POLES AND THE JEWS
appreciate to the full the concern on account of the alleged anti- Semitic activities in the Polish Army, to which expression was given on several occasions in the House of Commons and in many articles in the British daily and weekly Press. They injure the very fundamental feelings of humanity, the sense of justice and —route proportion gardie—jeopardise at least one of the aims for which this war is fought. I am afraid, how- ever, that those who only listen to the B.B.C. news bulletins or read the daily papers, but have no personal contact with Polish affairs and Polish people, will draw from them the conclusion that anti-Semitism in the Polish Army is running wild, knowing no bounds and no restraint. This conclusion does not correspond with the facts. Unfortunately I cannot simply deny the alleged anti-Semitism. As a matter of fact, anti-Semitism is widely spread among the Poles, though most often it is of a verbal nature, revealing itself in a way peculiar to our national characteristics in talking with much fire and a great expense of words in quite general terms about the perniciousness, unworthiness, perversity, &c., of something or other. The anti-Semitic views do not preclude, on the part of those who hold them, a friendly attitude and undis- criminating helpfulness towards their fellow-soldiers of Jewish' extraction. This is the case with the unit with which I serve, and about which I can speak authoritatively, with a full knowledge of the relevant facts.
Yet in my unit the desertions from the army occurred too. I know the circumstances of some of them, and I cannot think they were pro- voked by any kind of unfriendliness and ill-feeling—let alone a petty tyranny or outspoken persecution. It is to be supposed that the mass- 3 desertion was actuated in a high proportion of cases by the feeling of solidarity, or by some other reason to be ascertained by an investigation of particular cases. But that is quite a different matter from the suggested state of affairs, according to which it is simply beneath human dignity and beyond human endurance for a man of Jewish extraction to serve with the Polish Army.
I should like to emphasise another point of view which, after many
discussions with my fellow-soldiers I consider as rather representative. a Almost every one of us knows, without a shadow of doubt, one or more cases of unprovoked desertion. There is, moreover, some evidence of
the mass-desertion being planned and prepared from without. It is only natural to surmise that some force, or forces, which aim at disrupting Polish unity (almost the only capital left to us to build on in the present and in the future) and at showing us in an unfavourable light, were at work. The Jewish question, still unsettled among us and sure to arouse indignation in every truly democratic country, was seized upon. It was done at a moment politically disadvantageous to us and militarily requiring every citizen free from more important duty to be in the army. Desertion at such a moment, carried out orl instigation from outside to create mis- leading appearances, is regarded as a very high offence and disloyalty, the more so that if not all then at least some of its Consequences must have been known very well to the deserters. They proved themselves, in my fellow-soldiers' opinion, bad citizens.
For many of us, far more than British opinion expects, the whole question and first of all the facts. which gave rise to it, are extremely painful. By what I have said I do not want to minimise the danger of verbal anti-Semitism. I am sure I am not alone in thinking that the passage from a verbal to an active anti-Semitism might be sometimes imperceptible. believe that such opinions originate emotions which are base, degrading and corrosive for the human heart and mind. It does not lie in man's power to eradicate them by an order of the day, a regulation, a sentence in the courts of law, though of course such measures are necessary and they play their part too. It is a long business that can be dealt with, successfully and definitely, by persuasion and discussion, and a development to a fuller personal humanity. There are in the Polish Army men who will do everything in their power to speed up this evolution. A CORPORAL IN THE POLISH ARMY.
Previous page
