Bieganski: The Brute Polak Stereotype, Its Role in Polish-Jewish Relations and American Popular Culture by Danusha B. Goska (review)

The author of Bieganski: The Brute Polak Stereotype, Its Role in Polish-Jewish Relations and American Popular Culture has chosen a subject embedded in a difficult history. The book is an analysis of Polish identity in relation to the perpetuation of stereotypes, especially those maintained by Jews and as reflected in American culture. Questions posed by the author include: “What stereotypes of Poles do Jews (and others) hold?” and “Why are Poles associated with anti-Semitism?” The book’s readers may ask: “How do scholars dissect the core issues in of ethnic stereotyping, including their genesis, distribution, and perpetuation?”

Bieganski is comprised of a lengthy introduction and 10 chapters. The author assembles material primarily from the nineteenth and twentieth century to show the development and perpetuation of stereotypes of Poles. Her discussion attempts to show relationships between Poles and Jews with reference to these stereotypes. In chapter 1, Goska addresses the origins of the Polish stereotypes. She starts with an analysis of Borat, a Central Asian character with East European characteristics, the creation of British Jewish comedian Sacha Baron Cohen. She also draws upon numerous examples, including literary sources in which the Polish peasant stereotype figures large, exemplified by the work of Isaac Bashevis Singer and Art Spiegelman.

Chapter 2 argues how Jews have long been victimized, to provide context for her wider arguments about Polish-Jewish relations. Goska compares two incidents involving Jews and non-Jews that received extensive press coverage. The first involved the Nation of Islam (1993); the other examines a controversy over Carmelite nuns’ attempts to establish a convent near Auschwitz (1984). The presence of Bieganski in America is the focus of chapter 3. Polish immigrants of the nineteenth century are contrasted with immigrants from all of Eastern and Southern Europe during the Great Wave of immigration (1888–1924). She shows how the characteristics applied to Poles, including “poverty, dirt, stupidity, ineptitude, and vulgarity” (p. 106), were also applied to most Eastern European immigrants.

The transformation of Poles in the United States from rural European peasants into proletarians in American films of the second half of the twentieth century is the focus of chapter 4. A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), The Deer Hunter (1978), The Fugitive (1993), and The Apartment (1960) illustrate how Polish stereotypes reflect classism within this socio-cultural change. How stereotypes validate the identity of those perpetuating them is addressed in chapter 5. Goska provides a brief historic overview of the development of popular images of Poles from the eighteenth century to the twentieth century when Poland changed political hands. The Polish peasant bore the brunt of these changes, as represented in the stereotype.

American Jewish identity is the topic of chapter 6. The author raises the issues of relationships between German Jewish immigrants and more visible East European Jewish immigrants. She focuses on immigrants from the Polish shtetl as characterized by Sholem Aleichem, yet she overlooks that many of these people and their descendants identify their origins as Russia, Lithuania, and other points east. The ever-present scapegoat enters in chapter 7. We return to the death camps of World War II, where thousands of Poles were also interned and died. Goska suggests that the responsibility of the deaths of millions of Jews has been transferred, in part, from the more educated German to the Polish peasant.

Included in Goska’s work are interviews conducted among American adults of Jewish descent to elicit information about stereotypes of Poles and Jews in search of “the presence of the Polish stereotype, Bieganski” (p. 216). Data from these interviews are presented in chapters 8 and 9. In the latter, stereotypes of Jews elicited spontaneously are discussed. The book closes with “Final Thoughts.” The reader could assume they would tie together the text, but they appear, however, to be meandering musings.

Bieganski poses a difficult challenge to the reader. Issues...