Blood and Homeland: Eugenics and Racial Nationalism in Central and Southeast Europe, 1900-1940

“Moses als Eugeniker”? The Reception of Eugenic Ideas in Jewish Medical Circles in Interwar Poland

“Moses als Eugeniker”? The Reception of Eugenic Ideas in Jewish Medical Circles in Interwar Poland Kamila Uzarczyk On account of eugenics being associated with Nazi racial policy, until recently there has been little discussion of Jewish eugenics. There is no doubt that eugenics, effectively a value judgment about the worth of human beings, has racist connotations. However, its evaluation solely in the context of the Nazi experience disregards the enormous popularity of eugenic ideas that related to social life, and the diversity of the international eugenic movement in the interwar period. The movement was not an ideological monolith, and the solutions to social problems postulated by the advocates of eugenic ideas were attractive for many societies aiming at the biological regeneration of the population. Historical sources reveal that the concept of a distinctive Jewish race, and the program to eliminate “unfit” elements of Jewish society, did receive backing from Jewish medical circles during the interwar period. Zionism and the Concept of Jewish Eugenics In its heyday, eugenics was enthusiastically endorsed by advocates of the Zionist movement, which, as Raphael Falk has noted, evolved from a similar intellectual background, and had analogous goals, to the eugenic movement: “Whereas eugenics aspired to redeem the human species by forcing it to face the realities of its biological nature, Zionism aspired to redeem the the people by forcing it to face the realities of its biological existence.”1 In Zionist circles, it was emphasized that the preservation of the biological and cultural distinctiveness of the Jews living in diaspora would be much more advantageous for humanity than their assimilation into a foreign milieu. According to the Jewish anthropologist Arthur Ruppin (1876–1944): The Jews have not only preserved their great natural gifts, but through a long process of selection these gifts strengthened. The result is that, in the Jew of today, we have what is in some respects a particularly valuable human type. Other nations may have other points of superiority , but in respect to intellectual gifts the Jews can scarcely be surpassed by any nation. For this fact alone the Jews may well claim their right to a separate existence and resist any attempt to absorb them.2 Advocates of eugenics warned that the assimilation process was bringing about the adoption of negative cultural patterns, which, in turn, might affect the wholesome condition of the Jews. Intermarriages and late marriages, birth control as well as alcohol abuse and venereal diseases , previously occurring sporadically among the Jews, were viewed as indicators of the inevitable decline of the Jewish race. One of the zealous supporters of Jewish eugenics, Zewi Parnass, wrote: During the historical evolution of the Jewish race, capability to maintain racial features found its expression in separatist tendencies, that is, in the whole range of regulations that organized everyday life of single individuals and the nation, and distinguished them from the surrounding people. The Jews, living as a diaspora, maintained symbiotic relations with local people, while keeping enough distance to prevent any changes in racial texture, and to preserve the mechanism of racial selection unchanged.3 According to Parnass, this specific form of existence, a state of vita latens, was a favorable condition for survival, “just as it can be noticed in some species of plants, which do not get rooted deep in the ground but thrive on what they can find near the surface; hence they can move from place to place.”4 Similarly, argued Parnass, the Jews have always been engaged in trade, an occupation that involved frequent wanderings. This made it more difficult for Jews to settle down and integrate in different cultures, a condition which prevented the loss of traditional values. Thus, in Jewish eugenic circles, cultural assimilation of the Jews was seen as a process endangering national identity, and as a dysgenic factor. The dysgenic effects of assimilation also attracted the attention of eugenicists from countries with a considerable influx of immigrants and from those with numerous ethnic minorities. However, in interwar Poland, despite the ethnic mix and diversity of national minorities, the question of racial purity, from a eugenic point of view, was an issue of secondary importance. The political preferences of a majority of 284 “Blood and Homeland” eugenicists in Poland, recruited from liberal and left-wing circles, were reflected in their attitude towards race. Nevertheless, the dysgenic effect of assimilation troubled the nationalist anthropologist Karol Stojanowski (1895–1947). In 1927, Stojanowski noted: “writing...