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

Empire, Colony, Genocide: Conquest, Occupation, and Subaltern Resistance in World History, by A. Dirk Moses (ed). 2008, 2010. Berghahn Books, New York, Oxford

Colonial Masters: German Genocidal and Lebensraum Policies Went Hand-in-Hand

My review is limited to the article by David Furber and Wendy Lower, “Colonialism and Genocide in Nazi-Occupied Poland and Ukraine”. Most historical works focus on the Jews’ Holocaust, with that of the “other victims of the Nazis’ relegated to an afterthought (if that). This work, by contrast, appreciates the genocidal experiences of the Poles and the Jews on a more-or-less equal footing.

Authors Furber and Lower dare to juxtapose Poles and Jews. They write, “Colonialist thinking shaped Nazi genocidal concepts, rationales, and policies to a much larger degree than prior scholarship has stressed…Nazi colonialism led to two genocides in Poland and Ukraine respectively: one against the Jews, and another against the indigenous Poles and Ukrainians.” (p. 392).

GERMANS SAW THEMSELVES, AND NOT THE JEWS, AS THE RIGHTFUL COLONIAL MASTERS OF POLAND

Citing a German-language work, the authors write, “Officials governing the District of Warsaw also regarded its Jews as a primary developmental obstacle. The land had to be ‘liberated from chaos’ that stemmed partly from the Poles’ perceived natural inability to organize states, and partly from the perceived pernicious Jewish influence that Poles despised but were too weak to counteract.” (p. 382).

With regard to the usual practice of keeping alive the colonized peoples because they are a source of cheap labor, Furber and Lower comment, “These concerns also abounded in Nazi colonialism, but more with regard to Poles and Ukrainians than to Jews. In the General Government, administrators quickly came to consider Jews a ‘burden’ rather than an economic resource. (p. 383). The authors then cite a German-language source to support this contention.

WHY THE SPECIAL NAZI GERMAN HATRED OF POLAND’S JEWS

The authors write, “The Nazi perception of Jews was not only driven by a pragmatic or developmental logic. The colonizers elevated the self-perception of their task to ‘world historical’ by considering the ‘breeding ground’ (Brutstatte) of “World Jewry’ that they felt was oppressing Germany…The harsher the treatment became, the more Nazi administrators justified it through the ‘breeding ground’ and similar transcendent arguments.” (p. 383).

The foregoing may explain why the Third Reich targeted Poland’s Jews, and those of the western Soviet Union, more intensely than it did the Jews of western Europe and especially North Africa. The “breeding ground” notion also tends to support genocide scholar Donald Bloxham’s contention that the Nazis largely wanted to destroy the main centers of “world Jewry”, and did not necessarily require the death of every single European Jew:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/holocaust-exceptional-false-bloxham/

WHY THE GERMANS WERE FORCED (FOR NOW) TO TREAT POLES DIFFERENTLY FROM JEWS

Furber and Lower comment, “The Poles and Ukrainians came closest to the colonial stereotype of the ‘native’. Although genocide of these groups did not progress beyond the stage of de-nationalization and extreme pacifications, the result might be considered a ‘colonial genocide’ in the usual sense of the term. Yet for all that, these genocides fell short of their original goals for three reasons typical of colonial genocides. First, the colonizers were absolutely dependent upon the cheap labor and the grain that the indigenous people produced. The war only intensified the situation.” (p. 393). So the utility of Poles as laborers and farmers prevented their extermination, at least for the duration of the war.

POLISH GUERRILLA WARFARE THWARTED THE EXTERMINATION OF THE POLES

The authors continue, “Second, the Nazi efforts at ‘Indian removal,’ interminable ‘slave raids,’ and the brutal forced labor practices generated resistance so uneconomical that it persuaded even Hitler and Himmler that the time was not ripe for indigenocide. Third, these issues led to a struggle between an exploitation-minded civil administration and a settlement-focused police-executive in the form of the SS. This situation is reminiscent of the German genocide of the Herero in 1904…” (p. 393. Emphasis added). Note that Poles could still be exterminated in the future, after Germany won the war (which, of course, never happened).