Israel organizes its response to
UK's proposed academic boycott JERUSALEM (Press
Release) —In the wake of the decision by Britain's University and College
Teachers Union (UCU) to boycott Israeli academics, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni
and Education Minister Yuli Tamir convened a large, multi-body forum to discuss
the boycott and how best to respond.
"We must fight
the boycott on every level and with all the means at our disposal. This is an
act of hypocrisy and hatred that must not be allowed to raise its head, even if
it comes from marginal bodies," said Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni at a meeting
which took place Thursday evening, June 7.
"We must convince everyone who shares the values of Israel and the rest of the
free world to join this struggle. Whoever supports a boycott of this type should
know that there will be a price to pay. We cannot afford not to act; we have an
obligation to prevent the spread of this process. Our meeting today is the
beginning of a well-designed, coordinated action."
The Minister of
Education, Culture and Sport, Yuli Tamir, emphasized the need to show the world
that the British boycott is not a legitimate vehicle for protest. "The use of a
boycott is inappropriate, and it is important that Israel states this
unequivocally," Tamir said. "Our goal is to convince the British public to
reject the boycott of Israel."
The meeting,
called to discuss possible political and PR responses to the British call for a
boycott of Israeli institutions of higher education, medical institutions and
labor unions, was attended by political and academic leaders.
In addition to Ministers Livni and Tamir and other senior officials of the
Foreign and Education Ministries, the participants included the Chairman of the
Histadrut Labor Union; heads of the Israel-Britain Parliamentary Friendship
Society, the Israel Medical Association and the International Advisory Board for
Academic Freedom; and the presidents of Tel Aviv University, the Technion, and
the Interdisciplinary Center-Herzliya. In addition, the Students Union,
various colleges and
other government ministries were represented.
It was decided to form a task force composed of representatives from all the
bodies that took part in the meeting, to be headed by Mr. Raphael Barak,
Deputy Director General for Europe at the Foreign Ministry.
Ministers Livni and Tamir charged the task force with implementing concrete
recommendations for dealing with the situation, with an emphasis on the
Internet, working through such voluntary bodies in Britain as friendship
societies, the British Jewish community, churches, labor unions, etc. The task
force will report to the ministers regularly.
The preceding article was provided by Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs
JERUSALEM (Press Release) Major
General Dan Harel has been named as deputy chief of the general staff by
Israel’s Defense Secretary Amir Peretz.
Harel replaces Major General
Moshe Kaplinsky who is departing for a study period and will afterwards be
appointed to an additional position, according to an announcement made by the
Defense Ministry on Friday, June 8.
Currently serving as IDF
Military Attache in the U.S.A. , Harel previously held the positions of GOC
Southern Command (during the disengagement from Gaza), head of the IDF
Operations Branch, Armored Division Commander, Chief Artillery Officer and
Military Secretary to the Minister of Defense.
Additonally Colonel Avi
Benayahu was named as IDF Spokesperson, replacing Brigadier General Miri Regev.
Colonel Benayahu will be promoted to the rank of Brigadier General and will
replace Brigadier General Regev within a few months. Brigadier General Regev's
next position will be determined in the near future.
Benayahu, 48, married and
father of three, has served as the commander and chief editor of Army Radio in
the past few years. He Served as advisor to Defense Ministers Yitzhak Rabin,
Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Mordechai, as head of media relations at the IDF
Spokesperson’s Office, as a military correspondent and as head of the Military
Correspondents Association for several years.
The preceding story was provided by Israel's
Ministry of Defense.
12:30 p.m., Tuesday, June 19
Vista Library, 700 Eucalyptus Avenue, Vista
Free refreshments
For further information: call Vivian (760) 967-0149
Features
Jews
in the News --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Like you, we're pleased when members of our community are
praiseworthy, and are disappointed when they are blameworthy. Whether
it's good news or bad news, we'll try to keep track of what's being said in
general media about our fellow Jews.
Our news spotters are Dan Brin in Los Angeles, Donald H. Harrison in San
Diego, and you. Wherever you are, if you see a story of interest,
please send a summary and link to us at
sdheritage@cox.net. To
see a source story click on the link within the respective paragraph.
____________________________________________________________________________________________
*The 40th anniversary of the Six Day War drew
seven letters in today's San Diego Union-Tribune, four favoring
Israel, three favoring the Palestinians. Pro-Israel letters were written by
Michael Abrams, Arnold Flick, Patrick Groff and Ted Stern;
pro-Palestinian letters came from Elizabeth Mansur, Zaid Shaku and Valerie
Young.
*My one son from a previous connubial holocaust gives up his lucrative law
practice to become a ventriloquist…. " goes a line in Woody Allen's new
book, Mere Anarchy, providing the lead for Jerry Stahl's
book review appearing in today's Los Angeles Times.
*U.S. Rep. Susan Davis (Democrat, California) says Congress under
Democratic leadership has made progress on ethics reform, such as
restricting travel "junkets," but U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa (Republican,
California) disagrees. He says things haven't changed much at all from
the days when his party was running the House. The
story by John Marelius is in today's San Diego Union-Tribune.
