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Bieganski: The Brute Polak Stereotype in Polish-Jewish Relations and American Popular Culture (Jews of Poland)

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Among other things, the Talmud records edited discussions between rabbinic scholars on legal and literary-interpretive topics. Two particular rabbi-scholars frequently appear in tandem, commenting and responding to each other's opinion. These two are named Rava, and Abbaye. One day in Talmud class my Talmud teacher, a devout Polish Jew, commented that "Rava and Abbaye go together like ham and eggs". I saw the jaw of one of my classmates literally drop, nearly hit the floor. "But Rabbi", he stuttered, "what do you know of ham and eggs?". My teacher replied "I never tasted them, but I've heard they go together well". So too Poles and Jews. They seem to go together. Poles and Jews. Jews and Poles. But this taste is bitter, complicated, with a lingering confused finish on the palate.

At least they used to go together. These days, Jews and Palestinians are edging their way into the spot traditionally reserved for Poles and Jews. Israel and the Zionist lobby are making sure of that. Where were Poles will be Palestinians. And some day, sadly, tragically, someone will have to write a book about Jewish-Palestinian relations, stereotypes, etc., and that writer will be called names, variously and such as "anti-Semite", "self hater", "Jew lover", "Zionist spy", "traitor", etc., names such as Danusha Goska will be called for writing "Bieganski".

In "Bieganski" Goska writes a serious book, treading on sacred, crushed bone-, ash- and gold teeth- filled ground, and our journey with her, not surprisingly, is frequently unpleasant. The sites she guides us to in the courageous "Bieganski" are illuminating, and shocking: amazing quotes from current newspaper articles, from the New York Times and Washington Post etc., quoting esteemed, mostly WASP American scholars and commentators saying the most outrageous, nasty things about Poles, Bohemians, Hungarians, 'Bohunks', describing them as brutish protohumans who can only be assumed of eating their own while smacking greasy bulging lips with stupid, sated Slavic simian smiles. Goska points us, with sniper-scope accuracy, to the systematic, disgusting, and pervasive anti-Polish bias in contemporary Hollywood film, literature, and popular major media outlets, television, and newspapers.

But the stuff we read in "Bieganski" is not esoteric; this racism is as mainstream as ham and eggs, as ordinary as Rava and Abbaye doing their intellectual joustings across the centuries of Talmudic discourse. Yet we can barely keep our breakfast down; we want to vomit up that ham, those eggs in disgust. Revulsion. How could we accept such trayf, such unkosher hatred?

And Jews, how do Jews feel about Poles? "Bieganski" incorporates unusual interviews Goska personally conducted with American Jews, speaking off-the-cuff about their stereotypes of Poles. Jews? Poles? We feel what we were taught, and what has been reinforced and encouraged by our WASP overlords and by our Jewish, anti-Polish dayschool teachers; Poles are subhuman, they are fed antisemitism in their mother's milk, we are superior to them. We go to visit modern Poland to see how poor and stupid and undeveloped the Poles are, and to see the Nazi death camps on Polish soil, and we know that the Poles are undeveloped and poor and stupid in cosmic punishment for the so-called "Polish Holocaust", which was a Nazi Holocaust conducted on occupied Polish soil, and which targeted Catholic Poles as much as it targeted Jews. But of course the Poles are to blame. And the mass murder of Poles, Polish Catholics, by Nazis from the west, and by Soviets from the East, is completely ignored, relegated to the ash heap of history, irrelevant, unworthy of mention.

So why will author Dr. Goska likely need to hire a bodyguard now? Why, for writing "Bieganski" will she be reviled, by Jews, by Poles, by African Americans? Why is it that no mainstream publisher would touch her book "Bieganski" for fear that they might lose support from generous financial backers? Why will Goska now be labelled, variously, as an "anti-Semite", a "Polish apologist", a "right-wing whacko", a "racist", a "self-hating Pole", a "Jew lover" and a "Zionist spy", all at the same time?

