Joanna B.

Michlic March, 17-19 2009, Jerusalem

The Past That Will Not To Go Away: The Polish Historical Debate about Jan T. Grosss Fear. Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz (2006, 2008) and the Study of Early Postwar Anti-Semitism. Introduction In his study into the historical persistence of belief in ritual murder, Legenda Krwi. Analiza Krytyczno-Historyczna Tzw. Mordu Rytualnego, published just one year after the Kielce pogrom of 1946, the orientalist Tadeusz Zaderecki sets out his motives in writing the forty-five-page monograph. Zaderecki, who had arrived in the early postwar years in Poland from Lww, was shocked by his discovery that in the post-Holocaust reality, belief in ritual murder exerted a strong hold on significant sections of Polish society. His goals, in writing Legenda Krwi were to delineate in a scholarly fashion, the history of ritual murder accusation, and to expose the false character of this belief. Zadereckis other major aims were to facilitate further critical study of ritual murder accusations, and to gain intellectual and moral support for his position amongst those whom he describes as people of goodwill. In Fear, published first in English 60 years after the Kielce pogrom, Jan Tomasz Grosss principal aims are much more expansive and far-reaching. They define what can be called the Gross phenomenon with its impact on and interaction with postcommunist Polish historiography and collective memory. As in his previous book Neighbors. The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland, published first in Polish in 2000 and next in English in 2001, Gross raises the problem of postwar Polish historiography of the wartime and early postwar periods, and of the Poles self-image as the only victims and heroes during the Second World War and during the communist takeover of power between 1945 and 1949. Thus Fear continues to set out a clear counter-memory to the accepted canon of historical awareness and national self-image and myths of these two periods. Like Neighbors, Fear is also directed at the community of professional historians and constitutes a direct polemic with the dominant paradigms of postwar Polish historiography of Polish-Jewish relations between 1939 and 1949.

Joanna B. Michlic March, 17-19 2009, Jerusalem Yet unlike Neighbors, in Fear, Gross does not use an unknown event in the history of Polish-Jewish relations during the Second World War, the Jedwabne massacre of July 10 1941, to question, challenge and reshape the existing historical perspectives. Instead, with the same purpose in mind, he focuses on early postwar historical events that have entered Polish historiography in the last two decades. He discusses the social situation of the remnant of Polish Jews in the early postwar period and in particular, the etiology of the anti-Jewish violence of that time. Regarding the latter, Gross concentrates on the best-known, most-widely researched, and most-widely publicized event, namely the Kielce pogrom of July 4, 1946, whose gore, brutality, and scope of the death, shocked the world. Gross offers a new, passionate and provocative explanation and interpretation of early postwar anti-Jewish violence based on his reading of published and well-known archival data. His goal in writing Fear, as he informs the reader in the introduction, is to disentangle anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz from various phenomena with which it has been conflated. The key phenomenon from which Gross sets out to disentangle anti-Semitism is the anti-Jewish clich of Judeo-communism. His core interpretation of the etiology of early postwar anti-Jewish violence is delivered in one biting sentence: I believe, of a comprehensive documented story: it was widespread collusion in the Nazi-driven plunder, spoliation, and eventual murder of the Jews that generated Polish anti-Semitism after the war, not the alleged postwar Jewish collusion in the imposition of Communism on the Poles. Thus he introduces a vision of PolishJewish relations totally different from the prevailing ideological and social scientific paradigms and master narratives in Polish historical writing, awareness, and collective memory. Fear reveals certain unattractive truths about Polish attitudes and actions towards Jews during the Holocaust, and about the brutal violence the Jewish survivors faced, upon returning to their homes, at the hands of their former Christian Polish neighbors and other members of Polish society in the early postwar period. Fear also takes the reader through a day in the life of a Holocaust survivor in early postwar Poland, documenting the fear Jews continued to feel in their daily lives in the face of latent and violent antiSemitism. Gross treats the wartime and early postwar periods not as separate, but as

