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

The Holocaust: Origins, Implementation, Aftermath, Second Edition, Edited by Omer Bartov. 2015. Routledge, London and New York

Auschwitz Details: Little-Known and Seldom Appreciated Facts About Auschwitz. Does Not Forget the Poles

This second edition is almost completely different from Bartov’s first edition of this book. I focus on some highlights.

AUSCHWITZ BUILT FOR POLES. ONLY LATER DID JEWS ENTER THE PICTURE

Nowadays, Jews commonly act as though they “own” Auschwitz, telling Poles what Poles can and cannot do there (e g., the Carmelite convent controversy). The following facts set the record straight.

Dieter Pohl remarks, “In general, the concentration camps were not designed specifically for Jewish prisoners…The two major concentration camps in Poland, Auschwitz and Majdanek [Maidanek], underwent a change of function. Both were originally established for Polish political prisoners, and then enlarged for Soviet POWs under SS control. In spring and summer 1942, a dual system of exploitation and mass murder was established in both camps.” (p. 115. Emphasis added).

For more on Poles preceding the Jews as victims of Auschwitz, see:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2021/02/20/german-concentration-camps-german-death-camps-killing-centers-industrial-genocide-mythical-significance-auschwitz-classic-kapos-had-choice-szmaglewska/

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2021/03/10/gassing-poles-and-not-only-jews-at-auschwitz-nazi-concentration-camps-low-survivorship-siedlecki/

AUSCHWITZ GAS CHAMBERS, WHEN BUILT, FIRST USED ON NON-JEWS

Dieter Pohl writes, “It is clear that mass murder at Auschwitz began on a large scale in August/September 1941, when the toxin Zyklon B was used for the first time to kill Soviet POWs and other non-Jewish inmates. There are some indications that the crematorium for the planned Birkenau subcamp was conceived with a gas chamber already in October 1941. But the construction of Birkenau was officially commissioned for the imprisonment of more Soviet POWs: no mass transports to Auschwitz were envisaged at that time. The mass murder of Jews in Birkenau probably began during the construction of the camp in May 1942.” (p. 107).

WANNSEE DEMYSTIFIED: FULL-FLEDGED NAZI DECISION TO EXTERMINATE (AND NOT JUST RELOCATE) THE JEWS POST-DATED WANNSEE

There was a prolonged transition between the older German plans of resettling the Jews (as in Madagascar, or in the Lublin area) and the newer ideas of systematically killing them. At the time of Wannsee, the transition, in German thinking, had not yet been completed. Peter Longerich points out that the Wannsee Conference (January 30, 1942) still retained elements of some the older ideas of re-locating the Jews to the Eastern territories, and with the method of murder “not yet entirely clear”. (p. 129). The full conceptual transition from relocation to systematic mass murder was not completed for a few more months after Wannsee. Longerich writes, “With these decisions, probably made in the second half of April or early May [1942], which came into effect in May/June, the Nazi regime definitely abandoned the idea of ‘reservation’ in the eastern area of the General Government or the occupied Eastern territories which had increasingly become a fiction given the mass murder that was already under way.” (p. 131).

JEWS IN FORCED LABOR NOT NECESSARILY EARMARKED FOR ANNIHILATION

What about the Jews that the Nazis never sent to the gas chambers? Pohl comments, “It is a matter of dispute among historians whether the SS pursued an explicit policy of ‘annihilation through labor’ against Jews.” (p. 114).

Yet Jews got 3 times the reparations, per head, as did Poles, based on this very premise! See:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2022/09/25/holocaust-industry-improprieties-compensating-forced-laborers-jews-get-paid-and-other-victims-of-nazi-genocide-do-not-facts-and-figures-practical-victim-hierarchy-active-victimhood-competition/

JEWS ALSO ADMITTED AS “ORDINARY” INMATES INTO NAZI GERMAN CONCENTRATION CAMPS

Pohl generalizes, “Large numbers of Jewish survivors spend the last months of the war in concentration camps, the only ‘legal’ way left for them to live under German rule. Probably more Jewish survived in the camps than in hiding.” (p. 114).

In fact, Jews formed a significant part of the population of the “ordinary” German concentration camps. Pohl continues, “With the onset of the Soviet offensive in January 1945, most concentration camp inmates started to prepare for evacuation. At this time, around 30-40 percent of the 718,000 registered concentration camp inmates were of Jewish origin.” (p. 112).

THE NAZIS ALLOWED SOME JEWS TO SURVIVE AUSCHWITZ ITSELF

Here is an estimate of the survivorship of Jewish inmates at Auschwitz. Pohl writes, “Overall, out of more than 200,000 registered Jewish prisoners from all over Europe in Auschwitz, 30,000 survived.” (p. 115). Now, if the Germans were really out to exterminate each and every Jew, as claimed by Holocaust-exceptionality advocates, shouldn’t the number of Jewish survivors be much, much lower, if not down to zero?

LAST-MINUTE NAZI GERMAN KILLINGS OF NOT ONLY JEWS

The evacuations of the camps, conducted in the last few months of the existence of the Third Reich, were not specifically aimed at the remaining Jews. Pohl remarks, “The victim statistics of the evacuations are very difficult to establish…New estimates tend to give higher figures than previously, with at least 250,000 prisoners killed during the evacuations, probably half of them Jews.” (p. 113).

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A VALID ISSUE: HOLOCAUST DOMINANCE AND THE DIMINUTION OF NON-JEWISH GENOCIDES

Omer Bartov writes, “Arguments have been made that the insistence of some scholars, by now an extremely small minority, and a far more pervasive public and political discourse about the so-called uniqueness of the Holocaust, has had a detrimental effect on the study of other genocides and may have even played a role in preventing the world from paying sufficient attention to cases of mass murder that seemed not ‘as bad’ as the Holocaust. Indeed, some western politicians wishing to avoid involvement in risky intervention, and some Israeli leaders trying to divert attention from their own illegal occupation policies, have invoked the Holocaust as either worse than subsequent genocides or as giving license for clearly illegitimate policies by the descendants of its victims.” (p. 363).