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


Grave Robbery Jews Robbed Jews Adler


In the Warsaw Ghetto, 1940-1943, by Stanislaw Adler. 1982

Not Only Poles Robbed Jewish Graves. Jews Did Too. Polish Blackmailers Generally Cared About Sparing Jewish Lives

GRAVE ROBBERY WAS A COMMON WARTIME (AND NOT ONLY WARTIME) EVENT

Nowadays, the media sometimes shows pit-ridden places of Jews’ mass death, such as Treblinka. Grave looters, presumably Poles, had been searching for the Jews’ valuables, and this presumed mindset of Poles had been further embellished by the likes of Jan T. Gross and his FEAR.

In actually, grave-looting, along with all forms of looting, is a common consequence of war and its dehumanizing tendencies. It is not limited to any nationality. For instance, the Jews themselves engaged in the grave looting of their dead in the Warsaw Ghetto. Adler writes: “The populace became familiar with death; the sight of a corpse became less appalling than before the war. The notion of the majesty of death left human consciousness. It was not surprising, therefore, that the cemetery attendants were `practicing dentistry’ i. e., digging up graves and extracting gold crowns and fillings of corpses…They did not see anything reprehensible in their actions. Profanation of corpses? A ridiculous superstition!” (p. 258).

THE LITVAK PROBLEM WAS VERY REAL

Author Stanislaw Adler thus describes the Litwak (Litvak) problem: “In the lands which became part of the Polish Republic, but which had been before part of the Russian Empire, the Tsarist government, using the timeless invaders’ technique: DIVIDE ET EMPERA, fomented anti-Semitism, while the introduction of the so-called `Pale of Settlement’ for Jews in Russia became a very important, although not the only means of intensifying hostility toward Jews in the Polish population. Hundreds of thousands of Jews, the so-called `Litwaks’, were forced to settle in Poland. Far surpassing the local Jews in abilities and intelligence, they became the object of resentment on the part of the latter as well.” (p. 243).

DO NOT CONFLATE THE MOSTLY-VERBAL POLISH ANTISEMITISM WITH THE GENOCIDAL NAZI GERMAN ANTISEMITISM

Unlike modern hard-core Polonophobes, Adler recognizes the essential difference between the German Nazis and the anti-Semitic Poles: “The Nazis did not create the anti-Semitic movement in Poland, therefore. They merely facilitated its full expression, while their terrible methods (they did not balk at any cruelty) went far beyond the most fantastic ideas of the most fanatical Polish Jew baiters.” (p. 242).

POLISH BLACKMAILERS GENERALLY WENT AFTER MONEY, NOT JEWISH LIVES

The Nazis, in order to lure Jews out of hiding, proclaimed an amnesty for fugitive Warsaw Jews for the month of November (1942). Adler comments: “The amnesty and temporary suspension of the death sentence for Jews who were on the Aryan side had the effect of encouraging informers and blackmailers. Since the amnesty diminished their inhibitions, these contemptible individuals could now increase their activities: Their consciences were clear because their victims would not be shot when denounced.” (p. 292). The fact that these extortionists cared about whether their actions caused the death of Jews provides further proof that most Polish szmalcowniki were only interested in extorting money, not in causing Jewish deaths!

KEEPING JEWS ALIVE BECAME MORE AND MORE UNECONOMICAL FOR THE GERMANS

In time, even the highly-skilled Jewish remnant lost its economic standing in the eyes of the Nazis, as explained by Adler: “The dilemma of the Jews was this: How much longer could the economic advantage restrain the monster? The previously high productivity of the remaining Jewish slave laborers gradually diminished. The Jewish workers who remained alive were emaciated from chronic undernourishment and suffered permanently from anxiety…Thus, the productivity of the workshops gradually became insignificant.” (p. 290). For more on the Holocaust itself as an economically-driven progressive destruction of “superfluous” Jews, see the Peczkis review of Architects of Annihilation: Auschwitz and the Logic of Destruction.

ANTI-CATHOLIC PREJUDICES

Adler (p. 242) verbalizes the rather silly premise that the Roman Catholic teaching on the indissolubility of marriage has caused vast numbers of unhappy marriages and what he calls eternal quarreling and “legions of hysterical old maids.”

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