Grabowski JUDENJAGD Wanton-Jew-Killing Debunked Frydel

The Holocaust and European Societies, by Frank Bajohr and Andrea Low (eds.) 2016

The German-Terror Object Lesson at Podborze: The REAL Reason That Poles Started Killing Jews

My review is limited to the eye-opening chapter Tomasz Frydel, titled “The PAZIFIZIERUNGSAKTION as a Catalyst of Anti-Jewish Violence. A Study of the Social Dynamics of Fear”. It is outstanding.

INTRODUCTION

Frydel’s work is refreshingly objective. It stands out in stark contrast to the standard narrative, especially as propounded by neo-Stalinist authors such as Jan T. Gross, Jan Grabowski (especially his JUDENJAGD), and Barbara Engelking. According to the standard narrative, Poles, apart from a handful of enlightened individuals that rescued Jews, were a terribly primitive people steeped in Catholic-patriotic traditions, making them (what else?) anti-Semitic, and therefore prone to denounce and kill fugitive Jews.

Using excellent scholarship, including the use of archival information, Frydel soundly debunks this standard Polonophobic and anti-Catholic nonsense. His work is iconoclastic. It sweeps away the meme of Polish complicity in the Holocaust.

This is not to say that Frydel’s findings are original. They are not. They build upon the earlier Frydel-unmentioned works of historian Marek Jan Chodakiewicz. See, for example, his BETWEEN NAZIS AND SOVIETS.

A CAUTION TO READERS: JUDENJAGD IS A MISLEADING, ORWELLIAN TERM

In all my reviews, I use the word JUDENJAGD (hunt for the Jews, in German) for purpose of reference, but with reluctance, owing to its German-guilt-diluting Orwellian connotations. The reader sees the word “hunt”, and ordinarily thinks of the participants all acting freely, and killing game animals in accordance with their common purpose. Moreover, the hunt is not just an animal-shooting operation: It is a social event that celebrates and enhances the camaraderie of the men in the hunting party.

The term JUDENJAGD, a form of Newspeak (specifically Holocaustspeak), creates a narrative of false equivalences (at multiple levels) of Nazi-German Jew-killers and Polish Jew-killers. See below. Worse yet, the Orwellian term JUDENJAGD implies that a camaraderie exists, or is being built, between German Jew-killers and Polish Jew-killers. This, too, is patently false, as shown below. The term JUDENJJAGD puts Germans and Poles on the same side. The term JUDENJAGD thus serves to make the Jew a perpetual victim—of the Pole no less than the German—and to shift part of the blame for the Holocaust from where it belongs—the Germans—and unto the Poles.

GUESS WHAT? POLES ALSO FACED “CHOICELESS CHOICES” UNDER THE NAZI-GERMAN OCCUPATION

The author summarizes the nature of the German-imposed Polish subordinates at the local, rural level. These included the village head (SOLTYS), and the ORTSCHUTZ [local fire brigades, and Polish Blue Police (POLICJA GRANATOWA)]. They were forced to meet German quotas in terms of confiscated feedstuffs (KONTYGENTY) and forced laborers for the Third Reich. (p. 149). Frydel comments, “So the ORTSCHUTZ was in effect a kind of local militia representing the lowest reaches of German authority. A secondary system of ‘hostages’ (ZAKLADNICY) made these men personally responsible for maintaining ‘security’ over their areas of jurisdiction…Punishment could now be expected not only for helping fugitives, but for any failure to report and apprehend them. In essence, villages had been ‘weaponized’ against outsiders and the whole system was held in place by draconian threats at each level of authority.” (p. 149).

NOT ONLY ETHNIC POLES DENOUNCED FUGITIVE JEWS TO THE GERMANS

The Germans had a network of informers (V-PERSONEN: KONFIDENCI) of every background, but often VOLKSDEUTSCHE. (p. 150). There also was a more professional set of informers, consisting of agent provocateurs that moved from place to place, and ferreted-out German-nonconformist Poles by variously posing as help-seeking fugitive Jews, escaped Soviet POWs, deserters, or partisans. These informers included Jews. (pp. 149-150; 158-159, 163).

