Anti-Polish sentiment

German concentration-camp badge with letter "P"—required wear for Polish inmates

German public execution of Poles in Rożki, near Radom, Poland, 1942

Forms of hostility toward Poles and Polish culture include:

• Organized persecution of the Poles as a nation or as an ethnic group, often based on the belief that Polish interests are a threat to one's own national aspirations;
• Racist anti-Polish sentiment, a variety of xenophobia;
• Cultural anti-Polish sentiment: a prejudice against Poles and Polish-speaking persons – their customs, language and education; and
• Stereotypes about Poland and Polish people in the media and popular culture.

A historic example of anti-Polish sentiment was polakożerstwo (in English, "the devouring of Poles") – a Polish term introduced in the 19th century in relation to the dismemberment and annexation of Poland by foreign powers. Polakożerstwo described the forcible suppression of Polish culture, education and religion on historically Polish lands, and the elimination of Poles from public life as well as from landed property. Anti-Polish policies were implemented by the German Empire under Otto von Bismarck, especially during the Kulturkampf, and enforced up to the end of World War I.[17] Organized persecution of Poles raged in the territories annexed by the Russian Empire, mainly under Tsar Nicholas II.[18][19] Historic actions inspired by anti-Polonism ranged from felonious acts motivated by hatred, to physical extermination of the Polish nation, the goal of which was to eradicate the Polish state. During World War II, when most of Polish society became the object of genocidal policies of its neighbours, German anti-Polonism led to an unprecedented campaign of mass murder.[20]

At present, among those who often express their hostile attitude towards the Polish people are some Russian politicians and their far-right political parties who search for a new imperial identity.[21]

Anti-Polish stereotypes

In Russian language, the term mazurik (мазурик), a synonym for "pickpocket", "petty thief",[22] literally means "little Masovian".[23] The word is an example how Vladimir Putin's liberal use of colloquialisms has been catching attention of the media.[24]

The "Polish plumber" cliché may symbolize the threat of cheap labor from poorer European countries to "overtake" jobs in wealthier parts of Europe. On the other hand, others associate it with affordability and dependability of European migrant workers.[25]

Drunkenness is associated with Polish people in several European cultures; the French language has the phrase ‘drunk as a Pole’ (« soul comme un Polonais »), while German uses the phrase ‘drunk as a Pole on pay day’ (“betrunken wie ein Pole am Zahltage“).[26]

In Bieganski: The Brute Polak Stereotype, Its Role in Polish-Jewish Relations and American Popular Culture, American-Polish author Danusha Goska focuses on the relationship between the "twin" stereotypes of the anti-Semitic Shylock and the anti-Polish 'Bieganski', who is "strong, stupid, violent, fertile, anarchic, dirty," and whose "special hatefulness is epitomized by their Polish anti-Semitism."[27] She says that 'bestial' Poles have become more vilified as killers of Jews than the 'elite' German Nazis themselves.[28]

Partitions of Poland, 1795

Anti-Polish rhetoric combined with the condemnation of Polish culture was most prominent in the 18th-century Prussia during the partitions of Poland. However, anti-Polish propaganda begins with the Teutonic Order in the 14th century. It was a very important tool in the Order's attempt to conquer the Duchy of Lithuania which eventually failed because of Lithuania's Personal union with the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland and the Christianization of Lithuania to Catholicism. The first major thinker to openly call for the genocide of the Polish people was the 14th century German Dominican theologian John of Falkenberg who on behalf of the Teutonic Order argued not only that Polish pagans should be killed, but that all Poles should be subject to genocide on the grounds that Poles were an inherently heretical race and that even the King of Poland, Jogaila a Christian convert, ought to be murdered.[29][30] The assertion that Poles were heretical was largely politically motivated as the Teutonic Order desired to conquer Polish lands despite Christianity having become the dominant religion in Poland centuries prior.[31]

Germany, becoming more and more permeated with Teutonic Prussianism, has never since abandoned these tactics. For instance, David Blackbourn of Harvard University speaks of the scandalised writings of German intellectual Johann Georg Forster, who was granted a tenure at Vilnius University by the Polish Commission of National Education in 1784.[32] Forster wrote of Poland's "backwardness" in a similar vein to "ignorance and barbarism" of southeast Asia.[33] Such views were later repeated in the German ideas of Lebensraum and exploited by the Nazis.[34] German academics between the 18th and 20th centuries attempted to project, in the difference between Germany and Poland, a "boundary between civilization and barbarism; high German Kultur and primitive Slavdom" (1793 racist diatribe by J.C. Schulz republished by the Nazis in 1941).[35] Prussian officials, eager to secure Polish partition, encouraged the view that the Poles were culturally inferior and in need of Prussian tutelage.[33] Such racist texts, originally published from the 18th century onwards, were republished by the German Reich prior to and after its invasion of Poland.

Frederick the Great of Prussia nourished a particular hatred and contempt for the Polish people. Following his conquest of Poland, he compared the Poles to "Iroquois" of Canada.[33] In his all-encompassing anti-Polish campaign, even the nobility of Polish background living in Prussia were obliged to pay higher taxes than those of German heritage. Polish monasteries were viewed as "lairs of idleness" and their property often seized by Prussian authorities. The prevalent Catholicism among Poles was stigmatised. The Polish language was persecuted at all levels.[36]

After the Polish–Russian War in early 1600s, Poland was greatly antagonized by the Russians as the cause of chaos and tyranny in Russia. The future House of Romanov, who would found the Russian Empire after taken power from the Rurik dynasty, used a number of distortion activities, describing Poles as backward, cruel and heartless, praising the rebellion against Poles;[37] and heavily centered around the Orthodox belief.[38] When Tsardom of Russia invaded Poland at the Russo-Polish war of 1650s, the Russians caused a number of atrocities, and destroyed most of Eastern Poland, sometimes joining destruction with its Ukrainian ally led by Bohdan Khmelnytsky and the Swedes in the parallel Swedish invasion.[39] The war was held as a Russian triumph for its attempt to destroy Poland.

Sweden, which developed anti-Polish sentiment due to previous Polish–Swedish wars in hope to gain territorial and political influence, as well as dispute with the Polish Crown because of Sigismund III Vasa, launched an invasion known as the Deluge. Swedish invaders, joined force with Russian invaders in the east, together destroyed Poland and took away many of the Polish national treasures, as well as causing atrocities against Poles. The Poles were treated very brutally by Swedes, and as a result, Poland lost its wealth and was reduced in its development. Similar to Russia, Sweden hailed the destruction of Poland as a national triumph.

At 18th century, Russia as an empire attempted to make Poland disintegrate by using liberum veto, creating chaos and prevented reforms, as by Russian accords, was against the ideal of Imperial Russia's future plan to partition Poland.[40] Russia often sent troops and created atrocities on Polish civilians.[41] When Poland adopted its first ever Constitution of 3 May 1791, the first Constitution in Europe, Russia sent troops and brutally suppressed Polish people.[42]

When Poland lost the last vestiges of its independence in 1795 and remained partitioned for 123 years, ethnic Poles were subjected to discrimination in two areas: the Germanisation under Prussian and later German rule, and Russification in the territories annexed by Imperial Russia.

19th-century Polish exiles in Siberia (painting)

Being a Pole under the Russian occupation was in itself almost culpable – wrote Russian historian Liudmila Gatagova. – "Practically all of the Russian government, bureaucracy, and society were united in one outburst against the Poles." – "Rumor mongers informed the population about an order that had supposedly been given to kill [...] and take away their land."[18] Polish culture and religion were seen as threats to Russian imperial ambitions. Tsarist Namestniks suppressed them on Polish lands by force.[43] The Russian anti-Polish campaign, which included confiscation of Polish nobles' property,[44] was waged in the areas of education, religion as well as language.[43] Polish schools and universities were closed in a stepped-up campaign of russification. In addition to executions and mass deportations of Poles to Katorga camps, Tsar Nicholas I established an occupation army at Poland's expense.[19]

The fact that Poles, unlike the Russians, were overwhelmingly Roman Catholic gave impetus to their religious persecution. At the same time, with the emergence of Panslavist ideology, Russian writers accused the Polish nation of betraying their "Slavic family" because of their armed efforts aimed at winning independence.[45] Hostility toward Poles was present in many of Russia's literary works and media of the time.[46]

"During and after the 1830-1831 insurrection many Russian writers voluntarily participated in anti-Polish propaganda. Gogol wrote Taras Bulba, an anti-Polish novel of high literary merit, to say nothing about lesser writers." — Prof. Vilho Harle[47]