You'll just have to read the book and figure it out for yourself. It will be an exhilarating ride, eye-opening, jaw-dropping, intellectually rich and deep yet smooth as a Cuban cigar with a glass of dark, dark rum. "Bieganski". Mark my words. This one's a keeper. You'll be talking about it with your friends for years. "Bieganski". An exploration of the brute within.

"Bieganski..." is one of those thought-provoking and compelling books that left me with a feeling of unease after reading it. It is challenging, well-written and quite significant for the Polish-Jewish dialogue. Personally, it also led me to question my identity as a Polish person, especially in the context of the fact that I am living abroad.

In Poland one rarely encounters chances to become familiarized with the profoundness and influence of the hugely negative stereotype of Poles existing in the Western culture. At first, I felt overwhelmed by the description of the Bieganski stereotype as brute, non-educated and primitive creature. Learning about this image that I was never fully aware of proved to be difficult and intellectually challenging exercise, which was nonetheless generally well-guided in the first chapters of the book, and as I kept reading I realized its purpose and came to value it.

The descriptions of Anti- Semitism elsewhere, Jewish history in Poland and other European countries as well as the analysis of role of Anti- Semitism and Slavs perception in Europe before the Second World War provide a key to understand the context of the Holocaust and the perception of Poles during it and afterwards. The book analyses it very profoundly and considers many aspects, which enables the reader to more fully understand the roots, mechanisms and far-reaching implications and consequences of the Polish-Jewish relations in the past. Current image of Poland and Poles in the US and generally Western culture as depicted in the book seem to logically follow the stereotype and attitudes and prejudices deriving from it.

The narrative challenges the Polish national identity as well as the Jewish one, and it aims to exhaustingly explain the way these identities complement each other and derive their definitions from the dichotomous self-other framework. It demonstrates the far-reaching consequences that the perceptions themselves can bring about. For me, this deep and multi-aspectual analysis of cultural, political, social and historical issues connected with the Polish-Jewish-American relations aids in their deeper and fuller understanding of them, which I treat as the first step to work on changing the present situation. In order to be able to alter the existing perceptions and relations, the awareness of what they are and where they come from is undeniably crucial. The book, in my view, offers a unique and extremely broad insight into these relations between the three societies, so it could serve as a great starting point for an engaging public discussion on the subject.

Moreover, "Bieganski.." critically examines the attitudes to lessons of the Holocaust. Describing the examples such as the Holocaust tourism it makes the reader aware of the dangers posed by ignoring the current reality and instead focusing only on the past, therefore fitting the image of Jewish-Polish relations into the `us' versus `them' construction. The book demonstrates the importance of universalistic lessons that should be taken from the Holocaust - genocide can happen anywhere and we have to be very careful and critical about the interpretations of reality and various events, as it proves to be incredibly easy to simply become blinded by the stereotypes and let them control what we think and how we act.

I would fully recommend the book to anyone who is willing to question their views not only on the Polish-Jewish relations and stereotype of Poles in the US, but also to those who are able to critically consider how we all, as humans, are powerfully influenced by stereotypes and how we tend to draw far-reaching conclusions and oversimplify even without having any knowledge on the particular issue.

Dr. Danusha Goska's book was painful for me to read. The truths she discusses about the way Poles are stereotyped as brutal, filthy, stupid, and anti-Semitic are not easy to hear.

As a child, I grew up as a Displaced Person, a refugee, in Chicago following World War II. My parents had both been Polish-Catholic slave laborers in Nazi Germany, and we came to the US because my parents had lost their families during the war and were afraid of returning to Poland. My parents saw America as a promised land, a place where they would find a haven from the brutally and hatred that they experienced in the camps. What they discovered was that this was to some extent just BS, an acronym for one of the first American words they learned.

We discovered we weren't Poles, and we definitely weren't Polish Americans. We heard in the streets and the factories and the schools that we were Dirty Polaks. We were the people who nobody wanted to rent a room to or hire or help. We were the "wretched refuse" of somebody else's shore, dumped now on the shores of America, and many people we came across here wished we'd go back to where we came from--and that we'd take the rest of the Dirty Polaks with us.

