Poland update: "So that's why my oil lamps burn so long"

One thing I was surprised by in Jerusalem - the number of Poles. It didn't hurt that one of my friends was Polish, and I imagine there's a bit of a Pole-dar effect, but I seemed to encounter them in all sorts of places. Therefore, I wasn't so very surprised to find out in a short BBC article that the "President of the Union of Jewish communities [sic] of Poland" said that the Polish people were not anti-Semetic.

"It's more a broad dislike of Jews."

Wait. I know we live in an age of unstable definitions, but isn't that like saying, "It's not a duck. It's a web-footed waterfowl that has a broad bill and quacks." Now, I know "Polish Anti-Semitism" might seem to you like "Canadian Love for Maple Products," but this was a bit shocking for me, and reframed at least one conversation I had in the basement of an ancient church. I have had far more contact with Germans than Poles, and most of the Poles who I did speak with had something in common with those Germans on the subject of the Second World War - I wasn't there, and I wish it didn't happen, and it follows me everywhere, though I wasn't there.* The worrisome part of the BBC article was not the grandparents' dislike of Jews, but the fear of challenging that generational hatred, built of compounded ignorance, by exposing the children to a Jewish identity. The idea of Mrs. Bogomila sneaking out to Shabbat dinners at the community center does little to quash the propagation of hate. The overwhelming awkwardness of talking to German youth about the Holocaust is not a good thing - it tempts a backlash against continual appropriations of guilt, but comparing reactions in the two countries, it might be a necessary step, or the suggestion of what a necessary step would look like.

And so, as I give objectless thanks for being born in the first world of the first world, I think of my ancestors buzzing ferociously around my head, both the biological Alsatian goat farmers and the adopted progenitors of American WASPdom. I am compelled to force the awkward question of the other half of the "first" Thanksgiving. What guilt should the sons of immigrants feel regarding certain reservations that no one called to book? Should we feel more for each generation that was here to perpetrate, and do those of us whose actual forefathers might have traded scabby blankets have more of a responsibility than those who sat idly or innocently by but later reaped the rewards. Most importantly, how do we breach the subject without causing defensiveness to demolish discussion entirely?

The last question identifies one of the biggest plagues in the Arab-Israeli debate: defensiveness. In truth, the Israeli youth face this entire same series of questions, albeit with a different field of answers that is publicly condoned. In many ways, on roads bare of Tagalit, we can find microcosms of our own North American experience within the context of the Situation. Most importantly, we see people just like us, who want to live their lives free from chains of our ancestors suffering or wrongs committed. We, like them, want to make our own lives. But I have reservations, and though I feel I am not alone, I am unsure how to express them. Neither, clearly, does Mrs. Bogomila, and clearly, this is the capillary root of a much larger problem.

Time builds ignorance, engenders apathy. In another phrasing, time heals all wounds. However, hate is often generational - we conflate the wrongs perpetrated against our forefathers with the troubles in our own lives, and find in the abstraction of historical identities a perpetrator someone to take the blame, or the guilt.

*For a interesting, brief article on the subject, try this one. For a beautiful, somewhat longer revelation of the difficulties of innocence, read this.