Pushkin, together with three other poets, published a pamphlet called "On the Taking of Warsaw" to celebrate the crushing of the revolt. His contribution to the frenzy of anti-Polish writing comprised poems in which he hailed the capitulation of Warsaw as a new "triumph" of imperial Russia.[48]

In Prussia and later in Germany, Poles were forbidden to build homes, and their properties were targeted for forced buy-outs financed by the Prussian and subsequent German governments. Bismarck described Poles, as animals (wolves), that "one shoots if one can" and implemented several harsh laws aimed at their expulsion from traditionally Polish lands. The Polish language was banned from public use, and ethnically Polish children punished at school for speaking Polish.[49] Poles were subjected to a wave of forceful evictions (Rugi Pruskie). The German government financed and encouraged settlement of ethnic Germans into those areas aiming at their geopolitical germanisation.[50] The Prussian Landtag passed laws against Catholics.[51]

A German National People's Party poster from 1920 showing a Teutonic knight being attacked by Poles and socialists as the caption reads "Save the East"

Anti-Polish Czech leaflet produced during the Polish–Czechoslovak War and directed at Cieszyn Silesians

Toward the end of World War I during Poland's fight for independence, Imperial Germany made further attempts to take control over the territories of Congress Poland, aiming at ethnic cleansing of up to 3 million Jewish and Polish people which was meant to be followed by a new wave of settlement by ethnic Germans.[52][53][54] In August 1914, the German imperial army destroyed the city of Kalisz, chasing out tens of thousands of its Polish citizens.[55]

After Poland regained its independence as the Second Republic at the end of World War I, the question of new Polish borders could not have been easily settled against the will of her former long-term occupiers. Poles continued to be persecuted in the disputed territories, especially in Silesia. The German campaign of discrimination contributed to the Silesian Uprisings, where Polish workers were openly threatened with losing their jobs and pensions if they voted for Poland in the Upper Silesia plebiscite.[56]

At the Versailles Peace Conference of 1919, British historian and politician Lewis Bernstein Namier, who served as part of the British delegation, was seen as one of the biggest enemies of the newly independent Polish state in the British political environment and in the Polish territories. He falsified the earlier proposed Curzon line by detaching the city of Lwów from Poland with a version called Curzon Line "A". It was sent to Soviet diplomatic representatives for acceptance. The earlier compromised version of Curzon line which was debated at the Spa Conference of 1920 was renamed Curzon Line "B".[57]

Soviet poster (World War II): A Red Army soldier knocks a caricatured Polish general off backs of peasants armed with rocks

German notice of retaliatory executions carried out on 100 named Polish hostages, Warsaw, 1943

Soviet World War II poster urging vigilance. Villain in shadow wears a Polish uniform.

Memorial to Polish professors murdered by the Germans, Lviv, western Ukraine, with graffiti in Ukrainian: "Death to Poles!", November 2011

In the politics of inter-war Germany, anti-Polish feelings ran high.[58] The American historian Gerhard Weinberg observed that for many Germans in the Weimar Republic, "Poland was an abomination", Poles were "an East European species of cockroach", Poland was usually described as a Saisonstaat (a state for a season), and Germans used the phrase "Polish economy" (polnische Wirtschaft) for a situation of hopeless muddle.[58] Weinberg noted that in the 1920s–30s, leading German politicians refused to accept Poland as a legitimate nation, and hoped instead to partition Poland, probably with the help of the Soviet Union.[58]

The British historian A. J. P. Taylor wrote in 1945 that National Socialism was inevitable because the Germans wanted "to repudiate the equality with the peoples of (central and) eastern Europe which had then been forced upon them" after 1918.[59] Taylor wrote that:

"During the preceding eighty years the Germans had sacrificed to the Reich all their liberties; they demanded as a reward the enslavement of others. No German recognized the Czechs or Poles as equals. Therefore, every German desired the achievement which only total war could give. By no other means could the Reich be held together. It had been made by conquest and for conquest; if it ever gave up its career of conquest, it would dissolve."[60]

