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The following are excerpts from an interview with Norman Davis. The interview was contributed to the publication of the biography Norman Davis. About Myself. ”
I doubt the honesty of the British (in all matters).
But it’s still worth reading between the lines.
source:
dziennik.pl
October 7, 2019
https://wiadomosci.dziennik.pl/opinie/artykuly/609563,norman-davies-historia-holokaust-zydzi-polacy-ii-wojna-swiatowa-niemcy-hitlerowcy.html
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Professor, you are describing a meeting that took place in 1974 at the Israeli Embassy in London.
Closed-door conference. It was designed for professional young historians. The Israeli historian Yehuda Bauer was the main speaker. It was supposed to be a seminar on teaching the Holocaust. The beginning of a great operation, the beginning of a great campaign to spread knowledge about the Holocaust around the world. Professor Bauer presented the historical pattern clearly. It was based on the fact that during the war, in Poland, because it all happened in Poland, there were perpetrators, there were victims, and there were people who passively watched, the so-called “bystanders”. The performers were the Nazis…
Germany.
No, not Germany: Nazis, Nazis. Germans are rarely talked about in a collective, stereotyped way the way we talk about Poles. The word “Germany” does not appear in this pattern. There are Nazis and collaborators, there are victims, but only Jews, and there are passive people, the Poles. Then I say: Excuse me, my father-in-law was Polish and was put in two concentration camps during the Holocaust.
Did you stand up and raise your hand?
Yes. I stood up. I talked about my father-in-law, who survived Dachau and Mauthausen. I asked Prof. Bauer, or my father-in-law, if he was a passive observer of the Holocaust. I heard that there were exceptions, and I said that my father-in-law was not the only Pole in the concentration camps, that there were millions of Poles who suffered and died, so the whole scheme did not quite fit the reality.
How many British historians were there in the Israeli Embassy at the time?
Maybe thirty, maybe more.
And you’re the only one against it?
Only me, and that’s why I remember it. I was the difficult person in that meeting, a difficult student who questioned what the teacher said. I interrupted him because the whole meeting was supposed to lead to the fact that Poland was a historical center of anti-Semitism, so it made sense to describe Poles as anti-Semitic. I was scolded. I heard: “Sit down!” and “Polonophile.”
Is the latter an insult?
Well… that was 40 years ago, but yes, I remember it. Unfortunately, Poland was included in this plan, just like from above. And it keeps coming up.
Where is this “mountain”?
It is common in the United States, and it is also common in Israel. Every country, every government has a certain pattern when thinking about history. But Israel has a specific historical policy. I can say a thousand times that this pattern is untrue, but if I repeat it a million times, my words will be just a drop in the ocean. Unfortunately, this pattern has been adopted in the West, not only in universities, but also at the level of common sense, and it dominates the narrative about World War II. However, this only happened in the 1970s. Imagine that when I was a student at Oxford University, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Holocaust did not exist in research programs. In the first two decades after the war, this topic did not become a topic in the State of Israel either. Israelis did not want to talk about it or hear about it. The program that I encountered in 1974 was invented when the Israeli right came to power. Now it is like the Bible, the only indisputable truth. When I was already a professor in London, it was difficult for me to explain that the evil of the Nazis, Germans and fascists was not the only one.
Do Communism and Stalinism still exist?
Not only that, but mainly so. During my studies, Stalin was often called a good ally. Those who protested said that the situation was different, that they were treated like crazy, that they were not taken into account. When people began to talk about the Holocaust, at the same time evidence began to emerge that Stalin was not a good uncle. However, we must remember that our authorities have not yet fully accepted the truth about Katyn.
You gave a lecture that included: Research on Katyn at the University of Texas began as early as the second half of the 1980s.
