Antysemityzm w jedwabnych rękawiczkach. Konserwatyści i liberałowie wobec „zażydzenia kultury polskiej”, czyli o dwóch debatach z 1937 roku
White-Gloves Anti-Semitism. Conservatives and Liberals on „Semitization of Polish Culture”, or Two 1937 Debates

Summary/Abstract: One of the elements unifying the cultural writing of the 1920s and 1930s was the conviction about the „inundation” of Polish culture by authors of Jewish descent. The struggle against the “Semitization” was then taken up by representatives of the extreme right in the first place, for whom this was a sort of “nation’s self-defence”. Their texts, an incendiary cocktail of hate, aggression and xenophobia, sought to unmark the „enemy” before eradicating it from the domestic culture field. In the 1930s these writers were joined by conservative liberal commentators and even by some leftists. However, their struggle was to be waged without a battle, with white gloves worn, i.e., in a well-mannered or even, as per some proposals, an ethical manner! The author looks in particular at two debates launched in Wiadomości Literackie and Kurier Poranny in 1937, debates whose architects advocated intelligent anti-Semitism while copying nearly all the charges and prejudices encountered in the militant anti-Semites’ publications.

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