Polanski’s past is his own. His plans for the future could impact all of us

As a young child, I attended a Jewish primary school in the heart of Golders Green. It was closely affiliated to Munks, the Synagogue which was – and is – a bastion of the Germanic-Jewish tradition within Britain. When I began there, it had been 50 years since the Holocaust came to an end. If the headteacher at the time, of blessed memory, mentioned Hitler in assembly, it was always followed by the traditional curse associated with evil-doers, yemach sh’mo – may his name be wiped out. She would pronounce it sh’mau, with what is now the vanishingly rare cadence of the German Orthodox tradition, which had been reinvigorated in the 19^th century by Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsh.

It was rare for a child in my class to not have at least one grandparent who was a Holocaust survivor. But I was one of those lucky ones. My ancestors had fled Jew hatred in Eastern Europe over a period spanning the two centuries before the rise of the Nazis, meaning that by the time Hitler had come to power, my immediate family was out of his reach.

But in a school setting, the shadow of what had been visited upon our people half a century before was never far away. A Rabbi would tell us about how when he was a child and complained of being “starving”, he would be slapped by his mother. His father had survived the camps and therefore knew what true starvation was. In my final year in the school, we would discuss current affairs in the classroom. I remember my teacher’s voice breaking as she described the bravery of Professor Deborah Lipstadt, who was defending herself in court at the time against a libel claim brought by the Holocaust denier, David Irving.

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There was never, God forbid, any sort of cachet in claiming that one’s family members had been victims of the Nazis. What ‘privilege’ would there have been in describing how all that remained of your seven great aunts or uncles were grainy pictures, or that your grandfather still sometimes woke up, screaming, in the night? To classmates, this was simply reality.

Today, we have found out that something that Zack Polanski said about his past does not quite add up – something that we can probably safely now describe as a theme, rather than a series of occurrences. Last year, in his Green Party conference speech, he described how his “ancestors” had lived in Latvia, then fled to Ukraine because of pogroms, then fled to Poland, where they had fled the Nazis in turn. In subsequent public interviews, this language changed from “ancestors” to ”great grandparents”.

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The issue, as revealed in the Daily Mail, is that Polanski’s great grandparents were all in the UK well before the start of the Second World War.

There are two streams of thought here. The first, as I have heard widely elucidated today within the Jewish community, is that this is just the latest in a very long line of incidents where Zack Polanski has been economical with the truth. The second, which I have also heard from voices within the Jewish community, is that this story is a distasteful attempt to dissect the exact details of a Jewish man’s description of what his ancestors experienced – an experience which Polanski himself acknowledged in his original speech on the subject was “confusing and muddling”.

It is, after all, technically possible that some of Polanski’s great great grandparents remained alive in Poland into the 1940s and therefore were direct victims of the Holocaust – although this is not something Polanski appears to have said, to date. And in August, when speaking to Iain Dale and explaining why he had changed his name from David Paulden, Polanski specifically said that “I was told that my name had been changed because of the Second World War and to evade the Nazis. And I wanted to reclaim my name so I could take pride in my Jewish identity rather than feeling like I needed to hide.

“The bit that was really interesting, that I found out a few years later, though, was my great-grandparents actually came here way before the Second World War.”

Our knowledge of our family history may well change over time – and we may simply repeat what we have been told, only finding out further elucidating information later. Dara Horn, in her masterpiece of a book, People Love Dead Jews, describes having found how, contrary to the widely popular story of American Jews having their surnames changed for them upon arrival at Ellis Island, the actual history shows that Jews would actively change their surnames themselves later on – and how when she revealed this, many of her readers found this emotionally difficult to come to terms with. We have no evidence that Polanski deliberately set out to mislead, nor are we likely to receive any.

What is deeply depressing is how such situations then emerge into the public sphere, and we react based on our prior opinions. I am far from immune; I dislike Polanski intensely and am therefore generally ready to believe the worst of him. Others, including those who are themselves Jewish, will look at what has been published entirely differently. We have these disagreements in public – and those who are not Jewish join in. A situation which is deeply personal – not just to an individual, but to a community, is suddenly placed under the spotlight. A hypothetical is raised: Imagine a pro-Israel Jewish politician had said something similar to Polanski a decade ago, and a story had emerged from Corbynites which similarly dissected the claim and cast serious doubts on its veracity. Would the general response have been to attack the story itself, or the politician? I can only say that if something similar happens in the future, I will certainly speak out, even if the source was a distasteful one.

I imagine that Polanski will choose to go on the attack with regards to this story, focusing on the Daily Mail element (an easy target, given the paper’s own unsavoury history with regards to Fascism) and somewhat less on the fellow Jewish Mancunian who sourced the information in the first place. Ultimately, I would prefer to focus on what is in front of us, rather than what is behind is. This weekend, the Green Party will vote on a “Zionism is racism” motion, and leading Jewish communal organisations have written to the party about various elements it contains. I will reproduce one paragraph here:

“In practical terms, we wish to understand the implications for the welfare and security of Jews and Jewish institutions located within areas represented by Green Party elected officials. How will Green Party MPs, council leaders and councillors engage with Jewish communities, communal leaders and institutions that Green Party policy declares are “racist”. Can “racist” Jewish individuals and institutions continue to expect equal access to their elected representatives and equal provision of services? Will Green Party officials be willing even to meet with “racist” Jews, visit “racist” synagogues, or hear from “racist” cross-communal Jewish representative organisations? How will Green Party-led councils relate to Jewish faith schools that fall under their responsibility, that the party has branded “racist”?”

I should point out that Polanski, despite being given numerous chances, has not condemned the motion, only referring to it as an “unhelpful distraction”. And to me, ultimately, that matters far more than his utterances on the exact extent of the persecution his ancestors suffered.