I gave a guest lecture on Polish-Soviet relations. The head of the department knew something about Stalin, she wrote about him. When I talked about Katyn Stalin was behind this crime, they started asking me what evidence and documents I needed to prove it and whether I was repeating Nazi propaganda because Goebbels lied about it. You know, there was no discussion. That was 1986. Now things have changed. The whole world knows about Stalin’s brutal regime, but emotionally it still doesn’t accept it. There is knowledge, there are expert books, you can read, but the audience still doesn’t feel that this is the same crime committed by the Germans. Or to put it another way: the crimes of Stalinism cannot be compared to those of Hitler. Any historian who says, as I did, that there were two brutal systems fighting each other – the Third Reich and the Soviet Union – is immediately condemned. You hear that you shouldn’t say that, it’s an exaggeration. Yes, people think that Stalin was not the best, but he fought on the side of good. This is still the political vision of the past. I must add that many years later, when I returned to Texas, I was very well received there. The city of Houston proclaimed Norman Davis Day. A junior professor at the University of Texas wrote that I was “the greatest historian in Europe.”
However, Soviet soldiers liberated us – this was the leader of the SLD, Włodzimierz Czarzasty, a few days earlier.
Yes? They liberated and oppressed at the same time. The Red Army soldiers themselves were slaves. After all, the marshals did not lead the army… Every January there is a ceremony to celebrate the liberation of Auschwitz.
By the Red Army.
Yes, it was. But a few hundred kilometers to the east, near Lublin, there was the Majdanek concentration camp, which was liberated by the Soviets and then the NKVD placed Poles from the Home Army there. This was too hard for the world to accept. Or just accept it mechanically, not emotionally.
You feel like you’ve hit a wall.
I had it then and I still have it now.
December 14, 1981, your book “God’s Playground. History of Poland”.
It’s a great moment, isn’t it? I couldn’t have chosen better. Poland had just been put under martial law and a book about Poland premiered here. However, I must say that it was a complete surprise. The book was supposed to be printed a year ago. It’s a large and very complex material. The editing took a long time. In fact, God’s Game was released on December 14th.
Then you went to California, Stanford.
Not immediately. Four years later. In 1984, I was invited to apply for the position of Chair of the Department of East European History at Stanford University. The application process took nearly two years. I was unanimously selected by the selection committee. Something incomprehensible began. Like Kafka. I wrote about it all first in my autobiography, basically day by day. It was hard to believe that something like North Korea was happening in sunny California. Invisible forces, silent conspiracies. Unexplainable, incomprehensible, actions of higher forces.
But not God.
No, not God. People. When basically all the formalities were done and we had already bought a house on campus, the phone rang. The acting head of the history department at Stanford said solemnly: “There is a problem. If I were you, I would go back to London and forget everything. You will not get the job.” When I asked about it, all I heard was: “I’m sorry, I’m not allowed to say anything more. Goodbye”. Then, when I asked different people what this matter was, all I heard was: “I’m not allowed to talk about it.” A retired professor blocked my way and said: “If I were you, I would donate to the Palestinians.” A few weeks later, I found out that my case was related to the Jewish question, or more precisely to the Polish-Jewish relations that I had described.
The point is that you object to the current paradigm regarding the Holocaust?
Yes sir. That’s it. I’m sure my sin in their eyes was that I didn’t write that the Poles are anti-Semitic. All Poles. Because in this model there is also anti-Semitism among the Poles. It should be collective, without exception. The Poles collaborated, the Poles were anti-Semitic, so they supported Hitler. Yes, at first they fought for a month, but then they basically agreed with Hitler’s policies. Of course, this is very unfair, but if it is repeated a million times, we know what effect it will have.
If this pattern still applies, then you are putting yourself in the enemy’s shoes.
Naturally. I wondered if I should talk about it. However, I came to the conclusion that I was old enough that it was time to speak out. This time it was painful and everything was too much to bear. My wife was pregnant at the time and our son was born soon. That is why it was very important to me that there were people who supported me at the time, including: Piotr, Anita, Carolina and her family, Suzy and Chris, Paul McCloskey – lawyer, former congressman, member of the Board of Overseers of Stanford Law School, multiple war and civilian hero, Navy Captain. He offered his services to me free of charge. He himself faced various issues in Congress for many years. He was wrongly called an anti-Semite. In the end I was an exile. I became a pariah, officially excluded.
Being labeled anti-Semitic?
Not quite. It’s easy to end someone’s career with or without a patch like this. I survived it all, returned to Europe, returned to the UK, and the whole scandal didn’t affect my further career. No one came back to focus on the case. People prefer not to talk about these things.
Why?
Because it is complex and, in some ways, dangerous, it is difficult to talk about it briefly and convincingly.
…
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