Holocaust film faces invective borne of anti-Catholic bias (Andrew Greeley, 2/28/03, Chicago Sun-Times)

In a just world, Roman Polanski's film "The Pianist" should win the Academy award . . .

For me, the horror of German abuse of Jews was never more vivid than when a group of Germans stormed into an apartment, demanded that everyone stand, and then threw a man in a wheelchair out of the window to his death because he could not obey them. . . .

Yet the film has come under criticism from some Jewish critics . . . [One] argues that it is wrong to suggest that Wladyslaw Szpilman (the pianist) survived because he was helped by Polish Catholics--even though it is true that both he and Polanski were kept alive by Polish Catholics. If the younger generation is to understand the horror of the Holocaust, they must not think that there were any good Poles. Nor must they know that Szpilman escaped because of the help of a Jewish traitor and survived at the end because of the help of a German captain. . . . In other words, one should distort historical truth about Polish Catholics to make propaganda.

There is a serious social science literature--written mostly by Jewish scholars--about the ''righteous Poles'' who protected Jews. The literature asks why some Poles risked their own lives that Jews might survive. The answer is that most of them were deeply religious men and women, though not pious in the traditional sense.

"The Pianist" is indeed a masterpiece (grade: A+), the finest of the Holocaust movies. Its strength is its fidelity to the truth: without ever showing a gas chamber, it plumbs the depths of Nazi evil; yet dark though the movie is, it never loses sight of human goodness -- courageous resistance, artistic striving, and kindness to the suffering.

The critic to whom Greeley refers, Thane Rosenbaum ("Films Show Skewed Version of the Holocaust," 1/09/2003, Wall Street Journal, unavailable online) argues, "The impulse to honor the good in man is . . . disingenuous and misapplied when depicting an atrocity. . . . [B]oth Mr. Szpilman and Mr. Polanski . . . would not have survived without the assistance of Polish Catholics. But in their gratitude lies a distortion that favorably colors the anti-Semitic attitudes that the vast majority of Poles had toward Jews." Mr. Rosenbaum wishes the movie to depict Polish Catholics as anti-Semites, even though in real life Mr. Szpilman appealed to a Catholic friend and was helped, by her and a series of Catholic strangers. Surely Mr. Rosenbaum would not applaud the efforts of Holocaust deniers to conceal Nazi evil; why then does he wish Mr. Polanski and Mr. Szpilman to conceal the kindness of Catholics?

We recently discussed the accusations against Pius XII, and in the comments I recommended Ronald J. Rychlak's comprehensive refutation ("Goldhagen v. Pius XII," First Things, June/July 2002) of Daniel Goldhagen's deceitful screed in The New Republic (January 21, 2002, "What Would Jesus Have Done? Pope Pius XII, the Catholic Church, and the Holocaust," unavailable online). (If you don't have time to read all of Rychlak's piece -- and few will -- search down to the discussion of Goldhagen's accusations against Father Peter Gumpel.) When I consider the many errors, misrepresentations and mistranslations of primary sources, all skewing in the same direction and seemingly motivated by animus, from Goldhagen and similar writers such as James Carroll and John Cornwell, I wonder: how, precisely, do these critics differ from the anti-Semites they so eagerly deride?

Posted by Paul Jaminet at March 8, 2003 6:07 AM