Dr. Goska examines and analyzes this ongoing stereotype of the brutal Pole with the care and precision it deserves but has never received. As a graduate student studying American literature and culture many years ago, I remembering looking for books that would explain why Poles were depicted in this negative way, and I found nothing. It was almost as if America did not recognize that its immigrants were often treated as if they were garbage, dangerous garbage.

I am grateful, therefore, that Dr. Goska has had the courage to pursue and publish her study of this stereotype. I only hope that analyzing and discussing it will provide us with the means of making it go away.

Despite the fact that I had studied anti-Polonism for a long time (see my Listmania: Exposing Polonophobia...), even I was shocked at the extent and acceptability of such rank bigotry among influential Americans. Goska cites hundreds of sources to present her case, and space limitations permit mention of only a few themes.

After the publication of NEIGHBORS and FEAR, by Jan T. Gross, several respected publications ran articles that, in dead seriousness, made transparently racist statements suggesting that Poles are innately and inevitably brutal and anti-Semitic. (pp. 101-104). [Imagine how long a writer would last if s/he were to make "___are innately and inevitably___" statements about any other group!]

In terms of historical development, much has been said about how blacks had been thought of as innately inferior. However, as Goska shows, similar "scientific" attitudes were long held about Slavs. Some scholars went as far as asserting that Pulaski and Kosciuszko must have been misclassified Nordics! (p. 117). (This is reminiscent of the Nazi view that all successful Poles are actually Polonized Germans.)

In later years, "nationalism" became a dirty word. Goska writes: "The left's rejection of Polish peasants' insistence on clinging to their identity would find echoes decades later in lefts academics' and journalists' rejections of Polish and other Eastern European nationalisms as primitive and needing to evolve into Western liberalism..." (pp. 105-106).

Goska unmasks the media's extreme double standard. When prominent atheist Richard Dawkins (p. 32) and Nation of Islam member Khalid Abdul Muhammad (pp. 65-80) made vile anti-Semitic remarks, they were ignored and apologized-for, respectively. But when Cardinal Glemp made relatively mild remarks in the wake of the Auschwitz Carmelite controversy (well described in this book: pp. 80-95), he was practically crucified by the press, which did much more shouting than accurate analysis of what he had actually said and why. [Muhammad was considered to have sufficient "impact and authority" to be censured by the U.S. Senate in a 97-0 vote. In addition, American issues and personages are normally much more newsworthy than distant Polish ones].

Polish-Jewish prejudices always went both ways. "The Baal Shem Tov himself, the founder of Hasidism, was called upon to exorcise the Polish soul from the Jewish body." (p. 62). For more on this, see the Peczkis review of: Hasidism and the Jewish Enlightenment: Their Confrontation in Galicia and Poland in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century.

Considering the fact that Poland is inconsequential (p. 148), why does Polonophobia exist at all? Goska shows how it fulfills the attacker's needs. Consider Jewish Polonophobia. Many American Jews know very little about Judaism, and instead define themselves not as who they are, but who they are NOT (those dumb, primitive Poles.)(e. g., p. 154). In fact: "`Poland' became a metonym for anything negative in the Jewish makeup." (p. 160).

Let's analyze Jewish identity further. "According to Israeli politician Zevulun Orlev, who cites studies to support his position, Holocaust education is primary in creating Jewish identity. Poland is a SINE QUO NON for Holocaust education...'cursed' Poland is central to building Jewish identity." (p. 151). Finally, "One reason why some Jews refuse to acknowledge Polish suffering, and why some Jews express more rage against Poles than the Nazis, becomes clear. If it becomes more widely known that Poles were victims of World War Two, rather than its perpetrators, the new Jewish identity based on victim status, typified by the Holocaust, is threatened." (p. 213). For more on all this, see the Peczkis review of: Sparks Amidst the Ashes: The Spiritual Legacy of Polish Jewry.

