[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 14] [Extensions of Remarks] [Pages 19708-19709] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]ESSAY BY RABBI EMANUEL RACKMAN AND STEPHEN WAGNER ______ HON. ELIOT L. ENGEL of new york in the house of representatives Thursday, October 11, 2001 Mr. ENGEL. Mr. Speaker, I rise to call attention to a powerful essay by Rabbi Emanuel Rackman of Bar Ilan University and Stephen Wagner of Bar Ilan University entitled, ``Philo-Semitism in the Work of the Polish Nobel Laureate Czeslaw Milosz: He Pays Tribute to Jewish Literature.'' According to the article, while there has been anti- Semitism among the Polish masses, the Polish aristocracy and intelligencia ``were overwhelmingly philo-Semitic.'' According to the essay, Milosz's opinion ``corroborates the views of the great Jewish writer, the poet and novelist Chaim Grade, originally, like Milosz, from Vilna . . .'' For several years, I have been striving to protect the works of Chaim Grade, many of whose writings were lost due to the complexities Grade faced by the copyright laws after he came to the United States following World War II. I urge my colleagues to support my legislation to fully protect Grade's works, H.R. 2971. I ask unanimous consent that the full text of the Rackman/Wagner essay be printed at this point. Philo-Semitism in the Work of the Polish Nobel Laureate Czeslaw Milosz: He Pays Tribute to Jewish Literature Numerous very interested reviews of Czeslaw Milosz's newly published book, Milosz's ABC's inspired us to read it. The various, truly unexpected, unpredictable subjects, alphabetically arranged as if encyclopedia entries, may well require a volume of comments. So we comment here on only one subject, conspicuously absent from this work both as a subject and in spirit--anti-Semitism. Czeslaw Milosz, a Polish nobleman, gives as much attention and loving devotion to his Jewish friends and acquaintances, subjects and issues, as Polish ones. The absence of the least trace of anti-Semitism in Milosz's book is to us, as American Jews, a revelation, for it corroborates the views of the great Jewish writer, the poet and novelist Chaim Grade, originally, like Milosz, from Vilna, who said that in Poland anti-Semitism was mainly among the masses--evidently under the influence of the Church of pre-Vatican II--whereas the Polish aristocracy and intelligentsia, with rare exceptions, were overwhelmingly philo-Semitic. Indeed, Chaim Grade wrote a poem of homage to the greatest poet of Poland, Adam Mickiewicz, famous as a philo-Semite, calling him ``the conscience of Poland.'' Chaim Grade is a master of utmost objectivity, well aware of the horrors of anti-Semitism, for which reason in his Lamentations about the program in Kielce, July 1946--not yet translated--he describes the Polish doctor who at the funeral of the victims denounces the murderous mob with the fiery pathos of a Hebrew prophet. It is the very same doctor, a devout Catholic, who rescued more than twenty Jews from the Nazis, hiding them in his house, again as described by Chaim Grade in his acclaimed philosophical Dialogue, My War With Hersh Rassayner, the complete text of which, edited and revised by Chaim Grade himself, has just been translated into English. Scholar agree--and among them Professor Emeritus Millon R. Konvitz of Cornell University--that the Philosophical Dialogue of Chaim Grade is indeed the Book of Job on the Holocaust and that, like the Book of Job, it belongs ``among Jewish writings that are considered sacred . . . which in the Hebrew Scriptures are wisely placed in the part known simply as writings.'' Chaim Grade attended the funeral of the victims of the pogrom of Kielce with Antek Yitzhak Zuckerman, one of the foremost leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, who said that ``while it took one Pole to betray one hundred Jews, it took one hundred [[Page 19709]] Poles to save one Jew, and the Poles who were saving Jews are the glory of mankind.'' Chaim Grade's works reflect this truth. No doubt, it is Chaim Grade's absolute objectivity and utmost spiritual and intellectual honesty that inspired Czeslaw Milosz, the spiritual and literary heir of Mickiewicz, to devote to him a chapter of homage in Milosz's ABC's, where among other important comments, he reports what a Jewish authority should have reported a long time ago: The Nobel Prize for Isaac Bashevis Singer was cause for violent controversies among Yiddish-speaking New York Jews . . . Above all, . . . in the opinion of the majority of the disputants, Grade was a much better writer than Singer, but little translated into English, which is why members of the Swedish Academy had no access to his writings. Singer gained fame, according to this opinion, by dishonest means. Obsessively concerned with sex, he created his own world of Polish Jews which had nothing in common with reality--erotic, fantastic, filled with apparitions, spirits, and dybbuks, as if that had been the quotidian reality of Jewish towns. Grade was a real writer, faithful to the reality he described, and he deserved the Nobel Prize . . . Grade was attentive to the accuracy of the details he recorded and has been compared with Balzac or Dickens. . . . This statement by an authority of Czeslaw Milosz's stature, himself a Nobel laureate, is a very serious matter. Czeslaw Milosz goes on to describe Jewish life in Poland as it was and Jewish-Polish