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

Remembering Survival: Inside a Nazi Slave-Labor Camp, by Christopher R. Browning. 2010. W. W. Norton & Company, New York, London

Schindler Profit? Jews Permanently Spared From the Gas Chambers and Diverted Into Forced Labor

This book is about the Jewish forced laborers at Starachowice and environs, in German-occupied Poland, but in accordance with a Jewish-centered approach. To be sure, Polish forced laborers are mentioned, but only in reference to the Jews.

DID OSKAR SCHINDLER DEFEND HIS JEWISH LABORERS IN ORDER TO KEEP MAKING MONEY OFF THEM?

Browning, while not explicitly mentioning Schindler, nevertheless acknowledges the vested interest that German businessmen had to keep their Jewish workers in place. He writes, “Himmler was ever-suspicious of the claims of German entrepreneurs that Jewish labor was indispensable. They were, he felt, merely trying to enrich themselves at the expense of implementing Nazi racial policy and making the Final Solution truly final.” (p. 77). He adds that, “He [Himmler] threatened harsh consequences for anyone who opposed him ‘with alleged armaments interests’ but ‘in reality merely wanted to support the Jews and their business.'” (p. 147).

Later, Schindler tried to keep his Jews alive at all costs, or else he would have been deemed superfluous, and sent to the Russian front. See:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/schindlers-list-fear-of-russian-front-crowe/

Now consider another subject. Female Jewish forced laborers were not murdered for arriving pregnant or becoming pregnant (pp. 187-188), but their babies were put to death.

REJECTING JAN T. GROSS ON HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR TESTIMONY

Jan T. Gross has argued that the testimonies of Holocaust survivors, against Poles, be automatically believed “because these are the voices of victims.” Browning strongly disagrees, saying, “But the historian needs accuracy, not just sincerity. Claiming that survivor testimony must be accorded a privileged position not subject to the same critical analysis and rules of evidence as other sources will merely discredit and undermine the reputation and integrity of Holocaust scholarship itself.” (p. 8). And how! For more on the unreliability of Holocaust survivors, see:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2025/08/02/introducing-jewish-forced-laborers-a-stunning-holocaust-contradiction/

HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS “GRAFT-IN” EXTRANEOUS CLAIMS INTO THEIR OWN MEMORIES

Browning specifies, “Even within the realm of public memory, generally reliable witnesses whom I will cite frequently nonetheless provide obviously flawed and mistaken testimony on occasion. Most common in this regard are testimonies that incorporate iconic Holocaust tropes gained from post-war exposure to widespread representations in documentaries, movies, memoirs, and novels.” (p. 11).

As an example of this, consider the gas-chamber “showers”. Browning quips, “…the powerful capacity of popular media, especially film, to implant images and shape the way in which stories are retold. Before 1990, only one testimony–that of Josef Kohs from 1948–told how upon arrival in Birkenau the Starachowice prisoners did not dare to have hope until water rather than gas came from the showerheads. This must have been a not-uncommon experience, yet it does not appear in the testimonies for nearly fifty years. Then, after the remarkable shower scene in Schindler’s List had become an iconic image of the Holocaust, no fewer than twenty survivors included in their narratives a reference to their surprise or relief when the showers proved to be real, and water rather than gas came from the showerheads.” (p. 237).

HOLOCAUST FRAUDS: MADE-UP HOLOCAUST EXPERIENCES. NOT ONLY WILKOMIRSKI

The author moves beyond the Wilkomirski affair and identifies another whopper. He comments, “More recently, Herman Rosenblat’s purported memoir, Angel at the Fence, was similarly exposed as invention.” (p. 302).

For details on the Holocaust fraudulence of Jerzy Kosinski vel Lewinkopf, who actually went through the Holocaust, see:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/painted-bird-fraud-evil-murderous-peasants-siedlicka/

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/painted-bird-fraud-evil-murderous-peasants-sloan/

JUDENRAT AND JEWISH GHETTO POLICE

Christopher Browning draws on a large survivor base, and these people offer a mixed portrayal of Jews that served the Nazis. He writes, “Another critic felt that in addition to prewar community leaders, people who were ‘simply opportunists’ took advantage of their positions, and ‘corruption set in immediately.’ The most strident critic of the Judenrat claimed that they were ‘hated’ by everyone because ‘they got rich from the Jews,’ keeping for themselves some of what was collected for the Germans. ‘An honest Jew would not go to the Judenrat,’ she claimed…In contrast, the Jewish police of the Order Service were remembered less favorably. One survivor viewed them as more eager than they had to be in ‘collaborating’ with the Germans. Others noted cryptically: ‘Some good, mostly bad’ or ‘not too good.'” (pp. 38-39).

JEWISH-POLISH RELATIONS

Author Browning is generally even-handed in his understanding of Polish-Jewish relations in the first part of his book, but with an increasingly anti-Polish slant later on. His is an uncritical acceptance of the accusations of Jan T. Gross and Joanna Michlic, a rather puerile Zydokomuna denialism, the customary dump on the NSZ, and a pronounced Judeocentric contextual vacuum when dealing with postwar Jewish-Polish property disputes.

Browning is sometimes candid about Jewish Polonophobia, as when he writes, “VHA 33807 (Gloria Borenstein, 1997, who characterized the Poles as ‘uneducated’, ‘drunk’, and ‘disgusting’ and Poland as an ‘ugly, ugly country’.)” (p. 304). Poland gave Jews a home for several centuries, and that is the kind of gratitude that Poles get from Jews. Is it any wonder that some Poles don’t like Jews?