Beyond Censorship: Polish Independent Press Debates on Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah

Communist Poland and the History of the Holocaust and Polish–Jewish Relations

History was one of the most important topics in the self-published books and periodicals distributed in Poland. It was dominated by threads related to Soviet crimes against Poles and the building of a communist system in Poland. Generally, more was written about communist crimes than about Nazi crimes, which were widely discussed in official publishing in Poland. Jewish topics were not among the most popular historical subjects appearing in the second circulation, and for a long time texts on this subject were relatively few (although the Biuletyn Dolnośląski published a special edition on this subject in 1980). Generally, for a long time after March ’68, this topic was taboo in Poland. This situation changed slowly over the course of the 1980s. An important context was the desire to improve relations with Israel. In 1983, two events took place that had an effect on the presence of Jewish topics in public debate: the publication of a special issue of the Catholic monthly Znak and the dispute between the authorities and the opposition over the celebration of the fortieth anniversary of the outbreak of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (separate official and opposition commemorations). The real revival of discussion about Polish–Jewish relations in opposition circles took place in 1985–1987. Its manifestations were an issue of the émigré-published periodical Aneks (Annex) on Polish–Jewish relations; the ground-breaking text by the literary critic Jan Błoński “Poor Poles Look at the Ghetto,” ⁶ published in the Catholic opposition journal Tygodnik Powszechny; a documentary by Marcel Łoziński on the Kielce pogrom (1946) titled Witnesses, as well as the work of Lanzmann. They were all connected by confronting difficult issues for Poles and they provoked discussion in opposition circles. The debate around Shoah was particularly interesting because of the highly critical campaign organized by the authorities.

Starting in the late 1940s and the beginning of the 1950s, the communist authorities in Poland started to promote the image of organized and mass aid by Poles to Jews during the war. This topic became much more important after March ’68, both in research and the mass media. In the 1970s, in the state-controlled press, the attention of researchers was focused primarily on the issue of organized help for Jews, and the situation of those hiding in the cities, for example, in Warsaw, was analyzed as well. Only to some extent were they interested in the issue of aid by individuals. Much attention was still devoted to denouncing texts published abroad that were considered to be defamatory to Poles by referring to their complicity in crimes. However, in comparison to the campaign of 1968, the language and scope of these polemics were more restrained. The argument that was then used polemically was the number of Poles awarded the title of “Righteous Among the Nations.” Although this number spoke “in favor” of the Poles, in some circles the Yad Vashem procedure was considered to be not transparent enough or even discriminatory, since many Poles who had rescued or supported Jews did not appear in the group of “Righteous.” It is worth noting that in the 1970s, the issue of help given to Jews began to appear in broader studies concerning the German occupation of the Polish territories. In addition, both the number of Jews saved from the Holocaust and Poles who contributed to this were inflated. Only studies conducted after the political transformation of 1989 contributed to the verification of the wartime reality in this area.

In the late 1970s and 1980s, the situation began to change. In Poland, a new willingness to examine the thorny and difficult problem of Polish–Jewish relations resulted from a growth of interest in the Polish Jewish past that was characteristic of those years. The experiences of the Solidarity movement in 1980–1981 gave the Poles a greater sense of self-esteem. Nevertheless, in the 1980s, research in particular on the phenomenon of organized aid was expanded, focused mainly on the “Żegota” Council for Aid to Jews, the Polish Underground State, cooperation of the Jewish Fighting Organization with the Polish armed forces, and the clergy’s rescue mission. ⁷ But this does not mean the topics have been well and comprehensively developed. Even today, some of these aspects are still being researched. One of the most important monographs published at that time was Teresa Prekerowa’s book on the “Żegota” Council for Aid to Jews. ⁸ The author described the structure of this organization and outlined its main activities, as well as the profiles of people associated with this organization. She also referred to the agencies of “Żegota” operating in Krakow and Lviv. In the 1980s, memoirs and testimonies relating to the occupation were published as well, including the diary of the chief of the Warsaw Judenrat, Adam Czerniaków. Emanuel Ringelblum’s books have a special place among works published in this period—one devoted to events in the Warsaw Ghetto, the other on Polish–Jewish relations. ⁹ During this period, the famous album Żydzi Polscy: Historia i kultura (Polish Jews: History and Culture) was released. ¹⁰ The authorities’ main idea behind this publication was to bring readers closer to the world that was destroyed during World War II. It should be added that around the fortieth anniversary of the outbreak of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, articles relating to the state of Israel, in particular the ongoing Arab–Jewish conflict, were also published. Usually these texts assessed Israel’s policy in this field negatively. Articles on the lack of involvement of the United States, Great Britain, and other Western powers in saving Jews during World War II also appeared in the daily/weekly press. Representatives of the Jewish diaspora in these countries were equally negatively perceived. According to the authors of the texts related to this issue, they did nothing to help to dying Jews, although they were aware of their fate. ¹¹ Nevertheless, the issues of national minorities were not key for the authorities. This topic was treated as not very important, especially since the Jewish community in the 1980s was almost invisible in Poland. The remaining few, gathered around the Social and Cultural Society of Jews in Poland or the Jewish Historical Institute, represented a kind of relic of the past for the Polish majority. By the beginning of the eighties, however, growing interest in Jewish history and culture caused some Jewish people to talk openly about their origin or even search for their roots. From 1982, on Polish Radio, on the occasion of Jewish holidays, thematic programs appeared, and from 1983, the “Jewish Calendar” was published. Gradually, renovation works at Jewish cemeteries and synagogues began. Anniversaries of the outbreak of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising were also celebrated. Special celebrations took place in 1983, forty years after these events. ¹² As has already been stressed, after the end of martial law and in the second half of the 1980s, the PRL’s policy towards Israel changed. Diplomatic relations were resumed, while still bearing in mind Poland’s good relations with the Arab states. Research on the history and culture of the Polish Jews was conducted in the country, expanding this issue beyond the themes of the Second World War.

At the same time, there was no particular interest in individual assistance to Jews; and the attitude of the inhabitants of the Polish provinces was an area that was particularly neglected in this respect. The employees of the Institute of the History of the People’s Movement usually dealt with events in the countryside during the occupation, mainly emphasizing positive aspects of peasants helping Jewish escapees. The same happened with respect to the Catholic church and help given to Jews by its representatives, a topic discussed primarily in the pages of church historiography.

Some important events that affected the debate on Polish–Jewish relations must be mentioned here. One of them was the so-called Jewish issue of the Catholic monthly Znak published in February 1983. Another was the beginning of the Oświęcim Carmelite convent controversy in 1984, and the third was the academic conference on Polish–Jewish relations held in Oxford in the autumn of 1984. As Jean Charles Szurek described the agenda of the conference, “Each phase of the millennial history of Jewish–Polish relations was analyzed, and it was obvious that the period of German occupation raised the most lively controversies.” ¹³ At that conference, the creation of one of the most important journals, Polin: A Journal of Polish-Jewish Studies, was decided. A turning point in the discussion of Polish Jewish issues in the Polish independent press was Jan Błoński’s article “Biedni Polacy patrzą na ghetto” (The Poor Poles Look at the Ghetto) published in Tygodnik Powszechny on 11 January 1987. Błoński called on the Poles to accept some degree of responsibility for the fate of their Jewish fellow citizens under German occupation. Their guilt did not consist, in his view, in their involvement in the mass murder of the Jews. He claimed that the Poles did not participate significantly in killing Jews. According to him it was about the Poles’ “insufficient effort to resist,” their “holding back” from offering help to Jews. This was the consequence of the fact that, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Poles had not created conditions in which Jews could be integrated into the Polish national community. Błoński’s article was perceived as a controversial one. It also revealed that the need to come to terms with the more problematic aspects of the Polish Jewish past was to be found only within a minority of the Polish intelligentsia and was certainly not shared by the society as a whole.

