Newspaper Page Text
Brzezinski’s father tried
tohelpJewsin Hitler era
by Charles Lazarus
MONTREAL —Ever the
quintessential diplomat, Tadcusz
Brzezinski kept a low profile and
circumspect silence when his son.
Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, became
president Jimmy Carter's right-
hand man in American security
matters last January.
However, Brzezinski, now 81
and a long-term Canadian citizen
and Montreal resident he served
as Polish Consul-General here
from 1938 to 1945 — was
mentioned in the press.
A report in ‘'Time" magazine
mentioned him on the occasion of
the visit to Washington in July of
Menachem Begin, the Israeli
Premier.
The report stated that “the only
top member of (President) Carter’s
entourage who had met (Mr.)
Begin before was (Dr. Zbigniew)
Brzezinski. From the Israeli
Holocaust memorial, Yad
Vashem, the Premier had brought
copies of letters written in 1933 by
(Dr.) Brzezinski’s father. Tadeusz,
at the time Polish Consul in
Leipzig.
“The elder Brzezinski. in those
stern memos to the German
authorities, had protested their
discrimination against Jews..."
I went to see Brzezinski at his
home in the Montreal suburb of
Notre Dame and asked him about
those letters written in 1933.
“I served as the Polish consul in
Leipzig between 1931 and 1935.
and was in my post at the exact
time Adolf Hitler took power,” he
told me.
“At the beginning it was simply a
question of protecting Polish
nationals. There were perhaps
100.000 of these Polish nationals,
doing business or teaching in
places like Weimar and Dresden
“Hitler had come to power in
January 1933, on the basis of the
’Aryan purity’ of the Germans and
an anti-Semitic philosophy as
expounded in his 'Mein Kampl.’
but my diplomatic position made it
necessary to intercede on the basis
of protecting the rights of Polish
Tadeusz Brzezinski
nationals."
Yet, despite Brzezinski’s
assertion that his official position
restricted his protests to the
protection of Polish nationals, the
evidence contained in the Yad
Vashem documents shows that
many of the representations made
to the German authorities
specifically noted that Polish
nationals. who were Jews had
become the targets of anti-Semitic
policies.
It was on April I, 1933, that the
boycott of Jewish businesses and
professional men was invoked as
official policy by the Nazi
Government.
On that very day, an aide at the
Polish Consulate in Leipzig—on
behalf of the Consul, Brzezinski
intervened with the police in the
town of Langsfeld “regarding the
boycott process, which has
affected, among others, a Polish
citizen of the Jewish faith named
Peter Wildman..."
In August, 1933, tfye Polish
Consulate informed the Ministry
of the Interior of Saxony that a
complaint had been lodged with
the police in Leipzig, asking for
“compensatory damages because
of alleged ill-treatment of a
number of Polish Jews.”
Relerring to those days in Nazi
(iermany in the 1930s, Brzezinski
said: “At first it seemed only an
attitude against strangers. Then
this hardened and the attacks on
the Jews began, small at the start.
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boycotts, then came the dogma of
‘pure Aryans.’
“Looking back now, I suppose
what caught us off guard was how
quickly events moved. First came
discrimination, then boycotting,
then signs of 'Jude’ across shop
fronts and Nazis in brown
uniforms watching everyone wljo
walked in...”
Brzezinski appeared pained to
be reminded that Poland itself had
long been the scene of pogroms
and other anti-Semitic activities,
which he blamed on “a small
minority" rather than on national
government policy.
“I did what I could in Leipzig,”
he said, “knowing that Jews were
among the best Polish patriots,
and Poland was the scene of the
golden age of Jewish culture,
producing men such as Sholem
Asch and many others of the arts.”
Brzezinski, who decided to stay
in Canada when Poland became
part of the Soviet bloc a r er the
Second World War, now lives
quietly in retirement.
His son telephones him
regularly from Washington, he
told me smilingly, adding: “But he
doesn’t ask my opinion about what
he has to do, and I don’t offer any
advice,”
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P*«e 15 THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE December 16. 1977