*The "John and Ken Show" on Los
Angeles talk radio called upon its listeners to generate 30,000 calls to the
offices of U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (Democrat, California) to
protest the "amnesty" provisions of the Immigration Bill. The
resultant surge in calls clogged all of the senator's phone lines. The
story by Julia Preston of the New York Times News Service is in today's
San Diego Union-Tribune. .. In other news, the call by Feinstein and
others to close the prisoner camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and to
move the suspected terrorist inmates to the United States for trial won an
important endorsement from former Secretary of State Colin Powell. The
Associated Press
story is in today's Los Angeles Times.
*Saying he was unable to reconstruct from available public records what
may have happened two years ago at a fundraiser hosted by embattled Sunroad
Enterprises developer Aaron Feldman for San Diego Mayor Jerry
Sanders, San Diego Union-Tribune reporter Gerry Braun has asked to be
invited to tag along to every one of Mayor Sanders future fundraisers.
He promises to pay for all the hors d'ouevres he eats. His
column is in today's San Diego Union-Tribune.
*A San Diego Union-Tribune
editorial criticizes a bill to require various changes in how voting
machines are used, on the grounds that the requirements are unworkable and
may even cause election day delays. Furthermore, the newspaper
criticizes two San Diego Democrats, Rep. Bob Filner and Rep. Susan
Davis for supporting the measure.
*New York Mets outfielder Shawn Green is all for team solidarity:
he's willing to grow a beard, shave his legs—but he's not certain about
shaving his legs again. He's one of the quotables in Chris Jenkins'
behind-the-scenes baseball
column in today's San Diego Union-Tribune.
*Journalist Larry Register has resigned as editorial leader of Al-Hurra
television, the U.S-funded, Arab-language television service, after it drew
criticism for running an anti-Israel speech by Hezbollah leader Hassan
Nasrallah. The Associated Press
story is in today's San Diego Union-Tribune.
*Israel is one of the countries to which the United States is exporting
jobs, particularly in the computer industry. Ironically, some America-On-Line
operators are actually Israeli. The San Diego-based company, Sky Mobilemedia,
has software engineers at work in Croatia, India, and Israel. The
story by David Washburn is in today's San Diego Union-Tribune.
*Israel Defense Forces shot dead one Palestinian terrorist who
tried to crash through the border in a truck marked "TV." Three or four
other gunmen escaped after a two-hour battle in which no Israelis were harmed.
The Associated Press
story is in today's San Diego Union-Tribune.
*Pope Benedict XVI and U.S. President George W. Bush discussed the Israel-Palestine
issue during their meeting in Rome, but spokespersons for the two leaders did
not reveal the substance of their discussion. Bush presented to the pontiff a
walking stick engraved by a homeless man in Texas with the words of the Ten
Commandments. A combined wire service
story is in today's San Diego Union-Tribune.
*With Paris Hilton being permitted to leave jail, only to be required to
return again, Sheriff Lee Baca's handling of celebrities is coming under
question. In another instance of what critics call celebrity favoritism,
Baca withheld from the media news of Mel Gibson's rant against the Jews
during his now notorious arrest for drunken driving. The Associated Press
story by Michael Blood is in today' San Diego Union-Tribune.
*Chess champion and Russian dissident Garry Kasparov and other
protestors were permitted to demonstrate without interference in St. Petersburg,
Russia, where President Vladimir Putin was attempting to woo western investors.
Kasparov contends Putin has been turning Russia back into a police state.
The Associated Press story is in today's San Diego Union-Tribune.
*Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger says in a
column in today's San Diego Union-Tribune that American military
failure in Iraq would "immediately weaken societies with significant Muslim
populations."
*One of the biggest and most emotional fights in the California Legislature
is over a bill by Assemblyman Lloyd Levine (Democrat, Sherman Oaks) to
require most dogs and cats to be neutered. He says it will reduce the
number of unwanted animals that must be euthanized at shelters. But opponents
say it could reduce pet populations, even of needed service dogs. The
Copley News Service
story by Michael Gardner is in today's San Diego Union-Tribune.
*Washington Post columnist David Broder argues that U.S. District Court
Judge Reggie Walton got it right when he sentenced I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby
to jail time. To have let the former chief of staff to Vice President
Dick Cheney off would have sent the message that there is a double standard in
justice: one for little people and another for big shots. The
column is in today's San Diego Union-Tribune.
*Grace Paley, activist, feminist, short story writer, mother and
grandmother, makes a point of declaring that she is also Jewish. A
profile by Susan Salter Reynolds is in today's Los Angeles Times.
*The new presidential campaign season, which may find candidates wrapping up
their party's nominations early in early primaries then waiting many months
before the general election contest, has strategists wondering whether this is a
good or bad development. Democrat Simon Rosenberg, president of the NDN
advocacy group, thinks it is good. The
commentary by Ronald Brownstein is in today's Los Angeles Times.
*Henry Samueli, the Broadcom founder who purchased the Ducks from
Disney, celebrated his hockey teamwinning the Stanley Cup. "Even
Disney couldn't have choreographed such a magical season," he said at the
celebration. The
story
by Tony Barboza and David Haldaneis in today's Los Angeles Times.
