How One Town Overcame Its Past: Interview with Magda Teter

On Thursday, June 12, at 7:00 pm, Professor Magda Teter will deliver the Podbrodzer Lecture at YIVO.

In a small Polish town, over 300 years ago, Jews were accused of killing a Christian child. The lengthy and complicated trial pitted Jews' enemies and supporters against each other, agitated courts and royal and church authorities. Despite efforts to defend the Jews, the trial ended with a loss of Jewish life, a distraught community, and a legacy, preserved in iconographic representations of the trial that would come to haunt the town centuries later. But today, after decades of trying to come to terms with its past, the town has succeeded in facing it. This talk explores how the history, memory, and art about this event have impacted contemporary Jewish-Christian relations.

The Podbrodzer Lecture is made possible by support from the Podbrodzer Progressive Benevolent Association. The lecture was established to honor the Jewish Community of Podbrodz, now named Padbrade.

Attend the event.

Magda Teter is Professor of History and the Director of the Jewish and Israel Studies Program at Wesleyan University. She specializes in early modern religious and cultural history, with an emphasis on Jewish-Christian relations in Eastern Europe, the politics of religion, and transmission of culture among Jews and Christians across Europe in the early modern period. Teter is the author of Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland, Sinners on Trial (Cambridge University Press), and a co-editor of and contributor to Social and Cultural Boundaries in Pre-modern Poland (Littman). Teter's work has been supported by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (2012), the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation (in 2007 and 2012), the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, YIVO Institute, and the Yad Ha-Nadiv Foundation (Israel), among others. In 2002, she was a Harry Starr Fellow in Jewish Studies at Harvard University, and in 2007-2008, an Emeline Bigelow Conland Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, also at Harvard University.

She is interviewed here by YIVO Programs Coordinator Leah Falk.

LF: Give me a little bit of background on Sandomierz. Why is it that blood libel cases and representations of them have been particularly significant in that community?

MT: There were two blood libel trials that took place very close to each other, one in 1698 and one in 1710, and were linked to the same priest, Stefan Żuchowski who was behind commissioning the paintings that survived in Sandomierz. They were not the first blood libels in Poland, nor were they  the last ones, and they were not even the most cruel ones—there was a wave of blood libels that took place in Poland in the second half of the eighteenth century, especially in the eastern territories, which are now Ukraine.

Yet, they became what I call the “lieux de memoire,” or sites of memory, partly because of the paintings that remained, preserved as part of the sacred art in the cathedral and in a smaller church of St. Paul. They served as a reminder of the painful aspects of the history of the Jews in Poland. Why Sandomierz? I think it’s precisely because of the paintings and the books that the priests produced in the aftermath of the trials. [Those artifacts] became the material reminder of that past—which is not what survived in other places. In other places, there were also some iconographic pieces, but they were destroyed during the war, or were less prominent.

LF: The talk you’re going to give is more focused on the present day, when the Christian and Jewish communities of Sandomierz came together to discuss what to do with this painting. They’ve agreed upon a solution that they believe will help change attitudes toward Jews and the town. What was the conversation like leading up to that decision, what were some of the options, and what do you think are the advantages of the final decision?

MT: It’s complex, because really the story of the Sandomierz paintings is the story of the Polish-Jewish- Catholic relations and dialogue that happened after the Communist regime ended. Some of the voices that began to raise the question of antisemitism in the history of the Jews and the Catholic Church in Poland, and in the painting, came precisely at a time when dialogue and discussion about Jews and the Jewish presence in Polish history became possible: in the late 1980s and 90s. This whole controversy surrounding the painting, and the dialogue and lengthy conversations that took place, are really part of the story of that reconciliation in the aftermath of the end of the Cold War. And so the first voices that were raised about the painting came in the 1990s, from Catholics, actually, who visited the church and saw this painting, which was quite prominent in the cathedral, and began to protest. This also came at a time when foreigners were able to come to Poland, which had not been as possible during the Communist regime. That inspired some tourists to intervene with Church authorities to protest this [painting]. This was culturally very different from the way Poland dealt with Jewish history after the war.

Among the options suggested in the 1990s was the removal of the painting (some even proposed the destruction of the painting), and a plaque condemning the accusation and saying it did not represent any historical event. The Polish church, for complex reasons, initially did not embrace all the teachings of Vatican II, which were so crucial for the changes between the Catholic Church and the Jews. But with the change of the regime, some of the high-profile Catholic officials did embrace [the Vatican II teachings] and, in fact, in 1997 the first Day of Judaism was celebrated in the Catholic Church in Poland. Among the goals of the day is to “propagate exposition” of biblical texts, “which in the past may have been interpreted in an anti-Jewish and anti-Semitic way” in the spirit of the legacy of the Second Vatican council and Nostra Aetate, “to explain to the faithful the tragedy of the Jewish extermination,” and “to present anti-Semitism as a sin.” Next year, the Catholic Church will celebrate the 50th anniversary of Nostra Aetate, which marked the rapprochement between Jews and the Catholic Church following Vatican II, and the Polish Church is very much part of the preparations.

