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

Belica Memorial Book, by Issachar Kamenetzky (ed.) 1968, 2010. Emigres of Belica in Israel & America, Tel Aviv, New Jersey

Judenrat Helps Nazis Find Hidden Jews Through False Assurances

Belica (Belitsa) is a town in present-day Belarus, then a part of Poland. This yizkor (yizker) book is comparable to many others, and contains a few items of lasting interest. I discuss some of them. By way of introduction, the Germans usually granted the Jews considerable autonomy as to which Jews got to collaborate with the Germans while serving in the Judenrat:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2025/07/16/judenrat-jewish-agency-remarkably-proven-here/

JUDENRAT HELPS NAZIS: IT ROUSTS OR LURES JEWS OUT OF HIDING

When the Germans deported masses of Jews to the death camps, the Jews in the ghetto sometimes went into hiding, and the Judenrat or the Jewish ghetto police often uncovered the hideouts on behalf of the Germans. Now, the Jews of Belica were first relocated by the Germans to the town of Zhetl. It is there that eyewitness Shayn’keh Bat-Joseph, along with some other Jews, built a bunker in order to hide from those that were deporting the Jews to the death camps. Bat-Joseph describes what happened then, “There were 36 people in the ‘bunker’…From time-to-time the sound of heavy footfall from the Germans, who were searching for Jews. We also hear the calling of the members of the Judenrat: ‘Jews, come out of your hideouts, nothing will happen to you, this is for your own good…'” (p. 198). Yeah, right.

BLAMING THE HOME ARMY (ARMIA KRAJOWA) FOR KILLING FUGITIVE JEWS: AN IRONY

Some Jews frequently level almost-entirely-unsubstantiated allegations of the A. K. killing fugitive Jews, and then use this to bash Poland’s heroic narrative. They also use it as a pretext for their ancestors’ support of Communism in general, or for joining Communist guerrillas in preference over the Armia Krajowa. This pretext completely falls apart when considering the testimony of Kh, B. Shaziv, a participant. He writes, “”Death stalking us on all sides. It was necessary to be afraid of Germans, Byelorussian police, ‘White’ Poles, Ukrainians, and if this was not enough, also—from our ‘own’ Russian partisans of the Lida Brigade, who as soon as they would grab a Jew, they would shoot him on the spot.” (p. 294).

—Earlier History—

WHEN SWEDEN INVADED POLAND (1655)

Joseph Cohen-Tzedek coimments, “The Swedes were the only side in these wars that did not carry out pogroms and attacks against the Jews. They contented themselves with imposing a captive tax on them, that impoverished the community greatly. However, because of this, the Jews were loyal to them, and paid the Swedes without any resistance, as the tax was specified. This matter caused them a great deal of trouble subsequently, at the time the Poles returned to liberate their cities. They took revenge…” (p. 12). Well, actions have consequences. In addition, the no-pogrom excuse, even if true, does not hold. The Russians did plenty of pogroms of Jews, but this did not prevent the Jews from commonly supporting the Russians over the Poles.

Finally, the Jewish excuse for supporting Sweden is not even internally consistent. For a different exculpation, see:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/jewish-disloyalty-1655-dubnow/

JEWISH CONDUCT DURING THE NOVEMBER 1830 AND JANUARY 1863 INSURRECTIONS

Joseph Cohen-Tzedek candidly writes, “The Jews of Belica were indifferent to the Polish rebellions against the Russians, their oppressors, which erupted in 1830, and again in the following generation–in the year 1863. However, the Polish owners of the landed estates in the area, took a very active role in both, and the Polish populace that lived in the Novogrudek [Novogrodek] area. In the two times after the suppression of the revolts, the local capture participants were sentenced to hanging, and their supporters to exile; to the wilds of Siberia. The regime confiscated their estates, and sold or gave them to the nobility in the Russian security police. It was in this way that the bitter and hasty end came to the ancestral homes of many of the original Polish szlachta, which had a hereditary presence in the local soil.” (p. 24).

Cohen-Tzedek, except from ignoring the Jewish role in the expropriation of the Polish estates in the wake of the Russian vendetta, has a good grasp of the November 1830 January 1863 Insurrections. He is aware of the fact that participants in the uprisings were not, as sometimes claimed, limited to the nobility.

POGROM MONGERING AND THE KHMELNYTSKY REVOLT

Joseph Cohen-Tzedek (p. 11) states that 300,000 to 600,000 Jews were slaughtered by Khmelnitsky’s (Chmielnicki’s) hordes. He is off by only an order of magnitude. The actual Jewish death toll, from the Khmelnitsky Uprising, is now reckoned at 10,000-15,000. See:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/khmelnitsky-pogrom-greatly-exaggerated-petrovsky/

THE SHKOTZIM

No nationality has a monopoly on intolerance. The text uses, and an explanatory footnote acknowledges, that szkotzim (shkotzim) is a derogatory term for male gentiles. (Israel Zlocowsky, p. 158).