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

A Surplus of Memory: Chronicle of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, by Yitzhak “Antek” Zuckerman. 1993. University of California Press, Berkeley

Eyewitness Author Refutes the Notion That Jewish-Nazi Collaboration Had an Insignificant Outcome on the German-made Holocaust. The Polish Blue Police and the Jewish Ghetto Police: No Double Standard on German-Serving Poles and German-Serving Jews! 

This work presents a wealth of information. Owing to the fact that the conduct of the Polish Blue Police (POLICJA GRANATOWA) has been presented, in a rather lurid manner, by the likes of Jan T. Gross and Jan Grabowski, Yitzhak Zuckerman’s eyewitness testimony serves as an eye-opening corrective.

The following [except the titles in CAPS] are direct quotes:

COLLABORATION WITH THE NAZIS: LIKE POLES LIKE JEWS

“It’s a miserable thing that, sometimes even now, I include the Judenrat and the Jewish police with the enemies of the Jews. The Poles also had a “Judenrat,” as it were, and a Polish police, the “blue police,” [POLICJA GRANATOWA] who served the Germans. And they did their job when they had to. They came to guard the gates of the ghetto and carried out assignments against the Poles as well. The Germans thought that they should exploit the organized Polish force against the Poles, and they did. If they needed a mayor of a city or village, these collaborated with them. But the Germans didn’t take the Polish people to Treblinka; so the Polish police didn’t have to do that job. But they did do the job when it concerned Jews. They lent a hand; they cooperated with the Ukrainians, the Latvians, and the Germans. And so did the Jewish police.” [p. 168]

JEWISH-NAZI COLLABORATION DID NOT ARISE FROM THE DESPERATION OF JEWS FACING ANNIHILATION: IT LONG PRECEDED THE START OF THE HOLOCAUST!

“We must remember that, until the Great AKTSIA (starting July 22, 1942), the Jewish police did not take an active part in leading people to death. But they did snatch people for work, they did take bribes, and they did wicked things even before the AKTSIA.”  [p. 208].

NO “CHOICELESS CHOICES”: JEWISH GHETTO POLICE DID NOT HAVE TO OBEY OR DIE

“But the Jews, the Jewish police, did the despicable work of the Germans. Some people try to defend them, others accuse them…And there’s a supposedly ‘legal’ argument that anyone who didn’t follow orders was threatened with death. But what danger faced the police force? At most, what happened to all the Jews.” [p. 192]

JEWISH COLLABORATORS–NOT POLISH COLLABORATORS–DECISIVELY MADE THE GERMAN-MADE SHOAH A SUCCESS

“When there were hundreds of thousands of Jews in Warsaw, the Germans couldn’t have taken the transports to Treblinka without the help of the Jews themselves. It was the Jewish policemen who caught and took out the masses of Jews. ” [p. 208]

“Our blame is that we could have delayed the sentence, we could have made it hard for the Germans, we could have forced them to bring 10,000 Germans to do the work done by 2,000 to 3,000 Jewish police.” [p. 209]

—-End of direct quotations—-

ANALYSIS

Although this has commonly been done in Holocaust materials, as part of the standard mystification of the Holocaust, there is no valid double standard when evaluating the conduct of Poles and the conduct of Jews under the Nazis. One either condemns both, or exonerates both. Of course, Holocaust materials will continue to fault the Poles and give the Jews a pass.

One can also see that the specific actions of both the Jewish and Polish police owed less to the proclivities of the people involved, and more to the choices of the Nazi German authorities.

It is incorrect to suppose that Jewish collaboration with the Nazis was merely the desperation of Jewish individuals trying to save their lives. Instead, such collaboration went on since the beginning–long before the Nazis had started to kill Jews on a sustained, large-scale basis, and at a time when the Holocaust itself was not even imaged, least of all by the Jews.

—

IMPLICATIONS OF JEWISH-NAZI COLLABORATION

Zuckerman writes, “In her [1954 Hebrew-language book], Rachel Auerbach, reflecting her own guilt feelings, classifies the guilty by degrees of guilt. Jewish Gestapo agents and collaborators are at the top of the list, even above the Germans. Then came members of the Judenrat, the Jewish police…” (p. 265).

The author was one of those who pursued Alfred Nossig after finding out that Nossig was seen going to Gestapo headquarters. He was assassinated for being a Jewish agent of the Germans. Zuckerman found, on Nossig’s body, a German-language manuscript about how to be more effective in dealing with the Jews. (pp. 321-322).

