The Paderewski Memoirs (Da Capo Press music reprint series) [Hardcover]

Ignacy Jan Paderewski (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 409 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Pr (May 1981)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0306760460
• ISBN-13: 978-0306760464
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,711,905 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4.0 out of 5 stars Famous Polish Pianist and Statesman Tells His Story: Insights into the Paderewski-Dmowski Encounter, September 12, 2011

By 

Jan Peczkis "Scholar and Thinker" (Chicago IL, USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Paderewski Memoirs (Da Capo Press music reprint series) (Hardcover)

Ignace Jan Paderewski was born in 1860 in that part of Podolia situated east of the eventual Riga border. Most of this memoir (Review based on original 1938 edition) describes Paderewski's musical career and related travels. Little of it is on politics.

Music was always a large part of the Paderewski family: "My sister Antonina was then about eight years old. She always played the treble, and I, as you know, the bass, and sometimes our performances were very exciting, especially when we fought each other with our elbows, which we generally did very vigorously, accompanied by sudden little kicks as well. In fact our duet playing was very often more acrobatic than musical!" (pp. 15-16).

The author recounts other aspects of his boyhood. The little Ignace taught himself to play piano as a toddler, once tricked his father into believing that the French were defeating the hated Prussians in the Franco-Prussian War, and escaped serious injury when he was kicked in the stomach by a beloved horse (for no apparent reason) which he had just fed, rendering the boy unconscious.

According to Paderewski, the different groups living in Podolia lived amiably together. However, the policy of DIVIDE ET IMPERA, practiced by tsarist Russia, eventually pitted serfs against landowners (p. 3), Ukrainians against Poles (p.7), and Jews against Poles. (p. 384). In fact, Polish landowners, of whom Paderewski's father was one, were forbidden from emancipating their serfs until this became policy in the Russian Empire in 1861. (p. 3).

During Paderewski's boyhood in the late 19th-century, the Jews still wore their traditional garb. Ignace writes: "They have been exactly the same for eight hundred years in Poland, because the first Jews who came into Poland, you must know, came during the first Crusades, and they obtained privileges, and even advantages over the native population of Poland." (p. 10). The family got along very well with the local Jews. In fact, whenever the Jews had disputes amongst themselves, they did not go to the local rabbi as customarily done. They instead entrusted Jan Paderewski, Ignace's father, to mediate the dispute. (pp. 10-11).

Fast-forward into the post-1910 period. Consider the events that led to Paderewski becoming approached by Dmowski. Writing in diplomatic fashion, Paderewski describes the disloyalty of the Litwaks [Litvaks] to the Polish cause: "At that time all the Jews who came from Russia were victims...They came to Poland to escape persecution, but strangely enough, once in Poland, they started to show their excessive Russian patriotism, which was not very much to the taste of the Poles, and naturally these newcomers brought a great deal of disturbance and ferment into the whole community. They were persecuted in Russia, but in Poland they were very welcome to the Russian Government...[which] ...WANTED that disturbance, that ferment and discontent of the Poles. It suited their [Russia's] purpose." (pp. 383-384).

Even if there was no secret protocol between the Jews and tsarist Russian authorities during the 1912 elections to the Duma [Russian Parliament], the fact of Jews in cahoots with the Russian authorities, against Poles, is recognized by Paderewski: "...though the Jews were not in the majority in Warsaw, they managed so well with the consent, and even with the assistance, of the officials, that they got the majority of votes--and could elect the representative from Warsaw to the Parliament, not the Poles, but the Jews." (p. 384).

It was then that Dmowski launched the retaliatory boycott of Poland's Jews. Paderewski describes his meeting with Dmowski in London, not identifying Dmowski by name. It turns out that Dmowski had used Paderewski's name, in his new newspaper, without Paderewski's knowledge or consent, to promote the boycott. Paderewski made it clear that he did not consider the conduct of the Jews an important matter, that it was physically impossible to literally boycott all the Jewish merchants of Poland, etc. (p.383). Dmowski replied that the boycott was necessary, that it should be implemented in principle if not complete literal reality, and that Paderewski's big name was required for its success.

American Jews, in turn, wrote circulars advocating the boycotting of Paderewski's concerts. Displaying a lack of integrity, they actually accused Paderewski of organizing pogroms against Jews. (p. 387). [This is egregiously false. Apart from the fact that Dmowski had used Paderewski's name without consent, Dmowski himself never sponsored pogroms against Jews. In fact, Dmowski was strongly opposed to violence against Jews.] There were death threats against Paderewski. In early 1914, Paderewski signed an affidavit in which he told how his name had been used without his consent, and how he did not, and never had, supported any boycotting of Jews. (p. 390).

American Jews refused to believe Paderewski, and some Jewish newspapers displayed a clear absence of journalistic integrity. Paderewski commented: "Some of my friends in New York even went to a Jewish newspaper protesting against such treatment saying it was not true. The only reply was, `Oh yes. We know it was not true, but it is good publicity! It sells the newspaper.'" (p. 391).

Let us return to the situation in Poland. Paderewski evidently saw both Dmowski and the Jews as politically immature, if only for not agreeing to a compromise candidate that they could both have supported: "...to revenge themselves on the Jews, which was stupid. Yes, that was stupid, but the Jews were still more stupid, because instead of electing someone from among themselves who was an intelligent and respectable man, and who would have been a worthy representative of a community, they elected an almost illiterate Polish workman without any education, a man who was not capable of saying ten words. It was an insult to the city." (pp. 384-385).

Was it really stupidity? Maybe that was the whole idea: Elect a weak seat-filler who was easily manipulated by Jews, tsarist Russian authorities, or both--or who, at very least, was incompetent in terms of advancing Polish national interests--however limited their expression--within the Russian Empire.