*Film producer Jerry Weintraub got to put his feet and hands into the
sidewalk cement near Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. He was
accompanied to the publicity event by Oceans Thirteen cast members George
Clooney, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon. The
story is in the Public Eye column of today's San Diego Union-Tribune...Meanwhile,
Sheigh Crabtree has a
story in the Los Angeles Times telling how Weintraub is grooming Emma
Roberts, the niece of Julia Roberts, for stardom as teen detective Nancy Drew.
_______________________________________________
The Jewish Grapevine
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AROUND THE TOWN—Former San Diego Port Commissioner Dr. Robert Penner
practices ophthalmology in Coronado and keeps his eye on government affairs by
making trips to Washington to lobby Congress for more funds for eye research and
improved compensation under Medicare and similar issues. On a recent trip, he
attended a committee session in which U.S. Rep. Bob Filner (Democrat, San
Diego) was participating. "Come with me," Filner said to Penner as
the committee adjourned. "We walked down the rotunda and it was completely
filled with seats in which the Congress people and the Senators were all
sitting. I've been there many times but I had never seen anything like this. It
turned out it was the Day of Remembrance (Yom HaShoah). They had six candles up
there with six survivors of the Holocaust. The Army band was there, the
Army flag carriers and Joe Lieberman (Independent, Connecticut) gave a
speech which was tremendously inspiring: his wife's mother is a survivor.
Sitting in front of me was Congressman (Tom) Lantos (Democrat,
California), who was a survivor. It never happened to me before, and every
patriotic bone in my body was vibrating. It was such a meaningful thing."
San Diegans Rita & Murray Luftig are gathering 33 members of their
extended family later this month to celebrate their upcoming 60th anniversary
followed one day later by Rita's 80th birthday. The grand family
reunion will be in nearby Rosarito Beach, Mexico. The two were introduced
by mutual friends at UCLA and were married in 1947. Rita withdrew for a
while to help Murray through law school, but then reenrolled and received her
bachelor's degree the same year that he received his law degree. Murray would
much later in his career serve as a municipal court judge in San Diego County's
South Bay District. Rita served as chair of the San Diego County
Democratic Central Committee and as local chief of staff to then Senate
President pro tempore James R. Mills. Their own grandchildren range in age
from 20 to 33, but the youngest at the gathering will be a 2-year-old great
niece.
Allan Rappoport, former district director of U.S. Customs, has been involved
since the 1980s with San Diego's efforts to attract and retain the cruise ship
industry. Promoting international tourism to San Diego and providing for
homeland security are simultaneous goals of the Port of San Diego's Cruise Ship
Advisory Committee, on which he serves as the vice chairman. "The key to success
is the cooperation of the cruise liners," he said in a recent interview.
"From the beginning I found the cruise lines as interested in security as we
were, so when we work together, as is normally the case, there are problems but
we are able to resolve the problems. There is no reason why cruising and
security can't be compatible." Since his retirement in 1990, Rappoport had
an international consulting company, and also served for six years as a member
of the Retired Seniors Volunteer Patrol (RSVP), helping the Eastern Division of
the San Diego Police Department keep watch on traffic and residential
neighborhoods. Now, he and his wife, Jane, are looking forward to their
49th wedding anniversary in October, and have been doing a lot of traveling.
CYBER-REFERRALS—Larry Gorfine found a video of a talented lip-syncher
doing a Jib Jap impersonation of President George W. Bush. There
is some shtick in there about Adam and Eve. Here is
the link. ... Hillel
Mazansky was enthusiastic about the video clip at left in which
Israel's former Prime Minister Binyomin Netanyahu replies to Britain's
proposed academic boycott of Israel with a lesson from World War II
British history. Mazansky was so enthusiastic, in fact, he asked:
"Why isn't this guy Israel's PM?"
________________________________________________________________________
The
Jewish
Citizen by Donald H. Harrison
____________________________________________________________
Current S.D. City
Council 'less public-spirited' than previous councils, says Abbe Wolfsheimer
Stutz
SAN DIEGO—Abbe Wolfsheimer Stutz
served on the San Diego City Council for two terms, but now as a deputy to City
Attorney Michael Aguirre she has a different perspective on the body. In
her view, the City Council today is far less public-spirited, and far more lazy,
than the council was back in the years 1985 to 1993.
"I think that I dealt with people who were industrious, who tried to do the
right thing and I find today's council members generally, not all of them, are
fairly lazy," she told San Diego Jewish World in a recent interview.
"They would rather leave it to the mayor to do the work. They take a lot of time
out of the office, a lot of vacations. We used to have a week in the
summer..and two weeks in the holidays and they have vacations, what, at least
one third of the year."
Don't they also make more money? she was asked.
"They make more money. They are more self-interested. They do not have as
much public spirit—and this is not everyone. all the time, but in general, the
public spirit is not there. They are not really working, I don't believe,
for the people, the citizens, of San Diego."
(link to voice recording)
What's it like working for Mike Aguirre? "I love it," she replied.
"It is always exciting. He is a justice fighter and I like doing that very much.
A former law professor at Cal Western, she spends considerable time advising and
teaching other attorneys in the office. "I do seminars, for instance—all
the continuing education of the bar. I set those up. I write memos
of law on assorted topics—a lot of writing assignments."
