Replies to Lieberman and Schatz

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Most of my interaction with David Lieberman and all of my interaction with Jaff Schatz occurred in discussions on the h-antisemitism email discussion list. The indefatigable Lieberman, who is a professional musicologist and (in my opinion) ethnic hit-man, made dozens of attacks on me on h-antisemitism, to the point that I finally refused to enter into debate with him. However, when he appeared on an evolutionary psychology list, I felt compelled to respond once again. The message included here gives a flavor of that debate, and is followed by some material from exchanges on h-antisemitism with Lieberman and Schatz. Both of these lists are open to the public and are archived, so that interested people can look up all of the debates on my work. Lieberman has also written an "occasional paper" posted on the h-antisemitism website that goes over much of the same material discussed here.

Also, since Jewish representation in the Polish security forces was an issue in this discussion, I present some recent findings of the Institute of National Remembrance from the November 2005 issue of its Bulletin, pages 37–42: ŻYDZI W KIEROWNICTWIE UB, STEREOTYP CZY RZECZYWISTOŚĆ? (Jews in the Management of the UB [apparatus of state security]: Stereotype or Reality?). This study indicates the complexity of getting to the bottom of this issue, but argues for basing Jewish status on familial ancestry. The findings are based on assessments of the nationality of the parents of 450 managers of the UB. The critical information is as follows:

This study analyzed the following: the content of the MSW Informator and personnel files of 450 persons occupying  managerial positions in the Ministry of Public Security, complemented by data drawn from other sources.⁴⁰ As the results show, in the period of 1944–1954 of the 450 top managers of the Ministry of Public Security (from the head of division up), 167 were of Jewish origin (37.1%). After the MBP (Ministry of Public Security) was dissolved and its place was taken by Kds.BP (Committee for Public Security) in 1954, that number dropped to 86 managerial positions (34.5%). In that period (1944-1956), among the 107 managers and deputy managers of the voivodeship offices of state security, there were 22 of Jewish origin (20.5%). After having included other high positions in the voivodeship offices of the UB/UdsBP (the heads of department and the deputy managers of department), the most persons of Jewish origin were located in the security apparatus of the voivodeships of: Szczecin (18.7%), Wrocław (18.7%), Katowice (14.6%), Łódź (14.2%), Warszawa (13.6%),⁴¹ Gdańsk (12%), and Lublin (10.1%). In the remaining voivodeships that figure was about 7%, reaching the lowest level in Zielona Góra Voivedeship (3.5%).⁴²

In light of the statistical data presented, the thesis regarding a major [“dużym”, literally: “big”] participation of Jews and persons of Jewish extraction in the management of the UB has been arrived at based on true premises and as such reflects historical truth. However, the research results don’t answer the question: to what degree the numbers can make an argument in the highly charged discussion going on for many years now?   

Kevin MacDonald on David Lieberman, December 13, 2003, on Evolutionary Psychology email discussion list: Accusations of academic fraud or incompetence are extremely serious, going to the heart of one’s academic reputation and integrity. http://www.apa.org/about/division/dialogue/novdec03news.html#legal
I ask Lieberman once again to explain in plain English how my quotation of Cardinal Hlond—a quotation that is well known and available from a variety of sources (see, e.g.,
http://www.smcm.edu/academics/soan/smp/jewish_resilience/Hlond%20responds%20to%20kielce.htm)—demonstrates either fraud or incompetence. I also ask that Lieberman either provide a further clarification of why his comments on my alleged fraud or incompetence are justified or apologize to me for accusing me of fraud or incompetence. Failing this, I believe that he should be expelled from the list.

The following is the relevant passage from my [previous] post:

Hlond is quoted as follows: the pogrom was "due to the Jews who today occupy leading positions in Poland's government and
endeavor to introduce a governmental structure that the majority of the Poles do not wish to have." Cardinal Hlond's statement could be true even if indeed, as seems to have been the case, the majority of Jews had left Poland for any of a variety of reasons, including especially the anti-Jewish pogroms of the period, attraction to Israel, or economic opportunities elsewhere. The fact is that the leading positions in the government WERE occupied by Jews. This is undisputed. The whole point of Schatz's book is to recount the story of this group of Jewish communists who assumed power in Poland after they were installed as a puppet government by the USSR. The percentage of Jews who left is completely irrelevant to this fact or to the fact that Polish hostility was influenced by the government being dominated by Jews. Moreover, Lieberman does not dispute my statement that Hlond's statement is compatible with the possibility that many Jews may have been unfairly targeted by pogromists. Again, it is not surprising on the basis of all that we know about our evolved psychology that the negative activities of some group members are indiscriminately attributed to the whole group.