Much more could be said about this. See the free online book Mark Paul, titled: PATTERNS OF COOPERATION, COLLABORATION, AND BETRAYAL (2016 or more recent version, if now available.)  It also elaborates on Jews betraying Polish rescuers, as mentioned by Tomasz Frydel and my review below.

THE GERMAN “PACIFICATION” OF PODBORZE CREATES A CASCADE OF POLISH JEW-DENUNCIATIONS AND JEW-KILLINGS

The JUDENJAGD did not come out of nowhere. Nor was it an outgrowth of pre-WWII Polish-Jewish relations. In April 1943, the Germans came to the village of Podborze in Mielec county. They were after a Polish SOLTYS (village mayor) accused of hiding Jews. Both had fled earlier. So the Germans shot incendiary bullets into the wooden buildings, and soon most of the village had burned down.

The rural Poles had now experienced murderous German fury directly, and the results were catastrophic for fugitive Jews. Within days and weeks, the profoundly-terrorized Poles began to turn against the fugitive Jews that they had been aiding up to now. Moreover, as news spread to surrounding villages, the Poles living there also turned out, denounced, or killed their fugitive Jews. In fact, Frydel (p. 162) graphically shows this–a map with ten identified villages (all located within several miles of Podborze) in which this took place.

This “cascade” of German-initiated terror that radiated from Podborze was repeated in many other places in German-occupied Poland. And there were many, many pacifications of Polish villages in German-occupied Poland. (e. g, p. 157).

“CHOICELESS CHOICE”: YOU EITHER KILL THE JEW, OR ELSE HE WILL TELL THE GERMANS, CAUSING YOUR OWN DEATH

The JUDENJAGD as actually happened was very different from the JUDENJAGD as portrayed by Polonophobes. It was a battle for survival, not some primal Polish bloodlust acting against the poor defenseless Jews, and still less agreement with Nazi Jew-destroying objectives and therefore Polish complicity in the Holocaust!

After the German “visit” to Podborze, rural Poles in the entire region were so afraid of the Germans that they actually begged the POLICJA GRANATOWA to kill captured Jews instead of just delivering them to the Germans. The Poles were terrified of drawing ANY kind of German attention to their villages! (pp. 152-on).

There is more. Denunciations worked both ways. Jews who fell in German hands, under whatever circumstance, commonly would tell the Germans which Poles had aided them, sometimes also implicating non-involved Poles. The Germans then came and murdered these Poles. In fact, an ARMIA KRAJOWA actually had an order warning Poles not to aid Jews because such Jewish denunciations of Polish rescuers were becoming so common. (p. 159).

Moreover, if the Jews in renewed German captivity did not spontaneously rat on their erstwhile Polish rescuers to the Germans, they were “encouraged” to do so German tortures or offers of amnesty in exchange for such information. [Many more examples of this could be provided. For instance, see my review of PONARY DIARY, by Sakowicz.] Obviously, this kill-or-be-killed “choiceless choice”, imposed on the Poles, created further incentive to Poles to kill fugitive Jews.

As if this was not enough, Jews captured by the Poles, during the JUDENJAGD, effectively invited the Poles themselves to kill the Jews, instead of just handing them over to the Germans, as the only way of protecting Polish lives. This especially happened whenever the Polish-captured Jews mockingly warned that they would disclose everything and thereby “teach the Poles a lesson” upon being delivered into German hands. (p. 154). Surely dead men tell no tales.

POLISH JEW-KILLING: LAYING THE BOGEYMAN OF POLISH ANTISEMITISM TO REST

Without denying the existence of Polish anti-Semitism, Tomasz Frydel realizes that Polish violence against fugitive Jews HAS NO EVIDENT CONNECTION to anti-Semitism, but does in fact connect VERY CLOSELY with specific escalations of German terror against the Polish rural population. He writes, “The case of Podborze shows a progression of violence not grounded in any obvious anti-Semitic feeling or extreme nationalism, but arising in the force field of collective fear and hysteria sown by German terror…A system of control was imposed on village life that ensnared and destroyed the lives of Jews. It did not require anti-Semites for its continued operation, and—self-perpetuating—it gave rise to a certain arithmetic of survival, as people struggled to cope with the brutal conditions of occupation. Violence accelerated exponentially when fugitive Jews came to represent an existential threat to the community.” (p. 161).