relations as they were, all as reflected in the works of Chaim Grade. It is regrettable that he did not know what was very well known in Jewish literary circles, that Chaim Grade forbade all from nominating him for the Nobel prize, mostly because his pre-world war II prophetic and poetic visions of doom were recited like prayers both in the Vilna Ghetto and in Auschwitz, along with the poetry of the great Jewish poet Yitzhak Katznelson, who, together with his wife and sons, perished in Auschwitz, and of whose works very little has been rescued. All this was reported by the surviving eyewitnesses in Yiddish and published in Argentina, then in English in America--check the Jewish Book Annual--the American Yearbook of Jewish Creativity 1990-1991, 5751. Many people regretted Chaim Grade's decision, for it was taken advantage of by the writer unequivocally rejected by the Jewish writers and readers for reasons well explained by Czeslaw Milosz, who, by whatever means, got the prize and paraded the foremost representative of Jewish literature, of the very Judaism. Thus, the issue is not that Chaim Grade does not have the Nobel Prize, but that, from the Jewish viewpoint, the least suitable, the worst possible writer, has it. As Czeslaw Milosz rightly testifies, the Jewish people have the greatest appreciation for Chaim Grade, especially because of his volumes of lamentations in poetry and prose about the Holocaust, for which Encyclopedia Judaica reports, he is declared ``the national Jewish poet, as Bialik was in his day.'' Chaim Grade's volumes resurrect the life of East European Jewry, such as it truly was, very much as stated by Czeslaw Milosz who, a Pole from Vilna, knew this life very well and is a most reliable witness. Czeslaw Milosz's report about the Jewish attitude towards the Yiddish Nobel laureate may be corroborated by the following vignette: Professor Saul Lieberman, the Dean of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, heard the news from Sweden, and exclaimed in utter disbelief, ``What?!!! But he wrote only pornography!'' When Bar Ilan University in Israel was approached about a prize for the Yiddish laureate, he was rejected so emphatically that the issue was never raised again. Czeslaw Milosz's report is especially important in view of the general contempt for the Yiddish Nobel laureate. Thus, less than a month before the incomprehensible news from Sweden, John Simon wrote on September 12, 1978, in The Esquire: International understanding is a delightful thing. How nice it was at the recent Pula Film Festival, in Yugoslavia, between looking at films, to find a group of critics and scholars from various countries in agreement about the vast overratedness of that self-inflated, dully repetitious, barely second-rate fictionalist Isaac Bashevis Singer. And Israel Shenker concluded the definitive literary obituary of the Yiddish laureate in August 1991, in the Book Review of the New York Times: He shied from chicken soup--and chickens--and became a devoted vegetarian . . . ``So, in a very small way, I do a favor for the chickens,'' Singer said. ``If I will ever get a monument, chickens will do it for me.'' A New York Times reporter in 1978, the year of the shocking choice of the Nobel prize for literature, Israel Shenker is known to have approached the late Eugene Rachlis, the Editor- in-Chief of Bobbs-Merryl, then Chaim Grade's English publisher (now it is Knopf); and asked, ``what's going on? Everybody says that it is your man who should have gotten the prize.'' All this explains why Israel Shenker chose to end the definitive literary obituary of the Yiddish laureate with the laureate's own ``chickens'' words. And all this proves the great truth of the words of the man who is America's conscience, Abraham Lincoln, ``you can fool all of the people some of the time, you can fool some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.'' Most importantly about this case is, of course, not just that the Yiddish laureate is a ``pornographic writer,'' as rightly denounced by Saul Lieberman, nor that he is merely a ``self-inflated, dully- repetitious, barely second-rate fictionalist,'' as rightly stated by John Simon and colleagues, nor that--as he himself knew and said--he is a writer for ``chickens,''--whatever this may mean. The most important is precisely as Czeslaw Milosz testifies, ``he created his own world of Polish Jews which had nothing in common with reality,'' as the result of which he has misinformed and mislead people, preventing them from knowing the truth about Jewish life in Eastern Europe, especially about Jewish-Polish relations. It is to be hoped that responsible people like John Simon and Israel Shenker will appreciate Czeslaw Milosz's testimony, that they are aware that the Jewish people are no ``chickens,'' that, prize or no prize, the Jewish people have rejected the so-called Yiddish laureate, that his prize remains an incomprehensible insult, if not an outrage. And we cannot be too grateful to Czeslaw Milosz, the Polish Nobel Laureate, for having made in his ABC's room also for Chaim Grade, the Jewish master, who describes Jewish life in Eastern Europe as it really was, and, above all, the Jewish spirit such as it is, always and everywhere, beyond time and space, the spirit of the Bible. Rabbi Emanuel Rackman, Chancellor, Bar Ilan University. Stephen Wagner, Esq., Counsel, Bar Ilan University. ____________________