Hatred Jews Against Jews Goldberg

Running Through Fire: How I Survived the Holocaust, by Zosia Goldberg, Hilton Obenzinger, Paul Auster (Introduction). 2004

Against the Awfulization of Polish Jewish Experience. Zydokomuna Not Marginal. Jewish-Nazi Collaboration. Like Poles Like Jews in Suffering

Zosia Goldberg traces her experiences in prewar Poland, war-torn Poland, and then wartime Germany (as a mislabeled forced Polish laborer).

DO NOT AWFULIZE THE EXPERIENCES OF PRE-WWII POLISH JEWS

In her ON THE EDGE OF DESTRUCTION, Celia Heller would have us believe that prewar assimilated Polish Jews suffered just as much from anti-Semitism as did the much more numerous non-assimilated Polish Jews. In contrast, Goldberg writes: “I did not suffer much, but the Jews in Poland did. Especially if you had a Jewish accent and could not speak Polish, people would always say hurtful things, like: ‘Dirty Jew.’ With my dark eyes and hair, I never heard that I was a Jew. They called me a Gypsy instead—admiringly!” (p. 9). (Of course, this was generally true elsewhere. The relative infrequency of anti-Semitism in the west, compared to that in eastern Europe, owed less to the virtue of tolerance presumably possessed by westerners and more to the assimilated state of western Jewry).

GOLDBERG EXPERIENCES HATRED ALL RIGHT–FROM HER FELLOW JEWS

Goldberg herself experienced hatred of exceptional virulence not from Poles but from her unassimilated fellow Polish Jews. She comments: “There was a Jew with a big beard who I had never seen before, and I went over to him and asked, ‘What’s happening? Could you tell me?’ I could not speak Yiddish, so I spoke Polish to him. I think he understood me, but he got very angry that I did not speak Yiddish, so he spat on me, ‘Du solst starben zwischem goyim!’…’May you die amongst the goyim!’” (p. 39).

THE ZYDOKOMUNA WAS NO MARGINAL PHENOMENON

Goldberg tacitly attests to the fact that the prewar sympathy of Polish Jews towards Communism (the Zydokomuna) was widespread: “When I was going to school, I had feelings for communism, like all the young ones.” (p. 7). She also frequently mentions her Communist-involved relatives (p. 8, 16, 29-30, 33). She absurdly refers to all prewar Polish political parties, excepting Pilsudski’s, as Nazi parties (p. 7).

GERMAN BARBARITY FROM DAY ONE

The author provides a telling commentary on German conduct during the German-Soviet conquest of Poland in 1939: “It was a tremendous job to get to Warsaw because German planes were shooting everyone on the road. Everybody was running, and the Germans were shooting the refugees…They bombed the national shrines.” (p. 12).

In referring to Poles and Jews under the German occupation, Goldberg writes: “Everybody stole at the time…” (p. 20). This corrects Jan Tomasz Gross (FEAR) and his tacit mischaracterization of thievery as something in which Poles were the sole perpetrators and Jews the sole victims.

JEWISH-NAZI COLLABORATION

From the earliest days of the German occupation, Goldberg had to contend with Jewish collaborators, including the Jewish Gestapo (pp. 23-24, 44), and Jewish informers who betrayed other Jews (p. 48, 133-134). She describes one roundup of Jews: “Along with the German Nazis, there were Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Latvians, and Jewish police.” (p. 34).

DO NOT CONFUSE ETHNIC POLES WITH POLISH-SPEAKING GERMANS (VOLKSDEUTSCHE)

Throughout her book, Goldberg makes a sage distinction between ethnic Poles on one hand, and the Volksdeutsche on the other. For example, her experience with the Polish Blue Police (Policja Granatowa) was a positive one: “So the police came, a plainclothes Volksdeutscher. The real Polish police would never come. The Germans would not trust them because the real Polish police would do anything possible against the Germans.” (p. 62).

GERMANS, JEWS, AND POLES

While in the Warsaw Ghetto itself, Goldberg observed the arrival of some German Jews, and commented on their behavior: “One day these German Jews were marching off to work past the SS men on guard. These German Jews were raising their hands, hollering, ‘Heil Hitler!’ and the SS men did not even answer them, did not look at them, did not even spit at them.” (p. 24).

For all the talk about Poles and Jews being “unequal victims”, it becomes obvious that Germans didn’t see the Poles as having any more inherent right to live than the Jews. When in Germany for forced labor, Zosia Goldberg, concealing her Jewishness and saying that she was a Pole, went to a German doctor to treat her hepatitis. His reaction was revealing: “’You are from there?’ he said. ‘All these Jews, these Poles and Jews, they should die. They should all be killed. I don’t know why we are using them for workers.’ ‘You are very sick’, he then said. ‘You think I will give you medicine? You are very much mistaken. We need medicine for our soldiers, for our Germans. For foreigners—for Poles and Jews—nothing! The Poles, the Russians, and the Jews—nothing!’” (pp. 113-114).

While a forced laborer at Erfurt, her fellow Polish forced laborers kept her Jewishness a secret and helped her (p. 147). Earlier, while seriously ill, Goldberg had been helped in Germany by a Polish woman who blamed the Jews for systematically cheating Poles (pp. 115-116). This adds to the numerous other accounts of anti-Semitic Poles nevertheless helping Jews. Disliking Jews is one thing: Wanting Jews all dead is quite another.

NAZISM WAS NOT IN CAHOOTS WITH CHRISTIANITY

Goldberg alludes to the anti-Christian character of Nazism: “While I was in prison, I always prayed regular Catholic prayers, not because I wanted to pray, but because it was forbidden. Prayers were not allowed. It was against Hitler.” (p. 110).