Lanzmann’s Shoah and the Poles

Before we analyze the uncensored debate on Shoah, we would like to recall some basic facts about the film. Lanzmann had worked on it for almost eleven years before it was released in France in May 1985. Documents were collected in fourteen countries, there were about 350 hours of footage, and the editing itself took five years. The whole film lasts about nine and a half hours. Some shots, in particular those in which the director talked with perpetrators, were filmed secretly. The film was based on material shot especially for it. The director did not use archival photographs or documentary footage shot during the war. Lanzmann gave the floor to those who became the victims of the German extermination policy, but also talked with their neighbors (witnesses) as well as the perpetrators. ¹⁴ As Jean Charles Szurek concluded in his article on Shoah: “Lanzmann’s approach ought to make specialists in social science who work on historical issues reflect on what they are doing. It is through restaging, through a sort of theatrical technique, that the past is reintroduced into the present, brutally conferring on it a dramatic intensity and a precision that cannot be achieved by other means.” ¹⁵

The main theme of the film is the final stage of the Holocaust. Lanzmann did not portray life in the ghettos or in transit camps like Westerbork, but showed final moments such as the arrival of the transports of European Jews onto occupied Polish soil or discussed the ways the death camps operated. Nevertheless, one other issue aroused much controversy even before the film was aired in Poland. This was related to the light in which Lanzmann showed Polish witnesses of the Holocaust, as well as the question of the purpose he had in mind. These so-called “Polish accents” can be often found in the film. Firstly, all of the extermination centers referred to in the movie were those established by Nazi Germany on occupied Polish territory. Because the director did not use archival materials in the film, one of the most important elements is the landscape where it was filmed: the Polish landscape of the 1970s, that is, a country ruled for over thirty years by the communist authorities, dominated by scenes of poverty and economic backwardness. The film shows the remnants of the German extermination camps, and existing monuments commemorating the victims, designed in line with the aesthetics of the time. The camps were located in secluded areas near small towns rather than in the centers of big cities; hence, in Shoah, the images of these places and their residents became important elements in the director’s message. The poverty of the villages visited by Lanzmann is clearly evident, as is their neglect, the poor education of the local population, their limited vocabulary, and their use of stereotypes. Lanzmann asked them about their feelings not only in connection with the deportation of their Jewish neighbors, but also about their deepening awareness of their death. In this context, various statements were made, with the screen also showing the different facial expressions of respondents. Some people reacted emotionally, clearly touched by memories of the fate of the Jews during World War II. But Lanzmann’s inability to communicate with the peasants is clear. This touches not only their language but also their culture. As Szurek pointed out, “There is a communication problem, in every sense of the term, between Lanzmann and the Polish peasants. If his powers of investigation and perception are wholly present when he speaks directly to his interlocutors in either English or German, the mediating translation [from the Polish] does not always—even at important moments—allow him to grasp the nuances of the peasants’ discourse.” ¹⁶ However, he mostly chose such interlocutors. In the whole long movie, only one Pole of the so-called elite is presented—Jan Karski. The other non-Jewish character that can be perceived as positive in the film is the locomotive driver Henryk Gawkowski. ¹⁷

However, in watching the film, one gets the impression that many of the interviewees seem most moved by the fact that a foreign film director is talking to them and filming them. Thus, even difficult and poignant issues were discussed with a smile, maybe even a kind of pride and excitement. There were also those who showed off in front of the camera and emphasized their knowledge of the topic being analyzed. Two scenes were particularly overwhelming in the context of Polish–Jewish relations and the image of Poles in Lanzmann’s film. One was shot in front of the Catholic church in Chełmno, and the other in Grabowo, not far from Chełmno. In April 1942, about 1,200 Jews were deported from Grabów to Chełmno. Mordechaj Podchlebnik, one of the survivors who shown in the film, also escaped from the Kulmhof death camp through this town.

The first shot mentioned above was considered anti-Polish by the Polish public and was seen as proof of Lanzmann’s bias against Poles and his intention of showing them as anti-Semites. ¹⁸ In this scene, a group of people, mostly of an advanced age, gathered around Szymon Srebrnik, one of the three refugees from the extermination camp in Chełmno, who had lived in this community as a child. Lanzmann asked those present there whether they were happy to see Szymek (diminutive of his name) Srebrnik among the living. Everyone answered yes and said they remembered him as a small, thin boy who carried water and sang songs. In the next frames, the Poles gathered in front of the church are asked a question: Do they remember the Jews locked up in the church? Again, they agree that they do and complement each other, adding that some even called on Mary and Jesus. Others also clarify that the Jews had suitcases full of gold with them. Some added that sometimes they or other locals would bring them food or water. Lanzmann asked a particularly important question about their opinion on the causes of the Shoah: Why did this happen to the Jews? The almost automatic answer was that Jews were the richest and therefore the Germans wanted to liquidate them. There was also a statement regarding punishment for the crucifixion of Jesus. Lanzmann also asked if they were sorry that there were no more Jews in the town. The answer was, “Why not? A Jew is also a human being.” ¹⁹ The statements quoted are inscribed in anti-Semitic clichés, which were often reproduced in non-educated society, and had often been heard earlier, for example, in homes or from the church pulpit. The debates around this scene were further fueled by the director’s statements in which he seemed to equate Catholicism with anti-Semitism and implied that the Germans allegedly located extermination centers on occupied Polish territory, because they hoped for an approving silence from the Poles. ²⁰

The second of the scenes discussed contained conversations with the inhabitants of Grabów, a small town near Chełmno. Jewish property was one of the issues addressed. The content of the conversations was dominated by stereotypical messages. Lanzmann asked various questions, including about how Poles remembered their Jewish neighbors. The film recorded opinions that the men were ugly: overgrown hair, with payes [side-locks], they had long beards and gave off an unpleasant smell. The women were remembered as beautiful, which was part of their stereotypical perception. Men also mentioned that they often fell in love with them, which made their Polish women friends jealous. They were sorry those women were gone. Women specified that the beauty of Jewish women was due to the fact that “they did nothing but contemplate their beauty, dressed nicely.” It was also widely claimed that all the town’s capital was in Jewish hands. Lanzmann also asked biased questions such as “Do you think it’s good that there are no more Jews or not?” One person replied: “They disturbed me. Jews had all the industry before the war in Poland (and Germany). They were mean to us, dishonest. They lived out of the exploitation of Poles. Every best-paying profession—it was Jews, and they would take from the Pole as much as they could.” The other question was, “What do you think about gassing these Jews in the gazvagen?” The interlocutor replied: “If they had voluntarily moved to Israel, we would be glad, but they were unpleasantly murdered.” The director also asked: “Is it a shame there are no Jews?” Someone from the crowd replied: “It’s a shame because there were pretty Jewish women.” Another person replied: “Better than before, because before the war she had to harvest potatoes, and now she has a stall with eggs, so she is much better.” There were also other questions related to prewar Polish–Jewish coexistence as well as to wartime relations between both groups. ²¹ Those about houses or items that previously belonged to Jews and later were taken over by Poles were perceived by the audience as provocative questions.

It’s Hard to Discuss a Movie That Can’t Be Watched

Information about the aforementioned scenes and Lanzmann’s statements meant that immediately after the Paris première in April 1985 the film was recognized by the Polish authorities and their media as “anti-Polish.” Already on the day of the première, a letter from the PRL authorities was sent to the French authorities expressing their opposition to the messages implied in the film. The atmosphere was heated by Lanzmann’s statements claiming to have orchestrated his film as a kind of indictment against Poland and arguing that the extermination of Jews did not bother anyone in Poland. In the fall of 1985, during the debate in Oxford about the movie, he said the opposite, arguing that Poles could not have done anything to help the Jews. ²² The contradictions in the director’s statements encouraged the spread of rumors and speculation about the reception of the film in Poland, where the film would not be seen for a long time.

