From: avr@cbnewsj.cb.att.com (adam.v.reed)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish,soc.culture.polish
Subject: Re: On "standard" books
Summary: Marcus does not contradict anything in Heller.
	 The differences are in specialty and interpretation.
Date: 16 Oct 92 03:26:12 GMT
Followup-To: soc.culture.jewish
Organization: AT&T

In article <dobo.719161518@swalwell>,
dobo@cs.UAlberta.CA (W. Dobosiewicz) writes:
> In the last few weeks, I became engaged in a serious discussion over
> Jewish/Polish relations. I think it was beneficial to al involved.
> Now the news: my opponents (or should I say "discussion partners")
> constantly refer to books by "Celia Heller" and "Lucy Dawidowicz" (the
> latter must be some relative of mine, based on name :-)).
> Tonight, I went to my public library, and guess what?
> You guessed it: Celia Heller is not listed at all; ther are some scholarly
> works by D., unrelated to antisemitism (like something about Mexico, etc.)
> as we discussed here.
> What gives? I wonder! I hear that in the USA, Heller is mandatory reading,
> so its absence here is most puzzling. Any explanation, folks?

Yes. Celia Stopnicka Heller wrote a scholarly book. In spite of
appearances from its histrionic title, it is heavy reading, and
was published by a university press. You may have better luck at
a university library. Another possibility is that your library
files the works of married women under their maiden names; try
under "Stopnicka".

> P.S.2. Heller is not highly regarded for credibility, as pointed out by
> Mendelson:

I've read Mendelson, and while he disagrees with parts of
Heller's interpretation, he does NOT cast any aspersions on her
*credibility*. So far I have not seen anyone challenge, much
less disprove, any of the facts cited (and very thoroughly documented)
by Celia Heller. Her interpretations are, as one would expect, a
different matter.

> Mendelson:
> [...]
> malkodet. Yehude Polin 1935-1939" (1982). The most influential work 
> of this kind is Celia Heller's "On the Edge of Destruction" (1977), now 
> available in paperback and required reading in many courses on Jewish 
> history in the United States. The title of this book expresses very 
> clearly the author's belief that interwar Poland was a disaster area for 
> the Jews. She believes, and so do other adherents of this camp, that the 
> years 1919 - 39 were a rehearsal for the Holocaust period. The Poles 
> pushed the Jews to the `edge of destruction', and the Nazis (with 
> Polish help) destroyed them.
> [...]
> The basic attitudes expressed by Heller and other members of the 
> Jewish camp have recently been challenged by a number of scholars. 
> An example is the recently published book by Joseph Marcus, a Polish 
> Jew, which is certainly the best single-volume treatment of Jewish 
> history in interwar Poland [2]. Marcus's book is, among other things, a 
> [...]

I have read Marcus, and have posted a full citation to his book,
in connection with the role of Jews in the history of Polish
railways. I strongly recommend it, and here again is the
citation:

Marcus, Joseph. Social and political history of the Jews in
Poland, 1919-1939. Walter de Gruyter & Co.: Berlin 1983.
ISBN 90-279-3239-5

And now it is my turn to disagree - this time with Mendelson.
There is nothing in Marcus that contradicts anything in Heller,
and vice versa. Even their interpretations complement rather
than clash, if you keep in mind that they approach their subject
with the perspectives of different disciplines and specialties.
Heller is a historical sociologist; for her, politics is the
causal foundation of social structure, social affect, and social
cognition. Marcus, on the other hand, is a heavily quantitative
historian of business and economic development. In spite of its
title, Marcus' book concentrates, not on social and political
matters, but on economic indicators and business case
histories.

There is no disagreement between Heller and Marcus that the
Polish government, with the support of the Church, fought an
overt economic war against its Jewish citizens. Indeed, Marcus
documents the quantitative extent and the tactical details of
this war in much greater depth than Heller. In particular,
Marcus documents the scale of the confiscation of Jewish
enterprises, followed by the firing of their Jewish employees.
These confiscations, as Marcus documents, were so extensive that
"By the second half of 1936, the scope of state enterprise had
reached such dimensions that (apart from the USSR) Poland had
become the most socialized country in the world" (p. 339).

But then, as Marcus shows, Polish Jews were not passive victims
in that war. The world Jewish community mobilized investment in
the remaining Jewish enterprises in Poland, enabling Jewish
businesses to create enough jobs to employ most of those laid
off in the course of the "white bolshevism". "In 1938, Jewish
firms employed more than 40 per cent of the labour force in
industry.... In 1929, only about one-third of this work force
was employed by Jewish firms, but in 1938, foreign participation
in these Jewish firms was between 15 and 20 per cent, and this
is roughly twice as much as in 1929." Also, after firing Jewish
employees the efficiency of state enterprises plummeted, so that
"As a result of all this, Jewish industry improved its relative
share of the market between 1929 and 1938" (p.120). In short,
the government declared the economic war; the Jews won it.

But this does not contradict Heller's observation that being
designated as Poland's official internal ennemies left the
Jewish community frustrated, alienated and anguished. Nor does
it contradict her implicit thesis that official anti-Semitic
propaganda, which painted the Jews as ennemies of the Polish
nation, created a social atmosphere in which, after the German
occupation, Polish nationalists were no more likely to help
fugitive Jews than to murder them. This thesis is, of course,
controversial. But with respect to facts, I know of no
historian ever accusing Heller of anything more serious than
a partial selectivity. The facts documented in her book are as
solid as anything in print.

				Adam_V_Reed@ATT.com
of anything
were no more
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish