Should Jews return to blood soaked Poland? | Naomi Seidman - The Frieda Vizel Podcast

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
I feel so like what I said about modern orthodoxters,
like part of me is such an asshole, like this
like second good race to each shi.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Not at all. I thought it was really interesting. I
appreciated it because we live in a world in which it's.

Speaker 1 (00:17):
Like trauma porn, trauma porn. I don't like our culture,
and there's something about Jewish culture just even though like
growing up like hating Poland, you know what I mean.
I mean, I understand it, and I don't know if
my father would be happy. That's suddenly I'm spending all
the time in Poland.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
We're two Jews visiting Poland, two Jews with Polish ancestors
who were survivors of the Holocaust. We're here in the
famously beautiful city of Krakhouse, staying in the Jewish neighborhood
of Kashumerish. There's a Jewish culture festival happening, and we're
here to make a video. In the coming weeks, we'll
share the travel blog on this channel, but first join
us in our apartment rental six flights up for a

(00:54):
cup of coffee and a long chat on the balcony
overlooking the river. We're going to discuss what we think
of being Jews in Poland, and we are not settling
for easy narratives of good and bad people. I'm free devising.
I host this YouTube channel, which occasionally involves international visits,
like to Israel or Germany. My paternal grandfather was a
Polish Jew who survived the war only because he was

(01:15):
orphaned young and sent to live with relatives in CHROs,
which was Hungary during the Holocaust. The rest of his
family didn't survive. This is Nomi Seidman, a historian a
professor at the University of Toronto. Nomi's father, doctor Hill Sideman,
was a famous Jews intellectual who studied for his PhD
at the University of Warsaw, Poland, and survived the Holocaust.

(01:36):
During our stay, we'll spend many hours chatting on miss balcony. Here.
Join us for a conversation. Do you feel connected to Poland?

Speaker 1 (01:45):
I feel so deeply connected to Poland in such a
complicated way. My mother's from Romania Transylvania, but my father
was born in Galitzia. These are all place names that
no longer exist. But Poland was divided for many hundreds
of years into three different among three different empires, and

(02:09):
so my father came from Galicia, which was part of
the Austro Hungarian Empire. He was from a small town
which is now in Ukraine, but he lived in different
places around what's now Poland, and he graduated from the
University of Warsaw in nineteen forty with the PhD. And

(02:31):
I had an aunt, I'm pretty sure who went to
the Baysiako Seminary here in Krakow, who did not survive
the war. And I never knew her, and I don't
remember my father ever mentioning her exactly, so I didn't
have a connection to her. But I've done a lot
of research about this town because this is the town

(02:53):
that the school system that I research was founded in.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
What was your father's experience during the war.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
My father was in Warsaw, he was in school when
the war broke out, and he was working on his PhD.
He was working on his PhD, and he was also
working as an archivist for the Jewish community and when
the you know, the Germans occupied the city and created

(03:23):
a ghetto, they wanted the archivists to remain in his
job because they wanted records duws. So my father had
a kind of protection for a while, but my father
survived the wars So Ghetto. He in nineteen forty three,
he got out of the Warsaw Ghetto through uh a

(03:47):
false passport, a false Allied passport, and instead of being
taken to Treblinka, he was almost sent to Triblnka. He
was on a train to Tribulenka and they opened up
the door to put more people in, and my father
rolled out and rolled under the train and ran away.
So my father came very close to being sent to Treblenka.

(04:07):
But then when he turned himself in with this Allied passport,
he was sent to a prisoner of war camp instead
of to a concentration camp. And he survived by hiding
in that prisoner of war camp, which was in occupied France.
So my father, my father was hidden by a Russian

(04:30):
woman and I think an American doctor inside the camp,
and that's how he survived the war. And something like
twelve Jews survived in hiding in that camp.

Speaker 2 (04:43):
Did your dad speak Polish?