In fact, even though the percentage of Jews who had left Poland is not logically relevant to understanding Hlond’s statement describing the source of anti-Jewish attitudes, there is a far more critical flaw in Lieberman’s argument. (I apologize for not noting this previously. I have not been involved in this research intensively for approximately 7 years.) Lieberman fails to note that Hlond’s statement was made in response to the Kielce Pogrom, at a time when Poland’s postwar Jewish population was at its height, as indicated by the quotations Lieberman himself provides. The Kielce Pogrom occurred on July 4, 1946 and Cardinal Hlond’s letter is dated July 11, 1946. The Jewish exodus only occurred after the pogroms. So accusing me of fraud or incompetence for failing to note high levels of Jewish emigration as contextualizing Hlond’s statement is ridiculous. The following are the relevant quotations from Schatz as posted by Lieberman on December 9:

(1) "The first wave of returnees reached its peak in April, May, and June 1946, when 213,000 Polish refugees returned from the USSR. Of these 64.1 percent, that is, 136,550 persons, were Jews. At least  20,000 Jewish refugees came back on their own, before the organized groups of repatriates reached Poland. In 1946, the CKZP [i.e., the Central Committee of Jews in Poland] registered 157,240 Jewish repatriates from the USSR. ... Together with approximately 60,000 to 70,000 survivors of concentration camps and soldiers, there were at least 245,000 Jews in Poland in July 1946." (Schatz 1991, 203)
 

(2) "Despite the strong condemnation of anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish violence by Polish intellectuals, such violence was widespread. Individual Jews were killed on returning to small cities and villages and were victims of the underground's raids on towns, settlements, railroads and buses. Several organized pogroms, which always seemed to begin with blood-libel accusations, also took place. Altogether, by summer 1947, approximately 1,500 Jews were killed in assaults that took place in 155 localities. This was bound to speed up the emigration that was already in motion. Despite the appeals of Jewish Communists, Bundists, and the Central Committee of Jews in Poland, and the promise that the regime would suppress anti-Semitism, by the end of 1947, only 100,000 Jews remained in Poland." (Schatz 1991, 207)

In the absence of either an apology to me or providing a further clarification of why his comments on my fraud or incompetence are justified, I think that Lieberman should be expelled from the list. Minimally, Lieberman should be asked to refrain from making such defamatory and incendiary statements on a list meant to increase knowledge and understanding through rational debate.

Schatz disputes only the first of these implications. He argues against my conclusion that there were strong ties between the Jewish community and the communist government by saying “The subject of this book, however, was not at all the ‘relationship of the Jewish population to the communist government’ (by the way - what a reductionist approach to reality!), but the life career of a particular - and fascinating - generation of communists.” I have no problem agreeing that the life career of these communists was the topic of the book, but, again, please tell me where I went wrong when I relied on the quoted passages to assert that there were strong ties between the Jewish community and the communist government. What is the context that would render my interpretation incorrect or misleading? Moreover, when one makes a statement that “Besides a group of influential politicians, too small to be called a category, there were the soldiers; the apparatchiks and the administrators; the intellectuals and ideologists; the policemen; the diplomats; and finally, the activists in the Jewish sector. There also existed the mass of common people-clerks, craftsmen, and workers-whose common denominator with the others was a shared ideological vision, a past history, and the essentially similar mode of ethnic aspiration” (p. 226); and when one describes Yiddish and Hebrew language schools and publications, Jewish cultural and social welfare organizations for Jews, and Jewish economic cooperatives that employed a substantial percentage of the Jewish population, it would seem to be a reasonable conclusion that there was in fact a Jewish community in Poland- - that the “groupness” of Jews was more than just a chimera.

Regarding my interpretation that “the post-WWII government was dominated by ethnically Jewish communists,” I can only suggest that people read the book for themselves. As in the CPUSA, actual Jewish leadership and involvement in Polish Communism was much greater than surface appearances; ethnic Poles were recruited and promoted to high positions in order to lessen the perception that the KPP was a Jewish movement (Schatz 1991, 97). This attempt to deceptively lower the Jewish profile of the communist movement was also apparent in the ZPP, the organization created by the Soviet Union to occupy Poland after the war. Apart from members of the generation whose political loyalties could be counted on and who formed the leadership core of the group, Jews were often discouraged from joining the movement out of fear that the movement would appear too Jewish. However, Jews who could physically pass as Poles were allowed to join and were encouraged to state they were ethnic Poles and to change their names to Polish-sounding names. “Not everyone was approached [to engage in deception], and some were spared such proposals because nothing could be done with them: they just looked too Jewish” (Schatz 1991, 185).

