So Few Jews Saved Much Needed Context Robinson

And the Crooked Shall Be Made Straight: a New Look at the Eichmann Trial, by Jacob Robinson. 1965

“So Few Polish Jews Saved” Irony. Advantages of Dutch, Bulgarian, and Danish Rescuers. Impending Polokaust Acknowledged

Robinson believes that the Madagascar plan had been a real plan. It was not merely a cover for the already-decided physical extermination of Europe’s Jews (p. 51).

THE PERENNIAL ACCUSATION: WHY DIDN’T THE POLES “DO MORE”? AN IRONY

Although Poles rescued more Jews than any other nationality, and that under the constant threat of the automatic death penalty, frequent accusations of anti-Semitism are leveled against them for the “meager” percentage of Jews saved. In fact, the large-scale concealment of Jews, even under the best of circumstances and the most favorable of local Jewish-gentile relations, was impossible.

Robinson asks, “Did not the Danish Resistance consider hiding the Jews, only to reject this proposal as too perilous even among the traditionally philo-Semitic Danes, insisting instead on escape to Sweden? Has history ever recorded a case of millions going underground? In The Netherlands–a country with a three-century record of Jewish-Christian harmony–only 20,000 Jews out of 140,000 went into hiding; of these, one-half, or 10,000, we caught.” (pp. 203).

Moreover: “As for the Netherlands, non-Jews who gave shelter to Jewish escapees were often not punished at all; in other cases, perhaps the majority, they were arrested and sent to the concentration camp Vught for a period of six months. There they were severely maltreated and a number of people died.” (p. 337). Would that Polish rescuers of Jews, when caught by the Germans, enjoy such nonexistent to limited punishment!

THE DANISH RESCUE OF JEWS: NOT QUITE SO HEROIC

Robinson demythologizes the Danes and the Bulgarians. We learn that the Danish King never donned a yellow badge (p. 244). The Danish rescuers overlooked entire groups of Danish Jews: “…some were caught while fleeing, but most were found by the German police because they were poor and had no means and no connections to arrange for their escape, or because they were inmates of the communal old-age home, whom no one helped.” (p. 204). There were 13,600 accused Danish collaborators, and these faced only mild postwar punishment (p. 149). Tales about the King of Bulgaria giving an order forbidding the shipment of Jews, and of Bulgarians blocking the movements of Jews to the death trains, have little or no basis in fact (pp. 255-256). (Of course, individuals and groups of Danes and Bulgarians acted, and they had incomparably more freedom to act than the German-ruled Poles).

NOT ONLY JEWS. THE POLES WERE NEXT IN LINE FOR NAZI GERMAN EXTERMINATION (POLOKAUST)

Author Jacob Robinson addresses German plans for the Poles. He first cites the German historian Broszat, who spoke of the colonial exploitation of Poles by Germans on a scale never before seen in history. (pp. 92-93). He then cites Erhard Wetzel and Dr. Gollert, who had rejected the prospect of using the same methods on Poles as had been used against Jews for a variety of practical reasons (particularly the fact that there were so many Poles, and certainly not because the Poles were deemed more worthy of life than the Jews). Otherwise, Robinson says: “In a speech made by Himmler on March 15, 1940, to the commandants of the camps in occupied Poland, he foresaw `the disappearance of the Poles from the world’ (Dann verschwinden alle Polen aus der Welt) and the `extirpation (Ausrottung) of the Polentum,’ and he expressly formulated the mission of the German people as `the destruction of all Poles’ (alle Polen zu vernichten). (p. 93).