Speaker 1 (04:45):
So my dad certainly spoke Polish in his youth, and
he actually wrote four or five books in Polish. So
I have these books and I can't read them. And
his dissertation was in Polish. He went to school in Polish,
but I didn't hear him speak Polish very often because

(05:06):
my mother didn't speak Polish, so they communicated in Yiddish.
But at one point my family got a Polish cleaning
woman for some reason. A lot of the cleaning women
in New York are Polish. Not anymore, oh, they used
to be. Yeah, so I for the first time in
my life I heard my father talking Polish. My mother

(05:28):
was tell my father to say something to the cleaning
woman because obviously it was my mother that was in
charge of the cleaning woman. But he could communicate, so
he acted as a translator.

Speaker 2 (05:39):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (05:39):
Interesting, that's cool.

Speaker 2 (05:41):
Did he talk about Poland in.

Speaker 1 (05:43):
A fond way in a No, absolutely not. My father
was one of those survivors who I mean, he hated
Germany more than Poland, but he felt very bitter about
Poland and whatever he experienced here, and he when he

(06:06):
was in at the university, there were he talked about
how there were ghetto benches and the Jews had to
sit in separate benches, and or in some classes where
there were no separate benches, they had to stand for
the whole class. So there was real open discrimination. That
he experienced in the thirties. It was already pretty bad here.

(06:32):
And that wasn't the Nazis. That was Polish anti Semites
who were influenced by Nazism or had their own anti Semitism.
And he felt very He didn't like that people were
going back to Poland. He didn't want to support the
Polish economy. And I mean, one other thing that my
father always said that I've been reverberating in my mind

(06:56):
is that this the the earth of Poland is saturated
with Jewish blood. Yeah, that's what he felt. That it's
a cemetery. Every block is a cemetery.

Speaker 2 (07:11):
That's what my mother said. She was talking to me
recently about the rebuilding of synagogues in Eastern Europe, and
she said, wustaff Mundar. You know, she couldn't understand it.
Why why are they rebuilding? And this like it's in
the soil, it's in the soil.

Speaker 1 (07:31):
Right, right? Do you step on your ancestors blood a century?
But and I internalized that attitude. So when I came
to Poland, it was like I was very you know, defensive.

Speaker 2 (07:47):
I think you internalize a sense of like when like
you internalize a sense almost like on guards.

Speaker 1 (07:55):
And I inherited those attitudes and it was a real
it was a very major shift in my life. I
feel like this attitude of American Jews of stay away
from the polls is is really problematic, and I don't
feel that way anymore. I mean, I understand why other

(08:15):
people might feel that way, but I don't feel that
way anymore.

Speaker 2 (08:18):
What was it like to be the daughter of a
Holocaust survivor do you feel like in your personal life? Yeah,
do you feel like like you inherited? Like you know,
there's this talk about second generation tryal.

Speaker 1 (08:31):
I hate that stuff. I'm so like, I'm sure it's
true on some level, but I've always felt a little
bit suspicious of it. The like my parents are Holocaust
survivors and I am not. Like there's a huge difference.
I was born into a society where the Holocaust had

(08:53):
a kind of status that I've like, in some ways
benefited from, if you know what I mean. And my
parents didn't you know, Yeah, my father was sad and
I saw him cry, and I knew about the Holocaust.
But I just think there's a huge difference. And maybe
I'll tell this story about when I was I've never

(09:16):
gone to a meeting of children of Holocaust survivors or
identified myself that way in any kind of formal way,
except once I tried to do it. I was in
college and I saw an advertisement in the newspaper and
I thought the advertisement said it was for a meeting
of children of Holocaust survivors. And I went to the meeting.

(09:40):
It was in the village in a like a nice
apartment building, and I walk into the meeting and I
somehow don't get a Jewish vibe, like I'm like, these
people are not Jewish, and I was confused, like what
am I doing here? I'm not sensing And then they
went around in a circle and I realized from people

(10:02):
introducing themselves that they weren't children of Holocaust survivors. There
were people who believed themselves to be reincarnations of people
who were killed in the Holocaust. Did you sign up
for the wrong I signed up for the wrong thing.
And they got to me and I said, well, I'm sorry,

(10:23):
I misread the advertisement. I'm the child of Holocaust survivors.
And the woman who was leading it said you have
to go, it's not for you, and I said, well,
just because I'm the child of Holocaust survivors. Doesn't mean
that I'm not also a reincarnation, which you are. For

(10:48):
the purpose of staying, I said, maybe I am too.
How do you know. She kneels in front of me.
She looks in my eyes and she says, you're not.
And as soon as she said that, I was like,
she's right, I'm not.