During Stalin's Great Terror in the Soviet Union, a major ethnic cleansing operation,[61] known as the Polish Operation,[62] took place from about 25 August 1937 through 15 November 1938. According to Soviet NKVD archives, 111,091 Poles, and people accused of ties with Poland, were executed, and 28,744 were sentenced to Gulag labor camps, for a total of 139,835 Polish victims. This number constitutes 10 per cent of the officially persecuted persons during the entire Yezhovshchina period, with confirming NKVD documents.[63] US historian Timothy D. Snyder says: "It is hard not to see the Soviet "Polish Operation" of 1937-38 as genocidal."[64] Simon Sebag Montefiore presents a similar opinion,[65] Prof. Marek Jan Chodakiewicz,[66] Dr. Tomasz Sommer, and others.[67][68][69][70] The prosecuted Polish families were accused of anti-Soviet activities.[71][72] Michael Ellman has said in the context of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide that Stalin's Polish Operation "might well qualify as genocide" but because there has been no legal tribunal to try the crimes of Stalinism, there is no authoritative ruling on the legal characterisation.[73] Karol Karski argues that the Soviet actions against Poles are genocide according to the international law. He says that while the extermination was targeting other nationalities as well and according to the criteria other than ethnicity, but as long as Poles were singled out basing on their ethnicity, this makes the actions to be genocide.[74]

Nazi propagandists stereotyped Poles as nationalists in order to portray Germans as victims and justify the invasion of Poland; the Gleiwitz incident was a Nazi false flag to show that Germany was under Polish attack, and the killing of Germans by Poles in Bromberger Blutsonntag and elsewhere was inflated to 58,000 to increase German hatred of Poles and justify the killing of Polish civilians.[75]

In October 1939, Directive No.1306 of Nazi Germany's Propaganda Ministry stated: "It must be made clear even to the German milkmaid that Polishness equals subhumanity. Poles, Jews and gypsies are on the same inferior level... This should be brought home as a leitmotiv, and from time to time, in the form of existing concepts such as 'Polish economy', 'Polish ruin' and so on, until everyone in Germany sees every Pole, whether farm worker or intellectual, as vermin."[8]

Historian Karol Karski writes that before World War II the Soviet authorities carried out a discreditation campaign against the Poles and describes Stalin as Polonophobe.[76]

During World War II Poles became the subject of ethnic cleansing on an unprecedented scale, including: Nazi German genocide in General Government, Soviet executions and mass deportations to Siberia from Kresy, as well as massacres of Poles in Volhynia, a campaign of ethnic cleansing carried out in today's western Ukraine by Ukrainian nationalists. Among the 100,000 people murdered in the Intelligenzaktion operations in 1939–1940, approximately 61,000 were members of the Polish intelligentsia.[77] Millions of citizens of Poland, both ethnic Poles and Jews, died in German concentration camps such as Auschwitz. Unknown numbers perished in Soviet "gulags" and political prisons. Reprisals against partisan activities were brutal; on one occasion 1,200 Poles were murdered in retaliation for the death of one German officer and two German officials.[78] In August 2009 the Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) researchers estimated Poland's dead (including Polish Jews) at between 5.47 and 5.67 million (due to German actions) and 150,000 (due to Soviet), or around 5.62 and 5.82 million total.[79]

Soviet policy following their 1939 invasion of Poland in World War II was ruthless, and sometimes coordinated with the Nazis (see: Gestapo-NKVD Conferences). Elements of ethnic cleansing included Soviet mass executions of Polish prisoners of war in the Katyn Massacre and at other sites, and the exile of up to 1.5 million Polish citizens, including the intelligentsia, academics, priests and Jewish Poles to forced-labor camps in Siberia.[80]

In German and Soviet war propaganda, Poles were mocked as inept for their military techniques in fighting the war. Nazi fake newsreels and forged pseudo-documentaries claimed that the Polish cavalry "bravely but futilely" charged German tanks in 1939, and that the Polish Air Force was wiped out on the ground on the opening day of the war. Neither tale was true (see: Myths of the Polish September Campaign). German propaganda staged a Polish cavalry charge in their 1941 reel called "Geschwader Lützow".[81]

Inexperienced Royal Air Force commanders initially stereotyped veteran Polish fighter pilots as inept and reckless, refusing to let them fly combat missions until they chose to do so against orders; they went on to achieve a celebrated record in the Battle of Britain. British military commanders Bernard Montgomery and Frederick Browning scapegoated Polish troops and command for their defeat at the Battle of Arnhem, stereotyping them as 'difficult' and 'incompetent'. Later military commentators have generally concurred that the Poles had a distinguished role in the battle and that their commander's ideas could have won it for the Allies, while the allegations of Montgomery and Browning were hypocritical, self serving and even political, given the Great Power politics of the day.[82]