Initially, the Polish authorities had decided that the film would not be shown in Poland. In the fall of 1985, they changed their minds and not only allowed the entire film to be screened in a few cinemas, in Wrocław and Warsaw (its limited range should not be surprising, because the nine-hour documentary was definitely only a proposal for the most ambitious viewer), but also permitted screenings of the parts pertaining to Poland on public television. This hour and a half screening took place on 30 October, accompanied by a discussion of the same duration by intellectuals associated with the authorities of the PRL. These were Franciszek Ryszka, a lawyer and historian of fascism; Andrzej Grzegorczyk, a philosopher, mathematician, and Warsaw insurgent, the director of the National Publishing Institute and a member of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers’ Party; Andrzej Wasilewski, former head of the Office for Religious Affairs; Kazimierz Kąkol, the director of the Main Commission for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes–Institute of National Remembrance; Krzysztof Teodor Toeplitz, a journalist for the weekly Polityka; and Szymon Szurmiej, an actor, and director of “the Ester Rachel and Ida Kamińska Jewish Theater in Warsaw,” as well as a member of the Polish Parliament. They all subjected Lanzmann’s film to very severe criticism. ²³ Since it was mainly the parts about Poland that were broadcast, this gave the impression that Polish anti-Semitism was the main subject of the film. ²⁴ Later, other selected fragments of the film were also shown on television.

In opposition circles, it was difficult to discuss a movie that you have never seen. Wiktor Woroszylski, one of the leading poets associated with the opposition, noted in his diaries a conversation about Lanzmann’s film with Władysław Bartoszewski and his wife Zofia. He mentioned that none of the interlocutors had seen the movie, so they did not know what was really there. He emphasized that “I am not confident about Lanzmann’s credibility and the reliability of the whole work, and the Bartoszewskis also have reservations about Jan Karski, [and] claim that he has been crazy about this for years and could talk nonsense.” ²⁵ Another leading opposition writer Jan Józef Szczepański wrote about his impressions after watching the fragments shown on television: “A pathetic picture of an anachronistic province of the world, inhabited by dumb and miserable people. But their testimonies are at least honest in contrast to the neat Germans who knew nothing.” ²⁶ Szczepański commented on the next fragment of the film shown two months later: “Indeed, Lanzmann chose Polish witnesses with some intent, visible in his way of asking questions. The most poignant sequence of this episode is reading highly professional instructions for the construction of gas chamber cars against the background of the company’s modern plant.” ²⁷ An important context for the underground debates about the Lanzmann film is provided in an article written by Jerzy Turowicz, the editor-in-chief of Tygodnik Powszechny. He had the opportunity to see the movie during the above-mentioned discussion in Oxford. He described Lanzmann’s film as a great work, but at the same time he protested against its theses, pointing to his one-sidedness and failure to show the large scale of help by Poles to Jews. He wrote, among other things, that the Poles’ anti-Semitism cannot be justified, but it had “nothing to do with the Holocaust.” ²⁸

The decision of the authorities not to allow the film to be broadcast in Poland met with criticism in the leading magazines of the Polish independent publishing movement: Tygodnik Mazowsze (Mazovia Weekly) and KOS. The well-known journalist and organizer of the independent Jewish community and a leading underground leftist publicist Konstanty Gebert (under the penname “Dawid Warszawski”) wrote in KOS that perhaps the film actually contains content “defamatory toward the Polish nation,” and some of the director’s statements quoted by the Polish press make this supposition probable, if they were correctly translated and quoted. He emphasized that if the film indeed implies that Poles were accomplices in the “Nazi genocide,” then one would have to support the letter of the communist government to the French authorities, which, however, could not be done without watching the film. In such a situation, Dawid Warszawski appealed for withholding judgment. Taking the opportunity to comment on Polish–Jewish relations, this leading underground journalist referred to theses on the film promoted in the official propaganda of the Polish People’s Republic. He emphasized the heroism of thousands of Poles who rescued Jews and at the same time pointed to the passivity of the vast majority of society. He also remarked that the cases of cooperation between some Poles and the Nazis were difficult to quantify, but were “quite a frequent phenomenon.” Gebert appealed to Poles to do some soul-searching vis-à-vis history, because only that would give them an opportunity to respond to, as he put it, the really shameful slander about the collaboration of the Polish nation with the Nazis in the genocide of the Jews (other than hysterical propaganda or embarrassing silence). He considered the common silence of Poles on the truth as an indication of public support for the regime’s stance. ²⁹

Gebert and Turowicz’s texts provoked Roman Zimand to speak on the subject. He was one of the well-known opposition journalists (under the nickname “Leopolita”). Zimand was Jewish, and part of his family had perished in the Holocaust. He went a long political path from a dogmatic communist through revisionism and finally became an anti-communist. Zimand was critical of discussing a movie that he had never seen: “The range of people who, without watching the Shoah documentary, found it possible to comment on this subject is amazing. As long as Życie Warszawy ³⁰ did it—everything was fine. Ultimately, the condemnation ‘of the unseen’ Dr. Zhivago by leading critics and leading milkmaids belongs to normal Soviet morals. It is worse when Dawid Warszawski gets down to the same topic and also for something unseen. But here too, one can explain something: Dawid Warszawski, quite often, takes the floor in matters about which he clearly has no clue.” Zimand was surprised that Tygodnik Powszechny took part in, as he wrote, “this collective show.” ³¹ Gebert’s reply was as follows: “Well, in this article I did not deal with the film itself at all, but only with some elements of the propaganda campaign launched in the PRL ³² press on the occasion of its Paris première. Similarly, so did Tygodnik Powszechny, also reprimanded by Leopolita. It would be nice if Leopolita, an author whom I value and respect, did not go too hastily to the principles of honest polemics, ordering us to read the text before criticizing it.” ³³ An important context for this exchange of opinions between two leading underground journalists is the fact that immediately after the publication of Gebert’s first text about Shoah, Zimand decided to stop publishing his regular column in KOS. The reason was his reluctance to share columns with Gebert, with whom he had previously disagreed many times. It is possible that the Shoah movie controversy also played a role in this dispute. ³⁴

One of the most important texts on Shoah in the international debate was the piece by Timothy Garton Ash entitled “The Life of Death.” It was published in the New York Review of Books in December 1985 (this issue also discussed the famous 1984 German film series “Heimat” by Edgar Reitz). Garton Ash wrote about the huge impression Lanzmann’s movie made on him. He emphasized that Lanzmann applied various criteria to his work: both artistic and historical. From the historical point of view, according to Garton Ash, complaints about the image of Poles are justified. At the same time, he pointed to some positive aspects of showing Lanzmann’s film in Poland. Garton Ash criticized the reaction to Jerzy Turowicz’s speech in Oxford (Garton Ash was also present there), even accusing him of nationalism. ³⁵ After a few months, Turowicz responded to Garton Ash’s text:

Mr. Garton Ash qualifies my intervention as a “rather shocking” expression of Polish nationalism. Well, it is a rather painful accusation when addressed to somebody who all his life has been fighting against nationalism (and anti-Semitism) in his own country. But my reaction to Mr. Garton Ash’s article is not motivated by my “wounded feelings,” the problem is much larger and more important. I totally agree with Mr. Garton Ash that Shoah is a great film and a really haunting presentation of the terrible fate of the Jews in the days of the Holocaust. I also agree that the “Polish part” of the film is relatively secondary and marginal. But it was exactly this part that was the subject of the Oxford discussion, organized by the Institute for Polish-Jewish Studies. And maybe—it was not so marginal, given that after the Paris première of Shoah, the conclusion presented in the French mass media was that the Poles had their share in the guilt and responsibility for the extermination of the Jews.

