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

To be a Jew in Occupied Poland: Cracow-Auschwitz-Buchenwald, by Stanisław Taubenschlag. 1998

Holocaust and Polokaust Overlapped. Jewish-Nazi Collaboration: Jewish Gestapo Agents in Action. Jewish (and Not Only Polish) Double Collaboration

This WWII Jewish memoir is unusual in a number of respects. It is refreshingly free of Polonophobic innuendo. The author was an uncircumcised, assimilated Jew who had impeccable Aryan physical characteristics. (p. 54). Instead of displaying fear when accused by denouncers of being a Jew, he would put up a very bold front.

NO PARTICULAR 1939 JEWISH FEAR OF THE NAZIS

The start of WWII found the author in Soviet-occupied Lwow (Lviv). He, along with many other Jews, snuck back across the San River to be with relatives and friends in the German-occupied zone–prompting him to comment: “Nobody was as yet aware of the fate the Germans were preparing for the Jews.” (p. 19). [Although he doesn’t discuss Jewish-Soviet collaboration, his experiences further undercut the canned exculpation that this collaboration was driven by the need to be delivered from the Nazis. Obviously, Polish Jews weren’t especially afraid of the Nazis back in 1939, thus vitiating the exculpation].

THE UNFOLDING POLOKAUST: MOSTLY PASSIVE GENOCIDE AT THIS STAGE

This memoir even devotes some attention to German genocidal policies towards gentile Poles, including the seldom-mentioned passive-genocidal ones: “This [Polish] resistance was, on the one hand, an existential necessity since conforming to all the restrictions and limitations imposed by the German authorities would have resulted in death by starvation for millions of people or reduced their existence to primitive forms of biological vegetation.” (pp. 48-49). Later, the author noted that Doctor Wladyslaw Dering, a Pole incarcerated at Auschwitz, was forced to assist SS doctors Clauberg and Schumann in sterilization experiments on humans. (p. 77) [These were intended to develop and perfect mass sterilization techniques for the eventual genocidal elimination of tens of millions of Slavs.]

THE POLICJA GRANATOWA: NEITHER VOLUNTARY NOR COLLABORATIONIST SERVICE TO THE GERMANS

Taubenschlag realizes that [although the POLICJA GRANATOWA included collaborators in its ranks] it was not a Polish collaborationist police: “At that time I had two pals, Matlak and Zaslawski, who were in the police with the dark-blue uniforms. Policemen in the pre-war period, they had been compelled, under threat of severe punishment, to join the police force charged with keeping public order (Ordnungspolizei), and popularly called ‘the dark blue police’ because of the colour of their uniforms.” (p. 33). Note that Jan Grabowski has dumped on the Polish Blue Police, conveniently forgetting that their sometimes anti-Jewish actions were caused by German duress.

JEWISH NAZI COLLABORATION: JEWISH GESTAPO AGENTS

While mentioning ostensibly-Polish blackmailers (szmalcowniki) and a known Volksdeutsche one (p. 37), Taubenschlag focuses on Jewish betrayers, and that in just the Krakow area: “They formed, at 6 Slawkowska Street, what we Jews amongst ourselves called ‘the Jewish Gestapo’. This was a group of informers comprising several Jewish traitors. Among them were Diamant, Szpic, Brandstater, Appel. Their task was to denounce to the Gestapo the Jews who were in hiding.” (p. 31).

DOUBLE COLLABORATION: NOT ONLY POLES; JEWS TOO

Author Stanislaw Taubenschlag himself was betrayed by another Jewish informer, Danel Redlich. (pp. 50-52, 57). Redlich turned out to be a cold-blooded opportunist. During 1939-1941, he served the Soviet occupants in Lviv (Lwow). Now he served the Nazis. Following their defeat, Redlich turned instant Communist again, and was one of the many Jewish members of the postwar Communist security forces in Poland. (The UB, U.B., or Bezpieka). (p. 57).

Now consider the selective indignation, by the likes of Jan Grabowski, who had tried to make an issue of some Poles who engaged in double collaboration: First serving the Nazis by betraying Jews and then serving the Communists. Now we see, from this book, that some Jewish collaborators also engaged in double collaboration. But we almost never hear about that. For another example of Jewish double collaboration, see:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2025/11/07/jewish-collaboration-apologetic-sizable-and-poor-double-collaboration/

EQUAL VICTIMS: JEWS AND POLES EVERY DAY FACED IMPENDING DEATH (“POLISH BYSTANDER” IS HOLOCAUSTSPEAK NONSENSE)

For all the current emphasis on Poles and Jews as unequal victims, their everyday experiences weren’t all that different. He comments: “The change of status, from Jew to Pole, did not however guarantee me any security. Even if the secret of my Jewish origins remained intact, as a Polish Catholic, I could easily fall victim to a street roundup, a random arrest…I could be taken hostage and shot in reprisal for actions by the Resistance against the German occupation, and I could also be deported for no reason to a concentration camp, which is what happened.” (p. 27). Indeed! So what is all this clamor about Poles and Jews being unequal victims?

For other examples of Jews who found themselves equally terrified of the Germans as both Jews AND as Poles, see:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/betrayals-jews-by-poles-not-black-and-white-zylberberg/

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/germans-protect-jews-german-propaganda-lando/

While later incarcerated in Auschwitz as a non-Jewish Pole, Taubenschlag noticed that, whereas Jewish inmates were crowded four to a bunker, the Polish inmates had the “privilege” of being crowded only three to a bunker. (pp. 64-65).

LATER EVENTS

At Auschwitz, the author observed sick inmates being sent to the gas chambers. (pp. 70-71). He faced the affectionate attentions of a male homosexual kapo. (pp. 90-91). Later, towards the end of the war, Taubenschlag was successively moved to Buchenwald and Holzen. While in the process of being transported to Nordhausen, the author had to deal with Siegfried, a nasty Jewish kapo who had deduced the author’s Jewishness, and persecuted him. (pp. 113-115). Finally, he made it past an SS shootout to freedom, and later served the Allied authorities of defeated Germany.