Joanna B. Michlic March, 17-19 2009, Jerusalem interconnected historical times. This is a new approach as far as Polish historiography is concerned, but not in English language scholarly discussion of Polish-Jewish relations and the memory of these relations, see, for example, Joanna B. Michlic, Polands Threatening Other: The Image of the Jew from 1880 to the Present, and Michael Steinlauf, Bondage to the Dead. In Grosss view the social environment or the context of the wartime period provides evidence in which to study the causes of early postwar violent anti-Semitism. One might disagree with certain lines of Grosss arguments, or with key elements of his explanatory framework of the etiology of early postwar anti-Jewish violence. Still one has to agree with Fears underlying assumption that the history of early postwar antiSemitism has to be retold anew in Poland. Fear, like Neighbors, is written in the essayist genre, a form that allows the reader to engage with new concepts, new observations, eloquent new reflections and new interpretations, not necessarily fully developed. Fear is not a comprehensive synthetic study providing an overview of the literature of the history of Polish-Jewish relations, and one that refers in a systematic fashion to the theoretical and psychological literature of ethnic violence. Thus, like Neighbors, Fear does not offer a closure on the subject, but rather presents itself as an intellectually provoking invitation to further scholarly discussion that might lead to a deeper understanding of early postwar Polish anti-Semitism, of the social situation of surviving Polish Jews, and of the twentieth century Polish social history. In other words, Fear invites a fresh look at the history of wartime and early postwar Polish-Jewish relations and wartime and early postwar Polish society, and thus at Polish national mythology and identity. Fear itself also demonstrates that there is no single proper method of historical investigation and interpretation. That is the crux of its purpose and meaning. Responses towards Fear Has Grosss call been answered? Who has responded to his invitation by engaging with Fear in meaningful and constructive ways? Who has responded by taking a fresh look at twentieth century Polish history and collective identity? And who has manifestly failed to engage with it in an intellectually constructive manner?

Joanna B. Michlic March, 17-19 2009, Jerusalem The Polish debate about Fear began in 2006 after the publication of the English version of Fear, and intensified prior to and after the publication of the Polish edition of Fear on January 11, 2008. A close look at this debate and its accompanying cultural events suggests that it was primarily non-historically trained intellectuals such as the philosopher Barbara Skarga, the ethnographer Joanna Tokarska-Bakir, the journalists Halina Bortnowska and Teresa Bogucka, and young artists who responded to Grosss invitation in the most intellectually meaningful and constructive ways. This outcome should not be regarded entirely as a surprise, since in the earlier debate about Neighbors, the non-historically trained intellectuals had also succeeded in producing the most sophisticated observations and deep reflections about attitudes and actions towards Polish Jews before, during and after the Holocaust, and about Polish national identity and mythology. As in the debate about Neighbors, the key characteristic of their reactions to Fear was to open a conversation on the subject: to look at it in a fresh way, rather than avoiding it or closing it altogether. For example, in her essay O Strachu, the literary historian Alina Brodzka-Wald calls for Poles to look critically and honestly into Polish national history; to accept the painful and distressing facts of the wartime and early postwar anti-Jewish violence in Poland. She argues that Grosss detailed depiction constitutes a necessary counterbalance to the one-sided idealized image of a national history conjured by contemporary hypocritical manipulators of historical facts. She insists that without accepting the darkest aspects of Polish behavior towards Jews, Poles will continue to live a lie. In a similar vein, in the interview Polacy s bardziej nietolerancyjni od innych, the sociologist and journalist Kinga Dunins warns against failure in coming to terms with historical truths about the early postwar anti-Jewish violence and in not accepting this brutal and shameful chapter of history as an integral part of a collective portrayal of modern Polish society. She evaluates current indifference - if not hostility - towards Fear, and to the process of coming to terms with this history, as a failure that can only have detrimental effects on contemporary Polish society, and specifically on its relationships with ethnic and cultural minorities, both in the present and in the future.

