Jewish Disloyalty 1918 Prusin

Lands Between: Conflict in the East European Borderlands, 1870-1992, by Alexander V. Prusin. 2010

Relatively Objective on Polish-Jewish Relations: No Black and White. Jewish Disloyalty to Poland in 1918

This book introduces its intended topic, beginning with the events leading up to the WWI-era disintegration of the central-European empires. It ends with the disintegration of the Soviet Union. There is focus on the Baltic States, the pre-WWII Polish KRESY, Transcarpathia, as well as Bukovina and Bessarabia.

POLISH-JEWISH RELATIONS: NO JEWISH VICTIMS AND POLISH VILLAINS

The author, for the most part, is even-handed in discussing Jewish-gentile relations. For instance, while discussing Poland in its partitioned state, he comments: “Anti-Jewish sentiments among the nascent Polish middle class and the clergy were exacerbated by the conspicuous indifference of Jews towards Polish national aspirations.” (p. 24).

Although Alexander V. Prusin does not use terms such as Judeocracy and Judeopolonia, he makes it obvious why some Poles feared that Jews, already the local economic class, could also become a political ruling class, over the Poles, on behalf of the ruling powers. In discussing the Austro-Hungarian Empire about 1915, he writes: “Having become part of the administrative structure, Jews drew popular resentment upon themselves. Polish political groups were alarmed in particular by the activities of the Zionist organizations that propagated closer links between Jewish and German cultures and advocated the introduction of German in Jewish schools. For the Poles such steps seemed to portend the beginning of the Germanization process in the east…” (pp. 66-67).

JEWISH DISLOYALTY TO POLAND IN 1918

In any case, the Pole-unfriendly Jewish attitudes persisted: “Conversely, by the end of the First World War many Jews regarded Poland’s independence as the least desirable solution. Such attitudes were reflected in the overwhelming support accorded by the Jewish communities to the Germans in the German-Polish contested regions of western Poland and East Prussia.” (p. 93).

THE STANDARD LINE ON JEDWABNE

Unfortunately, Prusin departs from his usual objectivity when he discusses Jedwabne. He uncritically cites and accepts Jan T. Gross. (p. 150-on). In actuality, there are Jewish testimonies that point to the Germans, and not the Poles, as the main killers of the Jews of Jedwabne, Radzilow, etc. See the Peczkis review, and then follow the embedded link therein, of The Warriors: My Life As A Jewish Soviet Partisan (Religion, Theology, and the Holocaust).

POLES AND UKRAINIANS

Owing to the overview nature of this work, many items are not put in proper context. For instance, Prusin mentions Polish leaders seeing Eastern Galician Ukrainians as needing to be “civilized” and “nationally matured”. (p. 80). The reader is not told about the extreme backwardness of these Ukrainians. See the Peczkis review, and then follow the attached links in the comment, of The Ruthenian Question In Galicia.

CORRECTIONS NEEDED

Especially in a broad-based work of this nature, there are the inevitable errors and questionable facts and figures, of which I mention only a few. Prusin cites only 200,000 Kresy and Eastern Galician Poles deported by the Soviets in 1939-1941 (p. 147), and only 50,000 Poles murdered in the WWII-era Ukrainian fascist-separatist OUN-UPA genocide of Poles, and in combat against it. (p. 199). According to more comprehensive sources, the actual numbers are, respectively, at least three times greater. The Polish guerrilla A.K. combat on behalf of the Red Army, in 1944, was Operation BURZA (Tempest), not Operation Thunder. (p. 204). In spite of these shortcomings, and still others that could be mentioned, this is a fairly comprehensive and objective book.