Treasure is a tragicomedy starring Lena Dunham,
the 38-year-old behind the HBO phenom, Girls (2012 – 2017). Her co-star
is Stephen Fry, a 66-year-old English comedian. Treasure opened in the
U.S. on June 14, 2024.
Treasure takes place in February, 1991. Ruth Rothwax travels with her father, Edek, to Auschwitz, where he and his wife had been prisoners. Their chauffeur is Stefan (Zbigniew Zamachowski), a cabbie. The film ends with Ruth and Edek hugging, crying, and apologizing for past failures to express love. Finally, Ruth and Edek unearth actual, buried treasure.
Treasure was directed and co-written by the
aristocratically named Julia von Heinz, a 48-year-old German PhD. Von Heinz's previous
film And Tomorrow the Entire World depicts her life in Antifa. Of that
film, von Heinz said,
"We had to react to society and the rising fascism that we are
experiencing here and now." And Tomorrow the Entire
World explores Antifa's use of violence to oppose those they
call "Nazis."
John Quester, Von Heinz's husband,
fellow German, and fellow former Antifa member, co-wrote Treasure. Dunham,
von Heinz, and Fabian Gasmia co-produced. Gasmia is president of the
Franco-German Film Academy. He reports
that France and Germany "accounted for more than 80%" of the film's
nine-million-dollar budget. "We want to make sure that … all of our films
… somehow have the same values and therefore somehow the same identity. At our
core, we are often political," Gasmia says.
During its weekend opening, Treasure acquired
a 38 % score at Rotten Tomatoes. That
is more than twice as high as von Heinz received for her 2013 film, Hanna's
Journey, that depicts a romance between a German do-gooder in Israel and an
Israeli teacher of the handicapped.
Reviewer Glenn Kenny points out
that Lena Dunham and Stephen Fry are celebrities with literally and
figuratively larger-than-life personae, and those personae do not disappear
into their onscreen roles. Ben Kenigsberg, in a curt New
York Times review, says that Fry "never manages to make visceral"
Edek's "masked, repressed trauma." Edwin Arnaudin says the
film "consistently falls flat in all regards."
Danny Leigh says,
"The sitcom notes clang louder" than the Holocaust narrative. The
flaws of Treasure "are the same flaws of Ms Dunham's other work, a
strange kind of exhibitionist narcissism that annoys so much it's hard to
appreciate the value of its points," says Sarah
Manvel. "So muddled and misbegotten it's hard to perform an evidential
postmortem … of where it all goes wrong," says Leslie
Felperin. "An uncomfortable experience this: a laboriously acted
odd-couple heart warmer … with a sentimentality unsuited to its theme,"
writes Peter
Bradshaw.
During the first showing, I was one of
three people in a normally bustling Paramus, New Jersey multiplex. During the
second, I was alone, until a uniformed lad armed with a broom and dustpan
entered the theater before the film ended. I wanted to tell him that since no
one was seeing Treasure, there'd be nothing to clean up. In its opening
weekend, Treasure took in only $374
per theater. It is a box office bomb.
Why, then, bother talking about Treasure?
Treasure is part of a genre of media that intentionally distorts World
War II history. By extension, this genre distorts our understanding of evil.
First, a summary of the film. Ruth
Rothwax is in an airport in Poland. Her last name is from "to wax wroth,"
meaning "to become angry." Ruth is angry because her father, Edek, is
late. Ruth hurls the F-word at her father twice in the first few minutes of
film.
Ruth addresses Polish people in English.
They do not understand. Polish people speaking Polish in Poland angers Ruth
further. Loving Polish families reunite at the arrivals gate. Ruth scowls.
Jolly Edek and grumpy Ruth attempt to
board the train she has carefully scheduled for them. Edek looks sad and
stricken. We understand his response. He is a Holocaust survivor who was
transported on a train. Ruth, astoundingly, is oblivious. She reminds Edek that
she has worked very hard and spent a lot of money planning this trip. Edek
tells her that Polish trains are bad and the bathrooms on Polish trains are
really bad. They return to the airport.
Ruth goes to a bathroom. An ugly,
overweight, unkempt Pole requires her to pay a tiny sum for toilet paper.