Jews did indeed vote with their feet, but a lot of the voting seems to have occurred in response to the fact that the government became progressively less dominated by Jews and there was increasing anti-Semitism in the society as a whole. According to Schatz (again, this is my interpretation), after Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization speech of 1956 the party split into a Jewish and anti-Jewish section, with the anti-Jewish section complaining of too many Jews in top positions. In the words of a leader of the anti-Jewish faction, the preponderance of Jews “makes people hate Jews and mistrust the party. The Jews estrange people from the party and from the Soviet Union; national feelings have been offended, and it is the duty of the party to adjust to the demands so that Poles, not Jews, hold the top positions in Poland” (in Schatz 1991, 268). Khrushchev himself supported a new policy with his remark that “you have already too many Abramoviches” (in Schatz 1991, 272). This first stage in the anti-Jewish purges was accompanied by anti-Semitic incidents among the public at large, as well as demands that Jewish communists who had changed their names to lower the Jewish profile of the party reveal themselves. As a result of these changes, over half of the Jews in Poland responded by emigrating to Israel between 1956 and 1959. Anti-Semitism also increased dramatically toward the end of the 1960s, culminating in 1968 with an anti-Semitic campaign consequent to outpourings of joy among Jews over Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War. Israel’s victory occurred despite Soviet bloc support of the Arabs, and President Gomulka condemned the Jewish “fifth column” in the country. Extensive purges of Jews swept the country and secular Jewish life (e.g., Yiddish magazines and Jewish schools and day camps) was essentially dissolved.
It is at least reasonable to suppose that these outbursts of anti-Semitism were influenced by the perception among Poles of the role Jews played in postwar Poland. As one intellectual described it, Poland’s problems resulted essentially from ethnic conflict between Poles and Jews in which the Jews were supported by the Russians. The problems were due to “the arrival in our country . . . of certain politicians dressed in officer’s uniforms, who later presumed that only they- -the Zambrowskis, the Radkiewiczes, the Bermans- -had the right to leadership, a monopoly over deciding what was right for the Polish nation.” The solution would come when the “abnormal ethnic composition” of society was corrected (in Schatz 1991, 306, 307).

Of course the real issue in all of this was whether there was any shred of rationality in postwar Polish anti-Semitism resulting from the constitution of the Polish government and from the role of the wider Jewish community in supporting and staffing the government. As always, one must make the usual caveats that exaggeration and even fantasies may color the situation once the battle lines have been drawn between groups. But my basic position is that we should not simply assume that every instance of anti-Semitism is utterly irrational. Rather, we should suppose that in general there are indeed real conflicts of interest between groups and that outbreaks of intense hostility are a complex interplay of fantasy and reality. Obviously, I am an evolutionary social psychologist rather than a historian. My analysis is based on social identity theory, with which many historians may not be familiar. It predicts how and why differences in the relative frequency with which ingroup and outgroup members engage in various behaviors are molded by the human mind into essential characteristics of the entire group. My attempt is to explain why anti-Jewish statements had such resonance in this period among Poles, and I  think that actual Jewish behavior is part of the explanation.

Kevin MacDonald on Schatz, Lieberman, and Gluchowski: I am deeply disturbed by Schatz’s letter. On the one hand, he once again fails to provide any explication of the context of my quotes that would indicate how and why I misinterpreted them or clarify how I failed to provide a proper context. (Rather than bore readers with this once again, I append my previous messages at the bottom of this message.) On the other hand, he accuses me not of making honest mistakes but of “obviously willfully misrepresentative quotations” aimed at showing “that anti-Semitism is, or may ever be, rational.” The idea that I intentionally falsified quotations is outrageous. Minimally, it would be foolhardy in the extreme for me to intentionally misquote or take quotations out of context when I knew that my comments would upset some people on the list, including the indefatigable David Lieberman. Schatz states that “if intellectually honest” I should have noted that Jewish life flourished only until the onslaught of Stalinism. But that is exactly the point I made in my second reply to Schatz where I briefly described the decline of Jewish fortunes resulting from the change in Soviet policy and culminating in mass exodus of Jews in 1956-1959 and again in 1968. As I note several times in this post, I felt no need to qualify my comments on Jewish involvement by time in my first reply to Schatz because Polish attitudes and memories are likely to have been greatly influenced even by a relatively brief period given the contest of between-group hostility that pervaded the country. That was the only point that I was trying to make.

