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

Bystander Society, by Mary Fulbrook. 2023. Oxford University Press, Oxford, London

Revealing German Blame-Shifting: Germany Desperately Trying To Blame the Holocaust on Locals–Then and Now. Jedwabne Implications

This Holocaust book has some distinctive information, specifically on the revealing German blame-shifting tactics. This is my focus.

IN GERMAN-OCCUPIED POLAND, THE POLISH KILLING OF JEWS WAS NOT “COMPLICITY IN THE HOLOCAUST”!

Author Fulbrook hits the nail right on the head, “In rural areas of Poland, for example, fear of the fatal consequences for one’s family or even whole villages could easily switch people from being rescuers of Jews to helpers of Germans.” (p. 342).

This book is one of the few “mainstream” books on the Holocaust that gets this basic fact right!

REVEALING GERMAN BLAME-SHIFTING: DO NOT BLUR THE ACTS OF GERMANS WITH THAT OF LOCALS

Now consider those places (Lithuania and Latvia) in which significant locals’ collaboration with the Nazis in fact took place. Author Fulbrook admits that too many authors have folded the locals’ acts against Jews into those of the invading Germans. She comments, “But the record clearly suggests that the interactions between Germans and local activists were crucial to the initiation and escalation of early killings. Pointing to the dates at which violence erupted–as the Red Army retreated and the Germans advanced–and claiming this was a form of ‘interregnum’ may unwittingly serve to buttress the German attempts at the time to disguise the background planning and instigation of violence by locals.” (p. 307).

REVEALING GERMAN BLAME-SHIFTING: DISGUISING GERMAN CRIMES AS THE ACTS OF LOCALS

Fulbrook confirms the fact that the Germans intentionally attempted to pass off their crimes against Jews as the work of locals. She continues, “In mid-October 1941, General Stahlecker summarized with pride the progress Einsatzgruppe A had made since the invasion. As he put it: ‘It was the task of the Security Police to set these self-cleansing movements going and to direct them into the right channels in order to achieve the aim of this cleansing as rapidly as possible’–‘cleansing’ here being the standard euphemism for killing Jews. And Stahlecker further emphasized the significance of deception: ‘It was no less important to establish as unshakable and provable facts for the future that it was the liberated population itself which took the most severe measures on its own initiative, against the Bolshevik and Jewish enemy, without any German instruction being evident.’ However problematic some aspects of Stahlecker’s report might be, his summary identified key features of the situation. The escalating violence was initiated, incited, and legitimated by the Germans, who both organized and unleashed local initiatives and then brought them under their own control. The sheer extent of violence was made possible by a fatal combination of German initiatives and organization, local collaboration and acquiescence, and support or silence on the ground.” (p. 307. Emphasis added).

So there is the smoking gun. The foregoing has obvious implications for the Jedwabne accusation, in which Poles are automatically blamed for German crimes. When will the Holocaust establishment and the media drop their Jewish-serving propaganda stunt, and exonerate the Poles?

For more on Stahleckor’s tricks in blaming German crimes against Jews on the locals, see:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2025/04/05/odd-schindler-laborers-jedwabne-evil-stahlecker-old-anti-partisan-warfare/

REVEALING GERMAN BLAME-SHIFTING: THE GERMANS GO OUT OF THEIR WAY TO BLAME THE LOCALS FOR KILLING JEWS

For all the customary mystification of the Holocaust, one may think that the Germans boasted of their “mission” to “kill all the Jews.” Think again.

Fulbrook writes, “Everywhere, Germans observed, filmed, and photographed local people engaged in violence, often using these images to try to distance themselves from their own roles or share of responsibility. They were no longer bystanders but constructing a role as supposedly uninvolved witnesses.” (p. 294). Yes, very much so!

This reminds us of the German photographing of “the Polish killing of Jews” at Jedwabne, as alleged by Jan T. Gross, which has become a showcase of anti-Polish propaganda to a degree probably never imagined then by the Germans. For a thorough debunking of the Poles-did-Jedwabne lie, see:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2021/07/01/jedwabne-update-definitive-work-jedwabne-a-german-disguised-crime-long-suppressed-information-now-available-2000-2003-poles-are-guilty-ipn-commission-refuted-sommer-chodakiewicz-stankiewicz/

REVEALING GERMAN BLAME-SHIFTING: GERMANS EMPHASIZE MAKING FILMS IN ORDER TO PUT THE BLAME FOR THE HOLOCAUST ON LOCALS

The German blame-shifting was no passing little fad: It was systematic and extensive. Mary Fulbrook writes about how even Lithuanian collaborators were hyped by the Germans as the sole killers of Jews. She comments, “Although Blynas, like other Lithuanians, had been hoping that their aspirations to an independent state would be realized by cooperation with the Germans, by mid-December he was deeply shaken by the process. On 13 December 1941 he wrote: ‘I can’t stand the fact that Lithuania is being turned into a cemetery-morgue’ and ‘that we Lithuanians are doing the shooting, that we have become nothing more than paid executioners, that we are being filmed while the Germans are not filming themselves.’ He concluded this entry: ‘I cannot stand this evil.'” (p. 295).

There is more. The Germans are known to have falsified their documents in order to blame their crimes against Jews on the locals, see:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2023/10/12/goldhagen-speaks-finally-blame-the-germans-number-of-killers-do-matter-german-documents-falsely-blame-locals-for-german-killings-of-jews-implications-for-jedwabne-goldhagen/

Because the Germans so strongly emphasized blaming others for the Holocaust, we must be all the more skeptical of such efforts today. We must insist on a very high evidentiary hurdle to be cleared by those who insist that that “locals” killed Jews independent of the Germans! Hear that, Gross, Grabowski, and Engelking?

How much more obvious does it have to be that the Germans were (and are) trying to offload their Holocaust guilt onto other peoples? And now the Jews are pushing it too. It fits their agenda.

Clearly, the alleged “complicity in the Holocaust”, of central and eastern European nations, is way overblown. Let us finally affix the blame for the Holocaust where it belongs–upon the Germans and Austrians.