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

I Shall Live: Surviving Against All Odds 1939-1945, by Henry Orenstein. 1987. Simon & Schuster, Inc. New York, London

Collaborator Irrelevance: Details on the Large-Scale Direct German Finding of Jews in Hiding

The geographic setting of this book is the German-occupied Kresy. In terms of specifics, it is in the area bound by the towns of Hrubieszow, Wlodzimerz, Uscilug and Olyka.

Nowadays, “the Holocaust” has been expanded. Comparatively trivial acts done by non-Austrians and non-Germans get as much attention as the German murder of 6 million Jews! A subtle shifting of blame for the Holocaust, from Germans to Poles, takes place. We hear a lot about “Polish complicity in the Holocaust” or even about a “Germanless Holocaust”.

In recent Holocaust-related thinking, the Germans are limited to transporting and killing the Jews en masse, while “the locals” gladly betray those Jews that had gone into hiding. In actuality, Germans were perfectly capable of finding Jews in hiding, on their own, and without the assistance of local collaborators, as we shall see.

OVERALL JEWISH DISBELIEF IN THE UNFOLDING HOLOCAUST

In common with many Jewish authors, Orenstein points out that the Jews were very slow to realize that the Nazi plans for the Jews were infinitely worse than anything that Jews had ever experienced before. Jewish Germanophilia did the trick. He comments, “The speeches of Hitler and his lieutenants included a great deal of rhetoric concerning their plans for rendering Europe free of Jews (Judenrein), ‘stamping out the Jewish vermin,’ and so forth, but only the extreme pessimists could believe that Germany, a nation of poets, philosophers, musicians, and scientists, a nation that had given the world Beethoven, Goethe, and Kant, could actually embark on a program of deliberate mass extermination of the Jewish people as a whole, including innocent children, helpless old people, and women.” (pp. 61-62).

TREBLINKA HAD SELECTIONS

It is often said that no Jews sent to Treblinka came out alive (save the handful that escaped). This is untrue. Jews arriving at Treblinka could be selected to be diverted to nearby work camps. (p. 149).

COLLABORATOR IRRELEVANCE: SYSTEMATIC GERMAN PROCEDURES FOR UNCOVERING JEWS IN HIDING

Jewish author Henry Orenstein makes this clear, “Once the SS had dispatched those Jews who had showed up for the roundup by sending them to the gas chambers and burying them in mass graves, they would start the hunt for those who had gone into hiding. It was a hunt the likes of which mankind has never seen. Whole families would hide out in skrytkas [previously-made hideouts], as we had in Wlodzimierz, and they would be hunted down inexorably, relentlessly. Street by street, house by house, inch by inch, from attic to cellar. The Germans became expert at finding these hiding places.” (p. 86).

Orenstein continues, “When they [the Germans] searched a house, they were tapping the walls, listening for the hollow sound that indicated a double wall. They punched holes in ceilings or floors. People stayed in these skrytkas for days, for weeks, often without food and water, and the Germans listened for the muffled cries of children, with desperate parents trying to smother their sounds with hands over the little ones’ mouths.” (pp. 86-87).

These German actions were very comprehensive, as stressed by Orenstein, “These were no longer limited ‘actions’; this was total annihilation. Teams of SS men roamed the streets, searching ditches, outhouses, bushes, barns, stables, pigsties. And they caught and killed Jews by the thousands; then by the hundreds; then by tens; and finally one by one. Almost every day we heard new reports of the killer commandos going from town to town killing Jews. The deathwatch for the Jews of Uscilug had begun.” (p. 87).

Were collaborators in the Holocaust an essential part of the German-made cake, or where they, at most, just icing on the cake? Clearly, it was the latter.

MORE ON COLLABORATOR IRRELEVANCE

For further large-scale examples of Germans systematically searching for fugitive Jews (in urban areas): see:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/zydokomuna-warsaw-ghetto-uprising-goldstein/

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/jewish-collaboration-expansive-wolgelernter/

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/betrayals-not-needed-for-nazis-to-find-jews-berenstein/

For further large-scale examples of Germans systematically searching for fugitive Jews (in rural areas and forests): see:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2021/05/31/jews-and-poles-equal-victims-german-gendarmes-rather-than-polish-villagers-hunted-for-jews-poles-were-forced-blue-police-policja-granatowa-forced-jew-killer-communist-trials-a-sham-fugitive-j/

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/betrayals-not-needed-for-nazis-to-find-jews-burakowski/

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2022/12/27/auschwitz-gas-chambers-demystified-a-nazi-collaborating-jew-was-not-driven-by-fear-of-death-polish-collaborators-not-needed-in-the-nazi-hunt-for-the-jews-fugitive-jews-betrayed-other-fugitive-jews/

CONCLUSION

Clearly, the German-made Holocaust featured collaborator irrelevance. It was tangential at best.