Polish-Jewish Relations During the Second World War Review

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(More customer reviews)This book is a first-hand account of the failure of the Christian morality at a time when what it preaches was so desperately needed. In a wider sense, it's an insight into the human condition, exposing the fact that civilization is but a thin veneer that disappears so readily when disaster, natural or man-made, strikes. This is the story of the hordes of Polish racists, thugs and profiteers who used the opportunity of the Nazi persecution of the Jews to shamelessly prey on the victims, often in ways that were no less horrific than what the Nazis themselves concocted. This is the story of the tens of millions of Poles who turned the blind eye to these atrocities. More so, this is the story of the coward Polish government who fled to London, and while claiming to still be the legitimate power, occupied itself with discussing how to 'cleanse' the Polish land of the handful of its remaining Jewish citizens when the war ends instead of offering them even a token of assistance, just moments before they perish in the gas chambers of Treblinka. The only exception to the doom and gloom in the Polish political circles were the Communists, who readily took the Jews into their underground cells and provided a few badly needed weapons for the ghetto resistance fighters. Food for thought...
Obviously the author, in spite of his desire for scientific accuracy, was not an 'unbiased observer'. He tends to focus on the evil, even though he does pay homage to the few righteous Poles who put their life on the line to save fellow human beings. But who could demand balance from someone struggling for survival in the doomed ghetto?
This manuscript was intended serve as notes for a book to be written after the war. Unfortunately, the author, after somehow surviving the liquidation of the ghetto, did not escape the hand of the very evil souls that he describes, and was ultimately betrayed and murdered. The editors did not see fit to edit the text, and instead only provided extensive footnotes. This is a mixed blessing, because the text is raw, full of repetitions and occasionally hard to read.
The English translation is awkward and at times misleading. Scores of misspelled Polish names escaped the proofreaders. Many Hebrew words are so badly transliterated that even a Hebrew speaker is having trouble recognizing them. The legacy of Ringelblum deserves better. Nevertheless, for those who want to learn about the period from authentic documents rather than sugar-coated Hollywood movies, this is a very engaging book.


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