JUDENRAT Big Help to Germans Tenenbaum

Zloczow Memoir: 1939-1944 a Chronicle of Survival, by Samuel Tennenbaum. 2001

The “Jews Had It Bad in Poland” Myth. Not Only Poles: Jews Looted Too. Jewish Nazi Collaboration. Hitler and Big Capitalism: The Facts

This book touches on many issues related to Polish-Jewish relations and of general interest. For example:

BIG CAPITALISM AND HITLER: THE FACTS

The author notes that Hitler came to power because Hindenburg and the German corporations reluctantly came to support him as an alternative to a Communist Germany, and because the industrial potentates believed that they could control him. (p. 73). He then details the 1939 German-Soviet conquest of Poland (pp. 75-103), including the evacuation of Polish forces to Romania, followed by the Soviet occupation.

THE “JEWS HAD IT BAD IN POLAND” MYTH

Tennenbaum details life in pre-WWII eastern Galicia. He describes Jews as sometimes poor, sometimes wealthy, dominating many professions, and generally holding their own. (pp. 19-20). [To put this in much-needed perspective, most Poles were poor.]

POLES AND JEWS: RECIPROCITIES OF PREJUDICES. HIERARCHIES WITHIN JEWISH SOCIETY

Interestingly, whenever the author mentions rumored Polish anti-Semitism, it is in generalities. When reporting his firsthand experiences, in contrast, he describes anti-Semitism as something rarely severe, and more of a sporadic, episodic, and Polish-individual nature. (e. g., p. 12, 19, 34, 37, 75, 224).

Prejudices went both ways. He writes: “My maternal grandfather, Meir Kapaun, a very religious man, was afraid that my progressive parents might, God forbid, give me a goyish name.” (p. 12). A definite social stratification existed in the Jewish community itself. (p. 23). The rabbinical Brahmins (tzadikim) were on top, followed, in descending order, by the educated professionals, the merchants, the craftsmen (balmaluches), the wagon-drivers and wood-handlers, and finally the janitors and maids, and paupers (kaptzunim). [Does this hierarchy support the notion that Jews commonly regarded heavy manual labor as “goy work”?]

JEWISH DISLOYALTY TO POLAND

Both the Jews (p. 19, 36) and the Ukrainians (p. 32) are described as pro-German and pro-Austrian. Austria instigated the 1918-1919 Ukrainian-Polish War by encouraging Ukrainian separatism and arming the Ukrainians. (p. 95). Jewish Communism was recognizably covert as well as overt, and hardly limited to the CP. It encompassed the Hashomer Hatzair. (pp. 55-56).

NOT ONLY POLES: JEWS LOOTED TOO

Tennenbaum includes a diary covering the period of Nazi German occupation. Ironic to Jan T. Gross, who has made a big splash in the media about Poles looting Jews and doing so out of some (what else?) anti-Semitic acquisitive complex relative to Jews [see GOLDEN HARVEST], the reader learns that Jews were also among the looters. (pp. 167-168).

JEWISH NAZI COLLABORATION

Author Tennenbaum describes the later Judenrat as consisting of benefactors, opportunists, and rascals. The latter became dominant. (p. 177). The Judenrat intentionally made false assurances about the benign character of the Germans and their “resettlement” policies. (p. 208, 213). The Jewish ghetto police, with few exceptions, was composed of the dregs of Jewish society. (p. 184). All along, the Jews were animated by the belief that Germans were civilized. (p. 11, 175).

POLES ENABLED SOME JEWS TO SURVIVE

Tennenbaum survived the destruction of Zloczow’s Jews, by the Germans and Ukrainian collaborators, by hiding among Poles (e. g., pp. 230-232), who were probably motivated by their religion. (p. 254). The OUN-UPA genocide of Poles is mentioned. (p. 238).