Regarding, the rationality of anti-Semitism, I am simply saying that we have to be open to explanations of anti-Semitism that involve perceptions of  actual Jewish behavior as filtered through psychological mechanisms related to group identity. These are empirical questions. On the other hand, Schatz seems to think that it is literally inconceivable that anti-Semitism could involve rational perceptions of self-interest (“that anti-Semitism is, or may ever be, rational”). This strikes me as pure mysticism. Would Schatz similarly suppose that negative Jewish attitudes toward their enemies (e.g., Nazis) are similarly always necessarily irrational? I believe that this is just another instance of the attempt to take the study of anti-Semitism completely beyond the realm of science and the attempt to vilify writers who presume to suppose that there are indeed links between actual Jewish behavior and some instances of anti-Semitism.

LIEBERMAN
David Lieberman states: “The position that Jewish influence in a given enterprise often exceeds the percentage of Jews actually participating in the enterprise, of course, exempts MacDonald from responding to the point reiterated several times in the recent exchange that after the war Poland's decimated Jewish population continued to hemorrhage. A vanishingly small Jewish population (less than 100,000 in all of Poland immediately after the war), apparently, could still behave in such a way as to make widespread resentment of all Jews everywhere "not unreasonable."

I reply: The view that “Jewish influence in a given enterprise often exceeds the percentage of Jews actually participating in the enterprise” is an empirical generalization based on observations in a wide range of areas in many countries and in different eras; I am far from the only person who has made this point - - it is virtually a cliché in discussions of Jews and the left. I nowhere imply that Polish attitudes were directed “at all Jews everywhere.”

Lieberman states: “MacDonald's insistence that his concerns are limited to the post-WWII era begs the question -- how is the post-WWII era to be dated? Schatz reports that by the early 1950's, Jewish Communists were already being removed from positions of influence in the military and government bureaucracy (p. 216, 219). In the late 1950's, Schatz reports, most Jews were also purged from the ranks of the state police and the security apparatus (p. 222). The period of highest Jewish influence in Polish government, then, would appear to be as little as five-to-seven years before the process of removing them from positions of power began.

I reply: As indicated above, in my second post I briefly described the decline of Jews in Communist Poland. So obviously I agree with the general trajectory of Jewish influence. Lieberman’s point would seem to imply that I was right at least about the period after the war from 1945 to at least the early 1950s. In the Toranska interview Berman said he was under suspicion as a Jew during the Soviet anti-“Cosmopolite” campaign beginning in the late 1940s, but the quotes I had in my second reply to Schatz indicate widespread perceptions that Jews continued to be over-represented in the communist government at least until 1956 and the downfall of the Berman, Bierut, Minc troika; e.g., Khrushchev’s remark in 1956 that “you have already too many Abramoviches.” However one dates the period of Jewish predominance, I rather doubt that Polish perceptions of Jewish involvement in the post-war government are pure fantasy.

I quoted Schatz to the effect the government regarded the Jewish population, many of whom had not previously been communists, as "a reservoir that could be trusted and enlisted in its efforts to rebuild the country" (pp. 212-213). Lieberman claims that I left out the following passage from the same section: "Although they were trusted, however, there were limits to their usefulness and therefore to their upward social mobility. These were created by the regime's efforts to attain national legitimacy by presenting itself as genuinely Polish, which under current conditions meant avoiding identification with Jews. This resulted in a reluctance to man the new functionary position with Jews and an ambition to fill them, if possible, with non-Jews."

It seems to me that passages like this merely reinforce the point that I have made several times that Jews were so obviously over-represented in the government that subterfuge was necessary to attempt to place a non-Jewish face on it. As I noted in my second response to Schatz, Jews who could pass as Poles were actively recruited and promoted after changing their Jewish names to Polish names, while some Jews simply looked “too Jewish” for that ploy to work. The strategy of recruiting and promoting gentiles to publicly visible positions and changing Jewish names to gentile names also was pursued by American-Jewish communists (See Culture of Critique, Ch. 3). If Jews were not over-represented in the government either numerically and/or in positions of power, why adopt such strategies?