Goska notes that disproportionately many Poles are honored at Yad Vashem. Contrary to critics, this owes not to the large number of Polish Jews--quite the opposite. Western European Jews were relatively few, assimilated, geographically scattered, and thus relatively easy to disguise or hide. By contrast, the overwhelming majority of the huge numbers of Polish Jews were unassimilated, confined by the Germans to ghettos, and thereby inaccessible to potential Polish rescuers. Finally, Poles faced the death penalty for the slightest aid to Jews: Western European rescuers didn't. Thus the Polish rescuers actually compare even more, not less, favorably to their western European counterparts, than their already-disproportionate raw numbers would suggest.

Now consider German Polonophobia. In the past, it had served the purpose of excusing/justifying German imperial ambitions against Poland. It persists today. Goska comments: "A 1990 survey revealed that eighty-seven percent of Germans regarded Poles as `less desirable than themselves, Russians, or Turks.'" (p. 165).

Goska's work contains much seldom-presented historical information. For instance, we learn that the Polish term "black kitchen", contrary to conventional suppositions, had nothing to do with any Jews=devil anti-Semitic construct. (p. 57). It simply referred to the soot caking of a room in the typical peasant hut.

The author (pp. 57-58) cites Botticini and Eckstein, who pointed out that Jews had, in the 1st Millennium A.D., massively abandoned farming in favor of skilled, urban work. (This could be mapped unto Martin Luther's later complaint that Jews are privileged in that they don't have to do sweat-causing work, and foreign observers' suggestions that the poverty of late 19th-early-20th century Polish Jews owed, in large part, to the fact that they, having been displaced from their middleman positions, generally refused to take jobs that involved heavy, manual labor).

Far from being some kind of Polish disease, anti-Semitism, which historically had been much stronger and more developed in western Europe than in eastern Europe, is part of a much broader global phenomenon. Consider the Middleman Minority Theory (Jews in Europe, Indians in Uganda, Chinese in Thailand, etc.). In each case, the middleman "outsider" is resented for not having to do manual labor, and thought of as filling an exploitative niche, etc. (pp. 178-180). Likewise, Amy Chua's "market dominant minorities" position suggests that market-controlling ethnic minorities attract conflict whenever previously-disenfranchised locals gain strength and attempt to gain parity with the ethnic minority. This was realized, for example, by Roman Dmowski and his Endek movement's boycotts of Jews, etc. (pp. 186-188).

The blood libel, far from being some kind of Polish or Christian complex directed against Jews, is much, much broader. Goska uses her background in folklore to show how blood-consumption tales occur all over the world (pp. 188-189). For instance, pagans believed that early Christians drank baby blood, modern Tanzanians widely believe that Europeans consume Africans' blood, and extant Third-World peoples believe organ-theft-ring stories that blame Americans.

A superb book! It must be repeatedly studied in order to be fully appreciated.

Danusha V. Goska's tour de force, Bieganski: the Brute Polak stereotype, its role in Polish Jewish relations and American popular culture published by Academic Studies press Boston 2010 is as Sgt. Friday would say, "just the facts ma'am." But Polish Jewish relations and the Holocaust are extremely complicated subjects and facts aren't always universal.

The most important question in any criminal investigation is, "What did he/she know and when did they know it?" But when it comes to the Nazi extermination camps situated in Poland by the Germans and the history of Polish anti-Semitism before and after the camps, many things remain unclear and or unknown, though evidence is available. There is room for finger-pointing and blame still, though Auschwitz is now a museum struggling to remain open as the unique and horrible site it is to all of the world, incontrovertible proof of what happened there. Or is it?

Goska attended Polish Jewish relations classes offered at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow in 1987. I made my pilgrimage for the same purpose in 1986.(And my collection of poems, This Is Not a Place to Sing, West End, 1987 is about this journey.) Not long after, Polish Jewish relations were no longer studied in the summer school classes offered by the Kosciuszko Foundation. The wall had come down in Germany and Poland was on its way out of the communist mire. Much of what I learned that summer corroborated what my father had told me anecdotally as I was growing up in Detroit in the 1950's.

