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

Nazi Collaborators on Trial During the Cold War: Viktors ARājs and the Latvian Auxiliary Security Police, by Richards Plavnieks. 2017

How Holocaust Preeminence Has Disenfranchised Eastern Europeans. Germanless Holocaust! Jedwabne: German Guilt Substantiated

Author Plavnieks describes the sympathy Americans felt for Latvians [and, of course, Poles] before the 1970s as victims of Communism, and as captive nations. He writes, “The 1950s and the 1960s mostly passed quietly for the American Latvian community in exile in the United States. Neither the Holocaust nor the Eastern Front was yet at the center of American memory and consciousness about the Second World War, so Eastern European collaboration in the Holocaust was doubly distant.” (p. 226).

And then came Holocaust supremacy. Plavnieks continues, “Simultaneously, consciousness of the Holocaust and sympathy for its Jewish victims steadily heightened. Thus, after the 1960s, the balance, in the arena of popular consciousness, tipped firmly against American Latvians. They lost their status as a favored category of victims of Communism; had that special victim status actually supplanted by Jews; and were seen as out of step and behind the times in their obsessive anti-Soviet attitudes.” (p. 232). The same, of course, is true of Poles.

Those who would have us believe that there is no victimhood competition, or that dominance of the Holocaust is not a zero-sum game relative to the sufferings of non-Jews, are clearly out of touch with reality. What’s more, the dominance of the Holocaust not only causes the sufferings of Latvians and Poles to be diminished, but also re-defines Latvians and Poles as agents of harm against the Jews.

SHIFTING THE BLAME AWAY FROM THE GERMANS…

Author Plavnieks reminds us of the danger of a Germanless Holocaust that treats Latvians killing Jews as the product of eager Latvian killers. (p. 4). [Or the alleged Polish killings at Jedwabne as the product of eager Polish killers.] This is but one manifestation of German guilt dilution for the Holocaust.

JAN T. GROSS ACCOUNT OF POLES ACTING ON THEIR OWN, AT JEDWABNE, INADVERTENTLY EXPOSED AS NONSENSE

The version of events at Jedwabne, copied by the media from Jan T. Gross and presented as fact, is that the Polish neighbors of the Jews conducting a self-directed massive pogrom. This narrative is, to begin with, predicated on the assumption that the Germans would have tolerated massive civil disorder amongst peoples that they had conquered. Such was clearly not the case.

Plavnieks writes, “It is firmly established in the literature that no mass shootings took place solely on Latvian initiative, but only under German authority. This proposition rings true in light of the common sense assumption that the Germans were committed to controlling every last weapon on the territory they occupied, particularly as they were well aware of the historical Latvian animosity towards the Germans. [Reviewer comment: And the decidedly pronounced historical Polish animosity towards the Germans!] The presence of armed natives beyond the gaze of German supervision was anathema to the goal of securing total power. German personnel were always present at the shootings and gave oversight and direction when not, as they quite often did, participating directly weapon in hand.” (p. 68).

SMOKING-GUN EVIDENCE: THE GERMANS STAGED THEIR KILLINGS OF JEWS TO BLAME THE LOCALS FOR THE KILLINGS (AS POLES AT JEDWABNE)

Author Richard Plavnieks comments, “The Einsatzgruppen in fact had specific orders which have survived in the documentary record to make the killings appear before posterity as a righteous uprising of the locals against their former Judeo-Bolshevik oppressors and to leave no traces of German instigation.” (p. 156). The quoted document is: NARA II. Nuremberg Document L-180. “Einsatzgruppe A Gesamtbericht bis zum 15 October 1941”. (p. 156).

300,000 COLLABORATORS?

Plavnieks writes, “What is less well understood is the degree to which Eastern Europeans actively sought to participate and what motivated their fateful volunteerism. All told, as many as 300,000 Eastern European police auxiliaries had been recruited to the German side by the end of 1943. Not all of them colluded with the Nazis to carry out the Holocaust– indeed, relatively few to the degree that the men of the Arajs Kommando did– but all of them tied themselves to the fortunes of Hitler and the Third Reich.” (pp. 3-4).

Note that this 300,000 total, even if all directed against Jews and even if all voluntarily performed for the Germans, is far less than 1% of the eastern and central European populations.