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The Crosses of Auschwitz: Nationalism and Religion in Post-Communist Poland

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When Carmelite nuns established a convent in 1984 in a building adjacent to Auschwitz that had formerly been used to store Zyklon B gas during the Holocaust the international Jewish community was outraged. Jews argued that Auschwitz should have no connection to any particular religion. Relenting to world opinion, in 1989 the Roman Catholic hierarchy pressured the Polish Church to order the nuns to leave. They finally moved out in 1993 but left behind a large wooden cross in the middle of the former convent grounds that had been used at the 1979 Papal mass at Auschwitz II (Birkenau).

The Jewish community insisted that the cross also be removed. Polish Catholic traditionalists not only refused to remove the "Papal" cross, but by 1999 they had erected three-hundred smaller crosses on the grounds. As tensions mounted, Kazimierz Switon, the leader of the "Defenders of the Pope's Cross," was arrested for threatening violence and the additional crosses were removed in the middle of the night by Polish police on May 28, 1999. However, the "Papal Cross" still remains.

Genevieve Zubrzycki has written an extremely interesting survey of the Auschwitz cross controversy. However, this is not a chronological history of the events at Auschwitz in 1998 and 1999. Rather, Zubrzycki digs deep into Polish history to understand why these events took place.

As a consequence of the partitioning of the country in the eighteenth-century, the Polish Catholic Church became the guardian of Polish language, customs, and heritage. Polish nationalism became entwined with the Church. The cross and the Black Madonna of Czestochowa became Polish national symbols. Beginning in the late nineteenth-century and during the interwar period, when Poland was once again independent, ethno-religious-nationalism (integralism) became popular whereby it was argued the only "true" Poles were Catholic and ethnically Polish. Polish clerics were enthusiastic sponsors of this ideology. Under communism the Church once again became the preserver of Polish nationalism. The Church was a prime player in the Solidarity movement. When Poland regained independence in 1989 and a civic state was established, Poles were confronted with the unfamiliar concept of the Church uncoupled from politics.

During the communist era Poles had been told by the authorities that four million had perished at Oswiecim, with most of the victims being Polish citizens; the Soviets didn't differentiate between Jews and Gentiles. Consequently, Oswiecim became the national symbol of Polish martyrdom. After independence it was re-estimated that 1.5 million were actually murdered at Auschwitz; 1 million Jews and only 70,000 Polish Catholics. Many Poles bitterly contested this "Jewish usurpation" of their memorial. Traditionalist Poles fought the removal of the Carmelite convent and the crosses. Numerous manifestations of anti-Semitism marred both protests. The traditionalist view was that if you favored the removal of the crosses, you were not a "true" Pole.

I enjoyed this book very much although the academes and professional jargon is often waist deep. As the cross controversy demonstrates, Polish society is deeply divided. There are definitely two Polands; the Poland of the liberal and centrist civic nationalists (in the tradition of Pilsudski) and the Poland of the far-right ethno-religious nationalists (in the tradition of Dmowski). But in the last decade we've seen the Polish traditionalists pushed increasingly to the margins of Polish society. However, within tradition-bound American Polonia, the chauvinist, integralist view still predominates.

Some excellent books which examine Jewish society in Poland and Polish Catholic anti-Semitism include:

"Poland's Threatening Other: The Image of the Jew from 1880 to the Present" by Joanna B. Michlic

"Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland" by Jan T. Gross

"The Neighbors Respond: The Controversy over the Jedwabne Massacre in Poland" by Antony Polonsky

"Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland After Auschwitz" by Jan Tomasz Gross

"Contested Memories: Poles and Jews during the Holocaust and Its Aftermath" by Joshua D. Zimmerman

"Secret City: The Hidden Jews of Warsaw, 1940-1945" by Gunnar S. Paulsson

"Shtetl" by Eva Hoffman

"Bondage to the Dead: Poland and the Memory of the Holocaust" by Michael C. Steinlauf

"Karski: How One Man Tried to Stop the Holocaust" by E. Thomas Wood

"My Brother's Keeper: Recent Polish Debates on the Holocaust" by Antony Polonsky

"Polish-Jewish Relations During the Second World War" by Emanuel Ringelblum

"On the Edge of Destruction: Jews of Poland Between the Two World Wars" by Celia Stopnicka Heller

"The Convent at Auschwitz" by Wladyslaw Bartoszewski

"Rethinking Poles and Jews: Troubled Past, Brighter Future" by Robert Cherry

"The Hidden Pope: The Untold Story of a Lifelong Friendship That Is Changing the Relationship Between Catholics and Jews - The Personal Journey of John Paul II and Jerzy Kluger" by Darcy O'Brien

"When Nationalism Began to Hate: Imagining Modern Politics in Nineteenth-Century Poland" by Brian Porter

"Faith and Fatherland: Catholicism, Modernity, and Poland" by Brian Porter

"The Populist Radical Right in Poland: The Patriots" by Rafal Pankowski

"Rome's Most Faithful Daughter: The Catholic Church and Independent Poland, 1914-1939" (Polish and Polish American Studies) by Neal Pease