Communism promised full employment. When I was a visitor to Poland, I suspected
that these bathroom attendants were hired by the state so that everyone would
have a job. Ruth is annoyed that she has to pay for toilet paper, even though
the price was mere pennies in American money.
Ruth finds Edek in the parking lot with
Stefan, a cabbie. Stefan will drive them to Lodz. During this drive, and for
the rest of the film, director von Heinz films only ugliness, always in the
worst light. The sky is always gray. Buildings are ramshackle. Windows are
broken. Interior walls are constructed of cardboard and newspaper. Snow is
dirty. Roads are potholed. Industrial sites pockmark the landscape. An
expensive hotel has garish interior design. While Ruth sleeps, bugs crawl over
her body and bite her, drawing blood. She wakes and sees no bugs; never mind.
Von Heinz has successfully connected Poland, bad toilets, and bedbugs in the
mind.
Ironically, the one sunny day in the
film occurs during Edek and Ruth's tour of Auschwitz. No doubt the crew had to
film at a scheduled time on a given day and could not wait for the overcast
weather they preferred.
Arriving at their hotel in Lodz, Edek
insists that he and his daughter be assigned adjoining rooms. He bribes the
clerk. He's sending two messages with one gesture: Poles lie and are corrupt.
They say they have no rooms, even when they do, and you can get them to give
you what you want by bribing them. Second, Poland is unsafe. Edek must be next
to Ruth to protect her from Poles who, he insists, will otherwise break in and
kill her. As Ruth unpacks, Edek tells her to lock her room's front door. She
says she will, but Edek insists she do it immediately.
Edek repeatedly emphasizes what a
terrible idea it was to visit Poland. "What Jew goes to Poland as a
tourist?" Edek asks. "Your mother" who is deceased "would
be horrified that we are in Poland."
"Why did you come?" Ruth asks.
"I couldn't let my daughter travel
to Poland alone! Too dangerous!"
Before sleep, and also later, while
riding in cabs, Ruth reads one of the pile of Holocaust books she is carrying
in her suitcase.
In addition repeatedly to telling the
audience that Poles are bad, Treasure tells its audience that Poles are
ridiculous and frivolous, unaware of the horrors they committed during the
Holocaust. Edek and Ruth, obviously both wounded for life by bad Poles, share
the hotel with beautiful young women in brightly colored leotards. These are
pageant competitors. These young women are made to look ridiculous in
comparison to deep, serious Edek and Ruth, scarred by life's horrors, reading
history books, and thinking deep thoughts.
Stefan, Ruth, and Edek stop at an ugly,
anonymous, abandoned industrial site. Edek declares this to be the site of the
Warsaw Ghetto. He and Ruth ask Stefan to take their photograph at this site.
They drive to Lodz and visit the site of
the textile factory Edek's family owned. The site is filthy. Ruth brushes aside
some dirt and finds a lovely mosaic. The message is that there was once
something good here, constructed by Jews, but bad Poles turned it to garbage,
and buried the good. A surly Pole chases them away.
They visit the apartment Edek's family
owned. The apartment is occupied by four generations of a dirty, sickly,
dishonest, and hateful Polish family. During their scenes, a baby is constantly
crying. This family claims they have nothing that once belonged to Edek's
family. In fact they have the family's tea set, silver tray, and winter coat.
Against Edek's wishes, Ruth returns to
the apartment without Edek and purchases these items. The family demands
extortionate prices. Ruth is accompanied by Tadeusz (Tomasz Wlosok), a hotel
bellhop. Edek is furious. He rages at Ruth that traveling with Tadeusz put her
at risk of being killed, because all Polish people are prone to murdering Jews.
Back at the hotel, a sweet-looking
children's choir is singing a heavenly tune. Again, while Jews, Edek and Ruth
suffer horribly, Poles are doing frivolous things: insisting on paying to use
the toilet, staging a beauty contest, and, now, singing a Christian song.
Edek and Ruth look out onto Lodz's main
street. Edek says that this street was once full of happy people, but now it is
deserted.
Ruth goes for a morning jog and passes a
poor, dirty Polish woman who is selling pigs' feet, a used toothbrush, and a
Madonna statue. Ruth gives the begging woman a large sum of money. In her hotel
room, Ruth takes out a primitive needle and begins to puncture her flesh. She
is tattooing herself with a number, similar to those Nazis tattooed on
Auschwitz prisoners. Children of survivors tattooing themselves in this way is
a trend; see here.