A savvy viewer of government proceedings, she attended an Oct. 10 meeting of the
Regional Airport Commission "on the day that the Sunroad presentation was
made... I picked my body up and quickly ran into Mr. Aguirre's office, and
then he said, 'get everything lined up, get staff on board and so I did the
administrative work finding attorneys for him—that's the kind of thing I do."
Sunroad Enterprises, owned by Aaron Feldman, has a controversial high-rise
building near Montgomery Field which the Federal Aviation Administration has
said is too high and may pose a hazard to aviation. Wolfsheimer Stutz and
Aguirre immediately launched an investigation into how the city had previously
approved the building permit notwithstanding the FAA's opposition. That issue is
pending in the courts. More recently, another Sunroad proposal to build a
high rise on Harbor Island near Lindbergh Field has renewed controversy about
the company.
Besides mobilizing the city attorney's office for a controversial case, said
Wolfsheimer-Stutz, "I do seminars, for instance all the continuing education of
the bar; I set those up. I write memos of law on assorted topics... a lot of
writing assignments."
Compared to working on the City Council, life at the City Attorney's office is a
breeze, she said. "I don't have to deal with any political hassles. I deal only
with the law. I don't deal with people who are recalcitrant in any way
because that will go to some other attorney. It is very calm and serene.
Even though Mike is an exciting person to work for, it is 100 percent calmer
than serving on the City Council, and the work load is a lot lighter. A big
project: I may take work home for the weekend, but on the other hand, it is not
24/7."
Wolfsheimer-Stutz stays active in the Jewish community as well, not as one who
attends a lot of meetings, but as a contributor. The daughter of Col.
Irving Salomon, who served as a member of the United States delegation to the
United Nations during the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower,
Wolfsheimer-Stutz is working with the Jewish Historical Society of San Diego
"trying to put some things together with my father's papers."
Additionally she serves on the national legal committee of the American Jewish
Committee, an assignment that typically involves a conference telephone call per
month to discuss cases to be argued before the U.S. Supreme Court.
"We do mostly First Amendment cases at this point in time—religion in the public
areas, schools, vouchers," she said. "We are doing a lot of things with
respect to the violation of the civil rights of prisoners who are not
necessarily given the right to counsel, or the right to confront their accusers
and so forth. The national legal committee of the AJC is fascinating at
this point. We are dealing with the kinds of things that the administration has
put into place without the approval of Congress."
She said the topics that are discussed in the conference calls change from month
to month. "What happens with the national legal committee is that they
send you the material on a particular case as it approaches the Supreme Court
and then we are asked to vote on what we want to do with that, and why? Do
we feel that the law of the case before the Supreme Court is correct? Do
we want to abstain from writing an amicus or do we want to write one?"
Wolfsheimer-Stutz said she is the only member of the national committee from San
Diego. She said about 40 people participate in the rounds of conference
calls. "We become acquainted that way. If we do go to a meeting back
in Washington, it might be 'oh, I know you, you're the man who always screams
about blah, blah, blah..."
Movies about the Holocaust in Poland invariably
ignite the tinder of collective memories of Polish-Jewish relationships during
the War. Most Polish Catholics recall the German occupation as an odious regime
that enslaved the Polish masses and murdered millions, including targeted
executions of Polish intellectual, political, and religious elites. Polish
Gentiles claim that they rendered as much assistance to their Jewish neighbors
as possible under such conditions. Some Poles viewed Jews as traitors who
colluded with the Soviet occupation regime in Eastern Poland between 1939 and
1941 or collaborated with Germany by obeying the Jewish Councils established to
enforce German decrees in the ghettoes.
The majority of Polish Jews, on the other hand,
cannot forget the ferocity of prewar Polish anti-Semitism, which emanated from
the Catholic Church and nationalistic political parties. While a fraction of
their co-religionists found refuge in Polish homes or fought the Germans in
Jewish or leftist partisan cadres, many faced indifference to their plight and
betrayal by Polish informants who extorted money from Jews in hiding and handed
them over to the SS when their funds ran out.
The pilgrimage to Auschwitz made by the
Polish-born Pope John Paul II in 1979 and his efforts to expunge anti-Semitic
doctrines from Catholicism augured a new era in Polish-Jewish relations. So did
the emergence of the Solidarity movement out of the shipyard strikes in Gdansk
in 1980. As part of its aim of creating a democratic and pluralistic society
among Poles, the liberal wing of Solidarity encouraged a revival of Jewish
culture and research about Polish Jewish history.
Polish-Jewish reconciliation quickly became mired
in the swamp of deeply rooted animosities. Claude Lanzmann’s documentary
Shoah (1985) consisted of interviews of Jewish survivors, German
perpetrators, and Polish bystanders. Though one segment of it was devoted to
underground courier Jan Karski who revealed to Allied leaders what he had
witnessed in the Warsaw Ghetto and Belzec, other Poles reiterated traditional
economic, sexual, and theological stereotypes of Jews even when they condemned
Germany’s policy of extermination.
Poland lodged an official protest with the French government charging that the
film accused Poles of “complicity in Nazi genocide.” When the movie was
broadcast on Polish television and screened in theatres, it sparked an even
greater uproar. Heated exchanges over the Polish response to the Holocaust
ratcheted up the tensions. The founding of a Carmelite Convent at Auschwitz in
1984 led to a fight between American Jewish protestors and local Polish workers
at the site five years later. The Primate of Poland, Cardinal Josef Glemp,
retorted with an anti-Semitic homily that poured new salt into the old wounds of
Jewish-Polish antagonisms.