Lieberman then notes that Jewish involvement in the security forces was “certainly exaggerated by Soviet propaganda, both in terms of their numerical participation and their procedural influence.” I had mentioned Jewish involvement in the security forces only in passing. However, I rather doubt that Soviet propaganda is the whole story. It is worth noting that Schatz found that the generation of Jewish communists realized that their power derived entirely from the Soviet Union and that they would have to resort to coercion in order to control a fundamentally hostile noncommunist society (p. 262). The core members of the security service came from the Jewish communists who had been communists before the establishment of the Polish communist government, but these were joined by other Jews sympathetic to the government and alienated from the wider society. This in turn reinforced the popular image of Jews as servants of foreign interests and enemies of ethnic Poles (Schatz 1991, 225). Jewish members of the internal security force often appear to have been motivated by personal rage and a desire for revenge related to their Jewish identity:

“Their families had been murdered and the anti-Communist underground was, in their perception, a continuation of essentially the same anti-Semitic and anti-Communist tradition. They hated those who had collaborated with the Nazis and those who opposed the new order with almost the same intensity and knew that as Communists, or as both Communists and Jews, they were hated at least in the same way. In their eyes, the enemy was essentially the same. The old evil deeds had to be punished and new ones prevented and a merciless struggle was necessary before a better world could be built” (Schatz 1991, 226).

Lieberman notes that “Jews were, in fact, (wildly) disproportionate victims of the secret police.” I don’t have my copy of the book here, but I suppose that Jewish victimization occurred mainly after the purge of Jews from the government. Correct? By the 1960s the security force was now dominated by Poles who viewed Jews “as a group in need of close and constant surveillance” (Schatz, p. 290). Jews were removed from important positions in the government, the military, and the media. Elaborate files were maintained on Jews, including the crypto-Jews who had changed their names and adopted non-Jewish external identities. Were Jews as a group viewed by the government as needing constant surveillance prior to 1950? 1956? On the other hand, both Schatz (and Toranska’s interview with Berman) indicate that the generation were masters of self-deception to the point that they were able to rationalize virtually anything, even Stalin’s purges of Jews. Minimally, however, statements on the victimization of Jews must be qualified by when and why they occurred. Clearly, the policy of Polish governments toward Jews varied considerably between 1945 and 1968, and my reading indicates that Jews were not victimized during the period of greatest Jewish involvement in the government, i.e., until the mid-1950s.

Lieberman states: Schatz reports (and MacDonald does not): "The soldiers, the apparatchiks and administrators, the intellectuals and ideologists, the policeman, the diplomats, and the Jewish activists formed relatively clearly distinguishable categories ... The policemen were the most short-lived category. It existed only during the first postwar decade, mirroring all the dilemmas and ghosts of the new system. The other categories lasted throughout the entire period, although their size was fluid and the positions of those within most of them tended to deteriorate." (pp. 235-36)

Again, I totally agree that Jewish influence changed greatly over time. I have said so repeatedly both in my previous post and in my books. The point is that Polish perceptions had a (perhaps exaggerated) basis in reality, if only for a relatively brief period. When the battle lines are drawn between groups, disproportionate Jewish involvement in the Communist government was bound to be noted and commented on by Poles. This is the reason why I did not qualify my comments on Jewish involvement by time in my first reply to Schatz, although I certainly did in my second post: Polish attitudes and memories are likely to have been greatly influenced even by a relatively brief period given the contest of between-group hostility that pervaded the country, and that was the only point that I was trying to make.

Lieberman, like Schatz, charges me with willful misrepresentation. This is outrageous, especially coming from someone who fails to qualify his assertions on Jewish victimization by the security forces by noting when and under what circumstances victimization occurred; nor does he note evidence that at least some Jews in the security forces were motivated by Jewish issues related to Polish anti-Semitism. Similarly, Schatz in his first post noted that Jews, far from supporting Communism, voted against it with their feet, without stating when and under what conditions Jews fled. Clearly Jewish emigration was not a constant process throughout the period but, at least after the immediate post-WWII period, occurred mainly in response to the Soviet-initiated changes in the Polish government. Who’s being dishonest and intentionally misleading? Again, I did not feel a need to qualify my original comments in a forum such as this by noting the exact trajectory of Polish-Jewish relations. It was sufficient for my purposes simply to note that there were periods of Jewish overrepresentation. Attitudes and memories are likely to have been greatly influenced by what occurred even during a relatively brief period given the contest of between-group hostility that pervaded the country. Similarly it is important to determine if in fact only a miniscule percentage of Poles welcomed the 1939 Soviet invasion and whether the percentage of Jews who welcomed it was much larger, as I have suggested. The 1939 Soviet invasion and subsequent occupation did not last very long, but it would not be surprising if Polish perceptions of what occurred during this brief period colored their perceptions of Jewish behavior in later periods.
 

