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

Sentenced to Remember, by William Kornbluth. 1994

Paid Greedy Polish Rescuer Myth. Jews Prefered Separatism to Full Equality and Civil Rights. German-Imposed Death Penalty Appreciated

The author discusses his experiences in Tarnow. He elaborates on the 1939 war, and the local VOLKSDEUTSCHEN serving as a fifth column. Days before the war, they dynamited a local train station, and later spread demoralizing rumors. (p. 66).

The Nazi German terror soon bore fruit. Already in the early stages of the German occupation of Poland (1940), the local Poles got half the food rations of the Germans, and the Jews got half the food rations of the Poles. (p. 72). The author then describes the German-made ghettos, Jews dispatched to Belzec, Jews hiding among Poles, and his own imprisonment in German concentration camps such as Plaszow, St. Valentin, and Mauthausen. He also describes his return to Tarnow after the war, and again decades later.

PRE-WWII POLISH-JEWISH RELATIONS

While focusing on the Jewish community in his native Tarnow, Kornbluth emphasizes the Polish anti-Semitism that existed before WWII. However, he inadvertently touches on some of the reasons for this anti-Semitism. Thus, Poles and Jews lived in separate parts of town, and almost never socialized. (p. 43). In addition, Polish-Jewish contact tended to revolve around business matters (p. 43), and the Jews owned 95% of the small businesses of Tarnow as well as most industry. (p. 45). The hostilities between Poles, Jews, and Ukrainians are clarified by Kornbluth, (quote) The constant friction among the three groups originated in a fight for their own portion of a small economic pie. The only thing they shared in common was poverty and helplessness. (unquote). (p. 55).

CIVIL RIGHTS SPURNED: THE REAL REASON BEHIND ANTI-ASSIMILATIONIST TENDENCIES

A common exculpation for the resistance of Polish Jews to assimilation is the uncongenial Catholic-majoritarian atmosphere (“Jews had nothing to assimilate to”), as well as the perceived lack of equality. However, at least some Jews were opposed to assimilation for quite another reason: They wanted to maintain Jewish particularism, even though it meant the spurning of the civil rights, pluralism, and the secular state offered by the USA. Kornbluth comments, (quote) My uncles David and Max wanted to send us visas to come to America, but my father wouldn’t hear of it. He felt it would be impossible to pursue religious values there and that his family might become assimilated. (unquote). (p. 50).

DEATH PENALTY RISK FOR POLES APPRECIATED

Neo-Stalinist Jan T. Gross has belittled the German-imposed death penalty facing Poles who helped Jews, trivializing it as something that really meant nothing because Poles incurred it all the time in various activities. In contrast Edith, Kornbluth’s wife, appreciates the risk faced by Poles as she remarks, (quote) Orzech’s agreement took courage. Any contact with a Jew was punishable by death to all concerned…He [father] felt guilty risking Orzech’s family lives, and wanted an alternative solution. (unquote). (p. 31). Kornbluth recounts that, (quote) I declined the offer. I didn’t want to jeopardize Janka and her little brother, for they would have risked certain death if they were discovered hiding a Jew. (unquote). (p. 74).

PAID POLISH RESCUER GREEDY MYTH

Neo-Stalinists also have attacked “greedy” Poles–those who required payment from Jews to house them. Kornbluth, who actually went through the Holocaust, exonerates those Poles who exchanged help for payment. He comments, (quote) In Tarnow, I met other young women, Roza Schmuckler, along with her parents and brother, survived the war hiding in a bunker. A Polish peasant risked his life to save them. He was well paid, to be sure, but his risk was out of proportion to the reward. (unquote). (p. 148).

DO NOT BLAME THE POLES FOR THE OVERALL LOW SURVIVORSHIP OF FUGITIVE JEWS

Poles were not the only ones who betrayed fugitive Jews. The Germans also got Jews to betray other Jews by offering to spare them, or their relatives, in exchange for disclosing bunkers in which twenty or more Jews were hiding. (p. 94). Germans also did the same to roust out Jews in hiding in the ghettos during the Aktions. See:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2025/02/25/insidious-jews-betray-jews-and-exploit-them/

JEWISH-NAZI COLLABORATION

Instead of seeing Jews who collaborated with the Nazis merely as desperate individuals trying to save their own lives, Kornbluth focuses on their malevolence. He specifies their gratuitous cruelties. The Jewish collaborators included members of the O. D. (ORDNUNGS DIENST) and Judenrat (pp. 67-68, 110, 144).

A “BENEVOLENT” AUSTRIAN ACTUALLY MOTIVATED BY GREED–IMPLICATIONS: SCHINDLER”S LIST WRONG

Julius Madritsch was an Austrian who was honored by Yad Vashem for arranging Jews to be spared. The author was familiar with him. Kornbluth (p. 103) accused Madritsch of sending Jews to their deaths at Auschwitz, and “sparing” Jews at his factory out of greed. [The latter accusation has also been directed, by others, at the more famous Oskar Schindler. He spared his Jews so his factory would not be closed, and so he would not be sent to the Eastern Front.]

For more on the ulterior motives of Oskar Schindler, see these reviews:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/schindlers-list-fear-of-russian-front-crowe/

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/schindlers-list-fear-of-russian-front-topas/

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/jewish-gestapo-agents-pankiewicz/