A Herald in Zion....
Notes from Mevasseret Zion
Dorothea Shefer-Vanson
The
satisfaction of mentoring a young, talented musician
MEVASSERET ZION, Israel—Ilona Domnich first entered my world more than ten years ago,
when she was about fourteen years old. She had immigrated to Israel from Russia
with her mother and grandmother not long before, and was attending the
prestigious Jerusalem Music Academy High School. For lack of means, however, she
had been unable to buy the required textbooks and had been told not to return
until she had obtained them.
Somehow this information came to the ears of B'nai B'rith’s English-speaking
Albert Einstein Lodge in Jerusalem, of which both my late parents were members.
The Lodge committee saw fit to extend some financial aid to the young girl, who
quickly won the hearts of its members. The financial assistance continued for
several years and without a doubt contributed to Ilona’s success.
Ilona combines immense musical talent—both as a pianist and as a singer—with
great personal charm. After finishing high school she went on to complete
graduate studies at the Rubin Academy of Music, also in Jerusalem. She undertook
the onerous task of a double degree, in both piano and voice, studying with some
of Israel’s leading teachers. In addition to the assistance from B'nai B'rith,
Ilona also won scholarships from the America Israel Fund.
Ilona Domnich*
From time to time, with the assistance of the Lodge, Ilona gave concerts,
displaying her talents and achievements. It was always extremely gratifying for
the members to see the progress of their young protégée, and over the years her
audiences grew ever larger.
After completing her studies in Jerusalem Ilona moved to London, where she was
awarded a place at the Royal Academy of Music to undertake further voice
studies. Having successfully completed her M.A., she is currently working in
London and building her operatic career.
It is gratifying to know that Ilona’s talent has been enabled to blossom through
the foresight and kindness of patrons in Israel and England.
*Photo credit: Jerusalem Music Centre
The foregoing article was reprinted from the AJR
Journal (Association of Jewish Refugees) in England.
Amidst these recriminations and the election of Poland’s first postwar
democratic government, Andrzej Wajda filmed Korczak (1990). Wajda had a
long career as Poland’s “national director” whose movies often chronicled the
resistance and repression of Poles during World War Two. Three of Wajda’s
previous films had featured Jews as leading characters, but some film historians
accused him of confirming traditional Polish stereotypes of Jews as passive
victims or greedy capitalists in movies. Others felt that Wajda used his films
as a tool to promote mutual understanding between Jews and Poles since both were
victims of the German occupation.
By choosing Korczak as a protagonist, Wajda
“sought to reconcile Poles and Jews by demonstrating their compatibility in one
character.” Moreover, Wajda intended Korczak to be a good-will gesture
towards Polish Jewry. Korczak, whose real name was Henryk Goldszmit, remains
one of the rare wartime figures revered by Polish Gentiles and Jews alike. To
the former, he spoke and wrote in Polish, achieved international fame as an
educator, and enjoyed a national following for his prewar radio show The Old
Doctor. To the latter, he had contemplated immigrating to Palestine,
sheltered 200 Jewish orphans in the Warsaw Ghetto, and sacrificed his life by
remaining with them instead of going into hiding.
When Korczak premiered at the Cannes Film
Festival in 1990, it received a standing ovation from the audience, but a cold
shoulder from several French reviewers. The latter castigated Wajda for
minimizing Korczak’s Jewishness, exculpating the Poles of anti-Semitism,
perpetuating Polish stereotypes of Jews, and sugarcoating the deportation of
Korczak’s orphans by ending the movie with their train car decoupling, allowing
them to disembark into a heavenly mist. Never one to stifle his opinion about
Polish anti-Semitism, Claude Lanzmann created a “scandal” at the screening of
Korczak by walking out after its presentation and declaring, “You do not
know how evil this is!”
Viewing the movie 15 years later, I found it
remarkably realistic in its black and white documentary-look that seamlessly
segues several times into newsreel footage originally shot by German camera
crews. When Korzcak leaves the orphanage, he walks through overcrowded streets
into dilapidated buildings populated by the dying, the dead, and the starving. Wajda
probes Korczak’s bifurcated Polish-Jewish identity, his incessant efforts to
provide a normal existence for his orphans, the extremes of privilege and
poverty in the ghetto, and the stoic march of Korczak and his wards to the
deportation transport.
The prologue reveals that Korczak possessed multiple allegiances. In his role as
the “Old Doctor,” he advised his radio audience about compassionate
childrearing. Korczak humbly confesses, “Me, I love children. This is not a
sacrifice; the need is mine.” Upon completion of his broadcast, Korczak learns
that his program has been cancelled because it has become too controversial to
permit a Jew to have his own show. Korczak wonders if he had misled people by
not using his Jewish name. In a subsequent scene, two orphans debate whether
Korczak is the world’s greatest Jew or the world’s greatest Pole.
Rather than denying the extent of Polish anti-Semitism, Wajda presents several
instances of it. Korczak’s firing by the radio station establishes that
anti-Jewish discrimination existed among Poles before the Germany invasion.