Stefan drives Edek and Ruth to Krakow,
the Polish city closest to Auschwitz. A smiling hotel clerk mentions the
Auschwitz museum. Ruth is enraged. How dare he call Auschwitz a "museum"?
"It's a death camp!" she instructs. This same ritual – a Pole
referring to Auschwitz as a "museum" and Ruth "educating"
the Pole in the "real meaning" of Auschwitz is repeated three times.
As they drive to Auschwitz, the camera
shows a dreary view of Polish countryside scored by barbed wire. The message is
clear. All of Poland, including agricultural fields, is stigmatized by the
Holocaust; Poland is one big concentration camp. Ruth lectures the guide that
Auschwitz is not a "museum" but rather is a "death camp."
Back in the hotel, Ruth enters an
elevator full of people laughing over a shared joke. Ruth screams at them to
stop. Once again, Ruth, the Jewish person, is deep and dealing with grief,
while those around her in Poland are smarmy, dangerous, or ridiculous. Ruth,
who has made clear that she has an eating disorder, eats Polish chocolate alone
in her hotel room.
Ruth discovers that Edek had a
one-night-stand with Zofia (Iwona Bielska), a Polish woman. Ruth is furious. Zofia
is pleasant and Edek is a widower so the cause of Ruth's fury is not clear.
This viewer guessed that we are to conclude that Ruth is furious because Edek
slept with a Polish woman.
Ruth, perhaps to remind Edek of the
reason for their trip, presents him with his father's coat, which she bought
from the obnoxious Polish family. Edek touches the coat and cries for his lost
father, who was murdered by Nazis. Intercut with Edek's tears is more Polish
ridiculousness. Polish models are being photographed in the hotel wearing froofy
wedding gowns.
Edek, Stefan, and Ruth return to Lodz.
Edek digs up a box his family had buried before the Nazi expulsion. The box
contains deeds to the apartment and the factory. Edek tells Ruth she can
reclaim family property. In the cab ride to the airport, Edek and Ruth reaffirm
their love for each other, and apologize for any failures to express that love.
Treasure is adapted from the 1999, award-winning
and very well reviewed novel Too Many Men by Australian author Lily
Brett. Too Many Men is a fictionalized account of Brett's own travels to
Poland.
In the novel, Ruth Rothwax describes
Gdansk as "the middle of nowhere." Gdansk is a beautiful and historic
city; see here.
Given that her parents were survivors, Rothwax sees Poland as nothing but "an
abstract stretch of horror." Otherwise, "everyone is dead." "You
think you are going to someplace important? There is nothing important there.
There is nothing there."
Contrary to Brett's assertions, Poland
is an inhabited country. Also contrary to Brett, Poland includes a significant
presence of living Jews contributing to Poland's culture. Jews living in Poland
today express discomfort when Jews from other countries insist that they,
Polish Jews, no longer exist. "I want to show [foreign Jews] that we exist
and that we are human," Bozena, one Jew living in Poland today, tells
a researcher. "Bozena expresses her disappointment about other Jews
failing to acknowledge the existence of a contemporary Polish Jewish community."
Joanna, another Polish Jew, says, "Those groups come here, and they look
at you like you're a monkey in a ZOO … It pisses me off when Israelis say, 'How
can you live in this huge cemetery?'" Poland, to Bozena and Joanna, is not
a cemetery. It is their home.
In Too Many Men, Ruth lures her
father, Edek, to Poland by promising a side trip to Monte Carlo, a casino
resort in Monaco. Poland bad / Monaco good. During World War II, ninety Jews
from Monaco's tiny Jewish population were deported to concentration camps; most
died. Summarizing George Kundahl's book The
Riviera at War: World War II on the Cote D'Azur, Wikipedia
reports that, "Germany coveted Monaco's neutrality because its
flexible regulations and tax system allowed Nazis to trade with the rest of the
world through figurehead enterprises it established in the principality. With
access to a neutral country, Germany could obtain foreign currency, which was a
necessary component for carrying out ambitious military projects and
war-related activities."