GLUCHOWSKI
Leo Gluchowski posted a very interesting  message that thankfully is free of the attributions of willful misrepresentation on my part. I have no problem accepting that he has not found archival evidence of strong ties between the Jewish community and the government in the postwar period. My claim was only that I was providing a reasonable reading of Schatz’s book, in particular the comments that  the government regarded the Jewish population, many of whom had not previously been communists, as "a reservoir that could be trusted and enlisted in its efforts to rebuild the country. Although not old, ‘tested’ comrades, they were not rooted in the social networks of the anti-communist society, they were outsiders with regard to its historically shaped traditions, without connections to the Catholic Church, and hated by those who hated the regime. Thus they could be depended on and used to fill the required positions” (pp. 212-213). Schatz also comments on the lack of trustworthy Poles able to fill positions in the Communist Party, government administration, the military and the internal security forces in the post-WWII period. Jews who had severed formal ties with the Jewish community, or who had changed their names to Polish-sounding names, or who could pass as Poles because of their physical appearance or lack of a Jewish accent were favored in promotions (p. 214). I still think that mine is a reasonable reading of this material.

Gluchowski states that the post-WWII Polish government was never dominated by Jews, despite the fact that three of the most prominent leaders between 1948 and 1956 were Jews (Berman, Minc, Bierut), despite the apparent ethnic subtext of some of the conflicts within the party, and despite attempts to deceptively lower the Jewish profile within the party. Again, the question is whether and to what extent Jews were over-represented in the government at various times, whether Poles noticed this, how much they exaggerated it, etc. I do not claim to have a clear understanding of these issues. The definitive work on Jewish-Polish relations during this period remains to be written. Unfortunately there seems to be very little published research on the ethnic aspects of Polish politics during this period. I would like to see an organization chart of the Polish government between 1945 and 1968 with ethnic affiliation indicated, including whether the individuals were ethnic Jews posing as gentile Poles. I would like to get some understanding of the Poles who participated in the government during the early postwar period. They were surely not representative of the Polish population as a whole and were undoubtedly widely viewed as traitors. Were they “Jewified non-Jews”, the term Albert Lindemann uses to describe Russian Bolsheviks during the period of the Revolution?  (Lindemann defines “Jewified non-Jew as “a term, freed of its ugly connotations, [that] might be used to underline an often overlooked point: Even in Russia there were some non-Jews, whether Bolsheviks or not, who respected Jews, praised them abundantly, imitated them, cared about their welfare, and established intimate friendships or romantic liaisons with them” (Esau’s Tears, p. 433). (I seem to recall that Gomulka was married to a Jewish woman.) I would also like to see some good data on how and why Jewish support for the government waxed and waned at various times; also needed are reliable data on whether and why there were differences between Jewish attitudes toward the government and Polish attitudes toward the government; and we need better data on variations over time in the attitudes of the Polish government toward the Jewish community. It is only this type of research that would determine conclusively the extent to which Polish anti-Semitism was based on actual Jewish behavior. Nevertheless, what we have now certainly does not preclude the idea that actual Jewish behavior was a critical component of the situation.
 

My first Message:

Kevin MacDonald responding to Jaff Schatz: My original message said that I thought Sikora’s statement was broadly consistent with material in Schatz’s book.  Paullson then claimed that “In other ways, the Soviets discriminated against Jews even more than against Poles. All Jewish political, cultural and religious organizations were dissolved, and Jews, who made up 10% of the population, constituted about 30% of those deported to Siberia in 1939-40.” My second comment was intended not to say that all or even most Jews in Poland  were communists or to discuss the relative percentages of Jews in the communist party or who voted communist in pre-WWII Poland as Schatz seems to be understanding me (although I am not sure whether Schatz has seen my second message.) My comments were clearly restricted to the post-WWII period. (My message began: “Schatz describes the post-WWII the government as dominated by ethnically Jewish communists who had strong ties to the Soviet Union dating from much earlier,” and the rest of my comments clearly referred to that period.
 My point was that Schatz does say that in the post-WWII era there were in fact strong ties between the Jewish community and the Jewish-dominated communist government, that Jews tended to support the government while gentile Poles did not, and that Jewish life flourished during this period. (In fairness, perhaps Paulsson was only talking about 1939-1940, although his comments do not seem to be restricted to the pre-war period.) I don’t know how else to interpret the passage I included in my second post, to wit:
“Besides a group of influential politicians, too small to be called a category, there were the soldiers; the apparatchiks and the administrators; the intellectuals and ideologists; the policemen; the diplomats; and finally, the activists in the Jewish sector. There also existed the mass of common people-clerks, craftsmen, and workers-whose common denominator with the others was a shared ideological vision, a past history, and the essentially similar mode of ethnic aspiration” (p. 226). Moreover, if my notes are correct, Schatz notes the allegiance of the great majority of the Jewish population to the communist government while the great majority of non-Jewish Poles favored the anti-Soviet parties (Schatz 1991, 204–205). I also mentioned that Schatz notes that the government regarded the Jewish population, many of whom had not previously been communists, as "a reservoir that could be trusted and enlisted in its efforts to rebuild the country" (pp. 212-213). The passage continues: Although not old, ‘tested’ comrades, they were not rooted in the social networks of the anti-communist society, they were outsiders with regard to its historically shaped traditions, without connections to the Catholic Church, and hated by those who hated the regime.  Thus they could be depended on and used to fill the required positions.” Schatz also comments on the lack of trustworthy Poles able to fill positions in the Communist Party, government administration, the military and the internal security forces in the post-WWII period. Jews who had severed formal ties with the Jewish community, or who had changed their names to Polish-sounding names, or who could pass as Poles because of their physical appearance or lack of a Jewish accent were favored in promotions (p. 214). Again, the suggestion is that the role of the Jewish community in the post-WWII communist government was far more than the small number of communist leaders.