Poland's relationship with the USSR during World War II was complicated. The main Western Powers, the US and UK, understood the importance of the USSR in defeating Germany, to the point of allowing Soviet propaganda to vilify their Polish ally.[83] The western Allies were even willing to help cover up the Soviet massacre at Katyn.[84]

Zofia Kossak-Szczucka, the Catholic co-founder of Zegota, the Polish resistance group which risked the German death penalty to save Jews, and who herself was sent to Auschwitz, stereotyped Jews as haters of Poles even as she characterized Poles who remained silent in the face of the Holocaust as complicit:

With the conclusion of the Second World War, Nazi atrocities perforce ended. However, Soviet oppression of the Poles continued. Under Joseph Stalin, thousands of soldiers of Poland's underground eg. Home Army (Armia Krajowa) and returning veterans of the Polish Armed Forces that had served with the Western Allies were imprisoned, tortured by Soviet NKVD agents (see: W. Pilecki, Ł. Ciepliński) and murdered following staged trials like the infamous Trial of the Sixteen in Moscow, Soviet Union. A similar fate awaited the "cursed soldiers". At least 40,000 members of Poland’s Home Army were deported to Russia.[86]

In Britain after 1945, the British people initially accepted those Polish servicemen who chose not to return to a Poland ruled by the communist regime. The Poles resident in Britain served under British command during the Battle of Britain,[87] but as soon as the Soviets began to make gains on the Eastern Front both public opinion and the Government of the UK turned pro-Soviet and anti-Polish.[88] Supporters of the socialists falsely and deliberately made the Poles out to be "warmongers", "anti-Semites" and "fascists".[89] After the war, the trade unions and Labour party played on the fears of there not being enough jobs, food and housing. There were also anti-Polish rallies.[89]

In 1961, a book was published in Germany entitled Der Erzwungene Krieg (The Forced War) by the American historical writer and Holocaust denier David Hoggan, which argued that Germany did not commit aggression against Poland in 1939, but was instead the victim of an Anglo-Polish conspiracy against the Reich.[90] Reviewers have often noted that Hoggan seems to have an obsessive hostility towards the Poles. His claims included that the Polish government treated Poland's German minority far worse than the German government under Adolf Hitler treated its Jewish minority.[91] In 1964, much controversy was created when two German right-wing extremist groups awarded Hoggan prizes.[92] In the 1980s, the German philosopher and historian Ernst Nolte claimed that in 1939 Poland was engaged in a campaign of genocide against its ethnic German minority, and has strongly implied that the German invasion in 1939, and all of the subsequent German atrocities in Poland during World War II were in essence justified acts of retaliation.[93] Critics, such as the British historian Richard J. Evans, have accused Nolte of distorting the facts, and have argued that in no way was Poland committing genocide against its German minority.[93]

During the political transformation of the Soviet-controlled Eastern bloc in the 1980s, the traditional German anti-Polish feeling was again openly exploited in the East Germany against Solidarność. This tactic had become especially apparent in the "rejuvenation of 'Polish jokes,' some of which reminded listeners of the spread of such jokes under the Nazis."[94]

The expressions offensive to Poles are attributed to a number of non-Polish media in relation to World War II. The most prominent is a continued reference by Western news media to "Polish death camps" and "Polish concentration camps". These phrases refer to the network of concentration camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland in order to facilitate the "Final Solution", but the wording suggests that the Polish people might have been involved.[95][96][97] Even Dachau concentration camp in Bavaria, Germany was described as in Poland.[98]

The Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as Polish organizations around the world and all Polish governments since 1989, condemned the usage of such expressions, arguing that they suggest Polish responsibility for the camps. The American Jewish Committee stated in its 30 January 2005, press release: "This is not a mere semantic matter. Historical integrity and accuracy hang in the balance.... Any misrepresentation of Poland's role in the Second World War, whether intentional or accidental, would be most regrettable and therefore should not be left unchallenged."[99]