Turowicz recalled Lanzmann’s harmful words about Poles. He stressed that the reason for the extermination camps’ location on Polish territory was not the anti-Semitism of the Poles but the size of the Jewish community there. He underlined the unequivocally philo-Semitic attitude of Tygodnik Powszechny, pointing out that the relationship between Catholics and Jews had changed. Turowicz ended with the following words: “In the first part of his article, Mr. Garton Ash, while reviewing another film, Heimat by Edgar Reitz, is quite aware of the deep anti-Americanism of this German work. Why does he then underestimate the anti-Polish (and anti-Catholic) bias of Shoah?” ³⁶ Garton Ash defended his diagnosis of peasant anti-Semitism during and after the war. At the same time, he recognized that his comments on Turowicz and Tygodnik Powszechny had been badly received. He emphasized his respect for the editor and the magazine he directed. ³⁷

Shoah was getting more and more coverage, and therefore the editors of independent magazines wanted to address the topic. The editors of KOS hoped that one of the leaders of the underground Solidarity, Wiktor Kulerski, particularly interested in Jewish issues, would participate in the Shoah discussion. Another opposition activist, Stefan Starczewski, wrote to him in the spring of 1985, asking if he would like to discuss Lanzmann’s work. ³⁸ According to Starczewski’s letter to Kulerski, they both saw a lot of inaccuracies in the film. ³⁹ Kulerski promised to present his position on this issue. In one of his letters, Starczewski wrote:

In the meantime, I talked to three people who did see the film and agree that it is not anti-Polish. Interviews with peasants from around Treblinka show an immeasurable lack of their moral reflection, but they are authentic. Lanzmann did not talk to people who saved Jews, neither in Poland nor elsewhere. This is due to the concept of his film—a false concept, in my opinion. Certainly, however, he lied in some interviews, revealing simply the surprising ignorance of the realities of the time he made the film about—he claims, for example, that the villages around the extermination camps were making a fortune on Jewish gold, ⁴⁰ which was simply not possible, since almost no one was able to escape from the camps. There were protests in the French Jewish press . . . in this matter, as well as the one-dimensional image of Poles’ attitude toward Jews. . . . Another element of the film is its anti-Christian take—for Lanzmann, it’s the 2000-year history of Christian antisemitism that bears indirect responsibility for the Holocaust. And it is difficult to deny some logic to this, hence the negative assessment of the Polish Catholic Church contained in his film.

Starczewski also wrote that Seweryn Blumsztajn, a Jewish born oppositionist and émigré, was allegedly considering writing a protest about the way Poles were portrayed in the film. ⁴¹ Kulerski did not take a separate position on the Shoah case at that point.

The Defenders Who Were Not Uncritical

When Lanzmann’s film had reached Poland’s movie theaters, Konstanty Gebert returned to this topic in autumn. His position was not unambiguous. On the one hand, the journalist drew attention to the importance of the film for the perpetuation of the memory of the Holocaust, which was especially important given the passing of eyewitnesses. He also recalled John Paul II’s positive words about the film. On the other hand, he argued that Lanzmann did not want only to reconstruct the past and present it from different perspectives, but he also wanted to find those guilty of crimes.

Paradoxically, “the perpetrators” are not guilty. To be guilty one must be morally aware of one’s acts. It would be futile to look for that in the spontaneous stories of Lanzmann’s German interlocutors. So, if it’s not the perpetrators, who? The witnesses. What they say is scary. Terrifying—because the crime they witnessed had not transformed them. The same desperation, shocking with their stupidity and falsehood, raving about the Jews, their wealth and that they killed Christ. What the vast majority of his interlocutors are saying is outrageous, shameful. They, like us, try to live and think as if the Shoah had not happened. They are the viewers of this film, transferred to the screen. But for Lanzmann, that is not enough. He wants to have the guilty ones, he wants to have accomplices to the crime. And here Lanzmann himself becomes a witness. A witness for the prosecution. And he parts with the truth. These peasants saw not only the extermination of Jews. They also saw Germans murdering their neighbors on the streets—Poles like them. Had Lanzmann asked them, they would have responded in a similar way, with a similar language to that they used to describe the extermination of Jews. The language of helplessness. But that question is not asked in the film. It’s not asked because Lanzmann is not trying to understand. In this part of the film, he is constructing a thesis—a thesis about the complicity of Poles. And about Poland—an inhuman, cursed place. ⁴²

Here, Gebert pointed out that the only Polish interlocutor of the director who was aware of the meaning of the facts he reported was Jan Karski, an émigré. He emphasized that the absence of Bartoszewski and Edelman in the film did not bring praise to the director. At the same time, he appealed for Poles to confront themselves with the film, since on the whole he considered it important.

I’m writing about it not because this is the most important thing in the film. Vis-à-vis the powerful message of the whole work, these are just details, but details that are painful for us Poles. Lanzmann’s film is not anti-Polish. What is anti-Polish is what some Poles say in it. I’m writing about it so that we do not repeat Lanzmann’s mistakes, so that our prejudices and our offended pride do not obscure the picture of the whole, just as Lanzmann’s anti-Polish prejudices prevent him from understanding his Polish interlocutors. The meaning of this video cannot be obscured by some intentional falsehoods. Several incorrect ratings. Living people tell us about the extermination. We must not allow ourselves not to hear their voices. ⁴³

In the next issue of KOS, Krystyna Starczewska—an oppositionist associated with the independent educational movement (after 1989 the founder of the first non–state-run high school in Poland)—presented her opinion about the film. She went beyond the question of whether the film shows the anti-Semitism of Poles or the anti-Polish attitude of the director. What appeared to her as the main message of Lanzmann’s work was the experience of helplessness of the people who witnessed the crime:

So I saw people with exhausted faces ridden with wrinkles, people living in conditions that defy the ideas of twentieth-century civilization, people who are helpless in words, helpless towards both inconceivably horrifying memories, as well as the stereotypes of one’s own thinking and feeling. What these people were saying fitted their lives, captive, deprived of the opportunity for deeper moral reflection and independent agency. They talked about facts, about their own helplessness, about past feelings of compassion, about fear and danger. When asked about the past, they remembered “beautiful Jewish women” and rich Jews whose fortune they were jealous of. Asked about the causes of the crimes, they would sound dumb as if they had never asked themselves such questions before. “It was what it was—it seemingly had to be that way”—this philosophy of dependent and captive people is deeply inscribed in the mentality of the Polish peasant. To answer Lanzmann’s question, why that fate befell the Jews, they—“followers” of this fatalistic vision of human history—were looking for some footing in mindlessly repeated stereotypes about the “nation who murdered Jesus Christ.” It wouldn’t make any sense to hold the people whom Lanzmann shows us responsible for the history that swept through their lives. I don’t think the word antisemitism is the most accurate term for their attitude. ⁴⁴

The editor-in-chief’s text was titled “I feel offended.” Its meaning was different from what one might first think, which Starczewska addressed directly: “I do not feel, as a Pole, offended by what Lanzmann has shown me. I think he has shown the painful truth about the way a good part of our nation lives, thinks and feels.” The oppositionist felt offended by the participants in the discussion about the film, which was broadcast by the Polish public television, that they created a negative image of the Pole, self-confident and insensitive to others. ⁴⁵

Exactly the same opinion about the film and the accompanying debate was presented by Jacek Kuroń (one of the leaders of the Polish opposition, former communist, leader of the Workers’ Defence Committee, particularly sensitive to the problems of national minorities):

Did what I saw in Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah have anti-Polish significance? No. In contrast, the discussion that was shown on TV after the movie was anti-Polish in character: those “intellectuals” in front of the camera were wondering how to use the death of the Jewish people, how to make capital of it. Compared to them, those Poles shown in Shoah attained the heights of humanitarianism. For example, no one came up with the idea that appeared in the television debate of forgiving Jews dying on Polish soil. Jews were sentenced to death for being Jews. In other words—humans were sentenced to death for being human. And that fundamentally changed history. All of us who lived here in the valley of death came out maimed. This is what Shoah shows masterfully: in a real way, real people who experienced it. What was the difference between Poles and Jews during the occupation? Well, I would be going through the ghetto by tram to the swimming pool and watching people dying on the other side of the wall. Lanzmann placed the camera in the eyes of the Jew who was looking at me then. He must have seen me just as Lanzmann sees these Poles, and it’s hardly surprising. I would like to ask Abraham Bomba about all of that. Bomba worked as a Sonderkommando in Oświęcim and is featured in the film. The experience he had gone through must have crippled him—and he cut the hair and shaved those who were going to their deaths in such a way that they would not know what awaited them. But Lanzmann had the right to ask us, not Jews. Anyway, those parts of the film in which Jews speak were not shown to us. I have a personal grudge against Lanzmann about my friend Marek Edelman, the last commander of the Jewish Combat Organization, who the authorities would not allow come to the Warsaw Ghetto monument on the anniversary of the Ghetto Uprising and whom Lanzmann did not allow into his film. But this is a non-film and non-artistic regret. ⁴⁶

Kuroń’s text was reprinted by the Biuletyn Dolnośląski in 1985, which can be considered an expression of approval.

In the January 1986 issue of KOS, Lanzmann’s film was also defended by another member of the editorial board—Krzysztof Turlejski (a biologist by profession, in the opposition movement, he was responsible, among other things, for contacts with dissidents from the countries east of Poland). He emphasized that despite some bias, calling the movie “anti-Polish” is an exaggeration because one could easily find people who would make far more anti-Semitic statements than those in the film. He also argued with Zygmunt Kałużyński ⁴⁷ about the film’s anti-Church character, pointing out that the statements analyzed by the film critic writing for Polityka indicate something different: “Kałużyński’s thesis is a fake, and its anti-Church pronouncement is related to the current anti-church course of the government.” It has to be remembered that this was the time of communist anti-Church policy, the most important manifestation of which was the murder of Father Jerzy Popiełuszko by officers of the Security Service in the autumn of 1984.

Turlejski interpreted Shoah primarily as a work about human indifference and lack of solidarity. He argued that indifference—mixed with compassion in the film—towards the extermination of Polish peasants is something that often occurs in communities of simple people who tend to equate the word “we” with rather narrow groups of people. He pointed out that the film does not show that only Poles failed at the time of testing, but also Germans. What he missed in the film was the West’s indifference to the Holocaust. According to Turlejski, the counterpoint for Lanzmann’s film was the vision of history officially propagated by the Polish People’s Republic:

The film is a documentary which Poland, with its ZBOWiD ⁴⁸ and thousands of books about the war, did not have the courage to produce. This documentary includes a list of actual crime scenes mentioned by eyewitnesses. These places, so shocking, and often forgotten or grown into everyday life, were forever preserved in human memory. . . . The press reported that the “Polish Society of the Righteous Among the Nations was created.” These often old and poor people could not be enrolled in ZBOWiD. In Poland, saving Jews is not considered an act of resistance against Nazism! Well, this is a fact that has an anti-Polish significance for non-Polish citizens. ⁴⁹

At the beginning of 1986, Gebert returned to Lanzmann’s film, this time thinking about the fact that the “Muranów” cinema, where the documentary was screened, was empty. Why? From the list of possible reasons, he crossed out anti-Semitism:

I think stubborn anti-Semites were viewers of the Shoah—like the philo-Semites or people for whom the history of the Holocaust is important for whatever reason. An indifferent majority remained at home. And that was probably the first reason. The experience of recent years has intensified our national egocentrism. The suffering of others—present or past—does not interest us much. We are too much saturated with our own suffering.

It was not clear to Gebert why Lanzmann’s film was not allowed to broadcast at first but was then shown in some cinemas and, partially, on television. “It is customary for the public to evaluate public events using the criterion of ‘right–wrong’; to them the situation must have seemed unclear. It was not known whether to boycott or praise Shoah. Just in case, one would not go to the cinema to watch it.” To the reasons for the low popularity of the film, Gebert added a general decline in cinema attendance, being satisfied with fragments shown on TV. “It doesn’t change the fact that we don’t use the opportunity to form our own opinion about one of the most famous contemporary films. This is undoubtedly a contribution to the discussion of our ardent desire to learn and discuss historical truths.” ⁵⁰

The Krakow oppositionist Maciej Kozłowski (future Polish ambassador to Israel), associated with the milieu of Tygodnik Powszechny, wrote about Lanzmann’s film on the pages of Wroclaw’s Ognisko. He pointed out that the Polish participants in the debate focused primarily on Lanzmann’s dislike of Poles, thus shifting to the background what constituted the “greatness of the film.” Kozłowski agreed with the frequent reproach: “it is true, the trend unfavorable to Poles is present in Claude Lanzmann, but among the numerous voices of outrage, among the quoted data on the extent of help to Jews in occupied Poland, even among timidly appearing voices about history and the conditions of anti-Semitism in Poland and not only in Poland, I missed, apart from a fragment of Jerzy Turowicz’s text, a deeper reflection on the causes of that aversion or grudge, of which Lanzmann’s film is only one and not too drastic an exemplification.” ⁵¹ Kozłowski drew attention to testimonies including even sharper criticism harmful to Poles. At the same time, he showed the favorable attitude toward Poland of both Israeli Jews and the patriotism of Poles of Jewish origin.

He emphasized that the problem of the aversion of some Jews toward Poles is so serious that it requires attempts to build bridges.

Unfortunately, this goal cannot be served by the voices of idle indignation that are often heard in Poland, as well as the frequent attempts in propaganda to confirm the whole matter as an “anti-Polish campaign” or “anti-Polish conspiracy.” It is not entirely effective, although undoubtedly necessary and important—because it is always necessary and important to document historical truth—to quote testimonies of hundreds of thousands of Polish heroes saving Jews from destruction, reviewing the particular case of the occupation of Poland, and finally recalling the deep faults of other nations in relation to the people chosen to die. Usually, the ground for aversion or grudge is not solely rational; collective attitudes are not guided by simple laws of logic, and merely recalling facts, although certainly needed, will not change much. It is especially so since talking about facts often takes place in an atmosphere of indignation and offended pride. Of course, it is still necessary to document the truth about those who, “saving one life, saved the entire world.” Their heroism, especially in the context of the unique Polish situation, different from that of other occupied countries, should be publicly appreciated, but while documenting history, we must not forget about the other, less glorious side of the image of occupation. Just as it is an irrevocable historical fact that clearly more than one hundred thousand Polish Jews were saved from extermination thanks to the heroism of hundreds of thousands of Poles ⁵² ready to risk their own lives and the lives of their families, it is also an irrefutable fact that many Jews were killed because there were Poles who, out of fear, desire for profit, or mindless compliance with the rules imposed by the authorities—whatever their nature—handed Jews over to the perpetrators. And disposing of this problem with the smooth formula that demoralized and despicable individuals can be found in every nation—although that is undoubtedly true—can be enough to calm our own conscience, but it is not enough to convince those who experienced this vileness and demoralization. Their memories, their injuries, their feelings must be understood and respected. ⁵³

Kozłowski was opposed to speculating whether heroes or villains prevailed in the country.