Brett's dichotomy, of Poland bad /
Monaco good does not reflect objective reality. Brett reviles Poland,
devastated by German Nazi and Communist Russian occupation and genocidal
policies, and rewards Monaco, a superrich resort that was used by Nazi Germany.
Brett acknowledges her own skewed approach.
"Jews might express anger or
hostility or a fear of Germans, but they didn't deride them in the same way
that they slurred Poles … She hardly ever expressed any hostility to Germans.
But given half a chance, a round of aggression would fly out of her if she
spoke about the Polish."
Brett describes Poles. "They look
harsh and crushed and wrinkled and old as soon as they hit forty, as though
their souls have slipped out of them and turned into skin."
Brett's Poland, like the Poland of Treasures,
is ugly. There are trees, but Jews, Brett writes, are urban people, and
aren't "meant to know about trees."
The Poles with whom Brett interacts are
obnoxious.
"In restaurants, shops, and
offices, the notion of service hadn't been wholly absorbed. Train conductors,
shop assistants, clerks, and waiters seemed to slip from sycophantic to surly
with unseemly speed. Most officials could lurch from obsequious to peremptory,
in any exchange, with no evidence of what caused the switch. It was hard to
like Poles … A lot of Jews disliked Poles. 'They're a suspicious and sour
people, and they seem to have a monopoly on stained, brown teeth.'"
Brett justifies her hatred of Poles with
a particularly ugly scene, She describes a young woman "having a s---"
in public. Brett offers a detailed description of the excrement itself – its
color and shape. This sight, Brett says, is "so Polish" because it is
so "coarse and vulgar."
Polish women, Brett insists, "are
all over-lipsticked. Their bright red lipstick extended way above and beyond
their mouths, and the black penciled curves on their foreheads were not in the
same place that the eyebrows they were mimicking could possibly have been. They
looked harsh and judgmental."
Polish men, Brett informs her reader,
beat their wives.
And, of course, "The Poles were
eager to prove their loyalty to the Germans. Heil Hitler, they said. Heil
Hitler."
Brett says that once the Nazis invaded,
a Pole who had wanted to "f---" her mother turned on her.
"'You'll be sorry you didn't f---
with me … No one will want to touch you now, you piece of s---,' he said. 'You
missed out on a good f---. You thought you were better than me. Well, you're
not. The Germans know who is s--- and who isn't.'" In just a few opening
pages, Brett conflates, in her reader's mind, Polish people and excrement. She
repeats the word "s---" over and over, always in reference to Poles,
in several different scenarios.
Jews, in contrast, are clean and
orderly. The Rothwax home "smelled of Chanel No. 5 and Christian Dior
creams and lotions. Everything was in its place." Ruth's mother "ironed
and folded towels, napkins and sheets. She ironed handkerchiefs. She stored
things in neat, carefully organized shelves. You could see at a glance where
everything was kept."
Within the very few opening pages of her
book, Brett cleanses herself of any suspicion of being a prejudiced person by
insisting that she is charitable to black people. An ambitious teenager asks
her for a job. She hires him.
The black teen's mother is grateful and
seals Ruth's lack of prejudice. "'Not many white women would give a young
black man a chance … I'm going to pray for you in church, on Sunday.'
'Thank you,' Ruth had said. Ruth knew
life was hard for young black kids, especially boys. She could see how
segregated America was."
Disclaimer: I am the author of Bieganski,
the Brute Polak Stereotype, Its Role in Polish-Jewish Relations and American
Popular Culture. In that prize-winning book, I describe a
stereotype of the Brute Polak, or, indeed, the Brute Serb, Slovak, Ukrainian,
etc. This stereotype is deployed to distort World War II history. That war, and
the Holocaust, become, not the project of clean, modern, overtly anti-Christian,
well-educated German Nazis. The responsible party are dirty, primitive,
superstitious, Catholic, backward peasants. This replacement of German Nazis
with Polish peasants is typified by a 2009 quote by Stephen Fry, the actor who
plays Edek in Treasure. "Let's face it, there has been a history in
Poland of rightwing Catholicism, which has been deeply disturbing for those of
us who know a little history, and remember which side of the border Auschwitz
was on."