Though some Polish critics wondered why Wajda included this incident, others
recognized it as a protest against anti-Semitic elements within the Solidarity
movement. Before the outbreak of the war, Korczak escorts his orphans to the
river for a swim. Former students rebuke him for promoting harmonious relations
between Jews and Poles and tell him that Poles have beaten them and smashed
their windows. Korczak hoped resistance to German rule would unite Poles and
Jews, but despaired that this would never happen.
Though Wajda shows instances of Polish sympathy
for the Jews, he offsets these with vignettes about Polish abandonment or hatred
of Jews. Korczak’s Polish colleague Maryna Falska shelters a Jewish girl of
“suitable appearance” and urges her long-time associate to go into hiding.
While Wajda does not cite every anti-Semitic incident recorded in Korczak’s
diary, what he does include is more damning than Spielberg’s sparse references
to Polish anti-Semitism in Schindler’s List.
Wajda’s portrayal of the ghetto’s Jewish Council and black marketers incensed
some critics who charged that such characterizations confirmed Polish
stereotypes of Jews collaborating with Germany or profiting from the suffering
of their co-religionists. If directors should be more concerned about political
correctness than historical accuracy, these criticisms might have merit, but
anyone familiar with the history of the ghettos will not be shocked to see
Jewish Councils following German orders and Jewish gangsters amassing wealth
through smuggling.
Wajda exhibits a genuine understanding of the terrible alternatives faced by
Jewish leaders. Korczak approaches Adam Czerniakow, the Chairman of Warsaw’s
Jewish Council, to procure rations for his orphans. Czerniakow summarizes the
predicament the Jewish Council faced: "The choice is not between good and evil,
but of the lesser evil. ...I am fully aware of the fact that the majority have
little chance of seeing the end of the war. I know the poor and the deported
will die first. We will try to save as many as we can. Save the elite, save the
children.” Korczak denounces this strategy as a betrayal of Jewish solidarity,
but accepts the food the Council donates. He later witnesses the Germans beat
Czerniakow when he refuses to sign the first deportation order. The real Korczak
eulogized Czerniakow for fulfilling “his task of protecting the dignity of the
Jews.”
Korczak had no compunctions about consorting with disreputable elements in the
ghetto if he can raise money from them. In the movie, he visits a notorious
nightclub where Jewish racketeers congregated. A boy from the orphanage
censures Korczak later that evening for mingling with the “dregs” of Jewish
society. Korczak obstinately replies, “I will see the Devil himself to save my
children. I have no dignity. I have 200 children.” Wajda’s image of ghetto
nightlife is not a malicious fabrication, but is based on passages from
Korczak's diary.
French critic Daniéle Heymann denounced the movie’s final scene for glossing
over the wretched fate that awaited Korczak’s minions: “And the doors swing
open –a coda to a sleepy, disgusting dream on the edge of revisionism – and we
see how the how the little victims, energetic and joyful, merge in slow-motion
from the train of death. Treblinka as the salvation of murdered Jewish
children. No!”
Korczak biographer Betty Jean Lifton has suggested that Wajda had revived a
Polish legend that the “Old Doctor” and his children were spared when “the
carriage with the transport became miraculously unlinked from the train” to
preserve their vision of Korczak as “indestructible.” She felt that the charges
leveled against the movie subverted Wajda’s intention for making it: “Instead
of stirring up Polish-Jewish antagonisms, we should rather be thankful for the
sincere sympathy with which Wajda attempts to recreate this modern Jewish hero
who died -like he lived – for his children.”
Indeed, the final scene follows an unforgettable shot of Korczak and his orphans
waving a banner with a Star of David on one side and the emblem of his fictional
hero King Matt on the other as they walk to the Umschlagplatz. The
ponderous beat of a dirge intensifies the impact of what has been perceived as a
“mute protest” against Nazi genocide. Indeed, it is one of the few scenes in
the movie that has any background music. The closing caption informing viewers
that Korczak and his children were gassed at Treblinka destroys the illusion of
a happy ending, as does the return of the dirge as the background music played
over the closing credits.
Korczak deserved more acclaim and exposure than it initially received.
It became the casualty of Jewish-Polish polemics, Claude Lanzmann’s vendetta
against it, and the timing of its Cannes premier which coincided with a rash of
Jewish grave desecrations in Carpentras. Ironically, the movie received
positive receptions in Germany and Israel, prompting the latter to mandate that
it be shown as part of the country’s school curriculum. The controversy
surrounding the movie subsided by the late Nineties when the American and French
Academies of Motion Pictures recognized Wajda’s cinematic career. Nominating
Wajda for the lifetime achievement Oscar, Steven Spielberg called Korczak
“one of the most important European pictures about the Holocaust.”
The controversy surrounding Wajda’s Korczak did not end Polish efforts to
improve relations with Jews after the fall of communism. In accordance with
Pope John Paul II’s denunciations of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, the
Bishops of Poland issued a pastoral letter in 1991 beseeching Jews to forgive
Polish indifference towards, or complicity in, Germany’s wartime slaughter of
Jews. In 1997 the Jewish Historical Institute reported in 1997 that the
textbooks commonly used in the nation’s classrooms either omitted, minimized, or
distorted the role of Jews in Polish history. In 2000 Poland signed the
Stockholm Declaration obligating Polish public schools to teach about the
Holocaust.
