Polish Collaboration Sporadic Ezergailis

The Holocaust in Latvia, by Andrew Ezergailis. 1997

German Guilt Diffusion: The Nazi and Soviet (Now Jewish) Blame-the-Locals Holocaust Tactic. So Germanless Holocaust. Implications for Jedwabne. No Organized Polish Collaboration in the Holocaust

Author Andrew Ezergailis is a Holocaust scholar. My review is limited to the implications of Ezergailis’s findings relevant to Poland. Owing to the fact that the “complicity in the Holocaust” meme has been so overused, all this is of broad-based significance.

A word of caution. Ezergailis’ treatment of the Zydokomuna (Judeo-Bolshevism), as a reality, and as a factor motivating revenge collaboration with the Nazis, is—to put it diplomatically—very inadequate. He is apologetics about it.

GERMAN GUILT DIFFUSION AND THE GERMANLESS HOLOCAUST: THE NAZIS AND SOVIETS DID IT, AND NOW MUCH OF THE HOLOCAUST ESTABLISHMENT DOES TOO

With reference to Latvians, Ezergailis comments, “The general tendency of the Soviet works on the Holocaust has been to minimize, sometimes even eliminate, the German role in the killings, and attribute the responsibility for the murders to ‘nationalists’. The Soviets picked up and continued the Nazi theme of the spontaneity of ‘native’ forces in the killing of the Jews. The cornerstone of Soviet historiography was to divide the Latvian people into communists and nationalists. In Soviet usage the term ‘nationalist’ more often than not meant non-communist.” (p. 14).

Nowadays the tendency in Holocaust circles, LEWAKS, and well-named neo-Stalinists such as Jan T. Gross and Jan Grabowski, is to shift blame for the Holocaust away from the Germans and onto Poles. Once again, the blame is put on Polish “nationalists” (and “devout Catholics”). Once again, we are entering the Orwellian world of the Germanless Holocaust. The LEWACTWO follows the old Soviet model, dividing Poles into the good-guy “progressives” and the bad-guy “nationalists”. Judeo-independent thinkers are also labeled “nationalists”. If you are not a “progressive”, then you are a “nationalist”. Naughty, naughty you.

JEDWABNE PROBABLE CAUSE: GERMANS DELIBERATELY HID THEIR JEW-KILLING ATROCITIES BY FRAMING THE LOCALS

Holocaust scholar Ezergailis comments, “HIMMLER-HEYDRICH PLANS: Although we do not have any documents ordering the killing of the Jews of Latvia, we have a set of Heydrich’s instructions to General Walter Stahlecker and other Einsatzgruppen leaders to conceal the killings and to make it appear that the ‘natives’ were doing it. The unambiguous plan was to induce ‘spontaneous’ anti-Jewish pogroms in the local peoples…Another part of the concealment was to film and photograph the killing actions performed the ‘natives’ but to avoid doing the same when Germans were involved…The photographing of the ‘native’ killing squads went on for the whole of the killing period.” (p. 51).

[The media-acclaimed Jan T. Gross has alleged that the Germans had filmed the Poles in their “spontaneous” killing of Jedwabne’s Jews, even though this alleged film has never been found. Yet, even if it were, it would be nothing more than a German propaganda blame-the-Poles contrivance.]

MANY JEWS ARE NOW MAKING COMMON CAUSE WITH THE NAZIS IN BLAMING POLAND

Ironically, the many Jews, that nowadays treat Polish responsibility for Jedwabne as fact, are copying old Nazi propaganda! So is nearly all of the mainstream media. Himmler, Stahlecker, and Heydrich [ironically, probably a Jew himself] would have been very pleased.

NO ORGANIZED POLISH COLLABORATION AGAINST JEWS, and STOP RATTLING ABOUT POLISH ANTISEMITISM

Ezergailis parts ways with those who automatically connect anti-Semitism with any tendency to collaborate with the Nazis in the killings of Jews. He comments, “When does anti-Semitism become a motive for murder? Is anti-Semitism itself ever a cause for killing?…The case of Poland is perhaps the best example that undermines stereotypical thinking on this question. Though Poland is reputed to have been rife with anti-Semitism prior to 1939, the historical record tells us that Poles had no commandos killing Jews.” (p. 94).