As in Fry's statement, in the Brute
Polak stereotype, Auschwitz is not the project of Nazi Germany; rather, it is the
project of the Catholic Church. If we want to avoid atrocity in the future, all
we have to do is not be primitive Catholics. We just take a shower, go to
school, stop believing in God, suppress right-wing Catholics, and learn to be
tolerant of difference. Both Treasure and the novel on which it is
based, Too Many Men, are examples of the Brute Polak stereotype.
I first began visiting Eastern Europe in
the mid-1970s; my most recent visit was in 2022. I've been to several major
cities and tiny villages. I have slept in peasant homes and expensive hotels. I
have never seen the Poland filmed by von Heinz, the aristocratic German former
Antifa member, or described by Brett, the Australian novelist. I have seen
people defecate in public – in India. Never in Poland.
I have walked Polish streets and shared
classrooms, dorm rooms, restaurants and synagogue services with real, live
Jewish people, including rabbis, including Hasidim. I have never had a problem
with violence. I have read several accounts by Jews in Poland who report that
they feel safer there than any place else in Europe. See here.
The Poland I have visited, including
agricultural villages, has been – and I've been told that this is changing – a rigidly
formal place, where women aspire to a delicate and ladylike demeanor, even if
they spend their days slopping hogs, and men do kiss hands and insist on
carrying women's bags. I have been rescued numerous times by Polish strangers
who approach me at train stations or other public places, buy tickets for me,
never allow me to pay them back, carry my bags, buy me treats, and walk with me
so that I'm safe and ask for nothing in return.
There are two Poles in Treasure who,
superficially, do not fit the stereotype. Stefan, the cabbie, is eager to
please. Tadeusz, the bellhop, is a nice young man. Treasure, and also
its source material, the novel Too Many Men, though, have instructed us
quite overtly that Polish humanity is never to be trusted. The obnoxious family
in Edek's apartment insist that they have nothing of Edek's family's
belongings. They are lying. The desk clerk says that there are no available
adjoining rooms. She is lying. The schoolboy who turned on Ruth's mother after
the Nazi invasion. He had a crush on her – but once the Nazis arrived, this
Polish schoolboy turned out to be a foul-mouthed Nazi. Both Edek and Ruth pour
large sums of money into Polish hands, including Stefan's and Tadeusz's. These
two are only decent because they have been paid. They are Polish Stepin Fetchits,
groveling for dollars.
In Treasure, Ruth and Edek stop
at a random abandoned factory and pretend that it is the site of the Warsaw
Ghetto. The anonymity and desolation of the scene communicates what Brett's
book says outright. Poland does not remember its murdered Jews.
The real location of the former Warsaw
Ghetto hosts the thirty-six foot tall Pomnik Bohaterow Getta, or
Monument to the Ghetto Heroes. This monument was partially constructed of
labradorite stone sent to Warsaw for Albert Speer's planned Nazi monuments. The
monument depicts Jewish fighters against Nazism in heroic poses. The central
figure is Mordecai Anielewicz, a 24-year-old uprising leader. Anielewicz and
his fellow combatants look dignified, determined, and immortal. They stand
against a wall, representing both the walls of the Nazi ghetto and the Wailing
Wall in Jerusalem. Two menorahs stand in front of the fighters.
This monument was first planned in 1944,
while the war still raged. A precursor to the current monument was put in place
in April, 1946, less than a year after V-E Day. The current monument has been
in place since 1948. Opposite the monument stands the Museum of the History of
Polish Jews, a large and important site of Jewish culture.
In 1970, German Chancellor Willy Brandt,
in a move he insists was spontaneous, knelt at the Ghetto monument. His gesture
made history and it is still a
matter of much discussion. "Krzysztof Ruchniewicz, professor of
history at the University of Wroclaw" is quoted in Deutsche Welle. "Until
then it had always been the 'evil Germans.' They were seen as revanchists and
warmongers. And then there was suddenly a German chancellor, who knelt down
signaling an openness to atonement." Tens of thousands gathered at the
monument during Pope John Paul II's visit in 1983; see here and here.
President Obama visited in May, 2011.
Dunham was Woke before the term gained
widespread currency. She positions herself as an oppressed fat woman, sharing
oppression with oppressed others. She famously, repeatedly, appeared naked in Girls.