JEWISH SZMALCOWNIKI AS COMMON AS POLISH SZMALCOWNIKI!

Zuckerman makes this sobering statement: “And if I consider the treason carried out against me by individuals, there was just as many Jews among them as Poles. For example, when I was condemned to be executed on April 18, 1942, it was because of a Jewish denunciation.” (p. 493).

In other places (e. g, Krakow), Jewish szmalcowniki were actually MORE common than the selectively-emphasized Polish szmalcowniki! See:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/betrayals-jewish-more-common-than-polish-bieberstein/

CONTRARY TO HATEFUL POLONOPHOBIC MYTHS, POLES DID NOT CHEER THE DOOM OF THE JEWS

The movie Schindler’s List, seen by an audience of over 120 million Americans, shows a Polish girl giving a sarcastic farewell (Goodbye Jews!) to the soon-to-die Jews, while other Poles–even better–are throwing globs of mud at these defenseless Jews. This is supposed to be normative. Eyewitness Zuckerman, discussing the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, could teach Steven Spielberg a thing or two, as he writes,

“As the ghetto was burning, I would mix with the crowd assembled to watch the ghetto walls. At that time, there was a lot of sympathy and admiration for the Jews, because everyone understood that the struggle was against the Germans. They admired the Jews’ courage and strength. But there were also some, mostly underworld characters, who looked as us as bugs jumping out of burning houses. But you shouldn’t generalize from that. With my own eyes, I saw Poles crying, just standing and crying. Some days I would go to Zoliborz. One day the ghetto was shrouded in smoke and I saw masses of Poles, without a trace of spiteful malice.” (p. 493). Hear that, Steven Spielberg?

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising itself was a small undertaking. Zuckerman, a participant, estimates that there were only 500 Jewish fighters out of tens of thousands of remaining Warsaw Jews. (p. 592).

PAID POLISH RESCUERS OF JEWS

Unlike “Holocaust scholar” Jan Grabowski, eyewitness Yitzhak Zuckerman does not begrudge Poles who required to be paid for helping Jews. He comments, “…I met Poles who were the glory of mankind. And I argue that it doesn’t matter if they took money; life wasn’t easy for Poles either, and there wasn’t any way to make a living.” (p. 461).

DRAFT DODGING

Just before the 1939 Nazi German attack on Poland, Yitzhak Zuckerman’s brother, Abraham, drank coffee all night so that his heart pounding would enable him to fail the draft’s medical exam. Just to be sure, the family paid a bribe to avoid him serving in the Polish Army. (p. 3). And that was even to prevent fighting against the Nazis.

ZYDOKOMUNA MUCH BROADER THAN THE COMMUNIST PARTY

Zuckerman writes, “And, in fact, we differed with Ha-Shomer Ha-Tza’ir [Hashomer Hatzair] about this. For some reason, they believed in a ‘Marxist rapprochement’ with the Soviet Union, which would exist by dint of a certain adaptation of the Halutz movement, especially Ha-Shomer Ha-Tza’ir, to certain lines in the Soviet ideology. That was reminiscent of the delusion once held by Po’alei Zion Left [Poalei Zion] who believed it possible to integrate into the Soviet regime without giving up Zionism.” (p. 25).

If these nominally non-Communist Jewish organizations were not quite fully aligned with Communism, it wasn’t for lack of trying! Moreover, the Jewish quarrel with Communism, to the extent that it existed, had revolved around Jewish-specific demands.

WARSAW UPRISING AFTERMATH

The author comments, “Soviet officers who had been in Stalingrad said that Warsaw was the most destroyed city in Europe.” (p. 560).

KIELCE POGROM

Zuckerman clearly shows that this was not a spontaneous anti-Semitic riot driven by the blood libel. It had all the hallmarks of pre-planning. Zuckerman writes, “…the day before the pogrom, members of the UB [Bezpieka] and the militia had come and collected weapons from the Jews, because the members of the training kibbutz had a few rifles and guns–and they came to take them away. The members of the kibbutz handed over the weapons out of innocence, since the authorities demanded them! So during the pogrom, the young people who had previously had a few weapons, now had nothing to defend themselves with! The lack of response by the security forces established beyond a shadow of a doubt that the UB was an accomplice, involved with the rioters.” (p. 661). Let’s take this a bit further. Could the UB do anything without explicit Soviet authorization?