He had been born in Missouri and was traumatized by what he saw and experienced in the Lead Belt Riot of 1917 when he was only three years old. The Bieganski stereotype Goska explores so thoroughly was at the root of these riots. His parents returned to Poland after World War I and sensitized by what happened to his family and himself as well as the Slavic neighbors and miners in and around Leadwood Missouri, he turned a jaundiced eye however youthful it may be to us now considering his tender years, on what he saw in rural southeastern Poland.

He shared much of it with me when I was a little girl sitting with him on the green plastic glider on the front porch on Piedmont Street. The terror of gunfire and burning crosses. Being forced to leave his earliest childhood home. The green riverine hills of the southern Ozarks and creeks replete with crayfish. His eye became my eye. Like my third eye, maybe, I realize now as I write.

In school in Poland, in the town of Modliborzyce where the Germans would burn the synagogue not too far into the future, he attended public school classes, as did the Jewish children. When it came time for catechism, the priest who taught it, would announce, "All Jews out!" My father would follow his friends out of the classroom. Once he recalled this same priest ordering the students out into the village square where they raised their arms in a salute and marched in a goose-stepping style, while someone in a low-flying plane took photographs. My father insisted these were propaganda photos.

My father had many friends and girlfriends who were Jewish. He spent time at the Jewish owned tavern. A Jewish timber baron wanted to adopt him and graciously opened up the library in his home to my father who was hungry for knowledge. He had similar anecdotes about the Gypsies, the Roma, all positive, never feeding into any stereotypes. In fact, a remedy recommended by a Gypsy woman to his mother may have saved his life. Nothing else had been able to shake the chest cold and fever he was suffering. The pine trees were yellow with pollen which the Gypsy used in a poultice recipe that my grandmother put on his chest and he soon he recovered.

My father spent much of his life after World War II mourning the loss of his friends and a multicultural village he had instinctively embraced, though few members of his family either in Poland or in the US ever felt the loss quite so keenly as he did. When I visited his elderly sister that summer I was in Poland and asked about the Jewish people in that area of Felinow/Tarnobrzeg and what had happened to them during World War II she replied, "Many people suffered."

Goska tries admirably to sort all this out in her book, and writes, "Polish Jewish relations are profoundly complex." She is hopeful too when she says, "It is time for people of good will to join together to find a way to address all stereotypical thinking including that engaged by stereotyped people themselves."

This is a book for everyone to read.

This is an important and necessary book. Someone has finally stepped-up to the plate and tackled this complex and ignored story. Bieganski is a book that was hard to put down and is written with intelligence and fairness. Although the book is unconformable to read at times (because it calls Poles, Jews and other people of fair mind and good-will into action), it also leaves the reader with hope for healing and understanding. My conclusion after reading Bieganski is that the majority of people are fair; some just unclear of the facts. But there is a hateful minority who thrive off of anti-polish bigotry. Good people of all persuasions must not allow bigotry...hateful speech and actions to go unchallenged.

Slated to become a classic in the Polish-Jewish dialogue.

"The everlasting hope and resilience of the Polish people rises above the terror, forced labor, torture, executions and deaths of millions of Poles (and Jews) during Nazi occupation of Polish towns and villages, particularly at Majdanek (and Auschwitz) and other detention centers during World War II. Despite the repeated ravaging and takeover of Poland by outsiders throughout the centuries, the Polish people's will to determine their own destiny continually furnishes them with the fortitude to rebuild what others destroy. As Michener puts it, "A Pole is a man born with a sword in his right hand and a brick in his left. When the battle is over, he starts to rebuild.""