In the same year, the publication of Jan Gross’ book Neighbors challenged
the presumption that Poles never instigated violence against Jews during the
German occupation of their country. As might be expected, the Jedwabne
revelation elicited a mixed reaction from Polish leaders and citizens. In the
midst of the Jedwabne controversy, Poles hailed Roman Polanski’s decision to
film The Pianist in Poland as an opportunity to revive the Polish movie
industry which had been in a slump since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Several factors fostered the expectation that the picture would enjoy
international success: the popular fascination with Polanski’s notoriety, his
taut directorial style, the influx of funding from British, French, and German
studios which co-produced the picture, the multinational appeal of a film cast
with international stars, and, above all, the compelling tale of a gifted
classical musician who perseveres to play his instrument once again. Moreover,
Polanski’s survival as a boy hiding from the Germans in occupied Poland after
being separated from his mother, who died at Auschwitz, and his father, who was
incarcerated at Mauthausen, gave him excellent credentials to cinematically
recreate Jewish life within and outside theWarsaw ghetto. The Pianist borrows liberally from familiar images from Nazi newsreel
footage, wartime photographs of the Warsaw Ghetto, and previous documentaries
and feature films. The DVD version of the film features a stunning sequence of
crosscuts between actual movies and photographs of the Warsaw Ghetto and
Polanski’s recreations of these scenes. His shots of Jews carrying their
belongings in suitcases or on carts, nude corpses strewn on the pavement, the
bricking of the ghetto wall, German cameramen filming Jews herded into the
ghetto, and Jews crossing the bridge connecting the two parts of the ghetto lend
historical authenticity to Polanski’s representation of the ghetto
Polanski devotes many scenes to the deteriorating conditions in the Warsaw
Ghetto and the varied Jewish responses to Nazi policies. The idyllic footage of
prewar Warsaw precedes the bombardment of the city while Szpilman performs at a
Polish radio station until an artillery shell explodes and topples him off his
stool.
After German troops march into the city, Szpilman earns his living playing piano
in a café frequented by Jewish black-marketers and prostitutes who seem inured
to the starving and dying Jews littering the streets outside the establishment.
Two of the profiteers request that Szpilman halt his performance to enable them
to hear whether the sound of their gold coins clinking on the marble tabletop
sounds right. In his autobiography, Szpilman tersely observed, “I lost two
illusions here: my beliefs in our general solidarity and in the musicality of
the Jews.”
Polanski combed Szpilman’s memoir for graphic incidents to visualize the
ubiquitous danger and deprivation Jews confronted in the ghetto. Audiences may
have seen the Nazi newsreel of a Jewish boy frisked by German guards for
concealed food that tumbles into a mound around his feet. Polanski subjects
them to witnessing a young smuggler caught by his feet and beaten so brutally by
his captors on the Aryan side of the wall that he is dead by the time Szpilman
pulls him over to the Jewish side. Another haunting scene shows a character
nicknamed the “grabber” trying to snatch a can of soup from a woman. When it
spills on the ground, he voraciously licks the liquid off the pavement. The
Szpilmans witness the Gestapo push an elderly man in a wheelchair over his
balcony and execute the Jews who gather around his
corpse.
Amid the anguish, panic, or resignation of Jews awaiting deportation at the
Umschlagplatz, Polanski interjects his childhood memories into the story.
Determined to stay with his family, Szpilman is unexpectedly yanked out of line
by a Jewish policeman who prevents him from joining them. In the memoir,
Szpilman darts away as quickly as he can. In Polanski’s case, he asked a Polish
guard if he could fetch some food for the journey. The guard warned him not to
run, but to walk slowly so he wouldn’t attract attention. Polanski retains
Szpilman’s rescue by a Jewish policeman, but adds the advice from the Polish
guard about not running. Szpilman sobs as he walks through a boulevard covered
with cadavers, furniture, suitcases, and falling feathers from ripped-open
comforters and pillows.
True to Szpilman’s
memoir, Polanski portrays Polish Gentiles as both friends and foes. About to
enter a restaurant with a Polish woman he is courting, Szpilman stops when he
reads a sign barring Jews from dining there. Following the deportation of most
of the Jews from the ghetto, a Polish couple from the underground arranges for
Szpilman to hide in a vacant apartment in the Aryan sector of Warsaw. When he
accidentally knocks dishes off a cupboard shelf, the Polish woman in the
adjacent apartment alerts her neighbors to the presence of the Jew fleeing the
building. The Polish woman he had courted earlier in the film and her new
husband locate another hiding place for Szpilman. The Pole assigned to bring
food to Szpilman absconds with the money he raised to aid the famed musician and
fails to feed him frequently enough to stave off severe malnutrition.
Consequently, Szpilman contracts a severe case of jaundice and is nursed back to
health by the Polish couple.
Polanski refuses to romanticize either the Jewish or Polish resistance to the
Germans. By angling the camera down upon the action at street level and
shooting through the curtains and windows of Szpilman’s hiding places, he
reduces Szpilman and the audience to passive spectators of the Warsaw Ghetto
Uprising in 1943 and the Polish Revolt of 1944. This visual distancing
diminishes these armed struggles of the heroic stature posterity has conferred
upon them. In comparison Jon Avnet’s Uprising (2001) glorifies Jewish
resisters with close-up, straight-on, or low angle camera shots as they plan and
mount their rebellion.