Dunham shared images of herself naked, in a public restroom, sitting on a
toilet, eating an entire birthday cake by herself. As the Daily Mail put
it, "Lena has been praised not just for her writing, acting and directing
talents, but also for her willingness to openly parade her larger figure in
front of the camera, in defiance of the Hollywood pressure on women to be
thin."
Like novelist Lily Brett, Dunham uses
black people as a badge of her participation in the struggle. In the final
season of Girls, after the show
was criticized for being too white, Dunham's character became pregnant with and
gave birth to a black baby. She also announced her attraction to rapper Drake.
Drake is the son of a black father and a Jewish mother. "No one would be
calling me a racist if they knew how badly I wanted to f--- Drake," Dunham
has said. Her desire for a dark-skinned man is meant to prove her virtue.
When Dunham has lost weight, that too is
part of the struggle. "Donald Trump became president and I stopped being
able to eat food … Everyone's been asking like, 'What have you been doing?' And
I'm like, 'Try soul-crushing pain and devastation and hopelessness and you,
too, will lose weight,'" Dunham
said in 2017.
When Dunham posts, as she has several
times, photos of herself on the toilet, and others react negatively, that
negative reaction is proof that she is oppressed – see here.
During the publicity tour for Treasure,
rather than focusing on the October 7 attack on Israel or worldwide antisemitic
manifestations, Dunham has chosen to place an Auschwitz story in the
same box with "Islamophobia." "It's not just antisemitism that's
on the rise," Dunham
says. "it's Islamophobia. It's racism in America. It's about fear of
difference … And I think it's really, really important for us to share the
story not just for Jewish people." "I also hope that it encourages a
message of really, really strong opposition to any form of racism, xenophobia
or hatred," she
says.
Lena Dunham is obese in Treasure,
as is Stephen Fry, who reportedly weighs about three hundred pounds. Dunham
wears a knee-length, dark brown, leather coat throughout Treasure. From
the back, Dunham's appearance calls to mind a marine mammal. I am not making a
cruel joke. I'm a popular culture analyst telling you what I saw, and what I
saw matters for the larger point when discussing a Holocaust film starring an obese
celebrity who has politicized her appearance.
The fat, naked, food-and-excretion-obsessed
Lena Dunham of Girls is the fat, naked Ruth Rothwax of Treasure. In
Girls' first episode, Dunham takes food and drink into her mouth, twice,
releases it, and then consumes it again. She does the same in Treasure. She
takes chocolate into her mouth, spits it out, and then, later, eats more
chocolate. In Treasure, Dunham is wearing a sleeveless, translucent
t-shirt that renders her breasts clearly visible. Her father, whom she knows is
sharing a hotel suite with her, walks in on her. She protests that she doesn't
want him to see her exposed breasts – but of course she is the one who has
chosen to go braless in her father's presence. In another scene in Treasure,
Dunham is naked in a bathtub, her breasts exposed, and she is eating.
Instead of enjoying Polish hotels' free
breakfasts, Ruth ostentatiously unpacks multiple cannisters of food and slams
them down on tables. Since Ruth refuses to eat Polish hotel food, one must ask
why she doesn't eat in the comfort of her room, rather than making a spectacle
of herself in the dining room. Ruth / Lena is making a statement.
I experienced these scenes of Dunham
eating / not eating / spitting up / as acts of passive aggression,
exhibitionism, and narcissism. The movie tells us that Ruth has an eating
disorder because her parents were Holocaust survivors. Inherited trauma is real
and eating disorders among children of survivors has been the subject of
serious study; see here.
But Treasure doesn't treat the topic with the compassion and honesty it
deserves. Rather, we have Ruth / Dunham exhibiting to a roomful of Polish
diners, "I will not eat your food."
Treasure is daring us to notice, and remark
upon, its leads' weights. Starvation and simple hunger was a major issue in
Poland. Galicia was nicknamed "hungry Galicia" because of famines
there, famines that drove immigration to the U.S. Jews and non-Jewish Poles
starved to death during World War II. Under Communism, getting enough food was
a time-consuming pursuit involving long hours in food lines and the point of
numerous jokes. In visits to Czechoslovakia and Poland, I never saw an obese
person. Treasure reflects this reality. Its onscreen Poles are slim. The
choice to feature two very large performers as visitors to Auschwitz says
something. Dunham and Fry's obesity announces to everyone around, "We have
more to eat than you."