There were other incidents that raised questions about Jewish-Catholic relations in Poland. The cross at Auschwitz, and the nuns who lived at the site of Birkenau—they were reminders of the tensions between the Catholics and Jews in Poland. There were members of the church hierarchy who supported these efforts at dialogue, and there were others who did not, who were reluctant to acknowledge the painful past and reluctant to be implicated in the narrative of Polish antisemitism. Also, the Holocaust was not discussed under Communist rule. Jews were not discussed as victims, but, instead, they were wrapped into the international aspects of the murders. The information at Auschwitz and other camps would break down the victims by political nationality: x number of "Dutch citizens died at Auschwitz," and x number of “Hungarian citizens,” etc. It was not acknowledged that those citizens of other countries were Jews. As these issues began to emerge and reentered the public discourse, many Poles felt that their victimhood during the war was being denied over the victimhood of Jews, and that Poles were beginning to be implicated in the narrative of antisemitism. Even recently, when President Obama made a slip of the tongue, saying, “Polish death camps,” he had to clarify that he meant “death camps in Poland,” or “Nazi death camps.” Poles remain very sensitive about that past. So this, in a nutshell, is the larger context of these paintings.

Back to the paintings—as some people began to protest, one of the bishops admitted that, of course, [the blood libel accusations] were not true but the decision of what to do with the painting had to be made by the local bishop, and the local bishop was unwilling to take any steps because of the controversy surrounding the paintings, and the history of Jewish-Catholic relations in Poland. The text of the plaque was agreed upon by the Polish Council of Christians and Jews, but then it was shelved. And for the last twenty years or so, every once in a while there would be a flare-up of this controversy. One of the last flare-ups resulted in the decision to cover the controversial painting.

Sandomierz is my father’s hometown, so I was very familiar with both the painting and the town. I spent my childhood summers there. I am working on a book on the connections between Rome and Poland, and, in particular, the relationship between the papacy and Jews in Poland and Italy. When I encountered the name of the Sandomierz priest in the Vatican archives, I wanted to examine documents in the archives in Sandomierz. At that point I met with the bishop of Sandomierz, Bishop Krzysztof Nitkiewicz, and we talked about the controversy over this painting, and he suggested that maybe a symposium should be organized, and we began working together. It took place in January 2013, and was the fruit of a collaboration between a number of Polish scholars and myself and one colleague of mine at Stonybrook, Professor Sara Lipton, who specializes in Jews in medieval Christian art. That symposium was really the first time that the painting was discussed in an open way without controversy and without accusations. It was thanks to the Bishop’s initiative that this happened.

One of my goals and hopes for this symposium was to disentangle the present controversy from the past: to present this topic in an almost strictly scholarly symposium was to step away from the controversy.  I wanted to first take a look at the history of the painting, whose context is quite fascinating. In fact, what is frequently forgotten is that it is part of a larger series of paintings called Martyrologium Romanum, representing Christian martyrs dying at the hands of non-Christians (or non-Catholics, as the case may be with the representation of Swedish Lutherans blowing up the Sandomierz castle). The theological sophistication behind the painting had never been examined and never touched upon. So the idea was that we should first step back, look at the paintings and the historical contexts, and once we were able to understand the past, then we could begin to discuss the issues that were being raised about them in the present.

LF: What kind of public response did the symposium generate?

MT: The symposium was extremely well-attended. All the seminarians attended. The head of the Commission for Dialogue with Judaism of the Polish bishops’ council, Bishop Mieczysław Cisło, was there, and it was at that point, during that symposium, that the head of the Commission for the Dialogue with Judaism announced that the next year, 2014, the Day of Judaism would be celebrated in Sandomierz. And that was such a breakthrough for a town that until recently could not speak of the Jews in any constructive way because it always evoked this painful past and this set of defensive responses. So the fact that it was chosen as the main site of this ecumenical Catholic day devoted to Judaism and dialogue with Jews was a big breakthrough. It was of course all discussed and decided at the level of Church hierarchy and I had nothing to do with it, but the symposium essentially opened up the doors for discussing it. The symposium was covered by the media, and in the towns the response was very positive. Everybody was very happy that this was happening. I should add, that in light of the controversy, in 2006 the bishop decided to cover the painting up with plywood and some cloth, so the new bishop and the young seminarians and students had never seen the painting, they had only read about the controversy over it. This ugly structure in the middle of the church added to the controversy.