Joanna B. Michlic March, 17-19 2009, Jerusalem Fear also inspired a play about the Holocaust Nic co ludzkie, directed by Pawe Passini, Piotr Ratajczak and ukasz Witt-Michaowski, staged at the Cultural Center in Lublin on January 11, 2008. Conversely, the majority of professional historians, representatives of the Roman Catholic Church (to whom Grosss call was, in a sense, specifically directed), and various commentators from the major Polish dailies Rzeczpospolita and Dziennik, missed Grosss invitation altogether. Their responses to Fear were by no means uniform: they varied along different ideological lines. On the whole, these responses were overwhelmingly negative and did not see in Fear any cognitive, educational and moral value. These responses can be viewed as embedded in fixed modes of thinking, ideological perspectives and historical frames that constitute a barrier to any engagement with the subject in a fresh or novel manner. The negative responses of various representatives of the institutionalized Roman Catholic Church and journalists for Catholic publications (which are not the subject of any extensive discussion here) reveal the limits of the self-critical position within the Roman Catholic Church as far as the Churchs own role in disseminating anti-Jewish attitudes and in causing violent anti-Jewish actions. The comments of some Catholic representatives on Grosss brief comparative remarks about anti-Jewish violence in early postwar Poland and the genocidal violence in Rwanda in the 1990s, also reveal certain cultural prejudices, and a major ahistorical tendency to naively treat Polish anti-Jewish attitudes and actions as a special case, that absolutely cannot be compared to any other cases of anti-minority prejudice and interethnic violence. So far, the critical review of an AmericanIsraeli scholar, David Engel On Continuity and Discontinuity in Polish-Jewish Relations: Observations on Fear, published in East European Politics and Societies, vol. 21, no. 5 in 2007, has been the most constructive and engaging response to Fear by a professional historian. In his review Engel discusses three interconnected lines of inquiries into Polish Jewish relations that should be taken up in order to test the validity of Grosss explanatory framework and his interpretation of the etiology of anti-Jewish violence. Engel suggests a new comparative diachronic analysis that could reveal whether Polish behavior towards Jews after the war displayed a novel, virulent quality. He proposes an examination testing

Joanna B. Michlic March, 17-19 2009, Jerusalem whether early postwar virulence constituted a social norm or was specific only to certain social groups. Engel also urges to garner further evidence in order to establish whether there were any new causes of early postwar anti-Semitism. In the Polish debate, the most engaging response to Fear, and of importance for future historical discussion, was written not by a historian, but by the young literary historian and a photographer Elbieta Janicka, author of an important work on the wartime poet Andrzej Trzebiski. In her critical review Mord rytualny z aryjskiego paragrafu. O ksice Jana Tomasza Grossa Strach. Antysemityzm w Polsce Tu Po Wojnie. Historia moralnej zapaci, published in the quarterly Kultura i Spoeczestwo, no. 2, 2008, (pp.229-252), Janicka closely examines each of Grosss main arguments. She proposes an opposite interpretation of the etiology of anti-Jewish violence to that of the author of Fear. Her major line of argument is that this violence did not have a novel quality and that its causes are rooted in the prewar period. Her interpretation is built on what can be called a constructive discussion or conversation with Fear. This approach clearly differs from the responses of the majority of Polish historians who focused on historical details and aimed at showing flaws in Grosss discussion of the details, rather than also critically engaging with his main theses and proposing their own comprehensive interpretation. Of course Janickas position begs for future historical investigations as to whether hers and Grosss interpretations, which she presents as mutually exclusive, can in fact be complementary. Fear has the potential to stimulate new lines of historical investigation into the early postwar anti-Jewish violence. Much of the Polish historical debate about Fear does nothing to advance knowledge of early postwar Polish-Jewish relations and anti-Jewish violence, and indeed demonstrates that with the exception of a few individuals, the majority of its participants tend to be entrenched and locked in fixed modes of thinking about Polish history and Polish-Jewish relations. These participants are unwilling both for ideological and methodological reasons to look at this history with a fresh eye, and to meaningfully engage and converse with new interpretations. Thus, the historical debate illustrates both the constrains of the Polish historians investigations and simultaneously provides interesting data for the study of contemporary historical awareness and official history writing in Poland. It reveals how enmeshed the historians are in particular visions

