Poland's threatening other

Focuses on ethno-nationalism in Polish social and political thought, and its influence on Polish attitudes and actions among various social groups, especially the burger class, the landless nobles, the Roman Catholic clergy, and university students. Historically, there was a pluralistic tradition regarding minorities that included Jews as Poles, but only now, in the post-communist period, does this have the potential to actually become dominant and limit the stereotyping and scapegoating of Jews. Notes continuity amidst change in regard to a view of Jews as polluters of Polishness under varied political conditions, including independence after World War I, when the National Democratic Movement stressed a Polish identity built on anti-Jewishness. Under the Nazi occupation, many Poles wanted a Jew-free society, but hoped for their emigration, not annihilation. Under communism, there were two new varieties of viewing the Jew as the hostile Other: there was a revival of the old "Judeo-Bolshevik" myth, and a myth of the Jewish anti-communist. Discusses, also, the Polish antisemitic press and the ethnocentrism that was often used by groups and political parties to justify anti-Jewish violence. (From the Bibliography of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism - The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)