Zofia Kossak-Szczucka’s Enigma: The Antisemite Who Saved Jews

• In Event: Re/Considering Religious Traditions at the Time of the Holocaust Jewish and Christian Theological Attitudes

Abstract

Zofia Kossak (1889-1968), who was posthumously awarded the Medal of the Righteous, was inveterate anti-Semite. A noted interwar right-wing Catholic novelist and publicist, she wrote and spoke passionately about the seriousness of the Jewish problem which required exclusion of Jews from Polish society. Nonetheless, at the time of the 1942 deportations, Kossak, who was a prominent member of the underground, authored a widely disseminated leaflet entitled “Protest!” which made a powerful appeal to the Polish population to protest the mass-murder of the Jews. Furthermore, while personally engaged in risky rescue operations, Kossak co-founded the Provisional Committee to Aid Jews [Żegota], which under her totally committed leadership saved hundreds of Jews. Kossak’s attitude toward Jews was all the more remarkable in view of the fact that it was shared neither by the right-wing underground organizations, nor by the Catholic Church. While critics tend to appraise Kossak through the essentialist lens of either an “antisemite” or a “saint,” I argue that the reasons for her altruistic behavior lies in a theological transformation. The project of the extermination of the Jews revealed the dangers of the theology of contempt. Polish mainstream approval and even collaboration with German mass murders of Jews, which Kossak vehemently condemned, brought forth the necessity to reconsider the mainstays of the antisemitic tradition, which postulated the persecution of the Jews as the accursed “crucifiers of Christ.” The Final Solution, which declared the Jews as subhuman creatures required that the commandment of “love of your neighbor” be extended to the Jewish victims. Even though she never relinquished her xenophobic views, Kossak’s realization of the murderous aspect of racism made her affirm, in writing and in action, the sanctity of Jewish life created in God’s image and assert the Christian responsibility to protect this image.
 

Author

• Rachel F. Brenner, University of Wisconsin-Madison