Speaker 3 (11:07):
I'm not.

Speaker 1 (11:08):
And I got my coat and I started to leave.
And as I'm at the door, my face was bright red.
And as I'm at the door, I said, are all
of you reincarnations of victims of the Holocaust? Or are
some of you reincarnations of petrators? And I walked out.

(11:33):
Especially there's a there's a point system, a point sym there's.

Speaker 2 (11:39):
A system of of who has been a victim.

Speaker 1 (11:44):
Deserves therefore to be I am a victim and you're
not at all. I do not want to play that
I'm not. I didn't survive the Holocaust. I wasn't reincarnated
as a victim of the Holocaust, as far as you know,
as far as no I believe not, it didn't happen
to me. And I want to insist on that. And

(12:05):
not only that, but in the culture in which I
was raised in some ways. I've gotten points at various places,
and I've just had a real resistance to the I'm
the child of how second generation and I don't want
to put down anybody else's experience, Like I don't want
to get into that thing where I talk about myself

(12:26):
and I seem to be criticizing everybody else, even though
maybe in my mind I am, and maybe there's something
neurotic about not wanting to not wanting to take on
whatever kind of status there may be. I feel so
like I'm such an asshole like this like second generation shit.

Speaker 2 (12:44):
Not at all. I thought it was really interesting. I
appreciated it because we live in a world in which
it's like trauma porn, trauma porn.

Speaker 1 (12:52):
I don't like our culture. I don't like there's something
about Jewish culture, just even though like growing up like
hating Poland, you know what I mean. I mean, I
understand it, and I don't know if my father would
be happy that's suddenly I'm spending all the time in Poland.

Speaker 2 (13:05):
I'll tell you what it is. It's like, on the
one hand, victim culture can become something where its status
you cash in and it becomes so opportunistic that it's terrible,
but it can't be called out because who's going to
like criticize victims. On the other hand, sometimes people who
are genuine victims have a hard time accepting that they're

(13:29):
broken in some ways.

Speaker 1 (13:31):
I'm definitely broken in some ways.

Speaker 2 (13:33):
I do think that we I mean, to be completely honest,
I think I'm carrying brokenness because of my ancestral brokenness.

Speaker 1 (13:41):
I do think it sucks you up.

Speaker 2 (13:43):
It fucks you up.

Speaker 1 (13:44):
And my parents didn't, like, they didn't want me to
know about the Holocaust. They might they would take me
out of school when it was being discussed. I don't
know if you were raised that way.

Speaker 2 (13:57):
No, not at all, not at all, Not at all.

Speaker 1 (14:00):
Did your parents want you to know about the Holocaust?

Speaker 2 (14:03):
It was discussed. It was discussed at all times. It
was not an intentional education at all. It was more like,
does ID tell that story again? You know how you
have stories, cash of stories. It's like that is a
cash catch.

Speaker 1 (14:17):
Your grandfather was a Holocaster.

Speaker 2 (14:19):
Yeah, my grandparents were Holocaust survivors.

Speaker 1 (14:22):
And I wouldn't stories.

Speaker 2 (14:24):
Okay, yeah, I wouldn't say it was status as much
as you know, when you have a good story and
you know, you can tell it again and everyone will
exactly will appreciate it. So we were very cognizant, I
would say of the value of stories. I grew up
with like a good story, and our grandparents had good stories.
So it was like the adults would prompt them tell
the story.

Speaker 1 (14:45):
Exactly of the five Holocaust stories, That's what I grew
up with, and you'd hear them over and over over
and over, the same ones.

