Looting Jews Rob Deported Jews Klonicki

The Diary of Adam’s Father, by Aryeh Klonicki, Avner Tomaschoff (Translator), Malwina Klonicki. 1973

Jews, Like Poles, Helped Themselves to the Belongings of Nazi-Murdered Jews. Grave Robbery: Jews as Well as Poles

Aryeh (Leon) Klonitski (Klonicki), towards the end of the book, provides the reader some background on his family and their lives in Wolyn (Volhynia). The Holocaust-related events that Klonicki experienced, however, were in the eastern part of Eastern Galicia.

The Polish benefactor of the family saved this diary, written in mid-1943. (p. 13). During this time, the family entrusted their infant son, to gentiles, including Ukrainian nuns. The infant survived the Holocaust but, in a cruel irony, did not want to identify himself as a Jew or have a re-contact with his surviving family after the war. (p. 109). [How many other Jews survived in Poland, Ukraine, etc., but remained invisible because they had chosen to sever all ties with Jews and Judaism? Obviously, the number of Jewish survivors in these nations is undercounted, perhaps considerably.]

AT THE START OF OPERATION BARBAROSSA

The author was an eyewitness to the massacre of Jews by Ukrainians, on the heels of the Nazi German invaders, in 1941. He was at Tarnopol (Ternopil). (pp. 22-23). Otherwise, Klonicki does not usually identify the nationality of the people he was dealing with.

THE JUDENRAT PROFITS FROM THE MISFORTUNE OF THE JEWS

Much has been said about Poles engaging in “unjust enrichment” in personally enriching themselves from the belongings of Jews that had been sent to the German-made death camps. However, Jews, including Jewish leaders, did exactly the same thing.

The author features the collaboration of locals (in this mainly Ukrainian area) in the blackmailing, robbery, and even denunciation of fugitive Jews. However, in common with many other Jewish diarists, he devotes his harshest criticism to the JUDENRAT and the Jewish Ghetto Police, and does so as an eyewitness. He faults them for beating Jews, for taking all the Jews’ valuables for themselves, for enriching themselves through the taking of bribes, and even of throwing Jewish children out of windows. (pp. 41-42).

ROBBING THE DEAD: JEWS DID IT TO JEWS JUST AS POLES DID IT TO JEWS

Ironic to the complaints, by the likes of neo-Stalinists such as Jan T. Gross (as in his GOLDEN HARVESTS), about “greedy” and (what else?) anti-Semitic Poles stooping so low as to helping themselves to the belongings of the Jewish dead or engaging in outright grave robbery, Klonicki assigns, first the foremost, this role to the Jewish Ghetto Police. He comments, (quote) But the main source of profit offered itself during the “actions” against the Jews, when the policemen would rummage amongst the clothes of the dead, extracting dollars and other valuables. Here you have a new chapter in the history of our martyrdom: The descent of Jewish morals to their lowest depths. Do not think for a moment that distress has ennobled our souls. The very contrary is true. (unquote)(p. 41).

Clearly, this repulsive conduct was not a choiceless choice. It was the result of severe war-related demoralization. In any case, robbing the living or dead was not the characteristic of any specific nationality!