Viewers are dared to interpret Dunham's
obesity negatively. If we do so, we are "judgmental;" we are
fatphobic. In fact, though, at the same time that the movie uses Ruth's refusal
to eat Polish food as proof of her superiority to inferior, filthy Poland, we
are told that, after all, Ruth's obesity is not only a bad thing, it is a bad
thing that is Polish people's fault. She has an eating disorder because she is
the child of a Holocaust survivor, and the Holocaust is Polish people's fault.
People outside of Poland tend to be
completely unaware of what Nazi Germany and Communist Russia did to Poland, and
why. Nazi Germany and Communist Russia crucified Poland. The Ribbentrop –
Molotov Pact divided Poland; the Third Reich and the U.S.S.R. would erase the
local population through mass deportations and murder, and replace Poles and
Poland with Germany and Russia, respectively.
For most of my life, I've been trying to
talk to uninformed people about the complexities of Poland, and how stereotypes
distort truth. This effort matters, because the quest to understand evil
matters. At times, I imagine myself in an elevator. I have just a few brief
moments, not to introduce my interlocutor to every key fact; that would be
impossible. Rather, I try to isolate the one or two facts that will cause my
interlocutor to realize that he has been mislead, that he doesn't know what he
thinks he knows, and that he would benefit from discovering more.
Should I tell them about the Polish
women in Ravensbruck, the so-called "Rabbits," subjected to Nazi
medical experiments? Or the cattle cars that transported a million Poles to
Siberia under conditions so harsh that half died within a couple of years? Or
the Einsatzgruppen who committed mass shootings of any Pole who might lead a
resistance? Or the lapanki, the roundups, that victimized thousands of
Poles. Nazis arrested Poles randomly, with no warning, and killed them, or sent
them to concentration camps, or forced them into sex slavery, or slave labor in
Germany. Should I tell them about the concentration camp for Polish children, or
the Polish children beheaded by Nazis in front of other children as a form of
terror?
Should I just tell them about the family
of one man, American poet John Guzlowski, whom I quote in my book. "John
Guzlowski's Polish Catholic grandmother, aunt, and cousin were murdered by
Nazis and Ukrainians. They raped John's Aunt Sophie and broke her teeth; they
stomped his cousin to death. With his bayonet, a Nazi sexually mutilated John's
Aunt Genia. John's parents were Nazi slave laborers; his father was in
Buchenwald. John was born in a displaced persons camp after World War II."
Should I quote historian Michael C. Steinlauf, the son of Polish Jewish
Holocaust survivors, who said that Poles, "after the Jews and the Gypsies
[were] the most relentlessly tormented national group in Hitler's Europe"?
World War II began in Poland in 1939 with
blitzkrieg, a kind of warfare so horrific that even Nazi propagandist Leni
Riefenstahl, who accompanied invading Nazi troops, was traumatized by the
mechanized slaughter of defenseless civilians. Throughout the almost six years
of Nazi occupation, occupiers obeyed Hitler's order. "I have placed my
death-head formation in readiness … with orders to them to send to death mercilessly
and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and
language. Only thus shall we gain the Lebensraum which we need." Himmler
echoed Hitler's goals in his speeches in occupied Poznan. "All Poles will
disappear from the world ... It is therefore necessary that the great German
nation focuses on annihilating all Poles." The war did not end in Poland
on V-E Day. Russian Communists invaded, again. Poles fought and died for years
after 1945.
In Treasure, Lena / Ruth lectures
Polish people, including an Auschwitz guide, that Auschwitz is not a
museum, it is a death camp. Watching these scenes, I thought of a Christmas I
spent in Poland. A lovely Polish woman barely knew me but invited me to her
home. Her family apartment was cramped and primitive. But yes they had the
complete Wigilia supper laid out, including hand-made uszki, pierogi
shaped like "little ears." The phone rang. My hostess chatted for a
bit, and then hung up. "That was my grandfather," she informed me.
"Oh," I said, not thinking.
Any random comment might stumble on bones in Poland, and my next question did
just that. "Did you get to talk to your grandmother, too?"