When the German troops crush the Polish Revolt, Szpilman is at the epicenter of
their assault. Suddenly, he must dodge the blasts from flamethrowers, bazookas,
or machine guns that seem to divine his location although they are fired at
Polish resisters. Staying one step ahead of spectacular explosions creates a
segment that looks and feels more like an action movie. Polanski changes the
tone of The Pianist by tracking Szpilman’s perilous close calls into the
cavernous ruins of the ghetto. Polanski replicated this barren landscape by
razing an abandoned Soviet army base in the former East Germany.
The upbeat ending of The Pianist undercuts the gloomy mood pervading the
rest of the movie. When Szpilman clumsily tries to open a can of pickles, the
container falls from of his hands and rolls to the feet of an on-looking
Wehrmacht Captain. In a curt exchange, the German officer whose name was
Wilm Hosenfeld learns that the scraggly scavenger had been a pianist before the
war. He asks him to play something on a piano in the next room. Szpilman plays
a Chopin nocturne. His bony fingers stiffly strike the keys at first, but as
they regain dexterity, the music flows expressively with the camera alternating
between close-ups of Szpilman’s hands and the transfigured faces of the two men.
Instead of arresting him, the Captain brings him bread and jam. Retreating
with his troops, the Captain makes one final gesture of kindness by giving
Szpilman his coat.
Wearing a Wehrmacht coat, Szpilman narrowly escapes execution by Russian
soldiers who at first mistake him for a German soldier. Interned by the
Russians, Hosenfeld tries to contact Szpilman to vouch for his act of mercy. The
closing scene juxtaposes Szpilman’s resumption of his musical career with a
postscript that Hosenfeld died in Soviet captivity. The movie avoids
stereotyping either Jews or Poles. Indeed, when stopped by Russian soldiers,
Szpilman identifies himself as a Pole in both the memoir and the film.
Most American reviews of The Pianist applauded its cinematography,
detachment, even-handedness, and fine performances. Nevertheless, echoes of the
Polish-Jewish animosities reawakened by the Jedwabne controversy could be heard
in the negative reviews the film received.
Although appreciative of the film’s visual representation of the “brutality and
inhumanity inside the ghetto,” novelist Thane Rosenbaum labeled the film “a
valentine to Polanski’s Poland.” He contended that the gratitude Polanski and
Szpilman felt towards their Polish rescuers prompted both men to regard Poles
“only as freedom fighters” rather than as “complicit or indifferent to the fate
of their Jewish neighbors.” Thus, they were oblivious to the “anti-Semitic
attitudes that the vast majority of Poles had toward Jews.
Another critic accused Polanski of “blowtorching” the acrimonious history of
Polish Jewish relations. Omer Bartov has surmised that the popularity of the
film in Poland was due to its surfeit of “good Poles” who helped Szpilman and to
his lack of any Jewish affiliation beyond that of ancestry.
In response to Rosenbaum’s review, Robert Strybel praised the film as a “must-
see” for Polish Americans because it reflected Szpilman’s dispassionate account
of survival in wartime Warsaw and bore “the hallmarks of the Polish school of
cinematography, in which Polanski got his start.” He recognized that Polanski’s
film featured Jewish and Polish characters running gamut of enduring,
exploiting, or resisting German oppression.
Andrew Greeley wondered why Rosenbaum deemed it necessary to falsify Szpilman’s
story in order to tar all Polish Catholics for betraying their Jewish fellow
citizens. Greeley admitted that “no one can pretend there was massive support
for Jews in Poland at that time” but asserted that this should not obscure the
memory of the few Poles who bravely shielded Jews from the Germans. The
National Polish American-Jewish American Council sent a letter to The Wall
Street Journal where Rosenbaum’s article had been published. Its
co-signatories Martin Bresler and John Pikarski found Rosenbaum’s
generalizations “offensive and misleading” since they ignored the range of
Polish responses to the extermination of the Jews and the ruthlessness of German
rule in Poland where 3 million Gentiles also perished and the punishment for
hiding a Jew was execution of captured rescuers and their immediate
families.
In the absence of systematic research about the attitudes of American Jews
towards Poles, Zvi Gitelman has speculated that most “regard Poles as
incorrigibly anti-Semitic” because they have heard survivors bitterly recall the
intensity of Polish interwar anti-Semitism and wartime complacency towards, or
complicity in, the German hunt for Jews. In light of the flare-up of tensions
between the two groups occasioned by the Rosenbaum review, one can only
reiterate Gitelman’s conclusion that “as much remains to be done on the Jewish
side as on the Polish side” to foster reconciliation between the two groups.
The foregoing is an
abridged version of Baron's article from
Rethinking Poles and Jews: Troubled
Past, Brighter Future edited by Robert Cherry and Annamaria
Orla-Bukowska and released last week
by Rowman and Littlefield. Baron, a professor of history at San Diego
State University, is the author
of Projecting the Holocaust into the Present, which examines
how cinema has treated the Shoah.