Joanna B. Michlic March, 17-19 2009, Jerusalem of Polish national memory and identity and how they rework these visions to suit particular contemporary interests. The voices of historians who took part in the debate can be divided into two groups: those who belong to the reestablished core ethno-nationalist school, rooted in Roman Dmowskis vision of Poland; and those who are not part of that former group, including individuals who publicly oppose the ethno-nationalist model of Polish history, (This is not to say that in some cases such as Krzysztof Jasiewicz, there is no radical shift of positions from the latter to the former, see Jasiewiczs review of the Film Defiance). The ethno-nationalist historians gained an upper hand in the Institute of National Memory (IPN) in 2005, and hence can promote and implement their vision of Polish history in educational programs and historical works under the auspices of the IPN institute. As in the earlier debate about Neighbors, the chief protagonists of this group, Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, Jan ary, Bogdan Musia, Piotr Gontarczyk, John Radzilowski and Ryszard Tyndorf, issued the most derogatory statements against Gross and Fear, echoing their former positions taken up in the debate about Neighbors. Once again they accused Gross of lacking the necessary scholarly training to carry out historical research, and of presenting anti-Polish positions that could lead, or had already led, to the sabotaging of current transnational Polish-Jewish dialogue. There is also nothing new in the ways these individuals handle the difficult aspects of early postwar Polish history in relations to the Polish Jewish community. Just as in the case of the Jedwabne massacre of 10 July 1941, they use a range of strategies to rationalize and justify early postwar anti-Jewish violence and to minimize its criminal nature. Typically they shift blame for anti-Jewish violence upon the victims themselves, by applying as an explanatory concept, a diffused, to a lesser or greater degree, form of Judeocommunism. At the same time, somehow contradicting themselves, they also claim that at this point historians do not have adequate evidence to fully grasp and interpret early postwar anti-Jewish violence and Polish -Jewish relations. Thus the idea that we do not know everything supposedly should lead, in their view, to the dismissal of any interpretations of events which do not fit their logic and arguments. Their main aim is to show Christian/ethnic Polish society in a good light, Polish-Jewish relations as a mixture of good and bad, and to blame the communist postwar regime, and Jewish participation

Joanna B. Michlic March, 17-19 2009, Jerusalem in it for any negative actions taken by Poles against Jews. They also apply the same themes retrospectively in the discussion of anti-Jewish violence of the summer of 1941 to claim that the Poles, not Jews, were a double or continual victim of Jewish actions between 1939 and 1949. The individuals belonging to this school explain anti-Jewish attitudes and actions as a rational reaction against anti-Polish actions on the part of Jews, an explanation that Gross (and others) set out to debunk. In order to dismiss Grosss thesis about opportunistic wartime behavior of Poles who despoiled their Jewish neighbors, ethno-nationalist historians have developed a new theme, one that reinforces the image of the Polish Jews as the bad/untrustworthy protagonists, and of Christian Poles as the good honorable protagonists. Bogdan Musia is the author of the most elaborated version of this new theme, conceiving the surviving Polish Jews as a community of swindlers and cheats who themselves took advantage of the properties left by their murdered fellow Jews in the post-war period. One new element in the debate about Fear was the official IPNs promotion of Marek Jan Chodakiewiczs Po Zagadzie. Stosunki polsko-ydowskie 1944-1947 during the launch of the Polish edition of Fear in Poland. Chodakiewiczs work was conceived as a counterwork to Fear, one that would block its positive reception and that would unmask its alleged anti-Polish character. In other words Po Zagadzie was conceived as a whip directed at Fear. This is a good illustration of the extent to which the current leadership of IPN politicizes history as a discipline. The ethno-nationalist historians treat the history of Polish-Jewish relations as a zero-sum game, our version or theirs. Such treatment has become an accepted norm of a historical discourse in the post-Jedwabne period. This approach might prove the biggest threat to the future scholarly history writings in Poland and specifically to the integration of the history of Polish-Jewish relations into Polish history in a way that will not offer an ideological bias. The second group of historians who took part in the debate, unlike the ethnonationalists, does not represent a single uniform ideological agenda. This is a group consisting of many accomplished, first-rate scholars who have produced cutting edge works on modern Polish history and on Polish-Jewish relations. With the exception of Marcin Kula and Andrzej Friszke, the reception of Fear within this group was polite but lukewarm. On the whole they missed the opportunity to take up Grosss invitation to

