Between the two World Wars, the largest Jewish community in Europe resided within the borders of the Republic of Poland. While Jews were not the sole “minority nation” within interwar Poland, they were arguably the most visible and the most problematic for the Polish polity. Like other states created or resurrected after WWI, the Polish state saw its primary role in strengthening the ethnic Polish nation. Jews were at best tolerated, at worst targeted for hostile propaganda and policies. Ewa Stańczyk’s excellent book on this period does not investigate government policy—which is quite well known in any case—but takes a novel visual approach. Stańczyk’s main focus is on antisemitic caricatures in several important magazines ranging from the hard right Pokryzwy to the satirical Wróble na Dachu. Covering mainly the period after Józef Piłsudski’s death (1935), this book provides a detailed and highly readable account of Polish views of their Jewish co-citizens in the last years of the second Polish republic.
Stańczyk’s main sources are illustrated mass-market satirical weeklies and the images published there. She looks at four periodicals with quite different political outlooks to reflect a variety of attitudes towards Polish Jews from total rejection to bemused paternalism. The first weekly she draws on is Mucha, a moderate organ closely aligned with the Polish state. Two right-wing weeklies are explored: Szarża, published in Warsaw, and Pokryzywy, from the western city of Kalisz. The very popular mainstream magazine Wróble na Dachu and the leftist Szpilki (with a far smaller circulation) are then examined to provide to provide insight into both mass-market and more elitist liberal attitudes.
As might be expected from a middle-of-the-road publication linked to the government, Mucha’s caricatures satirize foreign policy (Jews as a “colonial product” for export from Poland), economic issues (Jews as exploiters of Polish peasants), and simple anti-Jewish prejudice (Jews as unhygienic and vulgar). But for the kind of vicious antisemitic images that one might expect to dominate in this book, one needs to look at Pokrzywy. The several illustrations provided here (as well as Stańczyk’s clear commentary) reveal truly vile tropes of Jews as insects and monsters. It is also worth noting that the quality (not just point of view) of these images is quite low, a fact that Stańczyk explains by arguing that this provincial magazine could not attract the best cartoonists.
Stańczyk quite properly notes that despite the prevalent antisemitism in interwar Poland, there were also voices opposing and mocking this prejudice. Her chapter on Szpilki illustrates this fact. The caricatures in this magazine not only made fun of right-wing hysteria on the “Jewish threat,” but even satirized that crude drawing style present in these reactionary press organs. Szpilki also mocked the conservative obsession with “Masons” and even aimed their satire at Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini themselves.
The longest chapter in the book is dedicated to the mass-circulation weekly Wróble na Dachu. Here, as in Szpilki, one finds mocking cartoons of Hitler and Mussolini as well as caricatures satirizing anti-Jewish violence at Polish universities and elsewhere. A quite different—but related—topic for satirical commentary was the romance of aristocratic Michał Radzwiłł with the lovely Jewish divorcée Judyta Suchestow. The planned wedding of the elderly prince with the much younger Judyta provided marvelous material for satire, as the several amusing caricatures published here show. At the same time, Wróble na Dachu was not above trading on antisemitic stereotypes, from suggesting that Jews dominated in the Red Army and NKVD to more banal mockery of Jews as loud, gesticulating vulgarians.
Many of the cartoons examined here were, as Stańczyk points out, published anonymously. One reason for this was that many cartoonists were themselves either Jewish or of Jewish origin. Stańczyk dedicates an entire chapter to one such cartoonist and editor, Henryk Szpigiel, a Polish patriot, supporter of the right-wing National Democratic party, and contributor to the mainly antisemitic weeklies Szpilki and Szarża. According to Stańczyk, Szpigiel was the main editor of the latter weekly though his obviously Jewish surname (he had, however, converted already as a boy) precluded its publication in Szarża, where his editorial influence was strongest. Stańczyk argues convincingly that Szpigiel’s work reflected both traditional anti-Jewish tropes and a broader satirical vision that did not preclude sympathy with Poland’s Jews, even when they were being mocked.
Ewa Stańczyk’s Cartoons and Antisemitism is a truly unique work which will be of interest both to specialists and to anyone interested in learning more about the 1930s in Poland and Europe. Her careful research and clear writing, combined with the marvelous illustrations included here, make this book a pleasure to read and—even more importantly—a major contribution to our understanding of antisemitism in the 1930s.
