AntiSemitism Silenced Polish Rescuers a Myth Poray

Those Who Risked Their Lives, by Anna Poray (Contributor). 2007

Why Occasional Polish Rescuer Fear of Disclosing This Fact. A Name-by-Name Catalog of the (Then-Current) 5,400 Poles Honored at Yad Vashem and 706 Very-Strongly-Verified Poles Killed for Helping Jews

The Yad Vashem list, containing personal names, locality information, and short-paragraph descriptions of each of the 5,400 honored Poles, is valid as of the end of 2003. However, the limitations of the Yad Vashem system should be remembered. First of all, numerous Polish rescuers were never honored by Yad Vashem because the ungrateful rescued Jews refused to identify or confirm the names of their Polish rescuers. Second, Yad Vashem refuses to honor the many Poles who were murdered by the Germans in reprisal for aid to Jews. In still other cases, both the hidden Jews and Polish benefactors were murdered.

DANISH RESCUERS AND POLISH RESCUERS

Third, Yad Vashem refuses to honor Poles who took money for the upkeep of fugitive Jews. (p. 63). (This constitutes a double standard. Danish rescuers of Jews, relatively well-off under a largely-nominal German occupation, but mostly taking hefty payments to ship Jews to Sweden, are honored by Yad Vashem in the sense that the entire Danish nation is honored. In contrast, Polish rescuers who took money to help Jews are not honored because they are deemed to not have acted from altruistic motives. Go figure! The fact that Poles lived at near-starvation levels under the German occupation, and had grave difficulties feeding Jews without payment, to say nothing about risking their lives for the slightest aid to Jews, makes this double standard all the more odious.)

A BARE-BONES UNDERESTIMATE OF POLES WHO DIED HELPING JEWS

The separate list of 706 Poles murdered for aiding Jews has been made meager by the fact that each death had to be verified by 3 to 4 sources, which was difficult so many decades after the event. (p. 12). (Under less stringent criteria, and when inclusion is made of Poles killed by Germans in collective reprisals for aiding Jews, the total of Polish victims is in the thousands: See the Peczkis review of Martyrs of Charity (Christian and Jewish Response to the Holocaust, A.)). Some of the Poles who were caught hiding Jews (e. g., the Malickis (p. 37) and Wrzosek (p. 58) were dispatched to Treblinka to die with the Jews there.)

THE MYTH OF POLISH RESCUER SECRECY THAT OWED TO (WHAT ELSE?) POLISH ANTISEMITISM

Neo-Stalinist Jan T. Gross, and the media uncritically following him, have leveled the accusation that Polish rescuers of Jews were afraid to later tell their neighbors because the latter were (presumably) anti-Semitic. Actually, there were various motives for such secrecy–when it existed in the first place. For instance, Antonina Wyrzykowski relocated because her neighbors were antagonized after learning that their lives had been endangered owing to her Jew-rescuing actions. (p. 349).

[However, Gross’ argument is largely bogus. There was no systematic secrecy and shame afflicting Polish rescuers of Jews. In fact, thousands of Polish rescuers of Jews had publicly identified themselves as such by the late 1960’s at the latest, when the following work came out: Righteous among nations: How Poles helped the Jews, 1939-1945).]

HOW MANY JEWS WERE ACTUALLY SAVED BY POLES?

Many of today’s Holocaust books, as if bending over backward to minimize any credit to Poles, tend to downplay the number of Jews saved. They typically admit only 30,000–60,000.

In actuality, the estimated total number of Jews rescued by Poles may be much greater. According to estimates by Polish Jews, it ranges from 120,000 (Jozef Kermish) to about 200,000 (Szymon Datner). (p. 366). (These totals do not include those Polish Jews who were in the USSR during the war, out of reach of the Nazis, and who later returned to Poland. Nor do they include those Jews who survived in German labor and concentration camps, and subsequently returned to Poland.).

But what do numbers matter? To the self-appointed moral critics of Poland, no number of Polish-rescued Jews is ever enough.

MAJOR FACTORS IN THE DENUNCIATION AND RESCUE OF FUGITIVE JEWS IN GERMAN-OCCUPIED POLAND

A number of trends are evident in this work. Many of the known denouncers of fugitive Jews and their Polish benefactors are identified as VOLKSDEUTCHE. Also, very many of the Polish rescuers of Jews are identified as members of the Polish Home Army (ARMIA KRAJOWA: A.K., or AK). This refutes the contention that the AK had been systematically anti-Semitic, and realizing some secret plan to exterminate Poland’s surviving Jews. (e. g., Yaffa Eliach).

Mention is made of the Jews who were transferred, by the Germans, from Pawiak Prison to Gesiowka concentration camp in Warsaw. The latter were freed (August 5, 1944) by the A.K. during the Warsaw Uprising.

Several paragraphs of biographical detail are given to better-known Polish benefactors of Jews. This includes Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, one of the founders of ZEGOTA. (p. 71). Henryk Wolinski was a long-term liaison between Poles and Jews, including with the ZOB (Z.O.B.) as related to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. (pp. 340-341). The Iwanski brothers, Roman and Zbigniew, actually died fighting in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising alongside the ZZW (Z.Z.W.). (p. 28). In addition, Jozef Wilk of the AK died performing a futile mission to blast a hole in the ghetto wall on April 19, 1943. (p. 52).