On 30 April 2004, a CTV News report made reference to "the Polish camp in Treblinka". The Polish embassy in Canada lodged a complaint with CTV. Robert Hurst of CTV, however, argued that the expression, "Polish death camp", is common usage in news organizations including those in the United States, and declined to issue a correction.[100] The Polish Ambassador to Ottawa then complained to the National Specialty Services Panel of the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council. The Council did not accept Hurst's argument and ruled against CTV stating that the word ""Polish"—similarly to such adjectives as "English", "French" and "German"—had connotations that clearly extended beyond geographic context. Its use with reference to Nazi extermination camps was misleading and improper". CTV broadcast the decision during prime time.[101] The Polish Ministry of Foreign affairs has stated, "That example of a successful campaign against the distortion of historic truth by the media – and in defense of the good name of Poland – will hopefully reduce the number of similar incidents in the future."[101]

A similar example was the phrase "Polish Nazis" used in relation to non-Polish paramilitary groups operating on German-occupied Polish soil during World War II,[102] disseminated by Norwegian State Broadcasting Corporation, NRK.[103] The Yad Vashem Institute in Jerusalem officially considered this claim by NRK a falsification "offensive to historical truth".[102]

Cardinal Józef Glemp in his controversial and widely criticized speech delivered on 26 August 1989 (and retracted in 1991)[104] argued that the outbursts of antisemitism are a "legitimate form of national self-defence against Jewish anti-Polonism."[105] He "asked Jews who 'have great power over the mass media in many countries' to rein in their anti-Polonism because 'if there won't be anti-Polonism, there won't be such antisemitism among us'."[106]

In November of the same year, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir said Poles “drink in (anti-Semitism) with their mother’s milk.”[107] Polish Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki said that “these blanket statements are the most destructive actions imaginable,” and that they “do irreparable harm” to people seeking Polish-Jewish reconciliation.[107]

Jan Nowak-Jezioranski, a Polish anti-Nazi resistance fighter said in 2001: "I took these words of Shamir as an insult to the memory of my mother, who was deeply religious and who taught her sons from childhood that displaying contempt to another person because of his origin, religion, or race is a mortal sin that violates the injunction to love one's neighbor. Those Poles who have fought racial prejudices their entire life must also take Shamir's words the same way." He also said: "there are Jewish counterparts of belligerent Polish anti-Semites. They see Poles, all Poles, as the most anti-Semitic nation in the world. They seem not to perceive the symptoms of this social disease in Russia, Germany and other countries of our region."[108] In Rethinking Poles and Jews, Robert Cherry and Annamaria Orla-Bukowska said that anti-Polonism and anti-Semitism remain "grotesquely twinned into our own time. We cannot combat the one without combating the other."[109]

In Rethinking Poles and Jews, Robert Cherry and Annamaria Orla-Bukowska said that anti-Polonism and anti-Semitism remain "grotesquely twinned into our own time. We cannot combat the one without combating the other."[109]

The term "anti-Polonism" is said to have been used for campaign purposes by political parties such as the League of Polish Families (Polish: Liga Polskich Rodzin) or the defunct Self-Defence of the Republic of Poland (Polish: Samoobrona Rzeczpospolitej Polskiej) and organizations such as the Association against Anti-Polonism led by Leszek Bubel, leader of the Polish National Party and a former presidential candidate.[110] Bubel was taken to court by a group of ten Polish intellectuals who filed a lawsuit against him for "violating the public good". Among the signatories were former Foreign Minister Władysław Bartoszewski and filmmaker Kazimierz Kutz.[111]

According to writer Joanna Michlic, the term is used in Poland also as an argument against the self-critical intellectuals who discuss Polish-Jewish relations, accusing them of "anti-Polish positions and interests." For example, historian Jan T. Gross has been accused of being anti-Polish when he wrote about crimes such as the Jedwabne pogrom. In her view, the charge is "not limited to arguments that can objectively be classified as anti-Polish—such as equating the Poles with the Nazis—but rather applied to any critical inquiry into the collective past. Moreover, anti-Polonism is equated with anti-Semitism."[112] Adam Michnik wrote for The New York Times that "almost all Poles react very sharply when confronted with the charge that Poles get their anti-Semitism 'with their mothers' milk'." (see: Yitzhak Shamir's outburst in an interview with The Jerusalem Post, 8 September 1989.) Such verbal attacks – according to Michnik – are interpreted by anti-Semites as "proof of the international anti-Polish Jewish conspiracy".[113]

