Death Penalty German Decisive Inhibiting Polish Jew-Rescue Efforts Chodakiewicz

Between Nazis and Soviets, by Marek Jan Chodakiewicz. 2004

33% of Local Fugitive Jews Survived! Polish Denunciations and Jew-Killings Driven by Banditry. German-Imposed Death Penalty: No Polish Double Standard on Black Market and Rescuing Jews

Holocaust education in western societies has favored the minimizing of the Polish agony during WWII, and this has spawned a large body of misconceptions regarding Polish-Jewish relationships during this tragic time. This profusely-documented work goes a long way towards clarifying these issues. It covers the time from the German-Soviet conquest of Poland to the western-acquiesced imposition of the Soviet puppet government (1939-1947), and is centered on the rural population of the county of Janow Lubelski.

“SPECTATORS”; “BYSTANDERS”: A FALSE HOLOCAUSTSPEAK MEME

Against the view that Poles were “spectators” of the Jewish catastrophe (a classic Orwellian Holocaustspeak term), the reader immediately realizes that Poles had no possible luxury of being spectators. They too were in a battle of survival, being subject to a progressive genocide consisting of episodic mass murder and universal pauperization. Few realize that, alongside the 5-6 million Jews, a total of 2-3 million ethnic Poles were murdered the Germans, as were a few hundred thousand the Soviet “allies”. [More recent research indicates that a total of 8 million Poles perished during WWII. See my review of Materski, POLSKA 1939-1945].

GERMAN GUILT DIFFUSION REJECTED

There was no valid dichotomy between “Germans” and “Nazis”. Thus, German crimes were hardly limited to “Nazified formations”, as some contemporary German authors claim. For example, the murder of Polish civilian hostages, in reprisal for any act of real or imagined disobedience, originated with the German army (p. 92), not the SS or Gestapo.

ECONOMIC RIVALRY, NOT POLISH VILLAINY, DROVE POLISH ANTISEMITISM

Various Polish actions, simplistically blamed on “Polish anti-Semitism”, usually had other causes. Prewar Polish-Jewish antagonisms, stereotypically attributed to church teachings, were actually fueled primarily by economic rivalry (p. 51-55, 64). Peasants’ acceptance of the blood libel must be contextualized within the large body of peasant superstitions, most of which had nothing to do with religion or ethnicity (p. 63). Any conflation of Polish Catholic nationalism with fascism and Nazism is demonstrably false. In fact, even the most right-wing Poles almost universally repudiated the materialistic, racialist, statist, totalitarian, and genocidal character of the latter (p. 56, 339-340).

REFUTING THE STANDARD POLONOPHOBIC ACCUSATIONS AGAINST THE UNDERGROUND

German documents from October 1941 complain that Poles are not opposing the movements of fugitive Jews within the county (p. 174). There is no evidence of Polish Underground collaboration with Germans against Jews (p. 326). Slanderous accusations of the Polish Underground (AK, NSZ, and successor organizations) having a secret plan to “finish Hitler’s work” by killing all remaining Polish Jews is refuted such things as the acceptance of known Jews into Underground ranks (p. 179), the sparing of Jews who fell into Underground hands (p. 307), and acts of assistance to fugitive Jews by the Underground (p. 317). The competition of Polish guerilla units against each other for scarce firearms (p. 185) illuminates the unwillingness of the Polish Underground to provide more arms to the Jewish Warsaw ghetto fighters.

FACTS ABOUT THE POLICJA GRANATOWA (NAVY BLUE POLICE)

The Blue police have incorrectly been portrayed as the Polish counterpart to Ukrainian and Baltic collaborationist forces used in the Holocaust. In actuality, it was a compulsory force set up the Germans for crime fighting and was hardly ever used for mass executions or the guarding of labor camps (p. 71). Although sometimes used against Jews, the Blue police was not, willingly or unwillingly, responsible for many Jewish deaths (p. 153). Some members of the Blue police aided Jews (p. 174), and a large fraction of its ranks doubled as members of the Polish Underground (p. 194, 222).

