Death Penalty German Decisive Landau

Caged, by David J. Landau. 2000

German-Imposed Death Penalty: Black Market Risk Jew Rescue Risk False Equivalence. Holocaust and Polokaust. Poles and Jews Looted Each Other

David Landau’s family engaged in leather manufacture before the war. Despite their wealth, they were Communists. (p. 8). [This adds to similar testimonies, refuting the exculpation that Jews were driven to Communism (the Zydokomuna) out of poverty and desperation.]

After Poland’s 1939 defeat, Landau joined the ZZW instead of the much-better known ZOB, despite Landau being professedly apolitical, because the ZZW was the first Jewish group to organize armed resistance. (p. xiv).

NO FUNDAMENTAL DUALISM BETWEEN THE HOLOCAUST AND THE POLOKAUST

Contrary to Holocaust-uniqueness advocates, the Nazis did not seek the death of every single possible Jewish man, woman, and child within reach. For instance, Jews who were citizens of neutral countries were exempt from Nazi persecution. (p. 64).

The mystification of the Holocaust is also misplaced. On a day-to-day basis, Jews and Poles under German rule weren’t that far apart: “The Poles in Warsaw lived life close to death; for the remaining Jews, death was the rule around which life centered.” (204). The Nazi extermination camps shouldn’t be dichotomized with conventional Nazi concentration camps: “In terms of goals, there were no differences. They were all intended to destroy innumerable victims…[differences only] in the methods used to achieve this end.” (p. 75).

FALSE EQUIVALENCE BETWEEN POLISH RISK IN ENGAGING IN THE BLACK MARKET AND ENGAGING IN THE RESCUE OF FUGITIVE JEWS

The media-promoted Jan T. Gross and his followers have argued that Poles regularly incurred the German-imposed death penalty while black marketeering, but seldom in hiding Jews, and therefore that risk of death is not what governed their “usual indifference” to Jews in need. This multiply-disingenuous argument presupposes that both activities had comparable risk of discovery, and comparable experiencing of the death penalty if caught. They were not. In fact, Landau writes: “Open black markets in primary products were working in different parts of Warsaw. The German authorities looked the other way where Poles were concerned. Germans were making the greatest profits anyway.” (p. 58).

LET’S NOT FORGET THE FACT THAT THE POLISH DENOUNCERS CAUSED THE DEATHS OF POLISH RESCUERS AS WELL AS THE JEWS IN HIDING

Hard-core Polish blackmailers of fugitive Jews (SZMALCOWNIKI) had no regard for Jewish lives. What is often forgotten is that they had no regard for Polish lives either. Landau comments: “The SZMALCOVNIKS made no distinction between Jews and their protectors.” (p. 267; see also p. 209). Landau adds: “To this day, whoever speaks of the Polish people as a unit, `the Poles’, does them the same injustice as the anti-Semite does to the Jewish people when they speak of `the Jews’.” (p. 289).

SUBSTANTIAL POLISH HELP TO THE WARSAW GHETTO UPRISING (1943)

Landau’s narrative of his participation in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising focuses on combat in the attics and the bunkers, and the help given by Polish sewer workers. He met “Bystry” (Iwanski)(pp. 40-41, 80-84), and thus summarized Polish involvement: “It would be as false to claim they [Poles] trained us merely for their interests as to claim they did it merely for our own. Our benefit was mutual. Before, during, and after the Uprising, our Polish friends stood by. A few even entered into the ghetto to fight, and some died fighting with us.” (p. 97). WARNING: The descriptions of German atrocities are atypically graphic, even for a book about the Shoah.

THE ZYDOKOMUNA CHILLED FURTHER POLISH-JEWISH RAPPROCHEMENT

Why didn’t the Polish Underground follow through and integrate the surviving ZZW units into the AK? Landau opines: “The Home Army officially welcomed Jews in their ranks. However, as history was later to prove, a secret order was sent out early in 1944 to eliminate the Jewish Underground fighters because they were suspected of helping the advancing Red Army, which was politically against the interests of the Government-in-Exile.” (p. 288).

NOT ONLY POLES LOOTED POST-JEWISH PROPERTY: JEWS ALSO LOOTED POST-POLISH PROPERTY [OF COURSE, WE NEVER HEAR ABOUT THAT]

David J. Landau observed the Polish Warsaw Uprising (1944), and was one of several hundred Jews who survived by hiding in its ruins following the German-forced evacuation of the population. Just as Poles had earlier looted Jewish properties, so now the Jews looted Polish properties. (pp. 321-324).