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

Genocide 1939-1945, War Crimes in Poland, by Szymon Datner. 1962

Jewishness Deaths: Jewish Victims Explicitly Identified as Jews. A Polokaust Primer

This book, though dated (1962), and of course tainted by the Communist censorship of the time, has good basic information.

THE HIDING JEWISH DEATHS MYTH

Contrary to endlessly repeated allegations about works of this nature, this one does not simply mix Polish and Jewish victims as one and the same, or as simply “Polish citizens” or “victims of fascism”. The authors EXPLICITLY frame the destruction of Jews in the context of the Final Solution, and the more long-term destruction of Poles in the context of MEIN KAMPF and GENERALPLAN OST. They support a figure of 3 million each of Polish Jews and gentiles killed. (p. 7). Although, in recent years, lower and higher figures for Poles have been quoted, this work makes obvious that the actual number will never be known. Countless atrocities were never recorded by anybody, and the Germans destroyed most of their documents. In addition, this work completely ignores the Poles murdered by the Germans in Germany, and in the Kresy (eastern prewar half of Poland), as well as the Poles lost through passive genocide. (How many Poles were never born, or died soon after birth, and how many died premature “natural” deaths, as a result of the deliberately-inflicted privations under the German occupation)?

COUNTERING THE USUAL MYSTIFICATION OF THE HOLOCAUST

There has, in recent years, been a curious tendency (e. g., by the likes of Jan Blonski, Michael Steinlauf, Jan T. Gross) to depict Poles as traumatized by the extermination of the Jews–a tendency that clearly ignores or devalues Polish suffering. (Also, few Poles actually saw Jews getting killed. Jews were sealed off in ghettos, and eventually discreetly shipped to what turned out to be a handful of death camps, whose operations were almost entirely covert.) In contrast, Poles were plenty traumatized by beholding many of THEIR OWN perish and, what’s more, as this work makes so obvious, no location in Poland was more than a very short distance from the scene of a German crime against Poles.

1939 DEFENSIVE WAR: GERMAN CRIMINALITY AGAINST POLES AND JEWS BEGAN IN THE FIRST HOURS OF WWII

During the 1939 war, the Luftwaffe bombed and strafed civilians in at least 156 named locations that had no military significance. (pp. 18-19). Contrary to the customary dichotomization of Germans and Nazis, and the selective onus placed on “Nazified” formations such as the SS and Gestapo, we learn that none other than the Wehrmacht (German Army) conducted mass murders of Polish civilians at 220 locations in western Poland alone. (p. 25). German forces also plundered and burned at least 270 named Polish localities having no military significance. (pp. 28-30). They also shot Jews, alone or together with Poles, at 28 named locations (p. 30, 32), and burned or dynamited synagogues in at least 15 named locations. (p. 31).

NAZI GERMAN TERROR IN THE COUNTRYSIDE : IMPLICATIONS FOR DISOBEDIENCE TO GERMAN ORDERS REGARDING FUGITIVE JEWS

During the occupation, the Germans partly or totally burned at least 260 villages. (pp. 331-334). A table (pp. 127-248) lists over 1,300 rural locations where Germans murdered Poles (by shooting, hanging, burning alive, etc.). [With reference to Jan Grabowski and his JUDENJAGD, is it surprising that rural Poles were traumatized, by impending German terror, into sometimes betraying or killing fugitive Jews? Of course, all we normally have, in modern discourse, is a Judeocentric contextual vacuum. Note that over 1,300 rural locations of German murder implies that no rural place was more than a few kilometers away from fully actualized German terror.]

UNKNOWN NUMBERS OF POLISH VICTIMS OF GERMAN CONCENTRATION CAMPS

The total number of Poles who perished in various German camps (including concentration and death camps) is impossible to determine. (e. g., p. 74). An arriving Pole usually died within 3-5 months of incarceration, as planned. (p. 51). So, instead of dying within a few hours of arrival from poison gas, as the Jews, the Pole had the “privilege” of dying slowly over a few months.

One complicating factor in computing total deaths is the fact that the large camps had numerous sub-camps. For instance, Stutthof had about 27 of them, Auschwitz-Birkenau had about 38, and Gross Rosen (where my father was incarcerated) had about 30. (p. 95). On top of all this, there existed about 110 different small forced-labor camps for Poles and 130 for Jews. The 240 small camps had an aggregate capacity of about 250,000 persons. (p. 93). But this was only at one instant in time: New arrivals constantly replaced the dead and the murdered.