To Jan Blonski in Reply
Błonski’s article endorses anti-Polish propaganda. Although criticizing the anti-Poles, he often agrees with them. In the years between 1933 and 1939, Poland was insanely antisemitic. Błonski notes the brutalization occurring on Polish soil, but overlooks its sufferings and heroism. Błonski is ashamed of the attitude of the Poles to the Jews. I am not. We could do little more than was done. Poland had opened its doors throughout the centuries to the Jews who survived, because they preserved their distinctiveness and national ties. They spawned high-quality intellectuals mainly in its cities. However, a huge gap prevailed between the wealthy Jews and the Jewish proletariat, which cannot be blamed on Poland. The number of Jews in the universities was out of proportion to that of the Poles; the author objects to this. Unlike the Germans, the Poles never considered genocide: Błonski’s statement that Poland came very close to emulating the genocide perpetrated by the Germans is untrue and unacceptable. Tragically, the Jews in Poland followed their instincts of passivity, believing that the war would end before their destruction. Few chose to escape the German roundups and marches. But then again, the Warsaw ghetto uprising would have been suicidal at an earlier date when the Soviet army was more distant from the capital city. Surprisingly, the Jewish organizations in the West could have done more to save European Jewry, whereas Poles, witnessing the atrocities at Auschwitz and Majdanek, were not in a position to stop the massacres.
