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

Martyrs of Charity, by Waclaw Zajaczkowski. 1988

Why Jews Were Betrayed. Why Property Disputes. Kielce Pogrom Subterfuge at the USHMM. Thousands of Poles Lost Their Lives Aiding Jews

In this painstakingly-detailed work, Zajaczkowski catalogues over 700 locations (listed alphabetically) where Germans murdered Poles for aiding Jews (pp. 119-291). In most of them, there were at least several Polish victims (often tens or hundreds), so the total known Polish death toll is at least in the thousands.

The massive Polish sacrifices refute the odious anti-Polish comments of the likes of Menachem Begin (p. 73), etc., who accused Poles of doing virtually nothing to save Jews. It also upends the absurd implied equation of the possibilities enjoyed by Danes and Poles.

UNGRATEFUL JEWS

Zajaczkowski points out that most Jews that were rescued by Poles give the Poles no credit for the Poles’ death-defying act. For this reason, such Poles cannot be awarded by Yad Vashem. He writes, “There are tens of thousands of similar cases in which the Jews saved by the sacrifices of the Christian brothers in Poland, respond with contempt and denigration.” (p. 272).

FUGITIVE JEWS BETRAYED THEIR POLISH RESCUERS

A Pole who hid a Jew had to keep in mind that the Jew could eventually fall into German hands, and, whether freely or by force, would disclose the identity of the Polish rescuer, causing the death of his family. It is therefore hardly surprising that many Poles refused to hide Jews, while some other Poles killed the Jews they had been hiding to prevent a betrayal to the Germans, or handed them over to the Blue Police (POLICJA GRANATOWA) to be killed or turned over to the Germans.

Some examples of such Jewish betrayals:

“Grzegorzowka, Przeworsk county, voivodship of Rzeszow. November 1942. During a raid on Jewish hiding places, German military police extorted from a Jewish woman the names of Christian Poles helping Jews. In consequence, Germans murdered [4 people].” (p. 153).

“Jeziorko, Lowicz county, voivodship of Warsaw. Two Polish families which had taken care of persecuted Jews were denounced to German authorities by a Jew apprehended by the Germans. As a result of this betrayal, thirteen Catholics were killed, including children.” (p. 160).

“Korniakow (forest), Lancut county, voivodship of Rzeszow. Winter of 1942/43. A Jewish hideout was betrayed by snow prints leading to the bunker in the forest. German police, before executing its inmates, obtained from a Jewish woman the whereabouts of a Polish gamekeeper who was providing food for them. The whole family of the forester was executed. The Jewish hideout was blown up with hand grenades.” (p. 167).

“Szerzyny (3). Jaslo country, voivodship of Rzeszow. Bronislaw Mitoraj, betrayed by the very Jews he was sheltering in his house, fell into German hands.” (p. 232).

“Warsaw (42). 1943. A crippled Catholic shoemaker from Pradzynska St. was murdered by the Germans together with his wife as a result of denunciation by a Jew, previously sheltered by him. All three were executed on the spot.” (p. 251).

Other examples of Polish rescuers denounced by fugitive Jews are described on pages 154 and 229-230.

WARSAW GHETTO UPRISING

Significant detail is presented about Polish aid to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (pp. 242-250)–almost never shown in Holocaust films! The AK’s aid to Jews (e. g., p. 148, 182, 198, 223, 236, 245, 246, 252-254, 272) is also recounted. Did you know that a Polish pilot flew some Jewish parachutists into Hungary in a futile attempt to start an uprising among Hungarian Jews? (p. 287).

POSTWAR HOUSING SHORTAGE: THE REAL REASON THAT POLES WERE NOT THRILLED WHEN HOLOCAUST-SURVIVING JEWS RETURNED TO RECLAIM THEIR PROPERTY

This 1988 work is timeless, as the same old Polonophobic arguments keep reappearing. For instance, the postwar Jewish property issue, revived and polemicized by Jan T. Gross in his FEAR, was debunked by Zajaczkowski: “In overcrowded Polish cities where one single room had to accommodate two or three families after the war, a reluctance to vacate the premises when they were claimed by the returning Jews was by Jewish historians branded as ‘antisemitism’…” (pp. 59-60).

“AUSCHWITZ IS NOT A PLACE FOR PRAYER”. SAYS WHO?

In his preface, J. B. Sheerin discusses the Auschwitz Carmelite Convent controversy (pp. 28-30). It is obvious that advocates of the “empty sky” over Auschwitz are attempting to impose their God-rejecting beliefs on those who believe differently!

GERMAN GUILT DIFFUSION REPUDIATED: NO VALID DUALISM BETWEEN GERMANS AND NAZIS

Dyed-in-the-wool Nazism was in no sense atypical amongst the German population. Every third German family had at least one member in the SS or Gestapo! (p. 83).

DO NOT BLAME CHRISTIANITY FOR THE HOLOCAUST

Against the portrayal of medieval Christianity as a prelude to the Holocaust, Zajaczkowski presents evidence (pp. 89-90) that, for much of this time, Jews enjoyed greater privileges than 95% of the Christian population. Also, in prewar Poland, Jewry had enjoyed an unprecedented political and cultural renaissance (pp. 38-39).

SO-DESIGNATED POLISH ANTI-SEMITES (AS ENDEKS) REJECTED EVEN MILD NAZI ANTI-JEWISH POLICIES

Members of the Polish Bar Association, who before the war had resented the disproportionate number of Jews among them, later refused a German order to disbar its Jewish members. For this act of defiance, they paid with one-way trips to Pawiak and Auschwitz. (p. 240).

THE KIELCE POGROM AT THE USHMM: IMPLICITLY CONNECTING POLISH CONDUCT WITH NAZI GERMAN CONDUCT

Author Zajaczkowski includes a photo of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s exhibit of the Kielce Pogrom (p. 106), although this wasn’t even part of the Holocaust. This is usually rationalized as a teaching of what happened to the Jews after the Shoah. Using the same logic, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) could include the Jewish mass murder of Arab civilians at Deir Yassin. The Jewish victim had quickly become a Jewish victimizer, and this must be told!

The false and arbitrary connection of the comparatively-trivial Kielce Pogrom (1946), to the German-made Holocaust of 6 million Jews (1941-1945) that had ended over a year earlier, is a rather transparent German guilt-dilution tactic, and is one that transfers part of the “bad smell” of Nazi German crimes onto Poles.