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

The Holocaust: The Third Reich and the Jews, 3^rd edition, by David Engel. 2021. Routledge, London and New York

Holocaust Unprecedented? Hardly. Locals’ Antisemitism Does Not Predict Success of the German-Made Holocaust

Most of the contents of this book has been said a hundred times before. However, some points are worth repeating.

NO PROOF OF ANY NAZI ORDER TO KILL EACH AND EVERY SINGLE JEW

Engel writes, “No written order for a comprehensive killing program, from Hitler or anyone else, has been found…Moreover, most extant documents that seem to reflect the transition to killing are maddeningly ambiguous.” (pp. 69-70). How interesting.

HOLOCAUST UNPRECEDENTED? RANSOM OF JEWS CONTRADICTS HOLOCAUST-UNIQUENESS CLAIMS

Engel repeats the mantra about the alleged Nazi plan to exterminate every single Jew (e. g, p. 5, 105, 115). This, of course, is the standard talking point for Holocaust uniqueness (or its softer version: Holocaust unprecedentedness) in general and Holocaust supremacism in particular. It is freely and intentionally used to justify the elevation of the Holocaust over all other genocides. The author does not see the contradiction between this claim and the contrary evidence of efforts to ransom the Jews. He writes:

“A February 1943 Romanian proposal to release 70,000 Jews from Transnistria in return for payment was rejected by the British and US governments, as was an April 1944 German offer to exchange a million Jews, including all the Jews of Hungary, for 10,000 trucks and amounts of various feedstuffs.” (p. 101).

For an example of a deal that actually led to the release of some Jews that were in the custody of the Third Reich, see:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/holocaust-exceptional-all-jews-die-a-myth-shulman/

NO CONNECTION BETWEEN PRIOR ANTISEMITISM AND “COMPLICITY IN THE HOLOCAUST”

More and more, history is flattened into the Holocaust, as if the Holocaust was an apocalyptic event to which everything had been leading to all along. Many Jews, conveniently forgetting that history does not run backward, keep trying to associate locals’ prior antisemitism with the later German-made Holocaust. Poland is especially reviled in this regard, with notable attempts to blame the Catholic Church. Engel supposes that Slovakia was anti-Semitic, but then, taking his own thinking to its logical conclusion, is puzzled by the following, “And why did the government of Norway–a country with a miniscule Jewish population and virtually no anti-Jewish tradition–cooperate in deporting Jews almost as enthusiastically as did the authorities in Slovakia?” (p. 99). Good question.