The Blue police and low-level Polish civilian administration were not, individual exceptions aside, collaborators. They were primarily accommodators to German terror and hostages of the same (p. 78, 80).

POLISH DENUNCIATIONS AND JEW-KILLINGS IN PROPER CONTEXT

Fugitive Jews formed bands and robbed and killed Polish peasants, and joined subversive Communist units, sometimes provoking Polish counter-actions (p. 149). Otherwise, the sporadic killings of fugitive Jews Poles was just part of the general lawlessness under a brutal German occupant (p. 154).

UNDERGROUND POLISH COURTS: VERY LIMITED POWERS OF PUNISHMENT OF EVILDOERS

Consider the much-discussed SZMALCOWNIKI. Complaints about Poles not protecting fugitive Jews from Polish criminals ignore, among other things, the fact that only a small percentage of even Pole-on-Pole crimes could eventuate Polish anti-criminal intervention (p. 94).

GERMAN-IMPOSED DEATH PENALTY: NO POLISH DOUBLE STANDARDS ON RESCUING JEWS AND PARTICIPATING IN THE BLACK MARKET

Poles had been willing, despite the draconian German occupation, to risk the death penalty in forming a flourishing black market and setting up Underground units. This has led the media-acclaimed neo-Stalinist Jan T. Gross to the absurd argument that Poles were therefore not deterred by the death penalty from saving many more Jews. In reality, the black market owed its success to its flexible, spontaneous, mobile, and decentralized nature (p. 122)–in most ways the OPPOSITE of hiding Jews, especially on a large, organized scale. Also, Jan T. Gross would us rather us not know that concealing a Jew was much riskier than blending into the population while a member of the Underground. The considerable German success in arresting members of the Polish underground (p. 192) underscores the risk of even Underground involvement, and makes folly of the argument that Poles should have saved many more Jews. Finally, the relevance of the death penalty in constraining Polish conduct is proved by the fact that the Underground carefully planned its actions to minimize German reprisals against Poles (p. 337).

POLISH AID TO JEWS: NEVER ENOUGH

About 4% of local Poles assisted Jews in some way (p. 152). [This may be compared with 7%-9% of Warsaw’s Poles aiding fugitive Jews in some way: See Paulsson SECRET CITY.] Perennial complaints that “most Poles did nothing” ignore the fact that the vast majority of Poles were never approached even a single fugitive Jew for help (p. 153)! The Holocaust itself was so unprecedented and so swiftly applied that few Jews could even plan to escape the urban ghettos and seek Polish help (p. 151, 153). [See also NOT JUST ANOTHER HOLOCAUST BOOK, by Eli Gat]. That, and not imagined Polish indifference or hostility, was the REAL reason for only a small percentage of Polish Jews surviving the Holocaust! It is high time that Holocaust materials and the media reflect this reality. Fat chance.

JANOW LUBELSKA’S FUGITIVE JEWS: A 33% SURVIVORSHIP RATE. ALSO NEVER ENOUGH

Some 300 out of about 1,000 fugitive local Jews did survive the Holocaust (p. 326), a fraction comparable to that of Warsaw’s fugitive Jews (Paulsson. SECRET CITY). These figures soundly refute the claim that a fugitive Jew was almost certain to be betrayed by a Pole. Application of Paulsson’s simple arithmetic makes it obvious that, unless Polish denouncers of Jews had been very uncommon, hardly any fugitive Jew could have survived. The Germans did boast of having “two informers per village” (p. 119) relevant to Pole-on-Pole denunciations, so it appears that these were at least as common as Pole-on-Jew denouncers. And all this does not even touch on the many fugitive Jews that the Germans apprehended without ANY kind of assistance, forced or “voluntary”, from locals.

For those readers who care about numbers, note that the 33% fugitive Jew survivorship rate, inferred independently by Paulsson and Chodakiewicz, is much higher than the 16%–24% implied by Jan Grabowski in his JUDENJAGD (Hunt for the Jews). But what does it matter? The attacks on Poland will continue no matter the facts.