Polonophobic Memes Communist Propaganda Recycled By Gross

Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz: An Essay in Historical Interpretation, by Jan Tomasz Gross. 2006

Recycled Old Communist Propaganda from Polonophobic Jewish Author Shnayderman (Shneiderman)

The reader of this book will be hard-pressed to avoid thinking that he or she is reading Shnayderman’s 1947 pro-Communist screed, BETWEEN FEAR AND HOPE.

See:

JAN T. GROSS AND HIS SELECTIVE OMISSION OF MATERIAL FACTS

For all of the onetime media fascination with this book, little of its content is new. There are too many fallacies, non sequiturs, and ridiculous assertions in this book to even begin addressing here. Those readers familiar with some of the sources that Jan Tomasz Gross cites will notice immediately that he does so in a selective manner according to his Pole-demonizing agenda. Gross cites Jason Browning on rural Poles betraying Jews to the Germans–while conveniently omitting the fact that those Jews had been stealing food from the Poles (Browning, p. 126)(magnified by the near-starvation conditions under the brutal German occupation). As for Gross’ expansive accounts of Polish-German collaboration in the killing of Jews (as at Jedwabne–itself a Gross exaggeration–pardon the pun), Gross tiptoes around Browning’s paragraph (p. 52) on the Germans’ dissatisfaction with the overall rarity of Polish collaborators and the need to replace them with Ukrainians and Baltics. (The latter subsequently became a mainstay in the roundup and killings of Jews throughout German-occupied Poland).

Elsewhere, Gross’ citation of Yitzhak Zuckerman, on Jewish grief after Kielce, avoids mention of Zuckerman’s statement (p. 661) on the disarming of Kielce’s Jews the day BEFORE the pogrom (excellent evidence for well-preplanned Communist staging). Elsewhere, Gross’ preoccupation with Poles rejoicing at Jewish sufferings conspicuously omits Zuckerman’s (p. 374, 493) detailed description of Polish conduct during and after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. A few Poles, mostly underworld figures, did make cruel jokes. But masses of Poles watched “without a trace of spiteful malice”, while other Poles cried. There was also widespread Polish admiration for Jewish bravery. (Of course, Jews had sometimes rejoiced at Polish tragedies in the past).

ACCUSATORY HEARSAY MASQUERADES AS FACT

Gross’ tendentious use of readily-available sources destroys the credibility of his many obscure citations. To begin with, how many of them are Jerzy Kosinski (Lewinkopf)-style Polonophobic tall tales? In addition, almost all of Gross’ accounts of in-war and postwar “Polish killings of Jews” occur in a contextual vacuum. They all automatically assume that: The killers were all ethnic Poles, anti-Semitism was always the sole or main motive, and extenuating circumstances were always absent.

THE MYTH OF THE MYTH OF THE ZYDOKOMUNA…YET AGAIN

Gross abandons all reality in his contentions that Poles should’ve overlooked the almost-completely Zydokomuna (Jewish Communist) leadership of the Soviet puppet state forced upon them. To say that they had nothing to do with Jews (since most Jews weren’t Communists) is akin to saying that Einstein had nothing to do with Jews (since most Jews weren’t and aren’t exceptionally intelligent). Gross elaborates on the Communist persecution of Jews as “evidence” against the Zydokomuna. It is no such thing. Jews had persecuted Jews before, while Communists, ever the masters of duplicity, first played both ends and then eventually dumped the Jews altogether. Perhaps silliest of all of Gross’ self-refuting statements is the one about Communism being imposed upon Poland even in the absence of Jewish Communists. Well, what about the fact that 5-6 million Jews would’ve been murdered by the Germans had not a single Polish anti-Semite ever existed and not a single post-Jewish property gone to the Poles?

In a rare display of genuine scholarship, Gross (pp. 228-230) cites various estimates (13%, 24.7%, 30%, even 50%–probably top leadership) of the Jewish share of the leading positions in the Bezpieka (UB: Communist security police). But Gross fails to “connect the dots”. A conservative 20% share means that Jews were twenty times more common as leaders in the hated police than in the general population, and were responsible for at least 16,000–60,000 of the 80,000–300,000 Polish victims of the Communist terror. The clear, inescapable fact is that Jews killed more Poles than Poles killed Jews. Of course, the reader can guess which side is called upon to “come to terms with the past”, “do a moral reckoning”, “confront dark chapters in one’s history”, all in accordance with the standard Holocaustspeak.

KIELCE THE CLUB WIELDED YET AGAIN

True to his neo-Stalinist character, Jan T. Gross dusts off anti-Catholic Stalinist propaganda when he accuses the Church of a “tardy” response to the Kielce tragedy. Who is holding the stopwatch? And what about the shoe on the other foot? How many influential Jewish religious (and secular) leaders had promptly, loudly, and specifically condemned Jewish Communists for their torture and murder of Poles?

THE MYSTIFICATION OF THE HOLOCAUST TAKEN TO NEW ABSURD EXTREMES

Gross engages in imaginative “psychoanalysis” of Polish thinking (pp. 246-249), accusing postwar Poles of murdering Jews out of a guilt complex over the earlier purchase of post-Jewish properties in Nazi-sponsored auctions. His egregious thesis begins with Polish “opportunistic complicity” in the Holocaust based solely on these acquisitions. Gross’ bizarre reasoning implies that anyone who acquires the property of a murder victim there becomes complicit in the murder (and, what’s more, also a “plunderer” and “exploiter” of the victim), regardless of the circumstances surrounding the acquisition and the fact that the recipient had nothing to do with the murder itself! Considering the massive loss of Polish life and property, and the destitution and desperate housing shortage during and after the war, what were Poles supposed to do? Let the Jewish properties stand vacant in reverence for Jewish deaths, and on the outside chance that the owners may return?

Let’s also have a little perspective on the 600 Jewish postwar deaths (p. 35; somewhat higher quoted figures are unproven) in the light of the 300,000 returning Jews. This amounts to a small fraction of one percent! Some effort of Poles to “finish Hitler’s work”! Some mini-Holocaust! Some Polish guilt complex!

HOLOCAUST INDUSTRY ALERT! THE PEDAGOGIKA WSTYDU (POLITICS OF SHAME) IN ACTION

The perceptive reader can see through Gross’ preposterous equation (pp. 248-249) of the Kristallnacht-related looting of Jewish properties with Polish post-Jewish property acquisitions. Decades after the former, a woman expressed guilt over an ill-gotten pillow, and asked the Jewish owners’ descendants what to do. The moral of the story is obvious: The Poles, “suffering from a long-repressed guilt complex”, can finally resolve it by paying massive tribute (“restitution”) to Jewish organizations (part of the Holocaust Industry). The plot gets even thicker: Gross discards WWII completely and actually equates the Polish acquisitions of post-German properties with the post-Jewish ones (p. 248)! It sure sounds like a veiled reference to a Jewish/German-revanchist alliance for the coming shakedown of Poland?

BETTER BOOKS AVAILABLE

Want to read a much deeper and more objective book on post-WWII Polish Jewish relations–one that was ignored entirely by Gross for obvious reasons? Please read (see also the Peczkis review of): After the Holocaust. Although the Judeocentric detractors of this historian, predictably, have attacked him personally, they, equally predictably, have presented no facts to contradict his claims. Furthermore, the author Chodakiewicz finds fault with both Poles and Jews.