Joanna B. Michlic March, 17-19 2009, Jerusalem critically explore the regnant interpretations of modern Polish history (including their own positions) and place them in a new light. They also failed to provide a full constructive counter-interpretation to that of Grosss. In his article Obrocy Swoich, the social historian Marcin Kula analyses some formal/technical reasons for this lukewarm reception. The first is a major tendency in history book reviews to concentrate on details only and eagerly search for factual errors in ones colleagues writings, rather than focusing on main lines of arguments and interpretation. Polish history writing generally tends to be rooted in a traditional positivist model, to focus on one period, and to be much more descriptive than analytical and interpretive. The second interwoven reason is that Polish historians conceive of one traditional form of writing history as the only proper method of scholarly expression. Thus they find the choice to depart from the typical descriptive historical narrative by applying theoretical works and open narratives which self-consciously uncover the process by which the historian constructs his or her argument, an oddity. In his article Gross i chopcy narodowcy, Andrzej Friszke takes up Grosss invitation to question, reexamine and more deeply reflect on contemporary conditions of writing Polish social history of the 1940s. Friszke correctly identifies a major weakness in Grosss approach, the exclusion of the prewar historical context from his analysis, and a lack of nuance in the discussion of some of the issues. But he does not deny the validity of Gross main theses about wartime spoliation of Jewish property and about the ethnic Polish composition of the ranks-and-files of the early postwar communist regime in the making. Friszke notes the strength of Fear in its ability to question and reshape major historical themes such as the Polish underground states treatment of the Holocaust, the reaction of the institutionalized Roman Catholic Church to the ongoing destruction of Polish Jews during WWII, and the attitudes of Polish society, emerging from the war, towards the newly forming communist regime. Friszke, who himself is a leading authority on the history of post-1945 underground movements, sees in Fear, an opportunity to rework the general historical portrayal of Polish society of the 1940s and 1950s. But he also views Fear as a contributing factor to the polarization of the historical discourse between the ethno-nationalist historical school and the more inclusive democratic/pluralistic history school, rooted in the PPS traditions. His latter remark

Joanna B. Michlic March, 17-19 2009, Jerusalem somewhat misses the point because Gross is not simply a co-producer of this polarization, but rather is its manifestation. The polarization of the current historical discourse on Polish-Jewish relations and on other national figures, events and developments shows a societal divide with deep historical and ideological roots. Historians, like other people born into certain communities, are shaped by certain ideologies and visions of their national history, which, in turn, influence their own writings. This approach has been particularly intense in Eastern Europe, but is not unique to the region. In her various polite and elegant responses to Fear, Boena Szaynok, who is recognized as the main historical authority on the Kielce pogrom, questions Grosss approach to the subject and his explanation of the etiology of early postwar anti-Jewish violence. She is neither keen on the language in which Gross presents his theses nor on the form in which they are delivered. In her discussion of Fear, she focuses on historical details pertaining to the discussion of anti-Jewish violence, especially the Kielce pogrom. In her overview of the Kielce pogrom, she accuses Gross for not taking into account the conceptualization of the Kielce pogrom put forward by Krystyna Kersten in the early 1990s. According to it, scholars do not know the extent to which this pogrom was a provocation masterminded by the Soviet or Polish communist forces in order to undermine the good name of Poland, and to what extent a spontaneous riot. Szaynok overlooks that the provocation theory as an analytical tool is very problematic, and so far has not contributed anything constructive to the discussion of the etiology of early postwar anti-Jewish violence. It should be abandoned altogether because, after all, it is rooted in the early postwar ideological battle. Underground and official oppositional forces and the communist regime used the provocation theory in a propaganda war with each other immediately after the Kielce pogrom. At the center of all the parties discourse was not the issue of the Jewish victims and their suffering, but the issue of the blemish made on the good image of Poland by the Kielce pogrom. Coming from opposing ideological and political stands they all implied one way or the other that the true Poles had nothing to do with anti-Jewish violence, that the violence had no spontaneous character. Thus, historians of various ideological provenances who have incorporated such assumption into their writings, consciously or