As with most kids that I knew in Grade School in 1950's New Mexico, the first awareness of anything Polish was the Polak joke. To me, a Polak was some distant, undefinable, stupid ethnic group that, initially, I didn't even associate with Poland. I didn't even know where Poland was. We also recited the very un-PC version of "Eenie, meenie, mynee, mo," but after awhile, as my consciousness expanded and I learned who Poles really were, I disliked the jokes and the stereotyping. My Finnish grandfather used to call me a "stupid Svede" whenever I accidently spilled or broke something, and he used to tell Swedish jokes that I recognized as the old Polak jokes I used to tell. Same tired old jokes, different ethnic group.

I realized that every culture probably has its "Polak," someone lower than them, someone to be the butt of their jokes. I wrote about this to the author and then asked her, "Who are Poland's 'Polaks'?" And she responded, "There is no one lower than a Pole."

Chilling words for me to hear, but it wasn't until I read this fine book that I fully realized their full import. Goska cites poet John Guzlowski and his parents living in a D.P. camp (for Displaced Persons) after WWII, coming to America as a D.P., and growing up with that stigma... how it affected his entire life. She cites example after example of Poles whose entire existence has been under the boot of ostracism.

Throughout my life I've had many Jewish and Polish friends, but not a single one of them gave me any hint of animosity toward any ethnic group. Perhaps it's because I'm a musician, as are most of my friends, and we just don't harbor that sort of attitude. Maybe the bandstand is the true melting pot, the gathering of equals, where one's musicianship is the only thing being judged. Color and ethnicity don't exist. So, it was a revelation for me to learn of Polish anti-Semitism and the degree to which some Jews hate Poles. It was heartbreaking to hear of how, in the eyes of many, the identity of an entire country can be reduced to having hosted Nazi death camps.

For me, however, the best part of the book is Goska's analysis of the bohunk role in the films "A Street Car Named Desire," "The Deerhunter," "The Fugitive," and "The Apartment"--the first of which is nothing short of brilliant. For anyone who has seen the film, this essay reveals incredible insights into Tennessee Williams' wonderful screenplay.

"Bieganski" is a book I highly recommend.

This impeccably written and researched book will definately be in line for our bookclub read. Mrs. Goska must be thanked over and over again for writing this book, which clarifies and brings attention to the problem of anti-Polishness. Poland is the most lied about country in WWII. Ms. Goska should receive the medal of bravery for this book. How painful it must have been for her.

About half way through the book. Will get back to elaborate more. This book needs to be in the classroom now! Respect and admiration for all the Poles have sacrificed and been through is way overdue and should be paid with all interest due too.

Back to the book... We'll be back.

A well-balanced, well-researched, and well-written overview of stereotypes of Poles and other Eastern European cultures, Bieganski: The Brute Polak Stereotype is an important and thought-provoking book on many levels.

Dr. Goska provides her readers with an accurate and carefully-worded picture of real human beings, and the hardships they've endured due to prejudice and the "Brute Polak Stereotype", as it were. She cites a multitude of credible sources, and weaves them together in a way that provides the reader with a clear, albeit hard to read at times, understanding of how real this stereotype actually is, as well as how many influential people actually are caught up in it.

Clearly a must-read for all, Bieganski: The Brute Polak Stereotype should not be regarded as anything less than an accurate representation of egregious problem affecting our's and other societies on a daily basis. Dr. Goska, who struggled immensely in finding someone to publish such a provocative and highly controversial book, should be commended for her outstanding achievement in tackling such a crucial topic.

Bieganski is a well-researched, well-written, and really darn interesting view of a topic that I came to without a lot of prior knowledge or assumptions. Danusha Goska's comprehensive approach to the topic stimulated my thinking not just of Poles and Jews, but of broader questions about how we interpret, judge and interact on many levels, with all peoples.

Dr Goska paints a full, rich, multi-dimensional picture of the Polish people and introduced real humans, like Cardinal Glemp, who I'd love to meet. The work engendered in me interest in better understanding my Polish-American acquaintances and exploring their perceptions of my Jewishness.

Beyond that, I find myself examining what assumptions I have about other groups. This is the sign of a great work, and I appreciate Dr Goska for what she has produced