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

Living in Fear on the Aryan Side, by Halina Zawadzka. 2009

Jews Ignored–Even Despised–Polish Holocaust Warnings About the German Gassing and Cremation of Jews. Why A.K. Sometimes Killed Fugitive Jews

Halina Zawadzka described her pre-WWII life as one in which her parents were atheists, hostile to religion, including Judaism. (p.122). She never observed any of the Jewish holidays. (p. 108).

THE MYTH OF POLES CHEERING AS JEWS WERE SENT TO THEIR DEATHS

This meme is exemplified by the highly-acclaimed movie THE SCHINDLER’S LIST. It features a young Polish girl giving a sarcastic farewell (Goodbye Jews!) to the Jews being escorted by the Germans to their deaths. To add to the Poles-are-bad propaganda, the scene also shows Poles throwing globs of mud at the doomed Jews.

The facts are rather different. During the Nazi occupation, Zawadzka was confined with her fellow Jews to the Ghetto in the town of Konskie. She fled in time before the “resettlement”, which she describes as follows: “At the beginning of November [1942], Germans and Latvians liquidated almost the whole Ghetto there. The Jewish population of about nine thousand people was transported by freight train from Konskie in an unknown direction. Although Poles were not allowed to approach the Ghetto or the railroad tracks at the time, it was well known that terrible things happened there.” (p. 101). How does she know that?

It is obvious from Zawadzka’s testimony that it would’ve been physically impossible for Poles to do what they are accused of, even had they been so inclined. The Germans wouldn’t have permitted any gathering and gawking at their Jew-killing operations!

POLISH WARNINGS TO JEWS WERE IGNORED. AND NOW POLES ARE BLAMED FOR “NOT DOING ENOUGH” TO AMELIORATE THE HOLOCAUST (SHOAH). GO FIGURE

Interestingly, the author, for a time, believed that Polish warnings about Jews being gassed and cremated by the Nazis were simply another manifestation of (what else?) Polish anti-Semitism, on par with the blood-added-to-matzo tales. She wrote: “Though the story was different, I saw an analogy between the accusation of Jews of ritual murder and the theory of gassing people in a death camp. To me, the name of the similarity was anti-Semitism.” (pp. 125-126).

Let us take this a little further. Could it be that many of the manifestations of Polish anti-Semitism alleged by this author, and that of many other Jews, are actually projections of her own hostility towards Poles?

I HAVE HEARD THIS ONE SO MANY TIMES BEFORE…

A number of accounts in this book come up so often in Holocaust memoirs, and are so stereotypically similar to each other from memoir to memoir, that one wonders if they have not assumed the status of Polonophobic archetypes. There is the one about the fugitive Jew overhearing a conversation between seemingly-benevolent Poles discussing plans to kill the Jew. (p. 15). There is also the one, really overdone in this memoir, of the incognito Jewish fugitive repeatedly encountering Poles who verbalize a wish for a monument to be built to Hitler in tribute for his destroying of Poland’s Jews. (p. 21, 149-150, 196). [Poles suffered very greatly under Hitler, and, regardless of their attitudes towards Jews, it is not even imaginable that any of them would want a monument constructed to honor Hitler.]

For more on Holocaust survivor imaginations blaming Poles, see:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/bad-pole-from-holocaust-survivor-imagination-walker/

POLISH BENEFACTORS

After fleeing the Konskie Ghetto, the author hid among gentiles, and eventually settled with Karolina Slowik and her daughters Olga (Dzuinia) and Maria (Kamer). These benefactors were honored posthumously by Yad Vashem.

THE ARMIA KRAJOWA KILLING FUGITIVE JEWS–CONTEXTUAL VACUUM

The Slowik household became a staging point for the AK (A.K., or Armia Krajowa, the Home Army)(pp. 137-on). For a time, Zawadzka worked for the AK. At one point, she claims that an AK commander spoke of ordering a fugitive Jew in the forest shot for “safety” reasons. (p. 156). Later, after her Jewishness became known to the AK members who frequented the Slowik household, she was threatened with death if she betrayed them or the organization. (p. 198).

The foregoing incidents are not clarified to the reader. They were no fun and games. They were life-and-death decisions. The AK feared penetration by enemy agents, both Communist and Nazi, for exposure meant certain torture and death to any captured Polish guerrillas. Jews were, using modern parlance, profiled as potential enemy agents. Although anyone could be an agent of the enemy, a Jew was much more likely to be a Communist than a Polish gentile. Also, the Nazis frequently spared individual Jews and sent them out to spy on Polish guerrillas. Finally, innocuous fugitive Jews who had obtained familiarity with Polish-Underground whereabouts were a security risk because, if they fell in German hands, they would immediately tell the Germans everything they knew in a (futile) attempt to save their lives.

STOP DEMONIZING THE ARMIA KRAJOWA

There is an irony to Zawadzka’s accusations. The very fact that she, then known openly to be Jewish, had encounters with the A. K., and lived to write about them, refutes the canard that the A. K. had some sort of secret plan to “finish Hitler’s job” or to conduct a “Holocaust after the Holocaust”, as asserted, for example, by  Polonophobe Yaffa Eliach.