Polokaust Holocaust Intertwined Lewin

A Cup of Tears: A Diary of the Warsaw Ghetto, by Abraham Lewin, Christopher Hutton (Translator). 1989

Polish Smugglers Crucial. Holocaust and Polokaust Intertwined. Jewish-Nazi Collaboration

Abraham Lewin kept a diary from early 1942 through early 1943. He focused on the mass deportation of Warsaw’s Jews to their deaths at Treblinka in mid-late 1942.

POLISH SMUGGLERS HELPED SAVE WARSAW’S JEWS

Lewin elaborates on the cooperation of Poles and Jews in the smuggling of food and other items into the Warsaw Ghetto, including the habit of the Polish Blue Police (Policja Granatowa) turning a blind eye to such smuggling (p. 62). He sided with those Jews who believed that Polish-Jewish relations had improved as a result of their common suffering (pp. 123-124). And, although Lewin mentions some examples of Poles denouncing fugitive Jews, he later makes it clear that Poles were not responsible for the roundup and extermination of Jews. For example: “Twenty Ukrainians, Jewish policemen (a few dozen) and a small number of Germans lead a crowd of 3,000 Jews to the slaughter.” (p. 151).

JEWISH-NAZI COLLABORATION

In common with some other chroniclers, Lewin reserves his harshest criticism for the collaborationist Jewish ghetto police. For example: “Russian pogromists would have been unable to make a more thorough and shattering pogrom than that carried out by the Jewish police.” (p. 160). “Today, the Jewish police carried out the `action’ with savage brutality. They simply ran riot.” (p. 164).

“WHY DIDN’T THE POLES PROTEST THE HOLOCAUST?”–AN ABSURD QUESTION

The Germans had not the slightest concern about the wishes of the Polish untermenschen. A protest was a form of suicide, as Lewin relates: “A Christian woman on Leszno Street, seeing the wagons with those who have been rounded up, curses the Germans. She presents her chest and is shot. On Nowy Swiat, a Christian woman stands defiantly, kneels on the pavement and prays to God to turn his sword against the executioners–she had seen how a gendarme killed a Jewish boy.” (p. 141)

DUALISM BETWEEN THE HOLOCAUST AND POLOKAUST SOUNDLY REJECTED

Although Jews and Poles may have been “unequal victims”, Lewin doesn’t neglect the latter: “Let us not forget: the Poles are in second place in the table of tragic losses among the nations, just behind the Jews. They have given, after us, the greatest number of victims to the Gestapo, and this does not take into account the destruction of the country.” (p. 124). “Jewish and Polish blood is spilled, it mingles together and, crying to the heavens, it demands revenge!” (p. 125).

Lewin mentions the German “action” against the rural Poles in the Zamosc region (p. 227), and comments: “In fact, there are reports of unrest and turmoil among the Poles over the mass-expulsions of Poles in the Zamosc area.” (p. 233). Lewin had no illusions as to what the Germans were capable of: “They began with us and will finish with other peoples: Poles, Czechs, Serbs and many others.” (p. 239).

POLISH ROMANTICISM

In the 19th century, Polish mystic Andrzej Towianski thought of the Polish people as the “Jesus Christ of Nations”, whose sufferings would save the world (p. 264). But Poles were not alone in such musings. Interestingly, Lewin wrote of his entertaining of Towianski-like thoughts about the Jewish people (p. 117).