Bieganski: The Brute Polak Stereotype in Polish-Jewish Relations and American Popular Culture

Winner of the 2010 Halecki Award for Outstanding Book on the Polish Experience in America In this study, Goska exposes one stereotype of Poles and other Eastern Europeans. In the aEUROoeBieganskiaEURO stereotype, Poles exhibit the qualities of animals. They are strong, stupid, violent, fertile, anarchic, dirty, and especially hateful in a way that more evolved humans are not. Their special hatefulness is epitomized by Polish anti- Semitism. Bieganski discovers this stereotype in the mainstream press, in scholarship and film, in JewsaEURO ™ self-definition, and in responses to the Holocaust. BieganskiaEURO ™s twin is Shylock, the stereotype of the crafty, physically inadequate, moneyed Jew. The final chapters of the book are devoted to interviews with American Jews, which reveal that BieganskiaEURO and ShylockaEURO are both alive and well among those who have little knowledge of Poles or Poland.