For the 1994 anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising, a Polish Gazeta Wyborcza journalist, Michał Cichy, wrote a review of a collection of 1943 memoirs entitled Czy ja jestem mordercą? (Am I a murderer?) by Calel Perechodnik,[114] a Jewish ghetto policeman from Otwock and member of the "Chrobry II Battalion",[115] alleging (as hearsay) that about 40 Jews were killed by a group of Polish insurgents during the 1944 Uprising.[116] Unlike the book (later reprinted with factual corrections), the actual review by Cichy elicited a fury of protests,[115] while selected fragments of his article were confirmed by three Polish historians.[117] Prof. Tomasz Strzembosz accused Cichy of practicing a 'distinct type of racism,' and charged Gazeta Wyborcza editor Adam Michnik with 'cultivating a species of tolerance that is absolutely intolerant of antisemitism yet regards anti-Polonism and anti-goyism as something altogether natural'."[118] Michnik responded to the controversy, praising the heroism of the AK by asking: "Is it an attack on Polish people when the past is being explored to seek the truth?".[119] Cichy later apologized for the tone of his article,[120] but not for the erroneous facts.[115]

"Polish jokes" belong to a category of conditional jokes, meaning that their understanding requires knowledge of what a Polish joke is. Conditional jokes depend on the audience's affective preference—on their likes and dislikes. Though these jokes might be understood by many, their success depends entirely on the negative disposition of the listener.[121]

Presumably the first Polish jokes by German displaced persons fleeing war-torn Europe were brought to the United States in the late 1940s. These jokes were fueled by ethnic slurs disseminated by German National Socialist propaganda, which attempted to justify the Nazis' murdering of Poles by presenting them as "dreck"—dirty, stupid and inferior.[122] It is also possible that some early American Polack jokes from Germany were originally told before World War II in disputed border regions such as Silesia.[123]

There is debate as to whether the early "Polish jokes" brought to states such as Wisconsin by German immigrants relate directly to the wave of American jokes of the early 1960s. A "provocative critique of previous scholarship on the subject"[124] has been made by British writer Christie Davies in The Mirth of Nations, which suggests that "Polish jokes" did not originate in Nazi Germany but much earlier, as an outgrowth of regional jokes rooted in "social class differences reaching back to the nineteenth century." According to Davies, American versions of Polish jokes are an unrelated "purely American phenomenon" and do not express the "historical Old World hatreds of the Germans for the Poles. However, Hollywood in the 1960s and 1970s imported the subhuman-intelligence jokes about Poles from old Nazi propaganda."[125]

For decades, Polish Americans have been the subject of derogatory jokes originating in anti-immigrant stereotypes that had developed in the U.S. before the 1920s. During the Partitions of Poland, Polish immigrants came to the United States in considerable numbers, fleeing mass persecution at home. They were taking the only jobs available to them, usually requiring physical labor. The same ethnic and job-related stereotypes persisted even as Polish Americans joined the middle class in the mid-20th century. "The constant derision, often publicly disseminated through the mass media, caused serious identity crises, feeling of inadequacy, and low self-esteem for many Polish Americans." In spite of the plight of Polish people under Cold War communism, negative stereotypes about Polish Americans endured.[126]

Since the late 1960s, Polish American organizations have made continuous effort to challenge the negative stereotyping of the Polish people once prevalent in American media.[126] The Polish American Guardian Society has argued that NBC-TV used the tremendous power of TV to introduce and push subhuman intelligence jokes about Poles (that were worse than prior simple anti-immigrant jokes) using the repetitive big lie technique to degrade Poles. The play called “Polish Joke” by David Ives has resulted in a number of complaints by the Polonia in the US.[127] The "Polish jokes" heard in the 1970s were particularly offensive, so much so that the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs approached the U.S. State Department about that, however unsuccessfully. The syndrome receded only after Cardinal Karol Wojtyła was elected Pope, and Polish jokes became passé.[128] Gradually, Americans have developed a more positive image of their Polish neighbors in the following decades.[126]

In 2014, a German speaker claimed during the European Aquatics Championships, that the Polish team would be coming back home in "our cars".[129]

• Poland portal
• War crimes in occupied Poland during World War II
  • Nazi German crimes against the Polish nation
    • Generalplan Ost
    • Lebensraum
• Soviet war crimes
  • Polish Operation of the NKVD
  • NKVD Order 00485
  • Soviet repressions of Polish citizens (1939–1946)
• Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia
• Germanisation of Poles during the Partitions
• Russification of Poles during the Partitions

