Bad Pole Holocaust Survivor Testimony Unreliable Browning

Collected Memories: Holocaust History and Postwar Testimony, by Christopher R. Browning. 2003

Holocaust Survivor Testimony Unreliable. It Needs to Be Subject to the Same Vetting Process, For Accuracy, as Is All Other’s Testimony

This work contains very timely information. For example:

UNCRITICALLY-BELIEVED HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR TESTIMONIES—NOT THE HOLOCAUST DENIERS—ARE THE MAIN THREAT TO HOLOCAUST MEMORY!

Scholar Christopher R. Browning, after repudiating the Holocaust deniers and their summary rejection of Holocaust-survivor testimonies, cautions against the more-harmful opposite extreme: “Paradoxically, perhaps the most serious challenge in the use of survivor testimony as historical evidence is posed not by those who are inherently hostile to it but by those who embrace it too uncritically and emotionally.” (p. 40).

Pointedly, Browning explicitly rejects the methodology of Jan T. Gross [as well as Jan Grabowski vel Abrahamer and Barbara Engelking], in which survivor testimony is afforded privileged status, and accepted as the default-correct one (pp. 42-44, 84). He concludes that: “They will merely discredit and undermine the reputation and integrity of Holocaust scholarship itself.” (p. 44). No kidding.

But it is more than that. Saying that the testimony of a Jewish victim is automatically credible just because he/she is a Jew, is racist on its face.

Gross’ other notion (that Jews wouldn’t falsely blame Poles for German crimes) is equally ridiculous. It flies in the face of evidence that wrongs done by neighbors are more intensely remembered than those of faceless foreigners. (p. 43). [Browning doesn’t go far enough. Polish Jews had a deep-seated Germanophilia, and, if anything, were very slow to realize that the Nazis could be “that bad”.]

SELF-IMPLANTED FALSE MEMORIES—IN HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS

Browning shows how Holocaust survivors often internalize what they heard about the Holocaust, especially commonly-repeated themes, and graft into their memories events that they never personally experienced. (p. 67, 82-84). [How many Pole-accusing events in Holocaust testimonies are actually the products of self-implanted memories derived from Polonophobic archetypical themes that exist in the Jewish community?]

For more on the fact that Holocaust survivor testimony is not automatically credible, see my reviews of ERA OF THE WITNESS, by Annette Wieviorka, and EICHMANN BEFORE JERUSALEM, by Bettina Stangneth.

POLES DID RETURN JEWISH PROPERTIES, AND DID SO VOLUNTARILY

Unlike the media-hyped tales of “greedy” Poles unwilling to return Jewish properties, the local Poles returned Jewish valuables entrusted to them. (p. 56, 58). This furthermore enabled their use in the often-successful bribing of the “corrupt” Germans.

JEWISH NAZI COLLABORATION: MOTIVATED BY THE PERKS RATHER THAN BY FEAR OF DEATH

At Starochowice, there existed a Judenrat-equivalent group of privileged Jews consisting of the Wilczek coterie. (pp. 56-57). They enjoyed noticeably better food, clothing and housing than other Jews, were free to travel to nearby towns, sold borrowed Jewish goods to Poles on the black market, and perhaps helped the Germans choose who was to die. Later, while on the train to Auschwitz, members of the Wilczek coterie were killed by other Jews in a vendetta (pp. 78-81; which was ironic in the sense that the Jews on this particular transport were not gassed: p. 83).

THE BRUTAL GERMAN OCCUPATION BROUGHT OUT THE WORST IN BOTH THE JEW AND THE POLE

Analyzing all this, Browning remarked: “One of the saddest ‘lessons’ of the Holocaust is confirmation that terrible persecution does not ennoble victims. A few magnificent exceptions notwithstanding, persecution, enslavement, starvation, and mass murder do not make ordinary people into saints and heroic martyrs.” (p. 85). [This exculpation of negative Jewish conduct against fellow Jews should be used consistently, exculpating negative Polish conduct against Jews. (And don’t forget: Poles were also victims!) It should also silence those who armchair-moralize about “so few Poles” rescuing Jews and “so many Poles” denouncing fugitive Jews. Will reason now prevail? Fat chance.]

ADOLPH EICHMANN’S OFT-QUOTED “BANALITY OF EVIL”—A CON JOB

Jason Browning suggests that Eichmann’s impersonal-passive-role self-portrayal had been nothing more than one of his self-serving lies. (p. 10).