Language:
English
Year of publication:
2011
Titel der Quelle:
East European Politics and Societies
Angaben zur Quelle:
25,1 (2011) 129-152
Keywords:
Sułek, Antoni
;
Social sciences
;
Jews History 1945-
;
Antisemitism History 1945-
;
Antisemitism History 21st century
Abstract:
Deplores the fact that a conspiracy of silence, inherited from the communist era and reinforced by the dissident intelligentsia in the post-communist period, still surrounds the issue of Polish-Jewish relations and hinders research of and investigation into this matter. Examines the lecture "Ordinary Poles Looking at Jews", delivered by Polish sociologist Antoni Sułek at the University of Warsaw in 2009, as part of the series "Ten Lectures for a New Millennium". Summarizing Polish research on Polish attitudes toward Jews, based on polls conducted during the last twenty years, Sułek concluded that the attitudes have been improving, and that the main reason for antisemitism in Poland is "continuing disputes about the history of Poles and Jews during the last war". In fact, Sułek repeated the thesis put forward by Ireneusz Krzemiński in the 1990s, that "Jewish organization activists" and their "anti-Polonism" preserve antisemitism in Poland. Sułek's approach is an attempt to conceal the problem of antisemitism in the hope that it will be extinguished by itself some day, in effect turning it into a skeleton in the closet. Notes that polling is insufficient for research on Polish attitudes toward Jews; more in-depth surveys are necessary, especially given the fact that Poles preserve a national-democratic, and in fact racist, vision of the Polish national entity and perceive the Jews as aliens who are genetically and generically distinct from Poles.
DOI:
10.1177/0888325410387640
URL:
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