"No," she said. "My
grandmother died in Auschwitz." My hostess said this so casually.
In every visit to Slovakia and Poland,
without trying, I encountered those who survived, or descended from those who
survived, or who witnessed, atrocity. I saw reflections of horror in my loved
ones' eyes. I saw tattoos on the arms of Polish revelers at a picnic. I met
rumpled looking people who were recognized as Righteous by Yad Vashem. My
charming aunt who served us lavish meals was gang-raped by the Red Army.
I don't have to travel to Eastern Europe
to have these encounters. A generous Polish-American accountant who does my
taxes is the daughter of a woman who survived one of those Communist cattle
cars. Her
husband was sent to Kolyma, a Gulag name that should be as notorious as
Auschwitz. An English friend is the daughter of a
father who fought the Nazis, escaped from Poland, and was never able to
return, because Communists would have arrested him. Thus, my friend never met
her own grandmother.
Auschwitz was first constructed, and
remained, for its first eighteen months, as a camp to destroy Poland. Its first
inmates were Poles arrested, imprisoned, tattooed,
tortured, and killed as Poles. One such victim was fourteen-year-old Czeslawa
(ches WAFF ah) Kwoka. You can see her photograph here. Czeslawa
died in Auschwitz because she was Polish and Catholic and the Nazi plan was to
eliminate or enslave her and everyone like her.
There are difficult issues between
Polish non-Jews and Polish Jews. There were, for example, an
estimated 140,000 Poles sent to Auschwitz, about half of whom died. There
were an estimated 1,100,000 Jews sent to Auschwitz; a million died there. Both
in terms of raw numbers and percentages of overall population, Jews suffered
worse. We have yet to master honoring the different suffering of both
populations adequately.
Also, while Poland, under the absolute
worst conditions in occupied Europe, produced the most Righteous and one of the
largest resistance movements, too many Poles committed atrocities against Jews.
Poles, for their part, don't want it forgotten that under occupation some Jews,
as well, behaved badly, for example Chaim Rumkowski, and some Jews participated
in Communist crimes against Poles, for example Jakub Berman. The point is not
to create a false image of equivalency. What happened to Jews in Poland in the
twentieth century was an atrocity of world historical significance and there is
no excuse for criminal Poles or for antisemitism. The point, rather, is that
all populations produce good and bad elements and singling Poland out as the
guilty party so that we can write the Holocaust off as a crime committed by
alien people unlike us clean, modern, educated types, so that we can revile
Poland and enjoy Monte Carlo, is to participate in a failure to take
responsibility that we all share for human evil.
Many very good people, Jewish and
non-Jewish, have traversed this ground. They include Eliza Orzeszkowa (1841 –
1910), a novelist who almost won the Nobel Prize for her work on Polish-Jewish
life; Harold B. Segel (1930 – 2016), a Columbia University Scholar and compiler
of Stranger in our Midst; Jan Blonski (1931 – 2009), an essayist; Pope
John Paul II; Ewa Hoffman (b. 1945), a memoirist; Menachem Daum (1946 – 2024), a
documentarian. Wladyslaw Bartoszewski (1922 – 2015) and Zofia Kossak-Szczucka (1889
– 1968) were both Polish Catholics. They were both Auschwitz prisoners. They
worked together to form Zegota, the only government-supported organization
dedicated to the rescue of Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe.
Lily Brett, Julia Von Heinz, Lena
Dunham, and Stephen Fry march past the essential work of these thinkers and
activists and resort, only, to the Brute Polak stereotype. They announce
themselves as part of the struggle against "Islamophobia," "fatphobia,"
"fascism," and "stereotyping," even as they are oblivious
to their own bigotry. Had Dunham, Fry, Brett, and von Heinz exposed themselves
to the truth of Poland they would have, as I did, without even trying,
encountered non-Jewish victims, and non-Jewish heroes. They chose to ignore
those victims and those heroes because attending to them would have revealed
the falsity of the Brute Polak stereotype and the folly of their own arrogance
and easy answers. The Brute Polak stereotype flatters Germany and France, the
financial backers of Treasure.
Danusha
Goska is the author of God through Binoculars:
A Hitchhiker at a Monastery
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