When I drive a car, I leaf through radio stations and on those occasions I listen to Rydzyk’s radio. It’s an experience every time. I remember a radio lecture given by my former professor of medieval Jewish philosophy, Stanisław Wielgus, who preached feverishly about Satan who was watching us everywhere. I felt that I was one of his tools – after all, Fr. prof. Wielgus, then rector of the Catholic University of Lublin, was very kind to me and even sent me one of his books years later. And then I disappointed him so much when the mask of a good Jew fell off me and it turned out that I was an ordinary Jew after all – the Evil One’s favorite vessel.
I was a “good Jew” for years. I received tender letters from Bender and other anti-Semites who, thanks to someone like me – a Polish Jew whom they believed to be faithful to Catholicism – were able to prove to their reflection in the mirror and to the whole world that they weren’t anti-Semitic at all. And not being anti-Semitic was and still is very necessary for a Catholic, and for three reasons. First, a Catholic must love everyone, including the Jew. Secondly, the times are such that being racist and anti-Semitic in good company is no longer appropriate (before the war it was appropriate – and very!). Thirdly and finally, proving that one is not an anti-Semite henceforth makes credible all that is said badly of Jews – because if he speaks badly of Jews, he is not at all an anti-Semite, but a fully objective and concerned Catholic, that must be true.
The rhetoric of anti-Semites trumpeting their non-anti-Semitism is well known and timely. However, Radio Maryja turned it into a diabolical strategy of hatred and contempt towards Jews, elevating the usual “I have nothing against Jews, but…” to a professional level. The show I encountered was a shocking example of this cunning professionalization.
Oh, it’s no longer a wink – it’s a difficult reprise of speech. Just like with the Torah, which Christians proclaimed as their own holy book, while giving themselves the right to modify it radically. What does it matter to them that Yahweh forbade the worship of other gods and commanded them to observe the Sabbath instead? Will they turn Saturday into Sunday, and Yahweh into Trinity? Who will ban them? And who will forbid Rydzyk from growing bacchanalia on the ashes of Holocaust victims in honor of the great love of Catholics saving heroes en masse for ungrateful Jews? To wipe one’s mouth (to stop at this organ) with the Righteous by arranging a chapel which praises the Catholic Pole, and treats the Jew only as an opportunity to do so, is one of those vile things whose nature is too perverse and complex for people. achieve. The frustration and helplessness of intelligent and sensitive people is even greater. And who is frustrated, this “loser”. And so the circle closes. Rydzyk plays, the Jews are silent, caught against the grain and deceived, and if they write, they will only confirm their eternal baseness and ingratitude. Such is their treacherous nature.
What a show it was – those December 21 “Unfinished Conversations”! In a worried priestly voice, the director of the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk, a member of the scientific council of the Jewish Historical Institute, prof. Grzegorz Berendt told a story full of Christian concern for the other man, about the great evil suffered by the Jews at the hands of the Germans, and at the same time about the undoubtedly complex Polish-Jewish relations before and during the war. And no less worried listeners called to share their great respect for the Jews who, unfortunately, did not always know how to respect all the good they encountered in hospitable Poland.
Berendt is a Jewish historian and knows the Holocaust very well. He surely also knows what anti-Semitism is. He fully understands that Rydzyk’s radio is full of anti-Semitism and that the anti-Semite is the simple priest who interviewed him. But no! After all, Berendt is a great friend of the Jews, even involved in the commemoration of the victims. Under certain conditions, however. The most important thing is never to accuse the Poles and only consider them as helpers. Yes, one can speak of a negative attitude of Poles towards Jews, but only in the context of conflicts based on economic interests, which makes this reluctant attitude quite understandable. There was a lot to be done in terms of Polish-Jewish reconciliation, but the bad Germans came and ruined everything. And the reason they murdered Jews is simple – they didn’t have God in their hearts. Simply: whoever believes helps, and whoever does not believe becomes a murderer. The Poles, as we know, believed, so by nature they could not have had anything to do with murder.
