Anna Bikont - Jan Gross, historian of Polish anti-Semitism caught up in a toxic new nationalism
Jan Gross’ Order of Merit
Satyagraha - An answer to modern nihilism
The groundbreaking scholar of Polish
anti-Semitism is caught up in a toxic new nationalism that seeks to edit
shameful persecution of Jews out of history
We Poles had our presidential race
last year. In a televised debate—the most important debate of the race—the two
main candidates asked each other questions. The first round of these questions,
posed by candidate Andrzej Duda, did not deal with the state of the Polish
economy, nor relations with Ukraine and Russia. It had to do instead with a
crime committed over 70 years ago in Jedwabne, a village in northeastern Poland
where Polish Catholics incinerated their Jewish neighbors. This event was
uncovered decades later by Polish-American historian Jan Gross, now a professor
at Princeton. Duda admonished his opponent, then-incumbent President Bronisław
Komorowski, for allowing Poles to be “wrongfully accused by others for
participating in the Holocaust.” He asked why the president failed to defend
the good name of Poland.
The election was won
by Andrzej Duda, the candidate who resolutely rejected the painful truth of
Jedwabne. The new president then proclaimed a “new historical policy strategy,”
which would enhance the perception of Poland in the world. That policy is
already in place. And an important component of it is a campaign against Jan
Gross. In January, President Duda went to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for
an opinion on the question of rescinding Gross’
Polish Order of Merit. According to his spokesman, the offices of the president
had been inundated with letters bearing precisely this request from outraged
citizens. The president could not simply ignore—or even silence—those voices.
This came across like
a grim joke, given that in the freezing days that followed thousands marched in
locations all over Poland to protest the president’s new policies, and yet the
voices of the protesters has gone completely unheard. We were protesting the
threat to democracy suggested by the president’s refusal to swear in three
legally appointed judges to the Constitutional Tribunal. We protested—and the
demonstrations took place in 36 cities—in the name of freedom, against the
actions of a government restricting civil liberties in a variety of ways:
through new surveillance regulations, new criminal procedures, the
politicization of public services and the appropriation of public media by the
ruling party. We write letters, too. They go unanswered. In defense of Gross,
Poland’s most prominent intellectuals produced letters of protest, and historian
Timothy Snyder (Yale University) announced he would renounce his own Polish
order.
Gross, whose Order is
now at stake, was previously decorated twice by the Polish state.
The first time was in
1996 (before he began writing the books that would upset so many Poles). He
received the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland for his books on the
underground structures of the state during World War II and Polish children
sent to Siberia, as well as for his personal record of opposing Soviet rule,
for his participation in the protests of 1968 and his support of the
independent resistance movement after his emigration.
The second time was
symbolic. It occurred on July 10, 2001, the 60th anniversary of the crime
in Jedwabne. Then-President Aleksander Kwaśniewski apologized to the
victims in a ceremony televised worldwide. All of this was due to a relatively
slim volume written by Gross entitled Neighbors: The Destruction of the
Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland, which had been published the year
before. A book that set off an avalanche, the biggest debate in Poland since it
had regained its independence in 1989.
This second Order of
Merit is what the regime now wishes to revoke from Gross and to erase from
public memory. And while they’re at it, they’re also revoking the medal he
received for absolutely uncontroversial service to Poland, even according to
the newly imposed political criteria... read more:
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/198490/jan-gross-order-of-merit
see also
Satyagraha - An answer to modern nihilism
