The Catholic Church and Anti-Semitism: Poland, 1933-39.

Last year marked the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War 11 and the liberation of Auschwitz, Two recent books shed light on the Catholic community of Poland before and during Nazi occupation.

Ronald Modras, a professor of theological studies at Saint Louis University, painstakingly surveyed the entire range of Polish Catholic publications in the years preceding the German invasion. The results reveal a disconcertingly high level of what today can be called anti-semitic attitudes, stereotypes, and prejudices, even to the extent of vocal church support for the anti-Jewish economic boycott that spread through Europe in the 1930s.

Modras, himself a Polish-American, presents these results with admirable candor and thoroughness. His thoughtful analysis of the data, however, provides challenges and surprises for those who may wish to classify Polish culture and Polish Catholicism as simply "anti-Semitic." Modras finds, for example, relatively few appeals in Polish Catholic literature to the traditional theological categories of medieval Christianity that French historian Jules Isaac so aptly called the "teaching of contempt." The Polish church was not only aware of but strongly and consistently condemned Nazi racialist anti-semitism and, indeed, any form of violence toward Jews.

A classic example of the ambivalent attitude of the Polish clergy of the period is found in the oft-cited pastoral letter of the primate, August Cardinal Hlond, issued on February 29, 1936. Modras, noting that the passage on "the Jewish question" is "usually quoted only in part," provides it in its entirety. Hlond repeats anti-Jewish allegations common at the time. (Modras notes and illustrates at some length that these same allegations were commonly found also in the "influential Rome-based journal," La Civilth Cattolica, lest the reader conclude that such attitudes were unique to Poland. "Hlond points to jewish involvement in Masonic "freethinking," "atheistic communism," "spreading pornography," and "practicing usury." Although he admits that "not all Jews are this way" and that "there are very many who are believers, honest, just, kind, and philanthropic," with a "healthy, edifying sense of family," he concludes that Jewish support for such causes as separation of church and state amounts to "waging war against the Catholic church," so that "it is good to prefer your own kind when shopping, to avoid Jewish stores ... and especially boycott the Jewish press."

But just when today's reader may be tempted to write off the Polish church, Hlond strikes a note that also reflects teachings in La Civilta Cattolica and attitudes expressed even more strongly by Pope Pius XI. He condemns anti-Semitism: "I warm against the moral stance, imported from abroad, that is basically and ruthlessly anti-Jewish. It is contrary to Catholic ethics. One may love one's own nation more, but one may not hate anyone. Not even Jews....It is forbidden to beat up, maim, or slander Jews. One should love Jews as human beings and neighbors, even though we do not honor the indescribable tragedy of that nation, which was the guardian of the idea of the Messiah and from which was born the Savior. When divine mercy enlightens a Jew to sincerely accept his and our Messiah, let us greet him into our Christian ranks with joy."

Herein lies a surprise and a challenge for traditional views of anti-Semitism as a direct outflow of medieval Christian anti-Judaism. In Hlond's pastoral, as in so much of the Polish-Catholic literature of the period, the anti-Jewish appeals are cultural, economic, and secular, not at all religious in character. The condemnation of "anti-Jewish violence," on the other hand, is theological in nature, appealing very directly to the New Testament and church teaching for its moral force.

The distinction between economic and racial anti-Semitism made by Polish Catholic literature in the interwar period is not one that can be countenanced today. But at the same time we can recognize that it is, historically, of a different character from Nazi anti-Semitism. The predominant Polish-Catholic attitude illustrated by Cardinal Hlond may have given support to a boycott of Jewish businesses, but, left to itself, it could not have led to genocide. Insofar as it saw a "Jewish problem," it offered the solution of conversion, or, for some Catholics, political support for the cause of Zionism. In major statements issued in 1991 and again on the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz in 1995, the Polish bishops' conference began the painful process of confronting the Polish church's past and moving toward reconciliation and change for the future.

Modras's book contains numerous insights that will enrich and complexity scholarly understanding of anti-Semitism and Polish Catholicism. The biography of one Polish Catholic, Jan Karski, will enrich and edify anyone who reads it. Karski was a young Polish officer with aspirations for a career as a diplomat when the Nazis began World War II with their surprise blitzkrieg attack on Poland. He was to emerge from the war an authentic hero. Karski began as a courier taking information out of occupied Poland to the Polish government in exile in London. The narrative woven by Wood and Jankowski is highly dramatic. At one point Karski is caught by the Germans and tortured. He escapes and returns to Poland.

Karski's contacts with the Polish underground led him into contact with the Jewish underground. He was invited into the Warsaw ghetto and into a concentration camp to see for himself what went on there, so that he could bring word of it by personal witness to the West, which knew more than it wanted to believe about what was going on. He did. It was worse than he imagined it could be.

The story of Karski's valiant but largely futile attempts to convince Allied leaders, including British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden and American President Franklin Roosevelt, to believe what was happening to the Jews, and to do something about it, is compelling and filled with moral lessons for today. After the war, with the Communists having taken over his homeland, Karski settled in Washington, D.C., where I. became a distinguished professor at Georgetown University. Declared a righteous gentile by Yad Vashem in Jerusalem for his efforts on behalf of the Jews, Karski was made an honorary citizen of the State of Israel on May 12, 1994.

Eugene J. Fisher is associate director of the Secretariat for Ecumenical and Inter-religious Affairs of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington, D.C.