And the Jews had problems with themselves. The compatriots sent them second-hand clothes from the United States, which led to the collapse of the native Jewish tailoring shops. The Jewish economic question is therefore not only a question of rivalry between Catholics and Jews in the economic field. The Jews themselves were a problem.
Of course, it’s very wrong that the Germans murdered the Jews. In fact, this radio does not talk about the Holocaust or the Shoah. Mr. Kostro agreed to talk about “Operation Reinhardt” (extermination of Jews in the so-called General Government) – this term refers only to Germans and is so little known in general that it may suggest that it s was one of many German genocides, not a single, mythical Holocaust.
No, no, no refusal of any kind! But it must be remembered that other groups were also exterminated, and the Poles were also “next”. The situation for the Jews was worse, but only temporarily. In a certain sense, namely “in absentia”, the Poles were the same victims as the Jews. After all, one should not evaluate the victims, divide them into better and worse.
Yes, yes, we know that perfectly well. People have inflicted this fate on people. No Jews there. It is humanity, not just the Jews, who has the right of victim. And the culprits have a nationality – but only one. A German murders as a German, and others as a “black sheep”.
The listeners perfectly understand the message of their Radio. Like a chorus in a Greek tragedy, they complete their lines. First, the most important: we are not anti-Semites and neither are our grandparents! The crown evidence is that mothers and fathers have told stories of playing with Jewish children and buying from a Jewish store. Because there were also good Jews! This cannot be denied. But there were also those who cracked down, acted dishonestly, sold the wrong goods and sold at high prices. Has the professor ever read the book in which they explain why the Poles did not like the Jews? And grandma mentioned that peanuts were called jewish and when she went to a jewish store to buy these jewish, jewish didn’t like it. But why, if only Jews could buy it?
We are very sorry for the Jews, but it is undeniable that their problems are partly their fault. After all, they insisted on being different and not accepting the Lord Jesus. This is the ultimate cause. But everyone is human and you have to save him – even if you don’t know who he was there. It is a Christian duty – and the Poles fulfilled this duty in an exemplary manner. And if someone should come free, well, the wicked are coming everywhere, including among the Jews.
You know what’s next, right? Why, them Jews didn’t know how to defend themselves and went like sheep to the slaughterhouse. And that they did not know how to be grateful and still spit on the Poles who for centuries hosted and tolerated them. And that we talk too much about this “holocaust” and forget that other nations, and especially the Poles, also suffered.
Teacher. Berendt did not speak of anti-Semitism. There is no such thing as first there are anti-Semites, who are more and more numerous and who act more and more boldly, and then Zagada comes out. If such a relationship were to exist, then all of Rydzyk’s children – trembling with fear not to be caught up in the anti-Semitism smoking in their ears – should be virtually entangled in this story and blamed. And yet Polish and Catholic innocence is a dogma equal to the Immaculate Conception!
This Polish no-no-anti-Semitism is disgusting and disgusting. This hypocrisy is so hypocritical that it lies to itself. This feigned compassion and this uncompromising susceptibility to all the superstitions and slanders against the Jews and all the lies about Polish-Jewish relations that whitewash the Poles. This total ignorance of what was happening here, and the absolute refusal to see the phenomenon of anti-Semitism among the Catholic people and the Catholic elites and all the horror that resulted from it.
In the sea of ignorance and narcissistic mythomania in which folk Poland and Rydzyków wallow, this cruel lie about the Jewish cause and the Holocaust is the coldest and darkest abyss. But even worse than this popular, petty-bourgeois cruelty of mind is the willful and conscious perversity of the functionaries in the service of the Church and the filthy, demoralized power of the professors, oozing the summer venom of idiosyncrasy, seasoned false care and selective, servile. erudition.
But does Pr. Berendt even understand the harm he is doing to simple people with his manipulations? And how terrible is it to accept an invitation to Radio Maryja to talk about the Jews there? It is quite possible that he imagines himself doing this for a great national and Catholic cause. Too bad for him if that’s what he thinks.
