Moral exemplars and moral disillusionment. How the perception of Poles' behavior during the Holocaust shapes current Polish-Israeli conflicted relations?

Abstract

The moral exemplars model of reconciliation (Cehajic-Clancy & Bilewicz, 2021) proposes that through focusing on the moral behavior during the genocide, the descendants of perpetrators, bystanders, and victims could become more willing to reconcile and engage in intergroup contact. In the present article we aim to test the boundary effects of such approach by analyzing the usage of moral exemplars argument in the Polish-Israeli conflict over the history of the Holocaust. In two studies, we tested whether Poles' and Israeli's estimations of moral behavior and emotions (vs. immoral ones) during the Holocaust are related to their attitudes towards contemporary counterparts. The studies confirmed that higher estimations of moral behavior during the Holocaust were related to more positive attitudes of Israelis towards Poles but not of Poles towards Israelis. On the contrary, higher estimations of such moral behavior among Poles were positively related to secondary antisemitism and harsh criticism of the current role of Israel in the Middle Eastern conflict. The results of our studies suggest that the moral exemplars-based model of reconciliation should be carefully applied to the contexts in which historical perpetrators and bystanders aim at whitewashing their histories.