Notes

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• Mikołaj Teres: Ethnic Cleansing of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia, Alliance of the Polish Eastern Provinces, Toronto, 1993, ISBN 0-9698020-0-5.
• Ryszard Torzecki: Polacy i Ukraińcy; Sprawa ukraińska w czasie II wojny światowej na terenie II Rzeczypospolitej; Warsaw, 1993.
• Wiktor Poliszczuk: Bitter Truth. Legal and Political Assessment of the OUN and UPA, Toronto-Warsaw-Kiev, 1995.
• Władysław & Ewa Siemaszko: Ludobojstwo na ludności polskiej Wołynia 1939–1945 (eng: The Genocide Carried Out by Ukrainian Nationalists on the Polish Population of the Volhynia Region 1939–1945, Warsaw, 2000.
• Filip Ozarowski: Wolyn Aflame, Publishing House WICI, 1977, ISBN 0-9655488-1-3.
• Tadeusz Piotrowski: Genocide and Rescue in Wolyn: Recollections of the Ukrainian Nationalist, Ethnic Cleansing Campaign Against the Poles During World War II, McFarland & Company, 2000, ISBN 0-7864-0773-5.
• Tadeusz Piotrowski: Vengeance of the Swallows: Memoir of a Polish Family's Ordeal Under Soviet Aggression, Ukrainian Ethnic Cleansing and Nazi Enslavement, and Their Emigration to America, McFarland & Company, 1995, ISBN 0-7864-0001-3.
• Dr. Bronislaw Kusnierz: Stalin and the Poles, Hollis & Carter, 1949.
• Dr. Dariusz Łukasiewicz: Czarna legenda Polski: Obraz Polski i Polaków w Prusach 1772-1815 (The black legend of Poland: the image of Poland and Poles in Prussia between 1772–1815) Wydawnictwo Poznanskiego Towarzystwa Przyjaciól Nauk, 1995. Vol. 51 of the history and social sciences series. ISBN 83-7063-148-7. Paper. In Polish with English and German summaries.
• Eduard v. Hartmanns Schlagwort vom "Ausrotten der Polen" : Antipolonismus und Antikatholizismus im Kaiserreich / Helmut Neubach.
• 'Erbfeindschaften': Antipolonismus, Preußen- und Deutschlandhaß, deutsche Ostforschung und polnische Westforschung, [w:] Deutschland und Polen im 20. Jahrhundert, red. U. A. J. Bechner, W. Borodziej, t. Maier, Hannover 2001

Further reading

• "The Forgotten Holocaust (mass deportations of Poles to the Soviet Union during WWII)". Archived from the original on 1 December 2006. Retrieved 1 July 2005. article
• A Forgotten Odyssey (mass deportations of Poles to the Soviet Union during WWII) website
• "False terminology in the foreign media used in reference to Nazi German concentration camps in occupied Poland" - Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs report
• The Institute of National Remembrance
• "Linguistic imprecision? (anti-Polish bias in the English-language media)". Archived from the original on 29 November 2006. Retrieved 1 July 2005.
• Non-Jewish Holocaust Victims - the 5 Million Others
• Alex Kurczaba, 'East Central Europe and Multiculturalism in the American Academy', The Sarmatian Review, 3/1998
• Interview with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland, Prof. Adam Daniel Rotfeld "We shall not let our country be libeled"
• (in Polish) "Takich obozow nie bylo" (There were not such camps)
• (in Polish) Kto pisze w USA nową historię Europy, Polski i II wojny światowej?
• Polonia in Germany
• Religion, Nationality, or Politics: Catholicism in the Russian Empire, 1863–1905 (pdf)
• From Polish Ministry of Information, "The Black Book of Poland" (New York, 1942), about German deportations
• Danusha Goska, "Bieganski: The Brute Polak Stereotype in Polish-Jewish Relations and American Popular Culture", 2010, ISBN 1936235153
• M.B.B. Biskupski, "Hollywood's War with Poland, 1939–1945" 2009, ISBN 0813125596
• "Polish Encounters, Russian Identity", 2005, ISBN 0253217717; — based on the materials of a conference on "Polonophilia and Polonophobia of the Russians", Indiana State University, 2000

• Quotations related to Anti-Polonism at Wikiquote
• The dictionary definition of Anti-Polonism at Wiktionary