Adam Kirsch Reviews a Pair of Polish Memoirs

In February of 2016, after winning the New Hampshire primary, Sen. Bernie Sanders gave a speech in which he identified himself as “the son of a Polish immigrant.” This was not exactly false—Sanders’ father, Eli, did come to America from Poland, at the age of 17. But it wasn’t exactly true, either, since as many Jews hastened to point out, a Jew from Poland is not and never was simply Polish. On the contrary: From the 14th century, when large numbers of Jews began to settle in Poland at the invitation of Casimir the Great, until 1939, when the Holocaust killed 90 percent of the country’s 3.5 million Jews, it was clear to Jews and Poles alike that they were two very different peoples who happened to share the same piece of territory. They could be neighbors and business partners, but they were seldom friends and almost never relatives or social or legal equals. It is only the amnesia of American Jews that allows us to blur a line that was, historically, blindingly bright.

But it is not just American Jews who have trouble making sense of the place of Poland in the Jewish story. Today almost every Ashkenazi Jewish community in the world has roots in Poland (though the geography of historic Poland overlaps only partly with its current political borders). It was in the late 19th century that the Jews of Poland—which was then not a sovereign state, but a territory divided among the Russian, Austrian, and Prussian crowns—began to surge out by the millions, driven by poverty and heightened persecution. This means that the Jews of all countries are only four or so generations removed from Poland; it is the mother of us all, but a cruel mother, one we are glad of having escaped. When the descendants of Irish or Italian—or Polish—emigrants go to visit the Old Country, they find relatives and ancestral villages. When Jews go to Poland, there is little for them to see, except Auschwitz.

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