Jewish Gestapo Agents Pankiewicz

The Krakow Ghetto Pharmacy, by Tadeusz Pankiewicz.

Jewish Gestapo Agents. BAUDIENST Was Not a Polish Collaborationist Unit. Iconoclasm: Oskar Schindler Not a Hero

My review is based on the 1985 English-language translation of the 1947 edition.

This memoir of ghettoized Polish Jews (review based on the 1987 edition) is unusual in that its author is a Polish gentile. He was the only non-Jew allowed to stay permanently in the ghetto, running its pharmacy. Consider the geographical setting: “And, in the distance, beyond the Vistula [Wisla], one could see Cracow with the tall hill of Wawel on whose steeple flew the hated flag of the swastika.” (p. 51).

German cruelties went far beyond fulfilling Nazi orders. Some Germans clearly enjoyed tripping crippled and blind Jews–and doing this repeatedly. (pp. 46-47).

NOT ONLY POLES SOMETIMES COLLABORATED WITH THE NAZIS. SOME JEWS DID TOO

Tadeusz Pankiewicz named 17 different known Jewish Gestapo agents and informers (p. 37) and discussed their acts (pp. 18-19, 35, 36, 74, 131-132, 135, etc.). This included the denunciation of Poles attempting to help Jews. (p. 38). Most of the informers were eventually killed by their German masters or liquidated by the Polish Underground.

WHEN DID THE HOLOCAUST BECOME CLEARLY EVIDENT TO POLES AND JEWS?

How much of the unfolding Holocaust was known to 1942 Poles and Jews, at what level of detail and correctness, and at what time of that year? (David Engel has accused the Polish government-in-exile of intentionally halving the number of Jews it allegedly knew were killed up to that time. Pointedly, knowing of the fact of the mass deportations of Jews should not be confused with having an accurate estimate of the number killed vs. the number spared for forced labor). Knowledge of the events was sketchy at best. In June 1942, the Krakow Jews being sent to Belzec had supposed that they were being resettled to work camps in the Ukraine, or to secret German munitions factories (pp. 58-59). Rumors, but only that, gradually increased. Not until November 1942, by which time the vast majority of Polish Jews had already been murdered, did a shocking letter arrive at Cracow ghetto. It reported on Belzec: the moans of people in trains, the mysteriously-ending railway spur, the sights and smells of smoke, and the locals’ accounts of gassed and cremated Jews. (pp. 94-95).

INADVERTENTLY CLARIFYING THE NON-HEROIC MOTIVES OF OSKAR SCHINDLER

The remnant Jews of the Cracow ghetto were sent to Plaszow (made famous by SCHINDLER’S LIST) in March 1943 (p. 123). Local Germans resisted this move, fearing that it would make them superfluous and therefore likely to be sent to the Russian front. (pp. 102-103, 128). (Oskar Schindler confessedly had similar mixed motives for wanting to save his Jews at all costs.)

POLISH AID AND “INDIFFERENCE” TO JEWS

Polish aid to Jews took many forms: ZEGOTA (pp. 147-148), smuggling medications, etc., into the ghetto (p. 31), providing dye for the hair of older Jews to make them look young enough for the Germans to spare them for forced labor (pp. 29-30), intercessions with receptive Germans on behalf of individuals (pp. 134-135), Polish Blue Police (POLICJA GRANATOWA) turning a blind eye to Jewish escapees (p. 129), etc. Pankiewicz himself helped Jews numerous times, and hid Torahs and other precious items for safekeeping following the dismantling of the ghetto. (p. 145).

Perennial complaints about Poles not doing enough to save Jews must be balanced by the fact that, as in the other ghettos, many Jews spurned proffered Polish help in favor of staying in the ghetto. This decision almost always doomed them. (p. 111).

CORRECTING JAN GRABOWSKI ON THE BAUDIENST

Neo-Stalinist Jan Grabowski, in his JUDENJAGD (Hunt for the Jews), would have us believe that the BAUDIENST (so-called construction battalions) voluntarily (even eagerly) helped the Germans in the search for fugitive Jews. Nothing could be further from the truth. Tadeusz Pankiewicz, in describing the “resettlement” of Jews (June 4, 1942) comments, “At dawn that day, large units of the Sonderdienst entered the Ghetto in battle gear. Alongside them, the German police appeared, and for the first time, a detachment of Polish police in blue [POLICJA GRANATOWA], and a detail of Polish farmers, forcibly recruited into the so-called ‘Baudienst’.” (p. 44).