He also drew attention to the uniqueness of the Jews’ fate during World War II, in which the entire nation was sentenced to destruction:

People were murdered and are being murdered for a number of reasons: for the desire for profit, because they are considered enemies that threaten someone’s interests or doctrines. The extermination of Jews was something else. It was reducing millions of lives to the status of hunted and exterminated animals, to a situation in which there was no means of defence or escape. The mere fact of being born Jewish or having Jewish ancestors meant not only the death sentence, it meant human dignity being taken away. This resulted not only in the deaths of millions but also—which was unavoidable—profound changes in the psyche of those who survived and the next generations. And putting the sign of equality or analogy between extermination and some other earlier or later anti-Semitic phenomenon, comparing the fate of Jews to the fate of other peoples experiencing the ordeal of occupation is a misunderstanding of this most important and most tragic matter. ⁵⁴

Kozłowski wrote that there are few testimonies of survivors that would help understand this perspective, and he pointed to the occupation episode in the famous film director Roman Polanski’s autobiography and connected it with opposition writer Hanna Krall’s Sublokatorka (both are Jewish). He considered Krall’s book an important work for understanding the question of Polish–Jewish relations. He argued that whether the Jews seeking rescue did or did not survive the war was not determined by the attitudes of Germans but Poles. One’s fate depended on who one met. ⁵⁵ Kozłowski recalled the words of the British intellectual of Polish Jewish background Rafael Scharf, about how hard the Poles were put to the moral test, and Bartoszewski’s words that nowhere in the world was enough done to save Jews, and that only those who were killed did enough to help: “And finally the most delicate issue. The story of Jews who survived the occupation in Poland thanks to Poles is a dramatic story of the most severe possible humiliation. Only those who have suffered humiliation themselves know that a normal human reaction, when the nightmare is over, is aversion to witnesses of one’s own fear, one’s own being pushed to the bottom. And this also needs to be understood and respected.” ⁵⁶ Kozłowski emphasized that national stereotypes are passed on to the next generations. He pointed to the importance of post-war anti-Semitism, the activities of the NSZ, ⁵⁷ the Kielce pogrom and March ’68. Among the people who left the country as a result of the anti-Semitic campaign of the late 1960s, he saw their understandable aversion. He emphasized that they felt fully Polish and were suddenly deprived of that identity. ⁵⁸ Kozłowski referred to the aforementioned TV debate and the words of Andrzej Grzegorczyk, who quoted the formula “we forgive and ask for forgiveness” from the famous letter of Polish bishops to German bishops. “This was met with a sharp reaction, justified to some extent as it is impossible to compare the dramatic tangle of Polish-Jewish affairs to the situation in which that formula was used for the first time,” wrote the opposition journalist. ⁵⁹

Wroclaw’s Obecność featured a review of Shoah by the journalist and writer Wiesław Wodecki. It is worth adding that during the war he was a soldier of the Home Army. After the war, he was a member of the Communist Party for many years, then he joined the opposition. Wodecki pointed out that the film director had the right not to show Poles helping Jews, because his film was about a different topic and it was no accident that it bore a title other than “rescue” or “compassion.” Wodecki noticed the director’s bias, but thought he had the right to it. He remarked that Lanzmann “titled his work with the Hebrew word shoah, which means extermination, destruction! Forty years after the fall of the totalitarian Germanic empire, he reminded the world of how the Germans had murdered Abraham’s people in front of the world’s eyes. He was not interested in scenes showing help to those sentenced to death. He did not inquire into the sources of genocide. He did not ask about the guilt of Germans. This is a given:

In him lives the suffering of those going to the gas chambers and the tormented conscience of the indifferent peoples of Europe who idly watched the destruction of the children of Zion. This is what Shoah is about and Lanzmann deserves gratitude, for the indifference of the living persists, both towards Jews and other nations of the world. Despite the terrible experiences of World War II and the United Nations Charter, the conscience of the world cannot or will not wake up. The West is idly staring at the slaughter of one and a half million Indonesian communists or people only suspected of communism. The West remained silent during the mass murder of Cambodian people. ⁶⁰

Roman Zimand, quoted above, referred to Lanzmann’s film in the famous essay “Wormwood and Ash: Do Poles and Jews Hate Each Other?” in which he tried to solve the complicated problem of relations between the two nations. He wrote about Shoah as follows:

I will not deal here with the communist manipulations of the film or the ex post statements of Lanzmann himself, since the work of documentary art, which Shoah undoubtedly is, fortunately exists independently of them. However, I cannot skip—since I have turned this way—one individual reference. I am thinking of Jerzy Turowicz’s article entitled “Shoah and Poles.” The fact that a man of such a mind and such integrity may not have understood the meaning of the film to such an extent, proves that Polish–Jewish relations are sore in an alarming way. Shoah is a film about the extermination of Jews and the indifference of the world to extermination.

Zimand underlined that Poles are not the focal point of the film, because this is film primarily about Jews. He wrote about Lanzmann’s attitude: “Shoah is a work undoubtedly created by a haunted man in the sense in which Dostoyevsky was haunted, or sometimes Mickiewicz.”

At the same time, Zimand made a critical remark in the text: “In this shocking work I miss one question and one answer: ‘During your stay in the ghetto (in Treblinka, in Terezin), did you hear anything about Babi Yar?’ The answer would have had to be negative, but it does not matter. It is important that in the film the name Babi Yar was not mentioned. Well, I think that the artist is allowed to be a haunted person. But the haunted person is not allowed to be crafty.” ⁶¹ Babi Yar was a place of murder of thirty thousand Kiev Jews and about forty thousand people of other nationalities, including some Poles. ⁶²

A statement about Lanzmann’s film can also be found on the pages of the underground journal Wyzwolenie. The author signed as “A.W.” defended Shoah against accusations, while maintaining a critical attitude towards it and pointing to the universality of attitudes towards the Holocaust. In the text Shoah: For Whom the Bell Tolls? he wrote:

Don’t ask—it tolls for you—answers the English poet John Donne in a poem, a fragment of which was used by Ernest Hemingway as a motto for a book about the Spanish Civil War. It sounds like a challenge—and it is. Others die, they murder others—moreover, it does not apply to us. Laznmann’s film Shoah, recently shown on television, is a grim example of this. The film is an accusation, not of us Poles, but of us—people, because the slaughter of Jews would be met with indifference in any country. Lanzmann’s amazement that one can live, work, eat, reproduce, etc. in the vestibule of Hell—it is a naive understanding. Compassion, showing sympathy, and willingness to help others find their social expression only when the price is not too high. When it is necessary to pay with one’s own lives to help other people, only individuals take up such a challenge. Most are always on the sidelines. The history of mankind is full of countless murders, fanciful cruelty and mass slaughter. These butcheries were never associated with collective impulses of solidarity with the victims and the will to help them.

The author then drew attention to the uniqueness of the Holocaust due to the mechanism of dehumanizing the victims by the perpetrators and depriving them of the status of human beings, the most obvious manifestation of which was treating Jews as “parasites.”

This German policy had, according to the author of the article, an impact on the attitudes of the witnesses to the crime:

“Jews are typhus” said the posters posted during the occupation in the General Government. The same motif of insects, signalling the need to undertake “disinfection treatments.” Is it possible to feel sorry for insects, when they spread disease? When help is associated with danger, is it not the most convenient—to drown out remorse—silently accept the “insect theory”? The murder of the Jews was accompanied in times of contempt by the demoralization of us, Poles, condemned to presence, and also inactive in the face of the crime that turns our hair white. The indignation of “professional patriots” about Lanzmann’s film—hat it shows Poles only passively watching the murder of women and children, and ignores those who saved them—is absurd and also morally suspect. Those who, as a rule were indignat, had nothing to do with saving Jews, so they had no moral right to refer to those who were planted in Israel in the Garden of the Righteous, and who risked their own lives to save others, by no means for patriotic reasons. Their deed, which is a testimony, is also the hope that when the bell tolls, there will be some people who will repeat the poet’s words—Don’t ask—it tolls for you. ⁶³

