Jewish Patrons and Polish Clients: Patronage in a Small Galician Town

Summary

They all marched past before Martin's eyes: the grandparents, parents, children. He knew them all by name … There is the old rabbi, and at the home of Rabbi Segal, Martin was quite one of the family. He brought water several times a day, cut wood, and each Saturday he ate sabbath bread with fish in the rabbi's kitchen. And who could compare with Martin on the morning of Passover when the rebbe asked him to enter the rabbinical court? The rebbe, the judge, and the sexton waited for him. The rebbe spoke Yiddish and Martin understood every single word. The leavened bread from all over the town was sold to him, even the bread which the Jews from Melawe had not yet brought to the rebbe but which they did not trust. And he, Martin, bought the leavened bread and paid in cash. And when he left with his purchased ‘wealth’, he would bend before the court and speak in Yiddish: ‘Martin, the shabbes goy, wishes you a kosher and happy Passover.’ The face of old Martin cleared with joy, his eyes brightened, and his lips muttered Yiddish words that he had not heard in years. That there were no more Jews in Melawe, no single person to speak Yiddish with, was bad for Martin.

(J. OPATOSHU, ‘The Jew Legend)

WHEN I first began research on Poles and Jews in Poland and their mutual relationship I did have preconceptions about what this relationship entailed. Through both my Dutch and my academic background I had learned of a troubled relationship. Poles and Jews lived isolated from one another in separate communities, and contacts between them were hostile owing to the virulent antisemitism of the Poles. I was still a teenager when I watched the documentary Shoah on Dutch television. For me, and the people watching with me, Claude Lanzmann's documentary established a permanent association between Poland and the Final Solution of European Jewry—concentration camps, memorial sites, concealed facts, painful memories, peasant backwardness, sorrow, resentment. In 1992, when I left for Poland to carry out my research, I was fully prepared to meet with resistance and hostility on the part of my Polish hosts and informants.