Speaker 2 (14:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (14:52):
Yeah, but there were also things that my mother would
like start to say and then she couldn't say it,
like horrible things she witnessed and she would like start
to say it and she couldn't say it. Or my
father would say the children and the ghetto, or and
then they couldn't say it.

Speaker 3 (15:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (15:07):
Yeah, it was very but I know exactly what you
mean by the stories, like, yeah, five years and you'd
get five stories.

Speaker 2 (15:16):
Yeah, And you know, for us, it wasn't status. I
don't think when I grew up there was a status involved.
I think when I started to leave the city community,
I was very surprised by how much I heard Debra
Felman talking about the Holocaust, because I didn't feel like
the Holocaust had really touched me much. But I think

(15:39):
in hindsight, I think a part of what came with
time was to begin to appreciate the kind of unusualness
of the air we breathed, which was so much the Holocaust.
For instance, September eleven, I was the eleventh grade. Everyone
thought so so certainly that we were all going to
be targeted, and it had a lot to do with

(16:00):
the amount of stories we had heard about being rounded up,
and it made it very, very real. And I think
I really appreciate your honesty, to be honest, I'm just
telling you this, I really appreciate your honesty about being
second generation and not liking it because I really like
that you're calling out like that there is like a

(16:21):
social benefit to these stories. On the other hand, there's
a reason for these social benefits, similar to like, cancer
survivors have these stories, and some people will lean into
it a lot, and other people will be like, let
me live my life up.

Speaker 1 (16:32):
Yeah, I don't think there's any benefits anymore to cancer. No,
I don't think there's any benefits to being like to
parading your connection to the Holocaust. I think that's over.
I see the Holocaust is mostly over. It's like old news,
what's you know what I mean, It's like I don't
think that for fifty years the world feel guilty, and

(16:55):
I don't think they do anymore. And in some ways
that's a shame and they should and it's been in
eighty years now. But you know, there are other what's
happening in Israel, I mean, those kinds of things I
think people don't feel. There isn't the same taboo around
anti Semitism.

Speaker 2 (17:14):
Yeah, it's very interesting because I didn't grow up with
a sense of anti Semitism.

Speaker 3 (17:19):
I didn't know what anti.

Speaker 1 (17:19):
Semitism, right. I never experienced it. I heard of it,
but I didn't even know what it was about. I
didn't know what it was about it. I didn't know
that Jews were supposed to be rich, I know, because
we didn't have any money.

Speaker 3 (17:29):
I know.

Speaker 2 (17:30):
How did I find out? I gave a tour. I
had a German on my tour, and there was a
Jewish cash register in a toy shop window. So it
was like olive bays and whatever. It was Jewish themed
for you to speaking children.

Speaker 1 (17:43):
Because Nangis aren't interested in money.

Speaker 2 (17:46):
But this German said, isn't it antisemitic, and I had
a hard time understanding what would be you know, it
took me some mental gymnastics to understand associating Jews with
money was associating Jews with being grubby, gravity taking thievery.

Speaker 1 (18:03):
Or even just being like merchants as opposed to like peasants. Right,
that's the economic stereotype that Jews are just they deal
with money, which is true, that was historically true. That's
what the Jews were able to do.

Speaker 3 (18:20):
Yeah, and once you start to learn about it, when
I come to a place like Poland, I feel like
there are these collective ideas about Jews, similar.

Speaker 2 (18:33):
To what's happened what you'll see in America with like
collective ideas about certain races.

Speaker 1 (18:39):
Right, stereotypes about Jews and Jews are just associated with money.
And it's awkward now because who comes here is American
Jews with money? Yeah, I think one is not the
country it was twenty years ago when it basically imported labor, exported.

Speaker 2 (18:57):
Labor to Yeah, you can't even get plus anymore exactly.
On that note, how do you feel about Polish anti Semitism?

