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

Yellow Star, Red Star: Holocaust Remembrance after Communism, by Jelena Subotic. 2019. Cornell University Press, New York

Philosemitism Virtue Signaling. Looting the Dead Common. Double Genocide Feared. Holocaust Zero Sum Game Tacitly Affirmed. Outright Lies about Poland

This is a Yugoslavia-centered book, but it is also a generic attack on other Eastern Europeans. It repeats all the canned complaints: About Eastern Europeans not bowing before the Jews’ Holocaust, about the equation of Nazi and Communist crimes (horror of horrors), and about Eastern Europeans not beating their breasts in shame over actual or imagined collaboration with the Nazis. She almost equates anti-Communism with fascism. (p. 16). The book promotes the demands of the Holocaust Industry against Eastern Europeans. (e. g., pp. 34-35). True to form, it consistently practices Zydokomuna denialism. Subotic even gets patronizing, as she dismisses Eastern European concerns as “insecurities”. (e. g., p. 10, 30, 43).

POLISH PHILOSEMITISM CAN BE A FORM OF REBELLION AGAINST TRADITIONAL POLISHNESS

Subotic perceptively writes, “This manifestation of philo-Semitism in Poland, while often clearly well intentioned, can also be interpreted as at times self-serving. It motivation may not always be just respecting the Jews (dead or living); philo-Semitism may also act as a form of virtue signaling for a segment of cosmopolitan-leaning Poles who appropriate Jewishness as a way to expand the boundaries of what it means to be Polish and to move Polish identity from ethnic to multicultural, from Catholic to secular. These non-Jewish Poles are, in another reading, appropriating Jewishness as a form of ‘redemptive cosmopolitanism.'” (p. 221).

THE MYSTIFICATION OF THE HOLOCAUST

Author Subotic begins with the standard spiel, “The Holocaust holds a central place in the global public memory of the twentieth century, especially in the West. It is the paradigmatic trauma of that century, and a formative event and one of the foundational stories of the European Union.” (p. 17). Flowery words–never said of any other genocide. If this is not Holocaust supremacism, then what is?

POLITICS OF MEMORY: HOLOCAUST SUPREMACY, MOREOVER PUSHED BY THE EUROPEAN UNION

Subotic adds that, “The European narrative of the Holocaust has created stress and resentment in postcommunist states, which have been asked to accept and contribute to this primarily Western European account as members or candidate states of the European Union. This lack of fit is evident primarily in the lack of centrality of the Holocaust as the defining memory of the twentieth-century experience across the postcommunist space.” (p. 10, emphasis added).

In other words, it is a zero sum game: It is not OK to mention non-Jewish genocides alongside the Jews’ Holocaust–unless non-Jewish genocides are unambiguously subordinate to the Jews’ Holocaust. If this is not the politics of memory, then what is?

THE HOLOCAUST IS DETHRONED, AND DOUBLE GENOCIDE IS REALIZED?

Ironic to complaints about equating Communists with Nazis, the Communists reopened Buchenwald concentration camp, but under new management. (p. 5).

Author Subotic consistently laments the Eastern Europeans’ recognition of Communist crimes as on par with Nazi crimes. Worse yet, this heresy has apparently spread to Western Europe! She comments, “The full equation of fascism and communism and their leveling as two European totalitarianisms has gotten perhaps its clearest physical manifestation in the new House of European History (HEH), which after decades of delays–some political, some administrative–finally opened in Brussels in May 2017…HEH specifically avoids singling out the experience of the European Jewry and has no separate remembrance of their annihilation–a curating decision agreed upon early in the development of the museum.” (p. 41).The HEH website is at

https://historia-europa.ep.eu/en/welcome-house-european-history

FINALLY, NAZISM AND COMMUNISM ARE PARALLEL EVILS

The author does not mention the May 25th celebration of International Day of Heroes of the Fight Against Totalitarianism. It is a welcome development for Genocide Recognition Equality. So is Black Ribbon Day: The European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism (August 23).

JAN T. GROSS, IN HIS GOLDEN HARVEST, WRONG ABOUT POLISH VILLAINY TO JEWS

Gross has portrayed Poles as some kind of primitive people for digging through the Jewish cremains at Treblinka. Actually, looting the dead is a rather common occurrence, and knows no nationality in terms of either victims or perpetrators.

Consider the following example. The Germans, during 1941-1944, shot tens of thousands of Jews, Serbs, and others, at Jajinci. Subotic writes, “In March 1944, as part of the SS operation Sonderaktion 1005, a group of Jews and Roma brought in from elsewhere were ordered to dig up and burn the bodies buried in mass graves at Jajinci, on the outskirts of Belgrade. After they completed their gruesome job, they were killed. The Germans then loaded the ashes onto seven trucks and dumped the contents at the mouth of the Topciderka River in Belgrade’s Cukarica neighborhood. The local population sifted through the ashes in search of valuables–most often gold teeth or rings–which they then sold on the Belgrade market. This went on for about a month and became known as the ‘Cukarica golden fever.'” (p. 54).

Subotic conveniently avoids mentioning the fact that a large fraction, if not majority, of the victims of the German shootings, at Jajinci, were Serbs. So this situation included not just a “golden harvest” of dead Jews by living Serbs, cut also a “golden harvest” of dead Serbs by living Serbs.

RE-USE OF CONCENTRATION CAMP MATERIALS IS COMMON: IT IS NOT AN ANTI-JEWISH ACT

The repurposing of the sites of mass murder is also a frequent occurrence, and it does not imply disrespect for the Jewish dead (or even all the dead). Consider the following, “The Jasenovac site, even though–or precisely because–it was by far the largest camp in the NDH, was completely destroyed and razed at the end of the war, first by the retreating Ustasha and then by the advancing partisans. What remained from the rubble local villagers took away as cheap building material.” (p. 115).

THE AUTHOR PROMOTES FALSEHOODS

Subotic repeats the well-worn lie that the 2018 Polish Antidefamation Law (“Holocaust Law”) forbids the discussion of what she calls “Polish complicity in the Holocaust.” (p. 206). It does no such thing: It only forbids “Polish death camps”.

She also repeats the falsehood that, in November 2017, Polish patriotic marchers were white supremacists. (Actually, a vanishing number were white supremacists.) She also drags-in the bogeyman of xenophobia in conjunction with PiS and the march.