In the context of the debate on Shoah with the participation of Polish oppositionists, it is impossible to omit the special emigration issue of Annex. The most discussed was the text by Jan Tomasz Gross “This One Is from My Homeland . . . but I Don’t Like Him.” The main thesis purports that the allegedly limited scale of Poles’ help for Jews during the war was not because of punishment by the Germans but anti-Semitism. ⁶⁴ This text aroused criticism from leading Polish leftist oppositionists like Jacek Kuroń and Jan Józef Lipski. According to Gross’s account, the latter reportedly sent a letter to Aleksander Smolar, the editor-in-chief of Annex, in which the tone of Gross’s text was explained by the impression that Lanzmann’s text was supposed to have caused: Gross recalled Lipski’s words, “As Jacek Kuroń says, with whom we agree on the article: Janek Gross looked at ‘Shoah’ and suddenly the blood of the Maccabees played in it. Everyone can reflect something.” Years later, Gross commented on these words: “This last observation is very interesting to me. I never thought that in the background of these discussions there was still a brilliant movie by Claude Lanzmann. Airing it in parts in Poland made everyone angry. But I do not know exactly what it was like, because I could not travel to Poland at that time, and in our Annex discussions, Lanzmann did not appear as an important topic at all. Also, by the way, I wonder why.” ⁶⁵ At this point, it should be noted that references to Lanzmann’s film appeared in four of the seven “Jewish” texts published in Annex. There is an authorized translation of Garton Ash’s essay. Israeli publicist Israel Shahak argued with Garton Ash, suggesting that “he does not understand more than Lanzmann from those who wanted to live normally during the occupation.” He argued that Jews would have behaved in the same way as Poles in an analogous situation. ⁶⁶ Wlodzimierz Goldkorn, an Italian journalist of Polish Jewish origin, also referred to Lanzmann’s film and warned against the impression that the Holocaust was the result of anti-Semitism of Poles, an impression that Shoah could have triggered. ⁶⁷ Aleksander Smolar in the essay “Taboo and Innocence” referred to the discussion about the Lanzmann film, to which we will return.

Wiktor Kulerski published a commentary on the “Jewish” issue of Annex in the underground magazine Krytyka. He was very impressed with it. He was closer to Gross’s criticism vis-à-vis Poles’ attitude to Jews. The text includes a reference to the critics of Lanzmann’s film and Jan Błoński’s essay, which he summarized with the words “bad, gregarious proclamations.” He recalled the character of Icchak Cukierman, who could talk about both the help given by Poles to insurgents in the ghetto and the cases of their murder by the Polish underground. “When Icchak Cukierman appeared in the film, the few people familiar with the matter certainly froze. . . . Icchak Cukierman refused to talk to Lanzmann. On the screen for only a moment his silent face remained silent.” ⁶⁸

Strong Critics

In the Wrocław Obecność, a text critical of Shoah was written by an unknown person who used the penname Teresa Pisarek. This author argued against one of the sentences in the film: “It began in Poland.” She pointed out that it should be clearly emphasized that the Holocaust was the idea and work of the Germans. The allegations made in Obecność also concerned the manner in which Poles were portrayed in the film:

There is a rule that a work of art should not be criticized for what is not in it. However, the rule cannot be used with regard to a documentary film that claims to discover historical truth. In this case, according to the well-known Jewish proverb, a half-truth is a whole lie. I do not mean the way of presenting Polish villages and towns, which aroused so much indignation—we all know that the filth and debasing behavior in these villages look exactly the way they were presented in the film. The point is that their inhabitants, dull, primitive people who with such joy answer “yes” to every question from a man with a camera, were chosen from among all the Poles as their only representatives. ⁶⁹

Pisarek reproached Lanzmann with the absence of Bartoszewski’s and Edelman’s voices and for shortening Karski’s part only to topis related to the Warsaw Ghetto, which resulted in bypassing the West’s lack of reaction to the Holocaust. “The bitter truth for everyone is the fact that the Nazis murdered almost 6 million European Jews with almost no opposition from other nations and Jews themselves.” ⁷⁰ The review also noted that the issue of the choice of Polish lands for the extermination centers had been raised many times already; they also recalled “Żegota,” ⁷¹ which according to the author of the review would save about one hundred thousand Jews. The review noted the omission of the blackmailer problem mentioned earlier. Pisarek explained the focus on simple people living in the vicinity of the camps as the deliberate intention of the director, who thus intended to show that the Holocaust was possible through the “primitivity and stupidity of Poles.” ⁷² Pisarek pointed out that the film director was right not to judge Jews who were forced to participate in the Holocaust; she argued that Poles should not be judged by analogy. ⁷³ The reason for their indifference to the Holocaust was primarily seen in the sense of mutual strangeness between representatives of both nations living side by side.

Pisarek also broadly referred to opinions of Lanzmann’s film appearing in opposition circles. Her opinion was dominated by the acceptance of the image presented in Shoah, often formulated without seeing the movie and without knowing the most important works on the Holocaust. She also quoted a response to the critical evaluation of this film: “you talk like a TV commentator.” She protested against the opinion that Lanzmann’s film is good based only on the fact that government propaganda portrays the film as bad: “I have a suggestion: let’s make the assessment differently. The premises: (1) the authorities lie; (2) the authorities claim that the Shoah is a bad film. Conclusion: The authorities think the movie is great.” She argued as follows:

The authorities aired Shoah on their TV because: (1) its evidently anti-Polish character would stimulate viewers’ anti-Semitic mood (acting according to the old slogan “beat Jews, save Russia!”); (2) privately their attitude toward us is exactly like Lanzmann’s, and in their eyes we are also a primitive stupid mass that can be convinced to say anything if it is going to be filmed with a camera. The authorities must have had a lot of fun approving this movie for distribution. And how much fun they had, playing the roles of outraged patriots, whom only noble tolerance caused them bring such a film to Poland. I suppose, moreover, that the image of Poles Shoah is popularizing abroad is also good for the government, justifying its methods of governing us. In addition to fun and propaganda, the authorities have another unexpected profit: they have found out how far independent thought is dependent on them negatively, but quite accurately. Be careful! If Urban ⁷⁴ on Tuesday suddenly says that the Catholic Church is a noble and wise institution, then the following Sunday “independent” journalists are not going to attend mass. And he knows it already! ⁷⁵

It is difficult to refrain from commenting at this point that the author’s considerations did not diverge from the elements of the PRL’s foreign policy, already clear at that time, hoping to ease relations with Jews. At the same time, it is known that their aversion to the film was authentic, which was related to the functioning of clichés originating in March ’68.

As early as 1986, Stanisław Michalkiewicz, the editor of Kurs, spoke about Shoah. The rightist opposition journalist, known in post-1989 Poland for unequivocally anti-Semitic statements, ⁷⁶ did not present such views in the last decades of communist Poland. At the same time, however, his view not only of Lanzmann’s film, but in general, strongly differed from the above-quoted voices and certain words came close to anti-Semitic views, or at least could be treated as such. Although Michalkiewicz began his argument with a polemic with the allegations against Lanzmann, he then went on to very harsh criticism. He pointed out that foreign correspondents of the Polish press, who saw the anti-Polish trend in the film, had not necessarily seen the film at all. He emphasized the unrepresentative selection of fragments shown on Polish television, which made the theses of the propaganda attacks on the film look “justified.” Shortening Karski’s speech was particularly irritating.

Why, then, did Polish television so drastically censor his statement? The answer that I give while watching the whole film by Claude Lanzmann is as follows: because showing the whole statement of Prof. Karski would give the lie to the official claim that this is an anti-Polish movie. Prof. Karski speaks about what he saw and what he felt, and finally about what kind of message he sent from dying Jews not to some farmers from Treblinka, who could not do anything concrete, but to the public opinion of the free world and the politicians of the Allied states which had the means; they had at least the means to retaliate at their disposal. ⁷⁷

According to Michalkiewicz, the message of the whole movie was clear: there could be no comparison between the passivity or powerlessness of Polish peasants toward the Holocaust and the silence of the powers. In Michalkiewicz’s view, the campaign against Lanzmann’s film was part of a policy of creating a sense of alleged threat for Poles, a threat coming from around the world.