Speaker 1 (19:06):
Well, I don't like it. I mean, how do I
feel that? Oh, it is is Polish anti Semitic. I
mean I've had I don't I haven't had a lot
of experience with Poles. I've already told you that I've
met these Poles that I think of as great friends
of the Jews. I've I've also I've had people yell
anti Semitic things at me in Poland. I think in

(19:32):
Poland a lot of it has to do with the
were American Jews that come back to Poland. And Poland
is a poor country compared to the United States, and
this idea of the rich Americans that come through. I
think that some of some of the anti Semitism must
have something to do with that. I think Poles are
also afraid that Americans are going to come and reclaim

(19:53):
American Jews are going to come and reclaim their property.
And then there's also this weird like middle case where
like if you go to the market square, you see
that there's a tourist industry around images of Jews, and
some of the images of Jews register as anti Semitic,

(20:16):
Like they sell piggy banks with the halscid like holding
a penny, pinching a penny, and they don't perceive this
as anti semitic and if you talk to them. I
had actually did have a Polish, non Jewish friend, Catholic friend,
very sophisticated, feminist, leftist, and when I said something about

(20:40):
this piggy bank, a Jewish piggy bank, She's like, oh, no, no, no,
it's not anti semitic, it's good luck. And I'm like,
I think I'm allowed to say what's anti semitic. Anyway,
she just didn't see eye to eye with me on this,
and I just let it go. She was being super
nice to me, but she just did not perceive it

(21:01):
as anti semonic. So how and then Poles also feel
as if they're blamed for the Holocaust. And certainly there
are things that Poles did. I mean, there were programs
after the war. In nineteen forty five, there was a
program and a stuttle of Kielts where Jews were killed
after the Holocaust. So it's not just the Nazis, but

(21:26):
the Polish society is extremely defensive about accusations of anti Semitism,
and sometimes there's a backlash against that. There's also there
are Jews living in Poland today and they don't want
to they don't like the American Jewish stereotype of all
Poles are anti Semitic. They want their experience to be known,

(21:47):
that you know, they live as friends and neighbors of Poles.
Most of them are Catholic. And there are a lot
of Poles on the left who see the multicultural Poland
of the inter war period when they were not just
Jews but also Germans and white Russians and etc. They
see that as a kind of golden age of Polish multiculturalism,

(22:11):
and they missed the Jews. The first time I came
to Poland and I had this strange experience. I went
to the Jewish cemetery in Warsaw. There's an amazing cemetery.
If you have time, you should go visit. It's more
or less intact. Some of these cemeteries survived, and it

(22:33):
was beautiful, full of art, and there were all these
students cleaning the cemetery and recording the names of the
people who were there, spending their weekend working in the cemetery.
And I asked who these people were and our guide said,
they're just they're students from Warsaw University studying Jewish history.

(22:56):
And I said are they Jewish? And she said no,
and I think that was the first thing I saw
and that so impressed me. And then as it happened,
I went after that trip, I went right to Israel
and I went to a Palestinian town that had been
abandoned and there were all these like sort of Israeli

(23:19):
hippies that were abandoned it. You know, they were expelled
from there in nineteen forty eight, and hippies were just
using it as a place to get stoned. And there
was no I mean, I didn't know. I didn't see
any Jewish equivalent to these Poles, And I thought, who's
taking care of Palestinian history, Who's remembering these towns? Who's

(23:40):
I mean, obviously this is a conflict that's ongoing. But
in Poland, yeah, there's ongoing political issues. So there's still
a Polish right wing that isn't happy that American Jews
come here and want to talk about the Holocaust, that
insists that it was all about the Germans. And it's
against the law to say a Polish concentration camp just

(24:01):
you know, you have to say a German concentration camp
in Poland, which is absolutely correct. But so there's still
tensions around Poland and the Holocaust and coming to terms
with the past. But there are so many polls that
have that have devoted themselves to Jewish history, and I

(24:23):
think coming here and appreciating their efforts is really important.
And I'm not my father, I'm not a Holocaust survivor,
and I'm a historian. And these are you know, people
of my generation and my age who are heroes and
they've really I'm thinking about people like Jano Schmakur, who
you know, has been putting on this festival for I