10

Joanna B. Michlic March, 17-19 2009, Jerusalem unconsciously tend to minimize the spontaneous aspect of the violence or not deal with a problem of spontaneity of violence. Pawe Machcewicz, a first rate historian who played a major role in the debate about Jedwabne, is also skeptical about the importance or relevance of Fear for the study of the subject. Similarly to Szaynok, Machcewicz views Fear as a one-dimensional work characterized by a radical interpretation and delivered in sharp biting language. According to Machcewicz, early postwar violence did not have unique qualities; it was part of the general daily brutality and violence of the early postwar years. Therefore he criticizes Gross for neglecting general historical context of early postwar period. Moreover, Machcewicz claims that Fear does not contribute anything new because the experts are already familiar with the subject and the data, and have described them fully. This latter position exposes an overwhelming confidence that no new sources could ever be found and that no new interpretation can ever throw a new light onto the subject. What is surprising is that such a position should come from the co-author of the two-volume monograph of historical writing and primary data Wok Jedwabnego, a remarkable historians achievement of the debate about Jedwabne. Machcewicz does not seem to draw a lesson from the fact that many primary sources, in the second volume of Wok Jedwabnego, were freshly dug out of various local archives and have not yet been fully utilized. The future research on the subject of Fear The continual discovery of new archival material, even partial, in recent years should alert scholars like Machcewicz to the fact that by no means all archival Jewish, Polish and other sources have been uncovered and fully utilized in the investigation of the early postwar Polish-Jewish relations and anti-Jewish violence. Historians still stumble upon new evidence that could deepen our understanding of perceptions and experiences of early postwar realities in Poland and that could validate and add a nuance to the existing interpretations of Polish-Jewish relations. For example, it will be worthwhile to conduct an analysis of the ample body of contemporaneous accounts, such as autobiographical testimonies of Polish Jewish children and adults who spent the war in the Soviet Union and who briefly stayed in Poland before and during the Kielce pogrom,

11

Joanna B. Michlic March, 17-19 2009, Jerusalem before embarking on a further journey via postwar Germany. This material could further illuminate the experience of Polish Jews in an early postwar Poland and contribute to the understanding of the major dilemma of the survivors, their experienced chasm between their dream about the return to their own country and the negative reception they encountered upon arrival to Poland. Oral histories, in all its forms and in a variety of settings, are also indispensable sources to fully reconstruct the mindset of perpetrators and eyewitnesses and the memory of early postwar anti-Jewish violence. Given the current fetishization of the archive in Polish historiography, historians are neglecting oral histories projects and are leaving them to ethnographs such as Alina Caa and Joanna Tokarska Bakir and filmmakers such as Marcel oziski and Andrzej mijewski. Although volumes of documents have mainly been published about the Kielce pogrom, there is no monograph similar to the two volume Wok Jedwabnego that would encompass a vital selection of multiple archival, press and oral sources on latent and violent anti-Semitism and on the entire spectrum of Polish-Jewish relations of the early postwar period, and on the reactions of Jews and non-Jews to specific events and developments. Thus, instead of attempting to close the discussion on the subject because nothing new can be said about it, as Machcewicz implies, one could reflect on how much work still awaits historians. Fear, as earlier mentioned, is an invitation to explore new avenues of historical investigations. Grosss explanation of early postwar anti-Jewish violence is an example of a rationalistic perspective on ethnic violence, in which there is no independent place for passion and non-rational perceptions and non-rational stereotypes as triggers of the violent outbursts against Jews. The violence is viewed as a consequence of rational action: ordinary Poles widespread collusion with Nazi-driven extermination of the Jews and the spoliation of Jewish property. In the early postwar period when Jewish survivors began to return to their home, their non-Jewish neighbors who had stolen their property or were squatting in their houses had reason to feel fear, as Gross asserts. Thus, Grosss understanding of fear on the part of perpetrators is also rational. But there is also a large body of evidence attesting that segments of early postwar Polish society displayed a fear of Jews that was not rational. They expressed irrational fear of Jews as alleged

