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

The History of a Forgotten German Camp: Nazi Ideology and Genocide at Szmalcówka, by Tomasz Ceran. 2014

Little-Known Nazi-German Genocide of Poles (Polokaust or Polocaust). De-Germanized Nazis. Polish (and Not Only Jewish!) Cemeteries Destroyed

Everybody has heard a million times about the 6 million Jews. Although this is not a book on Genocide Recognition Equality, it still forces the reader to confront this issue. Author Tomasz Ceran reminds us that WWII cost the lives of nearly 39 million civilians as well as over 21 million soldiers. (p. 33).

The setting of this book is the northwest part of German-occupied Poland, which was annexed directly to the Third Reich following Poland’s defeat in the 1939 German-Soviet invasion of Poland. In Gdansk Pomorze (Pomerania)–a small region–the Germans murdered around 40,000 Poles (mostly intelligentsia) in 1939 and early 1940 alone. (p. 38). Much of this book is about the Poles imprisoned in a German camp at Szmalcowka (near Torun). WARNING: The descriptions of German cruelties are graphic, and may upset the sensitive reader.

The main focus of my review is not the camp. It is the long-term issues raised by German thinking and German conduct.

ADDRESSING THE DE-GERMANIZATION OF THE NAZIS

Ceran makes the issue clear, “When I use the term ‘Nazi’, I am in no way trying to take responsibility away from the German people for these crimes; nor do I wish to create a non-existent nation of Nazis. My intention is only to pinpoint this state and these people not in a general sense but within a precise historical reality. Unfortunately, the fact that the Nazis were German is today not obvious to everybody.” (p. 190). No kidding!

BECAUSE OF HOLOCAUST SUPREMACY, PEOPLE HAVE NO IDEA THAT POLES WERE ALSO GENOCIDAL VICTIMS OF THE NAZI GERMANS

To add to many other such examples, Ceran writes, “Henryk Klimek, who was brought to the camp when he was nine years old, together with five siblings, has for many years been going to schools, libraries, community centers in Poland and Germany, telling young people about what happened in Poland during the war. In May and June 2004 he was invited by the Maximilian-Kolbe-Werk association to come to nine schools in Cologne. At one meeting a junior high school student asked him if he was Jewish. Surprised by the question, he replied that he was a Pole and asked why she wanted to know. The German student explained that she was taught at school that during World War II the Germans liquidated only Jews. (p. 9). Surprise…surprise…

THE GERMANS DESTROYED POLISH CEMETERIES, AND NOT ONLY JEWISH CEMETERIES

The customary mystification of the Holocaust has included the unilateral focus on Germans destroying Jewish communal properties, notably Jewish cemeteries. Modern Holocaust-related displays have featured the MATZEVOT (tombstones) from onetime Jewish cemeteries. However, the Germans also destroyed Polish cemeteries, such as the one in the Torun-Mokre district. The Germans forced Polish laborers to disinter the bodies of the Poles and to smash up the gravestones with hammers. (p. 128). Of course, we never hear about that.

POKING FUN AT THE GERMAN RACISM NOW DIRECTED AT POLES

Author Ceran brings up the Nazi (actually, also pre-Nazi and post-Nazi) German teachings about the Poles as an incompetent people that need the German master, as they are incapable of managing a nation-state [e. g, POLNISCHE WIRTSCHAFT]. His satire of this teaching is German chauvinism is biting: “This must sound ironic when considering that it was the Germans who, for centuries, had been unable to create a uniform state organism, but only a conglomeration of more than 300 small states, even when taking into account the fact that in modern times the model of a complex state (COMPOSITE STATE) was not something particularly extraordinary.” (p. 25; Italics in original).

[This kind of German thinking lives on to this day, in the form of the likes of Angela Merkel, who would have the world believe that Poles are neither worthy nor competent in having a sovereign nation, and need the wise Germans to tell them what to do through their mouthpiece (the European Union).]

WHICH POLES HAVE VALUABLE GERMAN BLOOD?

The DVL (VOLKSLISTE), sometimes portrayed as a favor that Germans did to some Poles that they would never contemplate doing for any Jews, was no such thing. It was merely an effort to identify and re-Germanize those Germans that had become Polonized over time. [BTW, some Jews were Aryanized by top Nazi officials. See, for example, my review of LIVES OF HITLER’S JEWISH SOLDIERS, by Rigg.] As with Jews and Mischlinge, Nazi racial classification policies on Poles of transitional Polish-German ethnicity were not even internally consistent. Thus, members of the very same family could be assigned to different categories in the VOLKSLISTE. (p. 89). [Just as one German Jew could be classified an Aryan, while his brother could remain condemned as a Jew.]

Albert Forster had an expansive interpretation of which Poles have German blood. This allowed enough Poles to qualify for the VOLKSLISTE to provoke resentment among some Germans. (p. 40).

One Pole noted was ironically defiant in refusing to sign the DVL. He retorted to his Hun masters, “‘Since I’m already a ‘Polish pig’. I’d prefer to stay one.'” (p. 90). Bravo!

LIKE POLES LIKE JEWS: WHO TO KILL, AND WHO TO EXPLOIT FOR FORCED LABOR?

Before he quotes Hans Frank, Ceran points to the dilemma-of-sorts facing the Nazis, “As a biographer of the Governor-General had noted, simultaneous extermination and exploitation were impossible: It is hard to kill a cow you want to milk. Frank combined the ‘unpleasant’ (tolerating the influx of Polish and Jewish elements) with the ‘useful’ (exploiting them as a labor force). (p. 61).