Warnings By Poles of Shoah Karski Was IGNORED Wood

Karski: How One Man Tried to Stop the Holocaust, by E. Thomas Wood (Goodreads Author), Stanislaw M. Jankowski, Elie Wiesel (Foreword). 1994

Americans (Jewish and Non-Jewish) Generally Disbelieved Karski’s Warnings. No Evidence That Endeks Summarily Opposed Polish Aid to Jews

The book includes interesting details about Polish underground action against the Germans. For instance, no sooner had Poland been defeated than over 200 different resistance groups sprung up spontaneously. (p. 27).

This work builds on the WWII classic on Karski, Story of a Secret State (see Peczkis review). Everything in that book is true, although a few details had been embellished, omitted, and, rarely, changed for then-necessary wartime security purposes. (p. 212, 227-229).

Karski was never in any death camp itself. He most probably had been taken to Izbica Lubelska, a holding camp leading to the Belzec death camp. (pp. 128-129, 283).

POLES ARE BLAMED FOR ANTISEMITISM NO MATTER WHAT

No matter what the Polish government in exile did, it could not win. If it spoke too little about Jews, it was because Poles were anti-Semitic. One British official suggested that, to the contrary, the Polish government in exile talked TOO MUCH about the fate of Jews, and did so because it was only trying to prove that it was not anti-Semitic! (p. 152).

NO EVIDENCE THAT THE ENDEKS OPPOSED POLISH AID TO JEWS

This book has been misrepresented by some Polonophobes as containing facts demonstrating that Endeks opposed aid to Jews. All there is in this book, along those lines, are vague insinuations and non-sequiturs alleging that, since Polish rightists had been unsympathetic to the Jews, they were therefore hostile to aiding Nazi-persecuted Jews. (p. 106). Certain murderous actions are attributed to them (p. 115) without evidentiary support.

The authors also repeat David Engel’s argument that factions within the Polish government in exile were afraid of antagonizing Polish anti-Semites (p. 144), failing completely to distinguish between everyday antagonism towards Jews and the eliminationist anti-Semitism of the Nazis and their actions. Also, by the authors’ own admission (p. 144), there is no agreement as to how important these factions were (p. 144), and the pro-Jewish actions of the Polish government in exile indicate the unimportance of those factions.

Even if some Endek individuals could be found who opposed aid to Jews suffering under the Nazis, it is manifestly incorrect to generalize about Endeks. The authors elaborate on Zofia Kossak, a very religiously conservative and politically conservative Polish woman who took initiative to help the Jews. (pp. 105-108). Her organization, FOP, despite being generally rightist politically, and supposedly anti-Semitic at times, aided Jews and was eventually merged into Zegota. (p. 107). Certain Vatican officials opposed FOP, but this had nothing to do with aiding Jews. The opposition centered on FOP allegedly promoting heresies. (p. 106).

REASONABLY, CONTEXTUALIZED POLISH SUSPICIONS OF JEWS

Any fear of the Polish government-in-exile that it might be perceived as too “pro-Jewish”, however, did have some foundation. Chicago’s Cardinal Samuel A. Stritch, for example, noting the “socialists and Jews” in the Polish government in exile, wondered if the postwar monies raised by Catholic charities would actually go to Catholics in Poland. (p. 213). The sophisticated reader will doubtless realize that such attitudes were not necessarily bigoted or anti-Semitic. In those pre-ecumenical times, suspicion rather than friendship towards other religions had been the norm.

JEWISH-AMERICANS, AS WELL AS GOYISCH-AMERICANS, GENERALLY DISBELIEVED IN THE HOLOCAUST

As Karski travelled to the west, he met with unbelief in his message about the fact of the Holocaust. This was true of Jewish personages as well as gentile ones. A survey of Americans at the late date of December 1944 [the Shoah almost completely over in Europe] found that only 27% of the American public believed that the Germans were conducting genocide against the Jews, and a miniscule 4% of the American public believed that more than 5 million Jews had been murdered. (p. 233).

CLAUDE LANZMANN’S UNRELENTING POLONOPHOBIA

Claude Lanzmann interviewed Karski for SHOAH. Lanzmann scandalously omitted the entire part about Karski’s mission to warn the world of the Holocaust. (p. 254). Evidently, Lanzmann, who focused on Polish anti-Semitism, wanted unilaterally to make the Poles look bad.