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

Auschwitz, by Deborah Dwork and Robert van Pelt. 2002

Severe Postwar Housing Shortage Explains Why Poles Were Not Delighted When Jewish Survivors (Owners) Turned Up Alive

This book is much more than about Auschwitz. For example:

IMPERIALISTIC NATIONALISM AND EMANCIPATORY NATIONALISM: A FUNDAMENTAL DIFFERENCE

“Nationalism” nowadays is often a dirty word, and is demonized by LEWAKS. In actuality, there are different kinds of nationalism, only some of which are repulsive. While discussing the 19th-century German rule over western Poles, Dwork and van Pelt comment: “What had been a domain of encounter became a battlefield where the imperial and integral nationalism of the Germans faced the functional and emancipatory nationalism of the Poles.” (p. 48). Quite a difference between nationalisms!

THE GERMAN VOTERS WELL KNEW THAT HITLER HAD WARLIKE, IMPERIALISTIC AMBITIONS

Contrary to those who exculpate the Germans as voting Hitler into power merely in order to avenge and rectify the “injustices” of Versailles, or out of the desperation caused by hyperinflation, the authors recognize the fact that Hitler plainly wrote in MEIN KAMPF about his plans for a massive war for lebensraum against the Slavic east. What’s more, this was not only well known to Germans in general, but enthusiastically supported by them. (pp. 82-83). (While it is technically true that Hitler didn’t win an absolute majority, it begs the question why the Nationalist and Catholic deputies deliberately chose to push him over the top (p. 96), giving him totalitarian rule.)

AUSCHWITZ: POLES BEFORE JEWS AS VICTIMS

Dwork and van Pelt realize that the Auschwitz camp was created for Poles. (p. 168, 173, 181). Its conversion into an extermination camp for Jews came much later. Nor was the latter a foregone conclusion. In fact, the Final Solution first envisioned the mass resettlement of Europe’s Jews to the Lublin-area, then Madagascar, then to German-ruled Russia–the latter similar to the planned eastward mass-resettlement of Poles (GENERALPLAN OST). The decision to systematically exterminate the Jews was made only after the Red Army had failed to collapse as expected, and the region for planned resettlement of Jews remained under Soviet control. (p. 287, 293).

DESPERATE HOUSING SHORTAGE IN POSTWAR POLAND [WHY SOME POLES WERE NOT EXACTLY THRILLED WHEN HOLOCAUST SURVIVING JEWS RETURNED TO RECLAIM THEIR PROPERTY]

Much has been said (e. g., Jan T. Gross) about Polish “greed” and (what else?) anti-Semitism in acquiring post-Jewish properties, and occasional (and much exaggerated) Polish hostility to Jewish survivors showing up to reclaim their properties. Inadvertently, the authors correct these misconceptions while discussing postwar Auschwitz: “Practical and theoretical considerations prompted the severance of the stucco barracks from the memorial camp. THERE WAS A CRIPPLING LACK OF HOUSING IN POLAND IN 1945, and these structures were spacious, well-built, intact, and available for immediate occupancy.” (p. 360; emphasis added).

POLAND’S POST-WWII WESTERN BORDER

It is interesting to note that the post-WWII Odra-Nysa (Oder-Neisse) boundary coincided with the east-most deployment of Germans before the year 1200 A.D. (p. 24).

WHO’S TRIUMPHALISM AT AUSCHWITZ?

The authors touch on the postwar history of Auschwitz-Birkenau, and, while discussing the controversy about the Carmelite convent and the crosses, they refer to the Christian symbols as expressing triumphalism over the Jewish victims. Using the same reasoning, shouldn’t the Stars of David be considered a form of triumphalism over the Christian victims of this camp? After all, it is not the Poles who are telling the Jews that Jewish suffering cannot freely be commemorated. It is the Jews who are telling the Poles that Polish suffering cannot freely be commemorated.