Polish-Jewish Relations: 1,300 Keyword-Phrase-Indexed Book Reviews (by Jan Peczkis)

Assistance to the Jews in Poland, by Tatiana Berenstein. 1963

Individual AND Collective Polish Aid to Jews. The Myth of Poles Subsuming Jewish Deaths as “Polish Citizen Losses”. No Betrayers Needed By Germans to Find Fugitive Jews! 

This book, published in 1963, describes the Nazi German persecution of the Jews in some detail. It upends some Holocaust myths.

POSTWAR POLAND HID JEWISHNESS OF DEATHS MYTH

This book unambiguously identifies Jewish victims as Jews. It adds to the refutation of the curious claim that books published during early postwar decades just lumped Poles and Jews together as “Polish citizens” or “victims of fascism”, or, worse yet, had tried to erase the memory of the Jews’ Holocaust from Polish public consciousness.

POLISH RESCUERS OF JEWS WERE NOT JUST ALTRUISTIC INDIVIDUALS ACTING ALONE. NOR WERE POLISH RESCUERS ASHAMED TO BE KNOWN, AMONG POLES, FOR THEIR RESCUE EFFORTS

The following information was already widely available at the time this book was published (1963):

Individual and corporate help to Jews, notably by ZEGOTA, are featured. ENTIRE VILLAGES that systematically aided Jews included Kretowce, Osiny, Woronowka, Kosciejow, Kulikow, and Bar (Lwow County). (p. 45). There are many more examples of entire Polish villages conspiring to hide the Jews amongst them. See my review of: Chodakiewicz: GOLDEN HARVEST OR HEARTS OF GOLD:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/jan-t-gross-rebutted-in-detail-chodakiewicz/

Remember, this book was published back in 1963, yet multitudes of onetime Polish rescuers publicly revealed this fact. So much for the myth, propounded by the likes of Jan T. Gross, that Polish rescuers of Jews were generally ashamed to disclose the fact that they rescued Jews (because of imagined antisemitic disapproval of their neighbors.)

THE GERMANS WERE PERFECTLY CAPABLE OF FINDING FUGITIVE JEWS WITHOUT LOCAL DENOUNCERS OR COLLABORATORS

We constantly hear, as a “truth by repetition”, that the Nazis could not have succeeded in the Holocaust without the help of locals. Really?

The draconian German actions, used to intimidate the Polish population against the aiding fugitive Jews, and to locate hidden fugitive Jews, are recounted. This included massive searches: “For example, on Good Friday, April 7, 1944, the Nazi authorities carried out a huge hunt in Zoliborz in Warsaw. A cordon of troops was thrown around the selected area, and the police went in and searched each house thoroughly from cellar to attic for Jews in hiding, caches of weapons, etc. In the course of this raid, in which a total of 3,000 soldiers and police were deployed and which lasted from 4 A. M. to 9 A. M., 250 persons were arrested…” (p. 43).

NOT ONLY LEFTIST POLES RESCUED JEWS

Although this book, not surprisingly, has a pro-Communist slant, it does show a measure of fairness to the facts: “The PPS [Polish Socialist Party] right-wing faction, Freedom–Equality–Independence (PPS–WRN), appealed on September 28, 1942 for assistance to Jews who had escaped from the Ghetto stressing that ‘this is an obligation stronger than death.'” (p. 56).