12

Joanna B. Michlic March, 17-19 2009, Jerusalem killers of Christian Polish children, and exhibited other related beliefs, adapted to the early postwar societal conditions, such as no Jewess will give birth until she receives Christian blood. Special units of the Ministry of Public Security registered that such beliefs were widely circulated in various strata of early postwar Polish society, not only among peasants and uneducated, but also among the middle class. An investigation of how these two kinds of fears, rational and non-rational, interacted could advance our understanding of the explosive nature and indiscriminate character of the early postwar anti-Jewish violence. It could reveal the extent to which these two fears could be seen as complementary rather than exclusive. Early postwar violent anti-Semitism could also be investigated as an emotional response to events, perceived in a prejudicial way, and embodied in the slogan we will teach them a lesson or, as William Hagen has suggested in his study of anti-Jewish violence of 1918-1920, as the enactment of scripts by which perpetrators aimed to restore their idea of the local normative order and demonstrated their actions as righteous. What the debate about Fear demonstrates is an urgent need for comparative studies of anti-Jewish violence, both diachronic and synchronic. Comparative analyses entail a double work for a scholar and involve cooperation with other scholars, yet can be illuminating. Diachronic analyses of anti-Jewish violence in Poland between 1918 and 1949, like those Engel and Michlic have proposed, would test whether the early postwar violence had a novel character and became a social norm, as Gross interprets. These analyses would also reexamine the anatomy of violence and its various participants, including the role of Christian Polish women in triggering anti-Jewish hostility and causing an atmosphere of anti-Jewish panic. By looking at this violence from a comparative perspective we could learn whether this violence was recurrent and had a hot character, whether it was driven by ethno-nationalist exclusivist anti-Semitic ideology, and whether the long-standing ethno-nationalist notion of house cleaning constituted rationalization and justification for the violence all the time between 1918 and 1949 or only during a specific period. A scholarly comparison of early postwar violence in Poland with early postwar anti-Jewish violence in Slovakia, Hungary and Ukraine should put an end to the typical argument in Polish historical and popular discussion that we were not the only ones, the

13

Joanna B. Michlic March, 17-19 2009, Jerusalem violence also happened elsewhere, an argument that from a cognitive point of view is useless. The synchronic comparison of anti-Jewish violence in early postwar East-Central Europe could throw a new light on issues such as the ability to attract participants, indiscriminate character of the violence, its scale and explosiveness, the mix of impulsive and instrumental elements and the historical contexts. Only by completing this comparison the degree to which the violent Polish anti-Semitism was dissimilar from and/or similar to other such occurrences could be established. Finally, the reactions to Fear indicate an urgent need for further in-depth studies of the Polish memory of early postwar violence. A detailed discussion of commonalities and differences in responses to anti-Jewish violence past and present would reveal the extent to which the current discourse has advanced and whether the arguments use contemporarily are new and sensu stricto scientific, and whether they have their intellectual and ideological roots in the previous periods, especially in the time the violence took place and its immediate aftermath. In light of the responses to Fear, the rather modest expectations of the abovementioned Tadeusz Zaderecki that his work would facilitate further research and gain intellectual and moral support among people of goodwill seem applicable to Fear.

14