Zydokomuna Exculpations Fail Wallach

Bitter Freedom: Memoirs of a Holocaust Survivor, by Jafa Wallach. 2006

Zydokomuna Fear-of-Germans Exculpation Exploded: Jews Voluntarily Return to Nazi-Ruled Poland. Jewish Property Issues Not Black and White

This work is moving, and includes a good deal of biographical detail. Owing to the fact that there are many reviews of this item that already cover its essential content, I will not repeat them. Instead, I will focus on some ancillary content, and relate it to commonly-voiced themes that go beyond the immediate purview of the book itself.

Although this family was assimilated, it, for a time, held to a separatist outlook that began long before WWII. Wallach comments, (quote) This was a time when many young Jews became ardent Zionists and began planning to emigrate to Palestine. We too hoped to make our home there. (unquote). (p. 77).

The setting of this Holocaust adventure is Lesko, near Sanok, in Poland. The town was located close to the Molotov-Ribbentrop line, which had divided Poland into the Nazi-ruled west and the Communist-ruled east after the 1939 German-Soviet conquest of Poland.

ZYDOKOMUNA EXCULPATION FAILS: LIMITED 1939-1941 JEWISH FEAR OF THE NAZIS

Fear of the Nazis, and gratitude to the Soviets for not falling in German hands, is the canned exculpation for Jewish-Soviet collaboration. Sounds half-reasonable, but it does not hold.

The reader must remember that the Shoah itself was not to begin for two years after the German conquest of Poland. When the Nazi Germans first entered Poland, the Jewish reaction was hardly one of unrelieved dread. In fact, Jewish refugees in the Soviet zone actually tried to return to the German zone.

Helena Manaster Ramer wrote, (quote) We Jews had heard about the German persecutions but most of us didn’t believe it. Many Jews who had come from the west to escape the Germans initially had actually registered with the Russian authorities to go back there in order to reunite with the families. They didn’t care for life under the Russians. But before these people could return to the German zone, the Russians sent them to Siberia. (unquote). (p. 177).

In addition, Wallach wrote that, despite the fact that the Germans had burned the synagogue at Sanok, and this became known to the Jews who had earlier moved to the Soviet zone during the 1939 war, the Jews in the Soviet zone still wanted to return to the Nazi-held Sanok area. (pp. 18-19). The Reds loaded them onto cattle cars, but instead of delivering them to the Nazi-held zone, deported them to Siberia. (pp. 20-21).

The foregoing add to similar testimonies of Jews who—as counterintuitive as it may sound—voluntarily returned to Nazi rule. It adds refutation to the commonly-cited reason (or exculpation) for Jewish-Soviet collaboration [not mentioned in this work]. The exculpation is framed in terms of gratitude for deliverance from the Nazis. It is obvious that, had Jews been particularly afraid of the Nazis at the time, it would have been unthinkable for any Jew to voluntarily return to Nazi-held territory. Instead, many Jews—refugees of the German invasion of western Poland–sought to return there.

These testimonies also confirm historian Jerzy Robert Nowak. He pointed out that the Jewish desire to leave the Soviet-occupied zone of Poland, in favor of Nazi-occupied Poland, was a major reason for the duplicitous deportations of such Jews to the interior of the USSR.

THE A. K. (ARMIA KRAJOWA) AND THE JEWS

In common with many Jewish authors, Wallach paints a negative portrait of the A. K. relative to the Jews, while painting a rosy picture of the Communist GL-AL. This is especially ironic in view of the man who endangered his life by hiding her for some two years in a shelter located in his shop. The man was Jozio (Jozef Zwoniarz). (p. 153). He was a member of the ARMIA KRAJOWA. (p. 100; See also p. 73).

JEWISH PROPERTY AND POLISH “GREED”

Unlike neo-Stalinist Jan T. Gross, Wallach presents a nuanced picture of Poles acquiring post-Jewish property. She realizes that Polish behaviors varied from Pole to Pole, and varied according to the nature of the Jewish property. She also appreciates the fact that the privations of the Poles, and German compulsions, animated acquisitive conduct. She refers to Jozio’s relatives as she comments, (quote) A niece and nephew were near starvation but they wouldn’t work for the Germans. None, however, could match our Jozio. What he did, he did without the least taint of self-interest though he could well have profited like the others. Jews were not around anymore. Jewish houses and properties were sold so cheaply to the population that peasants from the countryside could do very well by taking apart the house and carting the materials away. Synagogues were also destroyed in this way. Only one, the oldest, remained. Not due to sentimental reasons, however. No peasant wanted to touch this synagogue. The Germans were puzzled by this and tried to force a few people to pull the building apart. One man’s fingers froze. No one wanted to touch it. This synagogue was a few hundred years old and is still standing. (unquote). (p. 61). [This refers to the Lesko synagogue. See p. 172].

POLISH SERVICE TO THE GERMANS–NOT NAZI COLLABORATION

The actions of Jozio’s niece and nephew, quoted above, unmask another Polonophobic myth propounded by Jan T. Gross. He would have us believe that Poles who worked in the lower levels of the German administration were Nazi collaborators. Clearly, they were not. Poles were near starvation under the German occupation, and had to take whatever employment was available. Jozio’s niece and nephew were the heroic exceptions that proved the rule.

THE UNFOLDING POLOKAUST: POLES ALSO TARGETED FOR EXTERMINATION

Author Jafa Wallach moves beyond a purely Judeocentric view of events as she mentions long-term German plans for Poland. She relates a conversation involving Saltzman, a German civilian who was put in charge of the local mill. She writes, (quote) Saltzman liked to talk…Once he discussed with your father the outcome of the war. He said, “What good is it that almost all Europe is in our hands? We still won’t have lebensraum (living space).” He then explained to your father that the German mind is ingenious and will solve the lebensraum problem. “After the Jews are liquidated,” he said, “we will liquidate the Poles and Ukrainians. We will get our lebensraum.” (unquote). (p. 46).