Language:
English
Year of publication:
2011
Titel der Quelle:
Slavic Review
Angaben zur Quelle:
70,2 (2011) 399-421
Keywords:
Dabrowska, Maria,
;
Antisemitism History 1800-2000
;
Jewish literature History and criticism
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
Abstract:
Argues that wartime diaries written by non-Jewish Poles can shed light on Polish-Jewish relations during the Holocaust and show how Poles perceived the evolving genocide. Focuses on the pre-war, wartime, and postwar diary by the left-wing writer and journalist Maria Dąbrowska (1889-1967). Dąbrowska was renowned as a defender of the poor and the oppressed, e.g. in an article published in 1936, she deplored the practice of the "bench ghetto" in Polish universities. Dąbrowska's diary, published first in 1988 and in full in 2009, shocked readers by the undeniably antisemitic image of the author that emerged from it. Her diary is permeated with a mixed sense of admiration, envy, and resentment toward Jews. In the wartime period, she hardly mentions the Warsaw ghetto and expresses satisfaction with the fact that postwar Poland would develop without Jews. After the war, she regards Jews as Poland's communist rulers and, at the same time, as competitors with Catholic Poles for the title of those who suffered most during World War II. Argues that Dąbrowska's specific Polish patriotism is at the root of her attitude toward the Jews: in her view, Jews not only arrested the social development of the Polish nation, but also prevented it from fulfilling its international historical mission. Contends that her protest against the "bench ghetto" in 1936 was motivated by a wish to dissociate herself from the rabidly nationalist and antisemitic Endeks. Even the Holocaust failed to change Dąbrowska's perception of Jews as outsiders; her case demonstrates the role played by ideology in moral responses to the suffering Other.
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