By: Ross Tedder
It was a warm, muggy evening. We had just spent about an hour traveling to Kielce from Starachowice. Earlier, there was a lot on my mind concerning some of the conversations I had with some of the Polish students in Starachowice, but by the time we arrived in the city I was less distressed. This feeling though was soon to fade yet again.
In Kielce, we had the opportunity to attend a seminar with Bogdan Bialek, a Catholic psychologist who has for years tried to raise awareness of the brutal 1946 pogrom in Kielce. I had heard a bit about the pogrom both in class and in pre-seminar meetings, but Bogdan added an important part of the story: the pogrom in Kielce was a turning point for Jews in Poland after the war. After Kielce, Jews knew that they couldn’t feasibly reside in Poland any more. They became refugees in their own nation, after they had already survived some of the darkest moments in their lives. The resiliency that survivors of the Holocaust showed is absolutely incredible. I can only imagine the sigh of relief that they collectively released when they were liberated.
Yet, somehow, someway it was not over. After all they went through, after all they endured, they still weren’t free from persecution. This bothered me, and invoked in me a sense of empathy. In America, black people endured years of pain and hurt during slavery. Post civil war, so many slaves rejoiced over their new freedom. Seemingly, God had delivered them out of their own Egypt, and they were moving on to their promised land. But, there was something else in the way. After they had endured years of slavery, black people in America had to suffer from constant harassment from people who didn’t want them to be free. They were hunted down by klansmen, and beaten by mobs. My own grandfather fled Macon, Georgia when he was just 14 years old in part due to this reason. The Kielce pogrom reminded me of this because it was yet another burden on the shoulders of Poland’s Jews.
The Kielce Pogrom reminded me of the horror stories of the civil rights movement. For example, Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama, when locals and police joined in beating black protestors. It reminded me of the horror stories that occur to black people in America today. The pogrom started because of a lie, that a Jewish family had kidnapped and tortured a Christian boy in a cellar, to use his blood for matza bread. Despite how ludicrous this accusation was, the word of the Christian boy was given more merit than that of the Jewish family, and the Jewish community as a whole. This sort of thing happens to black people in America all the time. We’ve seen time and again police officers murder innocent black people and get off, because their word has more merit than anything a black person has to say. I understand how powerless a person must feel in that situation, and that must have been how Jews in Kielce felt during the pogrom. When I heard the story that Bogdon, and a witness of the pogrom told about it, I felt this same sense of powerlessness, and a sense of anger. No one deserves that. No human being deserves to be ignored. No human being deserves to be murdered. Going to Kielce allowed me to feel a sense of empathy that I had never really felt before. Going to Kielce is an experience that I will never forget.