Jewish Collaboration Ghetto Police Exculpations Wanting Eisner

The Survivor Of The Holocaust, by Jack Eisner. 1996

Jewish-Nazi Collaboration Fear-of-Death Exculpation Fails. Jews in ARMIA KRAJOWA (A. K.)

(Review based on 1980 edition). Author Eisner describes life in the German-made Warsaw Ghetto in some detail. Interestingly Jews, and not only Poles, had their superstitions. “She [mother] spat three times to ward off the evil eye.” (p. 81).

This work is refreshingly almost free of the usual Polonophobic innuendo. However, Eisner, along with many other Jewish authors, misrepresents the NSZ as having fascist goals. (p. 233).

JEWISH GESTAPO AGENTS

The author was a smuggler. He was involved in a ring that even conducted a daring theft of a crucial medicine from a German hospital. (p. 88). Although he had to fend off Polish SZMALCOWNIKI (blackmailers), he also recognized the existence of Jewish informers and denouncers. He warned another Jew: “`There are squealers all over the place, MOSRIM [Jewish traitors] ready to sell you to the Gestapo for a loaf of bread.'” (p. 83).

JEWISH-NAZI COLLABORATION COULD NOT HAVE BEEN DRIVEN BY AN IMMINENT FEAR OF DEATH THAT WAS GENERALLY NOT BELIEVED

The reality was quite different from the common exculpation of choiceless choices: Jews serving the Germans out of a desperate attempt to save their own lives. Jewish-Nazi collaboration began long before the exterminatory intentions of the Nazis had even crystallized, let alone become generally known. And, in common with quite a few Jewish authors, Eisner mentions the general unbelief of Warsaw’s Jews towards incoming news tidbits of the mass gassing and cremation of Jews going on at Treblinka (p. 98, 118).

Finally, the onerous actions of the Jewish ghetto police went far beyond that required by German orders. In common with many Jewish eyewitnesses, Eisner mentions the exceptional cruelty of the Jewish ghetto police. (p. 109).

NOT ONLY SOME CHRISTIANS: SOME JEWS ALSO BELIEVED THAT THE HOLOCAUST WAS GOD’S PUNISHMENT OF JEWISH SINS

There was a definite belief, by some Jews, that their suffering was God’s punishment for Jewish sins (p. 100). As violent resistance against the Nazis became contemplated, the older generation of Jews tended to be opposed to it, largely because of their concept of God’s will. (pp. 169-170).

THE WARSAW GHETTO UPRISING (1943)

Eisner joined the ZZW, and engaged in the combat at Muranowska Square. He knew that the ZZW had ties to the A. K. [AK, or Armia Krajowa](p. 170), that the AK supplied weaponry to the Jews (albeit not to his satisfaction)(p. 192), and that the AK provided intelligence information to the Jewish fighters as to when the Germans were preparing their attack. (p. 173).

Most of the photographs in this work are standard ones from the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. However, there a selection of family photos from the author, as well as a photo of a clownish Crazy Rubinstein, who is described as one capable of even making Germans laugh at his jokes and antics.

According to Eisner’s version of events, the flag hoisted over the fighting Warsaw Ghetto was only the white and blue Zionist flag. The oft-mentioned display of the Polish flag only happened later. It did not happen until the AK complained about its lack (p. 178), and delivered a Polish flag through a tunnel. (p. 181). If correct, this tends to support those who suggest that the posting of the Polish flag by the Jewish fighters was more of a sop to Polish sentiments than a genuine display of solidarity with Poland.

Despite being captured by the Germans, Eisner was not murdered on the spot or sent to Treblinka for gassing. Instead, he was sent to the working camp part of Maidanek.

THE POLISH UNDERGROUND ARMIA KRAJOWA DID ACCEPT JEWS–NOTWITHSTANDING PERENNIAL JEWISH COMPLAINTS THAT IT WAS NEVER “ENOUGH”

During one of his escapes, Eisner came across a group of peasants, and the local A. K. eventually accepted him in spite of suspecting his Jewishness. (p. 234). Commander Mlot told him that he did not mind Jews in his unit. (p. 242). It also adds refutation to the Polonophobic accusation that the AK systematically rejected Jews as members, and helps demolish the argument, advanced for example by Yaffa Eliach, that the A.K. had some sort of secret plan to exterminate Poland’s remaining Jews.

ANTI-SEMITISM IN THE ARMIA KRAJOWA

The verbal hostility which Eisner reported experiencing from other soldiers was of a long-standing nature [PARCH–scab; “Good for trading but not fighting”; “too delicate” ( p. 234)–all reflective of the Jews’ privileged place, as economic overclass, in Polish society and their usual relative physical weakness (as a consequence of having generally been exempt from the heavy manual labor of the Polish masses).] In any event, Eisner’s experience supports the position that anti-Semitism in the Polish armed forces tended to be mostly verbal in nature–really no different from what exists in virtually every multiethnic army in the world.

EISNER’S CONFLICTED LOYALTIES GET HIM IN TROUBLE WITH THE A. K. COMMAND

During a later guerrilla attack on the Trawniki Camp, Eisner’s assignment was to collect as much ammunition as possible in the confusion caused by the fighting. Instead, he spent much of his time helping fellow Jews escape the camp. This endangered the lives of his fellow AK guerrillas. (p. 239).

For this disobedience of orders, Commander Mlot expelled him from the A. K. (p. 242). [The reader must understand that military orders are absolute–notwithstanding loyalty conflicts. Thus, for instance, the A. K. soldier in the 1944 Poles’ Warsaw Uprising had to shoot at German soldiers even though a cordon of Polish civilian hostages, including his own mother, surrounded them.]

NO DUALISM BETWEEN NAZI DEATH CAMPS (WHERE MOSTLY JEWS DIED) AND NAZI CONCENTRATION CAMPS (WHERE MOSTLY NON-JEWS DIED)

During his travels over German-occupied Poland, he spent time at Maidanek, the work camp at Budzyn, Mielec, and then Flossenburg Concentration Camp in Germany. Unlike those who dichotomized Nazi death camps and concentration camps, Eisner did not. He commented: “Despite its classification as a concentration camp and not an extermination facility, Flossenburg still had a gassing barrack and a crematorium. Though small in size in comparison to Auschwitz or Majdanek, they were just as efficient. They operated around the clock and disposed of hundreds of corpses daily.” (p. 268).