Michalkiewicz argued against the allegation of anti-Semitism against Poles, pointing to the fact that it was never accepted as a doctrine, as happened in Germany, while in Poland “antagonisms occurring at a particular time were of a nature completely other than doctrinal.” It is difficult to refrain from commenting that this approach completely blurred the problem of anti-Semitism in the Second Polish Republic. Michalkiewicz also referred to the perception of Christianity and Catholicism as a source of anti-Semitism, which is what he noticed in the film, in the statements of Lanzmann and participants in the aforementioned TV debate.

Among these gentlemen, there was also an outstanding expert in the practice of anti-Semitism, prof. Kazimierz Kąkol, which was odd in itself, for as far as I know, he is neither Catholic nor Christian at all. Indeed, Christianity does not consider Jews to be God’s chosen people, but would that really be anti-Semitic? If that were to be the case, then only he who would recognize the unique position of the Jewish people among the nations would not be considered an anti-Semite. Personally, I think there is no sensible reason for that. I also get the impression that the conviction of their own uniqueness caused a lot of harm to the Jews themselves in their long and often really tragic history. ⁷⁸

Michalkiewicz later went on to analyze the history of Jews and their persecution, finding its sources in the Jewish sense of uniqueness. ⁷⁹ He emphasized that anti-Semitism existed before Christianity, which, in his opinion, fights that phenomenon. He generally viewed anti-Semitism as a political game, as he did Marxism, which he called “classism.” He called Lanzmann a “classist” and “communist.” ⁸⁰ It can be added that Lanzmann did in fact hold communist views for some time. Michalkiewicz combined this fact with the Western world’s perception of communism and its crimes through the prism of “revolutionary romanticism.” This was related to the silence of the West vis-à-vis crimes committed by the communist Pol Pot regime in Cambodia and the unwillingness to condemn it by the United Nations. All this, in his opinion, also would hold the director of Shoah accountable as a communist:

Because Claude Lanzmann is a communist, hence we feel that he justifies the extermination of millions of people carried out as part of “revolutionary romanticism”. If the answer is in the affirmative (for in fact what other answer can a consistent communist give?), then it could turn out that humanity does not really have a unified view on the crime of genocide, that the assessment of such crimes, or to put it mildly—such phenomena—depends on the adoption of some initial assumptions. Why, then, recognize the superiority of one over the other? After all, these are only hypotheses at best. . . . And, translating this into concrete language, one might reasonably ask why someone would be more concerned about the extermination of Jews than, for example, Cambodians or Afghans poisoned with “golden rain”? Why would they care about anything at all?” ⁸¹

It should be emphasized that Michalkiewicz did not quote any statements by Lanzmann about communist crimes, that Michalkiewicz assumed he defended. In general, relatively little space is dedicated to Shoah in Michalkiewicz’s text. It seems that it was primarily used to present his vision of the West’s approach to two totalitarianisms and polemics with the perception of the Holocaust as a unique phenomenon and to refute allegations of the anti-Semitism of Poles.

A brief critical mention of the film Shoah appeared in the text “Antisemitism and anti-Polonism” by the Krakow oppositionist Elżbieta Morawiec published in 1988 in Kultura Niezależna. Her article was a polemic with the texts of two other authors in this magazine, who in her opinion unnecessarily considered accusations against Poles regarding their attitude towards the Holocaust. Morawiec mentioned the Austrian film Vienna par mémoire showing the negative attitude of the French towards Jews who sought refuge in France after the outbreak of war. “The film had almost no press (as opposed to Shoah), no one was in a hurry to tear French robes. Much more comfortable—to tear people apart”, commented the oppositionist. ⁸²

Conclusions

The analysis of the collected material leads to the conclusion that the reactions of the authors publishing in the underground press about the Lanzmann film were varied. Voices opposing the campaign of the authorities directed against the film director and his work predominate (which did not mean a complete lack of criticism vis-à-vis some of the movie’s features). Only three opinions can be considered clearly negative; the others basically defended the film. In light of our research, it is difficult to agree with the opinion of Dariusz Libionka that the image of Poles presented in Shoah was unanimously protested in the “official, Catholic and underground press.” ⁸³ Libionka referred to the American historian Michael C. Steinleuf, who wrote about the discussion around the film that “in this case the differences between the official press, Catholic and underground press were small, although the tone of the official press was certainly louder.” ⁸⁴ Steinlauf referred only to four underground publications analyzing the film, two of which were negative and two positive, in light of which it is difficult to consider his conclusion legitimate. Nor can confrontation with the source material support the argument of Dorota Głowacka who, after giving examples of positive ratings of the film (from the writings of the second circulation, only Jacek Kuroń was mentioned), stated: “In most cases, however, both the government press and opposition, Catholic and secular publications in the same accusations: such agreement of opinions on both sides of the ideological barricade was a sensation in Poland in the second half of the 1980s.” ⁸⁵ Somewhat closer to the truth is the opinion of Timothy Garton Ash that “there is no clear dividing line between the authorities, the opposition and the Church.” ⁸⁶ However, in the light of the texts cited above, it can be said that the opposition generally defended the film.

Jean Charles Szurek, who refers to five independent press texts about the film, is right in emphasizing that the authorities, the Church, and the opposition perceived the matter from different perspectives. ⁸⁷ We can only partially agree with other Szurek’s interpretations of the role of the independent press in the debate about Lanzmann’s film. He came to the following conclusion: “To tell you the truth, the opposition press was generally situated on the same terrain as the official press, in that they accepted the Polish aspects of Shoah as the debate.” ⁸⁸ It is true that authors publishing in Poland, beyond the sight of censorship, mainly referred to Polish themes in the film, but it should be added that at the same time they generally pointed out that the film’s meaning is much broader and concerns the entire Holocaust.

Alexander Smolar, the editor-in-chief of Aneks wrote in 1986:

Recently, there have been numerous articles and statements by defenders of national honor in connection with the film Shoah by Claude Lanzmann. The discussion around this film was present in the official, Catholic and independent press. In the latter, there was almost never an argument about a “tarnished image” testifying to national complexes, moral insensitivity, or—most often—both. There are several reasons for this difference. This is the uncensored press, in which the authors can speak in full voice. Self-censorship imposed, among others, by national taboos plays a smaller role here. The independent press is created mainly by young people, and it is basically they who have their texts published there. They relate to the past with more distance than the generation of victims and witnesses. Having created their own underground space of freedom, they also do not feel the burden of institutions that the older generation did—that older generation that rose in public life within those institutions, thanks to them or through them. ⁸⁹

It is clear that there were many people in the opposition willing to deal with history with its various shades, not just to create an “easy and pleasant” vision of history. In the opposition elite’s view of history, two currents were parallel, often in statements authored by the same people. On the one hand, the trend was to show history primarily in the affirmative dimension, which was a reaction to the communist propaganda of bypassing or completely distorting some aspects of Polish history. On the other hand, there was a tendency to include also more controversial or even clearly shameful aspects in narratives on the history of Poland. The importance of the debate on Shoah and other independent publications addressing the Holocaust should not be overstated. Those publications certainly did not shape the views of all Poles. It is difficult to assess what impact they may have had. The authorities of the Polish People’s Republic did not refer to them; they only argued with the most important voices, for this topic, for example, with the Catholic press. The reach of the independent press was not very extensive, but the number of recipients was sometimes increased by Radio Free Europe, on whose waves selected texts were read. It seems that to a large extent texts devoted to the Holocaust shaped a young elite interested in this topic. However, they certainly had an impact on the formation of milieus that participated in the debates on this subject after the fall of communism.