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

The Death of the Shtetl, by Yehuda Bauer. 2009. Yale University Press, New Haven and London

Jews as Victims and Victimizers: Variable Insights

This work, by Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer, focuses on the shtetl. It is an odd mixture of wisdom and infantile anti-Polonism. I focus on both.

TAKE HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR TESTIMONY WITH A GRAIN OF SALT

Much Holocaust-related Polonophobia, and the Pole-accusing testimonies at the August Decree trials, are based on the postwar statements of Holocaust survivors. These testimonies suffer from the same flaws as the postwar Holocaust-survivor assessments of the Judenraete, as identified by Bauer, “The testimonies could have been influenced, after the fact, by peer pressure, the general consensus, or other outside factors and, again, may not necessarily reflect what the witnesses thought at the time of the events themselves.” (p. 84).

Bauer also reminds us that Holocaust survivors may “graft” events into their testimonies that they had heard from others but not experienced themselves, and goes further. He warns, “Postwar memoirs were influenced by postwar collective memory and may not reflect what the writer thought back when the events happened.” (p. 168).

For more on the dubious reliability of Holocaust-survivor testimony, see (and links therein):

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/bad-pole-holocaust-survivor-testimony-unreliable-wieviorka/

THE HOLOCAUST WAS CONDUCTED LARGELY BY GERMANS, NOT NAZIS

Sometimes facts that should be elementary and self-evident need to be re-stated. Bauer comments, “Was it the Germans or the German National Socialists, the Nazis, who were responsible for the murder of Jews?…It is appropriate to talk of Germans as the perpetrators and murderers and to mention Nazis only when talking of the party and the leadership.” (p. 155). Well said.

HOLODOMOR WAS A JEWISH ACT OF GENOCIDE

Bauer goes beyond the shtetl itself. He candidly writes, “Lazar M. Kaganovich, Stalin’s brother-in-law, an economic expert, was a Jew. He was the person chiefly responsible, in the nineteen thirties, for organizing the artificial starvation in Ukraine that killed millions of people.” (p. 190).

JERZY ROBERT NOWAK CORRECT ON SOVIET DEPORTATIONS OF JEWS

Bauer confirms the judgment of Polish historian Jerzy Robert Nowak regarding those Jews deported by the USSR, from the Soviet-occupied Kresy, in 1939-1941, “Who were the Jewish deportees? The vast majority of them were the refugees who had entered the kresy fleeing from German-occupied Poland.” (p. 54).

RIDICULOUS SLANDER OF ROMAN DMOWSKI

Bauer makes these amazing Polonophobic statements, “Despite all the denials by Polish nationalists, their views of the Jews came very close to German National Socialist racism, and, in fact, Dmowski came to admire Hitler (while hating the Germans).” (p. 15. Emphasis added).

What a crock! Dmowski actually saw and condemned Nazism for what it was–a criminal political movement that no one should emulate. Moreover, he said this back in 1934, which was several years before the German enmity toward Poland and the ensuing German-made Holocaust. See:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/undemonizing-dmowski-on-nazism-dmowski1/

In fact, far from admiring and copying Nazi antisemitism, Roman Dmowski actually expressed surprise at the intensity of even the relatively-tame early Nazi antisemitism, especially when one recounts all that the Jews had done for Germany. At no time did the well-founded Polish nationalist dislike of Jews ever partake of Nazi-style policies, let alone the Holocaust. To verify this for yourself, go to the right side of my website homepage, and click on the entire set of reviews under the category of Polish Nationalism: the Truth.