Jew Killing WWII By Poles Contextualized Appleman

Alicia, by Alicia Appleman-Jurman. 1989

Wartime Looting Universal. Jew Killings From Protection of Homesteads. Double Standard on anti-Semitism. Canned Polonophobic Memes

Alicia was born in Buczacz, Tarnopol area, eastern Galicia. While growing up, she did not classify her friends as Jews or gentiles. Her family did not experience anti-Semitism until 1938, when Poles allegedly beat up her older brother. (pp. 2-3). Her attempt to explain (or explain away) her lack of early experience of anti-Semitism to “the remote mountain area”, and to the protective effects of her relatives, is unconvincing. Buczacz was hardly a tiny settlement, and no amount of parental protection could have spared her from Polish anti-Semitism were it nearly as pervasive as it is usually made out to be.

THE GERMANS FIRST MURDERED THE LEADERS OF BOTH JEWS AND POLES

Interestingly, the first Nazi German action against the Jews was the arrest and murder of prominent civic, religious, and business leaders—those very ones who could inspire the people to resist. (p. 23). [The Germans also murdered the prominent Poles first.] The actual Shoah did not begin until years later. In the autumn of 1942, the Germans engaged in the mass shootings of most of the remaining Jews.

WARTIME LOOTING WAS UNIVERSAL: NOT SOMETHING THAT “POLES DID TO JEWS”

It is obvious, from Alicia’s testimony that virtually all peoples stole from others. If something Jewish of value was remained, it was because the Germans did not complete the task of taking it for themselves. (p. 332). While being housed by Polish farmers, Alicia stole from them in order to supplement her allotted food supplies. (p. 170). [The shortage of food under the German occupation, which put rural Poles and fugitive Jews in direct conflict, was an unmentioned factor in the Polish denunciation and killings of fugitive Jews. Note that theft during wartime is commonly a capital crime.] Her friend Mesha was Jewish (p. 331), and he and his friends would bring her goods they had looted from the Germans after the passage of the Red Army through then-German-held territories. (p. 334).

A FUGITIVE JEW WITH MINIMAL FEAR OF BEING BETRAYED: OVERALL RARITY OF DENOUNCERS

Alicia discusses her pretend-peasant role as follows, “For myself, I was not too worried about being discovered…I had to go out early every morning, face the fields with the people working in them, and become part of the working force in order to get something to eat. I concentrated on becoming a good worker, however, inexperienced, and I learned quickly.” (pp. 134-135). The fact that Alicia was out in the open, furthermore not a very convincing peasant, constantly visible to many different people–and yet was not denounced by any of them—reinforces the premise that Polish denouncers of fugitive Jews were very uncommon in the Polish population.

PEASANTS KILLED INTERLOPERS (NOT ONLY JEWS!) OUT OF PROTECTION OF THEIR HOMESTEAD

The author elaborates on the dynamics of Jews hiding on Polish farms, “In the meantime, I continued to work in the fields while my mother hid in a different field each day. She preferred wheat fields, which are wonderful hiding places if one takes care to part the tall and delicate stalks gently before passing through. If the stalks were crushed, they would leave a trail, and a farmer passing from time to time to inspect his fields would immediately see that someone had been sitting there. Who would be sitting in his fields during this busy season but a person who was trying to hide, and who would be trying to hide these days? The farmer might become angry enough to hunt down the hider and kill for even to the slightest damage he had caused to his field.” (p. 138). It is obvious that Polish peasants tended to be protective of their property and therefore to react with hostility to interlopers in general, and not only to Jewish ones!

SELECTIVE JEWISH INDIGNATION ABOUT ANTISEMITISM [DONE BY POLES IT IS BAD, DONE BY COMMUNISTS IT IS WINKED AT]

Throughout this work, Alicia makes sweeping derogatory generalizations about Poles because of bad experiences some Jews had with them. However, there is quite a bit of a double standard at work here. The fact that her own brother, Moshe, was murdered by the Soviets (p. 14, 278) did not turn her against Communists. In fact, she even praised leading Stalin-serving Polish Communist Wanda Wasilewska as “a great hero” to the military units she had organized. She adds that, “Many Polish-Jewish boys served in those units.” (p. 312).

CANNED POLONOPHOBIC MEMES

Alicia repeats stereotyped, inane generalizations about Poles, and Europeans in general, wanting all Jews gone, and doing so out of a sense of guilt—for having “done so little” to save the Jews, for having collaborated with the Nazis, and for being the recipients of post-Jewish properties. (e. g, p. 339, 341). (Long after this book’s publication (1988), the foregoing themes have been resurrected and repeated by neo-Stalinists such as Jan T. Gross, and countless others).

THE OUN-UPA GENOCIDE OF POLES

The German promise of a Ukrainian state motivated many Ukrainians to collaborate with the Nazis. (p. 39, 132). The author also alludes to the Ukrainian fascist-separatist OUN-UPA genocide of the Poles (p. 120, pp. 132-133) and confirms the “First the Jews, then the Poles” genocidal mentality of the Banderovcy (Bandera forces) (p. 178).