He also states that the government actively sought to revive and perpetuate Jewish life in Poland and fought anti-Semitism while  opposing the Catholic Church. He notes that collective Jewish life flourished in the postwar period. Yiddish and Hebrew language schools and publications were established, as well as a great variety of cultural and social welfare organizations for Jews. A substantial percentage of the Jewish population was employed in Jewish economic cooperatives. (see, e.g., p. 208)

In view of this, I would ask Prof. Schatz to describe the relationship of the Jewish population to the Communist government in the post-WWII period. If my summary is correct, it does not seem at all unreasonable that Polish anti-Semitism took cognizance of this situation, with the usual caveats that exaggeration and even fantasies may color the situation once the battle lines have been drawn between groups. In my  previous post I mentioned that, contrary to Paulsson’s suggestion,  I would surprised to find that similar percentages of Jews and Poles welcomed the 1939 Soviet invasion given that anti-Semitism (including government-sponsored anti-Jewish measures) was common in Poland while the Soviet Union was seen by Jews as beneficial for Jews.  Was I right in assuming that only a miniscule percentage of Poles welcomed this invasion and that the percentage of Jews who welcomed it was much larger? If so, one can easily see why this state of affairs would color Polish perceptions of Jews.

Finally, I agree entirely that only a minority of Jews were Communists during the 1930s in Poland. The situation appears to be the familiar one (as, e.g., in the U.S.) that while only a minority of Jews were Communists, Jews formed a disproportionate number of Communists, including much of the leadership. And as Albert Lindemann has pointed out with respect to the Soviet Union during the period of the revolution, the Jews who were involved in communist movements were highly talented; they were very intelligent and had great verbal and organizational skills and an intense emotional commitment. They therefore had influence far beyond their numbers. This was also the case in other communist movements such as the CPUSA. I suppose that this situation has also colored perceptions of Jewish involvement in Communism and other radical movements.
 
 

Second Message:

Kevin MacDonald responding to Jaff Schatz: Let me first say that I think Schatz’s book is excellent- - an honest portrayal of a difficult period by someone intimately acquainted with the people, communities, and events he describes. He accuses me of using “isolated quotations this book, disconnecting them from their context, thus falsifying the total picture.” This was surely not my intention. I took the quotes to mean what I thought they meant and, since Schatz obviously thinks they don’t mean what I thought they meant, I asked (not demanded) that he clarify the relationship between the Jewish population and the Poles during the post-WWII period. However, rather than clarify this relationship and deal with the quotations and the other points I mentioned and rather than show exactly how I have disregarded the facts and have falsified the total picture, he simply states that I have been proven wrong. I said that the book seemed to make three points: that in the post-WWII era there were in fact strong ties between the Jewish community and the Jewish-dominated communist government, that Jews tended to support the government while gentile Poles did not, and that Jewish life flourished during this period. Later in my post, I asked whether I was  right in assuming that only a miniscule percentage of Poles welcomed the 1939 Soviet invasion and that the percentage of Jews who welcomed it was much larger.
Schatz disputes only the first of these implications. He argues against my conclusion that there were strong ties between the Jewish community and the communist government by saying “The subject of this book, however, was not at all the ‘relationship of the Jewish population to the communist government’ (by the way - what a reductionist approach to reality!), but the life career of a particular - and fascinating - generation of communists.” I have no problem agreeing that the life career of these communists was the topic of the book, but, again, please tell me where I went wrong when I relied on the quoted passages to assert that there were strong ties between the Jewish community and the communist government. What is the context that would render my interpretation incorrect or misleading? Moreover, when one makes a statement that “Besides a group of influential politicians, too small to be called a category, there were the soldiers; the apparatchiks and the administrators; the intellectuals and ideologists; the policemen; the diplomats; and finally, the activists in the Jewish sector. There also existed the mass of common people-clerks, craftsmen, and workers-whose common denominator with the others was a shared ideological vision, a past history, and the essentially similar mode of ethnic aspiration” (p. 226); and when one describes Yiddish and Hebrew language schools and publications, Jewish cultural and social welfare organizations for Jews, and Jewish economic cooperatives that employed a substantial percentage of the Jewish population, it would seem to be a reasonable conclusion that there was in fact a Jewish community in Poland- - that the “groupness” of Jews was more than just a chimera.
Regarding my interpretation that “the post-WWII government was dominated by ethnically Jewish communists,” I can only suggest that people read the book for themselves. As in the CPUSA, actual Jewish leadership and involvement in Polish Communism was much greater than surface appearances; ethnic Poles were recruited and promoted to high positions in order to lessen the perception that the KPP was a Jewish movement (Schatz 1991, 97). This attempt to deceptively lower the Jewish profile of the communist movement was also apparent in the ZPP, the organization created by the Soviet Union to occupy Poland after the war. Apart from members of the generation whose political loyalties could be counted on and who formed the leadership core of the group, Jews were often discouraged from joining the movement out of fear that the movement would appear too Jewish. However, Jews who could physically pass as Poles were allowed to join and were encouraged to state they were ethnic Poles and to change their names to Polish-sounding names. “Not everyone was approached [to engage in deception], and some were spared such proposals because nothing could be done with them: they just looked too Jewish” (Schatz 1991, 185).
Jews did indeed vote with their feet, but a lot of the voting seems to have occurred in response to the fact that the government became progressively less dominated by Jews and there was increasing anti-Semitism in the society as a whole. According to Schatz (again, this is my interpretation), after Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization speech of 1956 the party split into a Jewish and anti-Jewish section, with the anti-Jewish section complaining of too many Jews in top positions. In the words of a leader of the anti-Jewish faction, the preponderance of Jews “makes people hate Jews and mistrust the party. The Jews estrange people from the party and from the Soviet Union; national feelings have been offended, and it is the duty of the party to adjust to the demands so that Poles, not Jews, hold the top positions in Poland” (in Schatz 1991, 268). Khrushchev himself supported a new policy with his remark that “you have already too many Abramoviches” (in Schatz 1991, 272). This first stage in the anti-Jewish purges was accompanied by anti-Semitic incidents among the public at large, as well as demands that Jewish communists who had changed their names to lower the Jewish profile of the party reveal themselves. As a result of these changes, over half of the Jews in Poland responded by emigrating to Israel between 1956 and 1959. Anti-Semitism also increased dramatically toward the end of the 1960s, culminating in 1968 with an anti-Semitic campaign consequent to outpourings of joy among Jews over Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War. Israel’s victory occurred despite Soviet bloc support of the Arabs, and President Gomulka condemned the Jewish “fifth column” in the country. Extensive purges of Jews swept the country and secular Jewish life (e.g., Yiddish magazines and Jewish schools and day camps) was essentially dissolved.
It is at least reasonable to suppose that these outbursts of anti-Semitism were influenced by the perception among Poles of the role Jews played in postwar Poland. As one intellectual described it, Poland’s problems resulted essentially from ethnic conflict between Poles and Jews in which the Jews were supported by the Russians. The problems were due to “the arrival in our country . . . of certain politicians dressed in officer’s uniforms, who later presumed that only they- -the Zambrowskis, the Radkiewiczes, the Bermans- -had the right to leadership, a monopoly over deciding what was right for the Polish nation.” The solution would come when the “abnormal ethnic composition” of society was corrected (in Schatz 1991, 306, 307).

Of course the real issue in all of this was whether there was any shred of rationality in postwar Polish anti-Semitism resulting from the constitution of the Polish government and from the role of the wider Jewish community in supporting and staffing the government. As always, one must make the usual caveats that exaggeration and even fantasies may color the situation once the battle lines have been drawn between groups. But my basic position is that we should not simply assume that every instance of anti-Semitism is utterly irrational. Rather, we should suppose that in general there are indeed real conflicts of interest between groups and that outbreaks of intense hostility are a complex interplay of fantasy and reality. Obviously, I am an evolutionary social psychologist rather than a historian. My analysis is based on social identity theory, with which many historians may not be familiar. It predicts how and why differences in the relative frequency with which ingroup and outgroup members engage in various behaviors are molded by the human mind into essential characteristics of the entire group. My attempt is to explain why anti-Jewish statements had such resonance in this period among Poles, and I  think that actual Jewish behavior is part of the explanation.