"Traitors & True Poles: Narrating A Polish-American Identity, 1880-1939" (Polish and Polish American Studies) by Karen Majewski

"The Catholic Church and Antisemitism: Poland, 1933-1939" by Ronald E. Modras

"The Jews in Poland" by Chimen Abramsky

"Imaginary Neighbors: Mediating Polish-Jewish Relations after the Holocaust" by Dorota Glowacka

"Sinners on Trial: Jews and Sacrilege after the Reformation" by Magda Teter

"From Assimilation to Anti-Semitism: The Jewish Question in Poland, 1850-1914" by Theodore R. Weeks

"Antisemitism And Its Opponents In Modern Poland" by Robert Blobaum

"The Jews of Poland Between Two World Wars" by Yisrael Gutman

"Unequal Victims: Poles and Jews During World War Two" by Israel Gutman

"Economic Origins of Antisemitism: Poland and Its Jews in the Early Modern Period" by Hillel Levine

"Forced Out: The Fate of Polish Jewry in Communist Poland" by Arthur J. Wolak

"The Crosses of Auschwitz: Nationalism and Religion in Post-Communist Poland" by Geneviève Zubrzycki

"Memory Offended: The Auschwitz Convent Controversy" by John K. Roth

"In the Shadow of the Polish Eagle: The Poles, the Holocaust and Beyond" by Leo Cooper

"No Way Out: The Politics of Polish Jewry, 1935-1939" by Emanuel Melzer

"The Politics of Hate: Anti-Semitism, History, and the Holocaust in Modern Europe" by John Weiss

"Boycott! The Politics of Anti-Semitism in Poland, 1912-1914" by Robert Blobaum

"In the Shadow of Hitler: Personalities of the Right in Central and Eastern Europe" by Rebecca Haynes

Zubrzycki's work is excellent in that it provides an in-depth summary of the situations and contentions relative to the Auschwitz Crosses, the mindsets of both Poles and Jews, and various useful historical information. One learns that the Polish nobility was one of the largest in Europe, comprising 10-13% of the total population. (p. 37). Every ninth adult Pole had someone in Auschwitz. (p. 136).

Unfortunately, Zubrzycki's statements often lack analytic depth, and exhibit a Judeocentric bias. She buys into the premise that the Jedwabne "revelation" has transformed Poles from victims to victimizers. (p. xiii). How is Jedwabne, etc. supposed to erase the fact of 2-3 million non-Jewish Poles, including half the intelligentsia, murdered by the Germans? She presents the arguments about the "de-Polonization" and "de-Judaization" of Auschwitz as symmetrical, when they are not--considering the vast volumes of Judeocentric educational and media materials worldwide which have all but buried the memory of the non-Jewish victims of the Nazis. She dwells on the fact that Poles saw Jews as "the Other" (p. 35), forgetting that Jews also considered themselves as "the Other" relative to Poles, and acted accordingly. She says that RADIO MARYJA "promotes a culture of fear and despair." (p. 167). As a long-time listener, I find this amusing.

Instead of just mentioning the fact that some Poles think of Jews as returning to Poland to exploit her, why not inform the reader that certain Jewish organizations are seeking massive tribute ("reparations") payments to the tune of many tens of billions of dollars? And, instead of dwelling on the fact that some Poles associate Jews with supranationalism, atheism, Communism, etc., Zubrzycki should be candid about the fact that Jews were and are in fact strongly overrepresented in these endeavors. As for the postwar Communist security forces (UB--Bezpieka), responsible for murdering tens of thousands of Poles, its leadership was about 35% Jewish, in a nation where Jews constituted less than 1% of the general population.

Zubrzycki uncritically mentions the argument that Auschwitz 1 and Birkenau cannot be separated, as proposed by the Polish compromise, because the entire area contains Jewish ashes. (p. 175). Considering the fact that the ashes from the Birkenau crematories were usually dumped in the Sola River, a tributary of the Vistula, and we cannot know how far downstream they went, should the entire Vistula Basin therefore be declared a Cross-free zone?

Some Jews have complained that they are not free to pray at Auschwitz because Christian symbols, to them, are idolatry. (p. 173). Considering the fact that we are supposed to be living in a pluralistic time in which all religions are welcome, how can such decidedly pre-ecumenical, in fact Old-Testament, thinking be condoned? Some Jews consider the Cross at Auschwitz objectionable because it reminds them of persecution. (p. 178). Considering the fact that just about every religion (including Judaism) has, at one time or other, persecuted other religions, isn't such reasoning a bit self-righteous?

Unfortunately, Zubrzycki repeats the false association of Fr. Kolbe and anti-Semitism (p. 58), and repeats the myth of the onetime Polish disregard of Auschwitz Jewish deaths (p. 108), and the myth of the 4-million victim toll as an invention designed to hide Jewish deaths. (p. 105). For the facts, see the Peczkis Listmania: Auschwitz (Oswiecim)...

The author presents a well-researched, highly nuanced "reading" of events surrounding the "war of the crosses" at Auschwitz. Dr. Piotr Sztompka, Poland's leading sociologist, gave it a rave review. Is the author biased? Read it and decide for yourself!