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

Harvest of Hate: The Nazi Program for the Destruction of the Jews of Europe, by Léon Poliakov, Reinhold Niebuhr (Foreword). 1956

German Guilt Diffusion Confronted. Jewish Passivity. Ewa Kurek Right. Polish Death Camp Mendacity Irony. The Unfolding Polokaust

Leon Poliakov, a French Jew and Holocaust scholar, provides the reader with an information-packed one-volume encyclopedia of the Holocaust. He covers such diverse topics as the rise of Nazism, the early persecutions of Jews, the development of what has become known as industrial genocide, Allied successes in freeing some Jews, Himmler’s second thoughts on the extermination of Jews, and much more. He mentions the attempts of Max Naumann, a German Jew, to effect reconciliation between German Jews and the Nazis (pp. 10-11).

JEWS AS RADICALS: ZYDOKOMUNA

In 1936, Polish Cardinal August Hlond described Jews as “freethinkers, vanguards of Bolshevism, etc.” for which he has been reviled as an anti-Semite ever since. It is interesting to note that Poliakov, using different words and employing a positive spin, makes basically the same generalization as did Cardinal Hlond. After listing several prominent Jewish Communists (e. g., Karl Marx), he writes: “These last remind us that it is in the Jewish tradition to be attracted to critical and reforming tendencies and to make common cause with the disinherited.” (p. 9). [But how is participating in a movement of mass murder making common cause with the disinherited? Does the end justify the means?]

ASSIGNING BLAME FOR THE HOLOCAUST: NO GERMAN GUILT DIFFUSION

Unfortunately Poliakov frequently lapses into standard Polonophobic and anti-Christian formulations. On the other hand, he makes clear the connection between recent German behavior and German attitudes that had long predated Hitler: “For decades, innumerable philosophers, journalists, and teachers had exalted the Prussian ideal of inflexible hardness and blind obedience–while the solemn Hegel himself deified the state. For a century the Jahns, the Arndts, the Lists, the Treitschkes, and the von Bernhardis had proclaimed the superiority of the German race and urged Germany on to new and joyous wars.” (p. 284). It was the classic furor teutonicus at its best.

POLISH ATTITUDES

Poliakov presents evidence that contradicts the common stereotype of most Poles being indifferent to the sufferings of Jews. It also counters historian Yisrael Gutman’s contention that common sufferings did not bring Poles and Jews any closer. The following is from a February 1940 letter from General Johannes Blaskowitz to von Brauchitsch: “The violence publically perpetrated against the Jews is not only provoking in the basically pious Polish people a deep disgust with their perpetrators; it is also creating a profound pity for the Jewish population, to whom the Poles were more or less hostile until now.” (p. 42).

CANDOR ABOUT “JEWISH PASSIVITY”

Poliakov cites two different German documents in which German soldiers are cautioned to closely watch captive Poles and Russians, and to do so while fully armed. This is in explicit contradistinction to the watching of captive Jews, during which a much more relaxed German policy can be taken. (p. 226). For another example of this, see:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/jewish-collaboration-ghetto-police-exculpations-wanting-braatz/

For an example of captive Jews not even guarded by the Germans, see:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/jewish-passivity-jews-unguarded-gray/

The author also points out that, one reason that Jews did not resist the Nazis, to a greater extent than they did, was the fact that Eastern European Jews, as a whole, had lacked a military tradition. (p. 226). [This helps explain why Poles, in the past, often doubted the value of Jewish soldiers, and why, in the months prior to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the Polish Underground did not take Jewish claims of wanting to fight the Nazis too seriously.]

Poles had sometimes complained that Jews were too compliant towards the Germans. This is supported by the fact that Jewish leaders long believed that the persecution of Jews could be stopped through the payment of massive bribes to the Gestapo (p. 99). So Polish scholar Ewa Kurek, who was recently blamed for her truthfulness about Jewish conduct, was correct.

AN IRONY TO THE FALSEHOOD OF “POLISH DEATH CAMPS”

For all of the chronic, mendacious media remarks about “Polish death camps” (or baseless insinuations that Poles’ presumed attitudes towards Jews had something to do with their location), the Nazis had originally planned to build the mass-gassing facilities in the German-occupied USSR. They opted for Poland instead, probably owing to a shortage of rolling stock. (p. 192).

NAZIS DID NOT INSIST ON THE DEATH OF EVERY SINGLE JEW IN THEIR GRASP

Contrary to the claims of Holocaust uniqueness advocates, the Nazis did in fact deliberately spare some known Jews. For example, fifty rich Dutch Jews ransomed themselves. (p. 254). Poliakov elaborates on mass-amnesty proposals entertained by the Nazis and concludes that: “…it is impossible to tell the number of lives saved by the ‘Europa Plan’. A few thousand Jews were allowed to go to Switzerland; some tens of thousands of Jews were spared deportation from Budapest…” (p. 258).

THE NUREMBERG LAWS PROTECTED GERMANS FROM JEWS. THEY DID NOT PROTECT POLES FROM JEWS!

Ironically, for all the talk about Poles and Jews being “unequal victims”, the Germans never saw any need to “protect” the Poles from being “defiled” by Jews. Poliakov writes, “On the other hand, certain sacral measures, such as the Nuremberg laws, were never introduced into a territory which the Nazis considered to be inhabited by an inferior race.” (p. 38).

THE UNFOLDING POLOKAUST. POLES AND OTHER SLAVS ALSO TARGETED FOR EVENTUAL GENOCIDE

Leon Poliakov’s work is not limited to the extermination of the Jews. In a manner reminiscent of Raphael Lemkin, Leon Poliakov elaborates on the Germans’ genocide of Poles in terms of the wholesale murder the Poland’s intelligentsia, the reducing of the fertility of the population (including by the encouraging of abortion: p. 274), the mental degradation of the Polish population, etc. (pp. 268-280). He quotes Polish sources whose estimates are that 3 million non-Jewish Poles were murdered, with 35,000 Polish intellectuals among the victims (p. 269). He also recognizes the fact that any mass resettlement of Poles would have exacted a very high death toll (p. 277). This would in itself be tantamount to genocide.

Poliakov also recognizes the fact that the mass sterilization methods being developed by the Germans, not ready for use against Jews, were instead to be used as part of the mass extermination of the Slavic untermenschen: “It should also be pointed out that these ambitious projects were not aimed at the Jews alone, but looked to the immediate sterilization of all the so-called inferior races.” (p. 253).

Meanwhile, Himmler spoke of 30 million Slavs killed as one of the eventual goals of Operation Barbarossa (p. 268), while Anthropology Professor Abel recommended the extermination of the Russian people (p. 266). Wetzel opposed the wholesale extermination of Slavs, not because the Slavs were deemed any more inherently worthy of life than Jews, but owing solely to obvious practical considerations (p. 266-267). Of course, as conditions changed, the extermination of the Slavs would become feasible, even through the employment of industrial genocide. Poliakov recognizes this fact: “The same word `genocide’ applies to the persecution of `inferior peoples,’ even if this was sometimes a `delayed’ genocide…Once the `final solution’ had been launched out on, all mental barriers were smashed and the necessary psychological precedent created…It was easy enough to see, moreover, by simple induction that so insane a scheme could not stop half-way; if the fortunes of war had given the Nazis enough time, the force of the logic of genocide would have inexorably driven other people and races into the gas chambers.” (p. 264).