(24:45):
think this is the thirty fourth year, which is happening
right now. It's a little smaller than usual because all
the Israeli performers are stuck. They can't fly in, so
the whole festival has kind of contracted, and it already
started to tracked with COVID. But it's still amazing, and
it's still to me it's one of the most interesting

(25:06):
things in the Jewish world today. I don't just mean
in the Jewish world of festivals, I just mean in
the Jewish world. I think it's so interesting. It started
during the Soviet era, when really, you know, the memory
of the Jews that used to live here was kind
of it was an unmentionable and he started this festival

(25:26):
underground with no support. Now it's supported by you know,
American Jewish philanthropists, but he did it on his own.
And then there are other people that we've met who
revived Jewish culture in Poland purely from their own I mean,
they were behind the iron curtain, just from their own resources.
They read. They so in America, we take it for granted,

(25:49):
we have freedom of religion, we have you know, we don't.
It's not so in some ways it's being Jewish is
so meaningful in Poland. And also just you know the
Polish mostly Catholics, that do Jewish studies here, or that
clean the cemeteries, or that study it Ish or teach

(26:11):
Itish or do tours like we're going to get today.
It's just it's very moving to me. And people, I
think American Jews are always really confused by this. They're like,
why don't you if you feel so much about being
Jewish about Jews, then why don't you convert to Judaism
and become a Jew. And they're like, no, we're not
Jews and we don't pretend to be. But this is

(26:32):
our country. And for a thousand years Jews lived here,
and you know, we want to remember it as part
of our own heritage too. So I walk down the
street and crack out, and it says if I'm walking
in different times, like I'm here today, and I'm so
aware of the city and the into our period because

(26:54):
I've studied it, I've researched it, i read about it,
I've immersed myself in it. I've seen photos of it.
I have so many photos of the girls sitting by
the banks of the river that's right over our balcony.
And I also my mother went to a different Basiaco
seminary in Chernovits, which is now in Ukraine, and I've

(27:19):
heard her talk about how every afternoon they went through
a for a walk in the city and they would
look for They came from small town, so for them
the city was like what kind of interesting fruit can
we get? And they loved the city. And that was
true here too. These were small town girls coming to
the big city to seminary to learn to be teachers.

(27:42):
And I like when I walked through the streets of Krakow,
I recognize the names.

Speaker 2 (27:48):
Of streets and to see.

Speaker 1 (27:54):
To do historical research and read the Yiddish press is
one thing. But then to walk down the street and
the bells ringing, and to understand what it means to
be a jewne a Catholic city is it's very close
to the surface. For me. Here there are things that
you can get only from being in the place, like

(28:15):
why like understanding. So I'll give you one example. When
I was a Basiakov student in Basiakov of bar Park,
we had a song about the early years of Basiakov,
which started in a little town in Poland not so
many years ago. Lived a mother of Basiako may her

(28:41):
memory always go a little town in Poland, this place Crackow.
I was like, oh my god, it was not a
little town. We have these memories of like as if
everyone lived in a black and white photograph or a
CPI ane photograph. Instead it's this bustling cosmopolitan city. And

(29:08):
I'm thinking of what's another example. I remember when I
heard about the Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster, which you maybe
weren't born for, and I was like, Chernobyl, that's a
settle and they have a nuclear reactor there. I mean,

(29:29):
we had a steeble like a little Hasidic prayer house
called the Chernobyler that we used to go to, so
to understand that these places didn't stop in time when
Jews left. And I'm taking the train here, and it's
like one schetel after another, like Chaming, you know, the Katovitz,

(29:50):
and all these names are familiar to me. So Poland
is like the familiar and the unfamiliar at the same time,
which Freud said us is the contents of our unconscious.
So so Poland is the contents of my unconscious. Wow,
the past that lives in me.

Speaker 2 (30:10):
Yeah, that is true, that it is. It is the
past that lives in me. Yeah, that's very interesting. Well
shall we go.

Speaker 1 (30:21):
You're the boss, let's

Speaker 2 (30:23):
Go see see Poland.

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Should Jews return to blood soaked Poland? | Naomi Seidman

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