The current bishop understood well that something needed to be done, that this situation was not sustainable. He became part of the process by deciding to organize the symposium. He opened a path for dialogue, which in turn led to the celebration of the day of Judaism in Sandomierz, with attendance by the ambassador of Israel, the Chief Rabbi of Poland, Michael Schudrich, as well as a number of high-profile Church officials. The painting was unveiled and the plaque was installed, with the text almost the same as that which had been agreed upon in the 1990s.

LF: How has the conversation changed in Sandomierz since then?

MT: The question of the painting was really only part of the whole process. Local high schools engaged in a program called School of Dialogue, which is run by The Forum for Dialogue Among Nations to encourage educational programs that integrate Jews into schools’ curricula. So the local high schools engaged in that, and one won the title of the School of Dialogue in 2013. Students prepared a curriculum looking at the history of the town, which they called “Tracing the history of Poles and Jews in towns,” looking at topography, and creating a route tracing Jewish history in town, using archival sources, and uncovering the Jewish past of the town. The other school turned to its own history, looking for Jewish alumni of their school, and they had an exhibition called “They were our students.” And a competition focusing on the knowledge of the history of Jews in Poland was also organized. So there was a whole educational package that these local schools embraced in preparation for the Day of Judaism. The Diocesan Museum had an exhibition related to the history of Jews in town, and even acquired a copy of the yizker bukh [memorial book] of Sandomierz, commemorating the Sandomierz that was lost, from the Yiddish Book Center, which is now part of their collection. The curator tells me that people began to bring in artifacts related to the history of the Jews in Sandomierz. So this really opened up a new set of ways of talking about the town’s past that is no longer defensive, that seems in fact embraced with pride.

LF: Do you think what’s happened in Sandomierz could be a model for similar conversations, similar approaches to reconciliation?

MT: Generally, these types of dialogues are between public entities: the Catholic Church, or the government, or Jewish community. They rarely engage scholars. I do believe that in terms of models, the symposium shows the success of [working with scholars]. Of stepping back for a moment and trying to be as dispassionate as possible. And again, these are controversial problems, so it’s not always possible to be totally dispassionate, and it doesn’t mean that being dispassionate means an endorsement of the past one way or another. But scholars have a role here, and they can provide a new and longer perspective, and they can help create that space where a dialogue is possible. And, in fact, part of the difficulty of discussing the past is that it’’s embroiled in memory, in myth and self–perception of the past, and allowing scholars to speak and to clarify or to shed a new light may allow for that space to emerge. In fact, the students in these two local high schools focused on precisely the history. They dug up some archival letters from prominent Polish Jewish writers who visited the town, and brought back the past through archival evidence, through these tangible artifacts. A dispassionate look at the past allows for that kind of dialogue.

So if there is a model, asking scholars to participate and not shying away from historical scholarship as something boring or not relevant to current concerns, may in fact allow for that kind of successful dialogue. I am not sure whether it’s the end of the story—obviously it doesn’t happen over one year, this dialogue, with successes and set-backs, took twenty years to bring change [in Sandomierz]. But I do think that opening up the conversation and engaging in the dialogue without fear, with historical materials and archival evidence presented in its historical context, even if people are still very passionate about it, can only create something positive. That’s exactly what the chief rabbi of Poland said, that it was a wise decision, and as long as we keep talking, good things can happen. Controversies over the Polish-Jewish past are not over, but programs promoting better understanding of the past are beginning to be implemented, whether through competitions such as the School of Dialogue, or through implementation of some of the topics into the curriculum. Polish-Jewish history will be gradually part of the discussion of the past in normal terms.

These changes go against what has been ingrained in historical education. If you think about the way history has been taught since the nineteenth century, it is generally through national narratives, which really excluded people who were not members of a given national group, and that’s true for Jewish history; Polish, German, and Ukrainian history, and so on. We are now sort of emerging from that national era into a post-nationalist era and we can now begin to look at history in a more organic way. But that historical memory, created by earlier national historians, is well-ingrained, so there’s still much to be done. I see my role as a scholar of the “deep” past—of pre-modern, pre-eighteenth-century history—as part of that process, of uncovering these very complex and fascinating stories that can hopefully challenge that monochromatic vision of the past, by presenting both the good and the painful, both of which are sometimes sources of controversy.

Interview edited for length and clarity.

Read more about blood libels and Sandomierz in The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Easter Europe.

Read more (in Polish) about some of the projects mentioned in this interview:
School of Dialogue
Interview with Bishop Nitkiewicz of Sandomierz
Day of Judaism 2014

Leah Falk is YIVO’s Programs Coordinator.