events of our highly civilized 20^th century if the successors of Uncle Sam and papa Churchill went through the list of their sins with us and with many others. 

Don’t you think that saying "WE APOLOGIZE" for our sins our CULTURE would RECEIVE APOLOGIES by those who survived beside us throughout the centuries in friendship and argument, and sheltered them from the awaiting extermination, at the same time remembering Tuwim, Grydzewski, Slonimski, also Christ, and many many others who have been contributing to it. 

Don’t you think we could finally, having gone through all this, put up a monument of a Good Jew to commemorate our and their memory? 

I wonder why, since the first discussion in 1989 and through all the recent fuss, we contend against each other in apologizing and protesting. Why nobody cares to notice that Hostowiec could explain a lot? 

Let me finish this letter with a picture quote from Slawomir Mrozek after "Rzeczpospolita", wishing all of us to avoid such a model of equality.

So much for my writing Take care! 

                         As always, 

                              JA

Ps: 
I must admit that the ideas of Stempowski - Hostowiec are being noticed in our country. The authors and readers of "Rzeczpospolita" become more and more aware of the fact how much harm we experienced from our neighbors and how much harm they experienced from us throughout the centuries, that continuing to live together we should say after rabi Schudrich: "The time has come when if Jews want Poles to feel and understand our pain, we need to feel and understand their pain". "We the Jews have to admit  that there were the Jews who served the communists and even Hitler, who commited crimes against Poles and against Jews", "accusing Polish people of participating in the holocaust is a sin", and bishop Stanislaw Gadecki adds: "The thing is that until we people living here do not recognize each other as friends, our imagination will be susceptible to manipulating and anybody would be able to interpret reality according to their interests".
A collection of articles:  

1. Jedwabne - Let us be silent in the face of this crime - Piotr Lipinski talks with prof Andrzej Rzeplinski
2. An address, delivered by Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs, on 5 April 2001, at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC
3. Memorial Book for the Community of Ciechanow (Poland)

Dedykujemy  tę Stronę tym wszystkim, którzy przeszli  przez "szczęście" OŚWIĘCIMIA.
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