Walesa to Israel: Forgive Polish Anti-Semitism

Polish President Lech Walesa stood before the Israeli Parliament on Monday and, in an emotional speech that laid bare decades of bitterness, asked forgiveness for years of anti-Semitism in Poland that culminated during the Nazi Holocaust.

“Here in Israel, in the cradle of our culture and the land of your revival, I am asking your forgiveness,” said Walesa, his head bowed.

“I ask for justice on behalf of the Polish people and that you remember the good things as well,” he said. “We want to build a free Poland for all, regardless of religion or race. . . . Let us learn from you.”

Walesa’s address, one of the few from a foreign dignitary ever permitted before the Israeli Knesset, marked the first visit to Israel of a head of state from Poland, home of the notorious Nazi death camps of Auschwitz and Treblinka and birthplace of four of Israel’s eight heads of government, including current Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir.

An estimated 3 million of Poland’s 3.5 million Jews died during World War II, and postwar pogroms and late-1960s purges by the Communist regime left just 6,000 Jews there.

Walesa himself was accused of capitalizing on lingering anti-Jewish sentiment in the country during his campaign for the presidency last year, when he asserted that he was a “100% Pole” and urged Jews in public positions to “reveal themselves.”

Shamir, listening quietly without the aid of an interpreter after Walesa won special permission to address the Parliament in Polish, stopped short of granting Walesa’s plea for forgiveness. The 76-year-old prime minister, whose father was killed by Polish villagers after escaping the Germans during the war, has said in the past that in Poland anti-Semitism is something “they suck . . . in with their mother’s milk.”

But Shamir accepted Walesa’s invitation to visit Poland and said he looked forward to an era of better relations between the two nations. The visit is supposed to result in a new trade and cultural agreement between Israel and Poland and further cement Israel’s improving ties to Eastern Europe. Poland also hopes Israeli goodwill may open the way to increased investment from the West.

“The Polish president represents in his history and character the new Poland, liberated and rejuvenated, a Poland which aspires to join the era of integration into democratic, free nations,” Shamir said.

“We want to hope and believe that the first official visit is a sign of the opening of a new page in relations between our people.”

It had been uncertain how the Polish president would be received in a country where feelings about Poland swing from sweet nostalgia to deep anger.

“In the Jewish consciousness, Poland is different from any other country in the world,” the respected Israeli daily newspaper Maariv said in an editorial. “Perhaps it is also different from any other country in the world. Because in Poland lived and in Poland was destroyed the largest Jewish community in Europe. Auschwitz is in Poland. Even if the Poles cannot be accused of setting up the death camps, a Jew cannot think about Poland without being reminded of the Holocaust.”

“The Polish Jews were the ones who created this country, they were the ruling elite from the first years of this country and they all from the beginning have had that feeling that Poland was the greatest grave in Europe,” said a Jerusalem-based writer and political analyst. “You can’t deny it. It’s something that touches a lot in the soul of the two nations, this sense of treachery, and they can’t cut away from that.”

Since his election last year, Walesa has energetically sought to dispel any perception of anti-Semitism, denying any anti-Jewish sentiments in his campaign statements, admitting that his “100% Pole” remark was “a stupid thing to say” and appointing a presidential council on Polish-Jewish relations to study and attack anti-Semitism in Poland.

The Polish news agency reported that Walesa plans to lend Poland’s support to Israel’s campaign to rescind the controversial U.N. resolution equating Zionism with racism.

“Before the Second World War, the Jewish community in Poland was the second largest in the world. The Nazis brought this to an end. But Poles suffered from the Nazis too, and the destruction of the Poles was only a matter of time,” Walesa told the Knesset.

“As a representative of Poland, which has fought and succeeded in achieving independence, in the name of the Polish honor, I am asking you to be just in your memory,” he said.

Before Walesa’s arrival, Israel Radio had raised concerns about possible demonstrations. Several members of the ruling Likud Party in the Knesset objected to his appearance, and there were still questions at mid-morning whether the Knesset would waive its rule requiring all addresses to be either in Hebrew or Arabic.

But no demonstrations materialized, and Walesa’s address, given as the Polish and Israeli flags waved side by side outside the Knesset, was received warmly.

“He touched a chord. He said all the right things that people were waiting for him to say,” said Israeli journalist Chaim Saibi. “Some of those listening were survivors of the ghettos in Poland, and what we saw was a moment of rapprochement.”

Opposition leader Shimon Peres of the Labor Party called Walesa a “true freedom fighter” and said his address was “a speech of a believer who cannot escape the historical bond of two peoples.”

And the Israeli daily paper Yediot Aharonot, in an unsigned column Monday, examined and largely forgave Walesa’s controversial remarks. “Walesa actually likes us, but he’s got a big mouth which he can’t completely control,” the newspaper concluded. “At 47, he’s still learning manners.”

There were practical considerations to the visit, with Israel seeking expanded access to markets in Eastern Europe and Poland hoping for increased Israeli tourism and, perhaps, expanded investment and aid from the West.

“I think the motto now is that the road from Warsaw to Washington leads through Jerusalem. I would definitely say that one of the Polish main highways to normalization from a political and economic point of view is through Jerusalem,” said Rafael Vago, professor of East European history and politics at Tel Aviv University.

Israelis are “guided by the principle toward Poland that they should break away from the traumatic parts of our common heritage, and Israel, I think, is seeking to help Poland to embark on a new truly democratic and liberal way and defuse the nationalistic and anti-Semitic undertones existing in Poland,” Vago said.

Israel also hopes that better ties to Poland will allow access to archives detailing the history of the 3.5 million Jews who lived in Poland before World War II. Poles now make up the third largest ethnic group in Israel, behind Moroccan and Soviet Jews.

Relations with Israel were cut by the Soviet-dominated government in Poland after the 1967 Arab-Israeli War and were not restored until last year. Israel in recent months has been improving relations with all of Eastern Europe, hosting leaders from Hungary and Czechoslovakia recently.

Walesa, a devout Roman Catholic, is scheduled to visit the holy sites in Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Galilee during his four-day visit, which also includes meetings with top Israeli officials and a stop at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial museum.

He was greeted at Israel’s Ben-Gurion Airport on Monday morning by Foreign Minister David Levy and then was flown by helicopter to Jerusalem, where he was welcomed with an Israel Defense Forces band and by Shamir and President Chaim Herzog.

“History will not forget . . . that you, with extraordinary courage, were the first to raise the banner of the springtime of the peoples,” Herzog told the Polish leader. “I welcome you in the name of the Israeli people.”