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

Killing Sites: Research and Remembrance, edited by IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance). 2015. Metropol, Berlin

Jew Killing Victim: No Special Way that Jews Were Killed. Overlap of Jewish and Slavic Victims. Universal Jew-Grave Robbery. Jedwabne Not Part of the Holocaust

This book focuses on the German mass-shooting operations in German-conquered central and Eastern Europe. Although non-Jewish victims are occasionally mentioned, the main focus, as always, is on Jews. I discuss a number of relevant issues.

JEW KILLING VICTIM: NO SPECIAL NAZI GERMAN WAY OF KILLING JEWS

The customary mystification of Nazi gas chambers and Jews is misplaced. To begin with, the Nazis developed gas chambers for use on the handicapped, and only later turned them for use against Jews.

A majority of the 6 million German-murdered Jews did not die in gas chambers! Author Dieter Pohl apportions the iconic 6 million figure as follows, “Of the 5.6–5.8 million murdered Jews, approximately 2-2.2 million died in mass executions, 2.5 million in extermination camps, and approximately 1 million due to other circumstances, in ghettos, other camps, or during death marches…” (p. 37).

JEW KILLING VICTIM: NOTHING SPECIAL ABOUT THE NAZI MASS SHOOTINGS OF JEWS

Dieter Pohl comments, “A mass execution can be defined as the killing of ten or more victims who were herded together and shot in one place in order that the corpses might be buried in a mass grave. Mass executions in general were not a specific Nazi pattern of killing; they have been recorded since the invention of rifles, during colonial warfare and massacres, in modern conflicts like the Balkan Wars, or during the mass murder of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Mass executions were common practice to exterminate alleged enemies during Bolshevik rule, from the times of the Russian Civil War until the crushing of Gulag uprisings during the early 1950s.” (p. 32. Emphasis in original).

JEW KILLING VICTIM? MURDER IS MURDER: DEATH BY SHOOTING VS DEATH BY GASSING

Nor were Jews the only victims of mass shooting. Furthermore, the Jewish and Slavic experiences overlapped considerable. Pohl writes, “It is reasonable to state that mass executions were a specific features of the Holocaust, but also a feature of German violence against the non-Jewish population of Eastern Europe. And it is difficult to draw a clear line between crimes against Jews and non-Jews.” (p. 37. Emphasis added).

Pohl concludes, “All in all, one can estimate that at least 3.5 million men, women, and children were shot under Axis rule.” (p. 37). Note that, according to Pohl’s minimal (for non-Jews) figure, a comparable number of Jews and Slavs were murdered by the Germans by shooting. But, in accordance with Holocaust supremacist thinking, only the death of the Jews counts. Need we ask why?

JEW KILLING VICTIM? PROFITING FROM WWII: NOTHING SPECIAL ABOUT THE GRAVE ROBBERY OF JEWS

Jan T. Gross has raised a big stink over the fact that the postwar Poles allegedly robbed the Jewish cremains at the Treblinka site. In actually, grave robbery is unremarkable and should be situated within the broader context of the efforts to profitably find objects related to WWII. Author Meylakh Sheykhet writes, “The Killing Sites in Ukraine have been vandalized by the so-called black archeologists, whose illegal businesses were and still are looking for jewelry and gold teeth, ammunition and other historical objects from World War II.” (p. 169).

JEW KILLING VICTIM? JEDWABNE WAS NOT EVEN PART OF THE HOLOCAUST! (HOLOCAUST BEGAN AUGUST 16, 1941)

The massacre at Jedwabne (July 10, 1941), occurred at a time when the exterminatory German motives against Jews were not yet crystallized, and at a time when German units were killing only Jewish men–as “Soviet commissars” (Milda Jakulyte-Vasil, p. 215).

The actual start of the Holocaust can be dated over a month after Jedwabne! At that time, a new German order specifically ordered the total murder of Jewish men, women, and children for the first time. Jakulyte-Vasil writes, “Although the mass murder of Jews in Lithuania began in the first days of the war, most Lithuanian historians who have investigated this subject have concluded that the start of the Holocaust in Lithuania should be dated from a letter sent by police chief Vytautas Reivytis to police departments around the country containing the order to concentrate Jews at discrete locations. This order was issued on August 16, 1941.” (p. 214).

Clearly, the Germans used deception and manipulation. First they convinced the locals (in this case, Lithuanians) that they were “only killing Bolsheviks”, and, having won their confidence and sometimes collaboration, they turned the “killing Bolsheviks” operation into purely a Jew-killing operation.

For more on the numbers of Lithuanian collaborators, see:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2025/03/09/rare-accepted-judeo-bolshevism-liability-lithuanian-revenge-extent/