Destroy Warsaw: Hitler's Punishment, Stalin's Revenge Review

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(More customer reviews)One especially valuable aspect of this book is its detailed introduction to the beginnings of the Polish Underground. Concrete strategy was planned even before the German guns of 1939 had fallen silent.
During the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, even Polish firemen tried to help the doomed Jews: "The flames leaped high above the twelve-foot wall covered with broken glass, and firemen in gleaming helmets were called to the scene. But when they aimed their hoses at the burning buildings across the wall, an SS officer waving a pistol shouted at them to stop wasting water. They were there not to extinguish the burning Jewish part of the city but to prevent the flames from spreading to the `Aryan' side of Warsaw. Nearby factories produced uniforms and spare parts for German army vehicles. The firemen stood there, useless and helpless, together with a crowd of silent Polish onlookers, numb with horror and fear. Several women wept. Then Lithuanian police in black uniforms arrived and told the crowd to move on." (p. 55). Borowiec's testimony, an eyewitness one (p. 66), adds refutation to the oft-repeated Polonophobic innuendo of Poles cheering the burning of the Jews.
Borowiec was 14 years old at the time of the Warsaw Uprising. He writes much about the first days of the Uprising and the premature shootouts that occurred prior to 5 PM, August 1. This made it virtually impossible to coordinate the first planned actions of the Uprising, and it ruined whatever chances the Poles had of taking the Germans by surprise at their strongly-defended positions (bridges, etc.). The Poles' arms had been depleted by the actions of "Operation Tempest" further east. German armored units played a major role in stifling the Uprising in certain parts of Warsaw in its first days (p. 94)
As if writing a rebuke to those who labeled the Uprising a folly, Borowiec quotes from an Underground newspaper: "There are no regrets and no fear. And we are determined to die in the Polish Thermopylae, in the ruins of our city, rather than abandon the independent life and the values gained in the general enthusiasm." (p. 181)
Some 40,000 Varsovians were taken to concentration camps (p. 177), in violation of the capitulation agreement. The Germans removed 33,000 railway wagons of loot before burning Warsaw's remaining buildings (p. 178). The AK continued to fight the Germans after the Uprising before being disbanded on January 19, 1945 (p. 181).


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Written by a survivor of the Warsaw Uprising, this book examines the background of the ill-fated 63-day uprising that pitted poorly armed Polish civilians and volunteers against Hitler's well-armed and veteran forces.

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The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy 1933-1945 (Clarendon Paperbacks) Review

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(More customer reviews)Gellately's research radically alters our understanding of how the secret police operated in Nazi Germany, as well as in the German Democratic Republic and elsewhere. Essentially, Gellately is challenging the notion that the Gestapo was omnipotent, i.e. there was an agent on every corner who provided the regime with all the information it needed. By looking at remaining files in the area of Wurzburg, Gellately found that only a small number of total agents were available to cover a relatively large area. He concludes that even if those agents worked all day and all night, they still would not be able to accumulate the type and amount of information that they did. So, if there was not a Gestapo agent on every corner, how was the regime able to detect the smallest signs of non-compliance and how could they enforce their racial policies? Gellately suggests that the key factor was the willingness of Germans to provide the authorities with information about alleged criminal activities. In fact, most cases began with denunciations or self-policing. In other words, the Gestapo was reactive, not proactive. Gellately suggests that without this cooperation, the Gestapo would have been far less efficient and successful. So just why did the Germans denounce each other? Gellately found that motives were usually quite petty. One had to worry about being denounced by former lovers, business competitors, jealous neighbours, and so on. In fact, Nazi officials tried to put the brakes on the denunciations. In a nutshell, Gellately is suggesting that the secret to the success of the Gestapo was not that it had an agent on every corner, but that the population was so willing to denounce each other for personal gain. The result was an environment of self-policing. There was a Gestapo agent on every police corner, but just in the minds of the German people. But according to Bentham's theory about pan-optic society, that was enough. Germans behaved because they thought they were being watched, whether they were or not was neither here nor there. Gellately's work suggests that there are a lot of problems with the notion of a totalitarian regime. Total control is not only impossible, but not necessary in even the most notorious regimes. Far from being a regime which depended completely on terror and compulsion, the Nazis appear to have been successful largely because of public participation. The only shortcoming is that Gellately's evidence is drawn from one set of files from one part of Germany. We have to assume that the results here would be similar if not identical to other areas, even though we have no evidence from those other areas. Gellately is aware of this and it is beyond his control since most Gestapo files were completely destroyed. This book is a must read for German and Holocaust historians.

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How was the Gestapo able to detect the smallest signs of non-compliance with Nazi doctrines--especially "crimes" pertaining to the private spheres of social, family, and sexual life?How could the police enforce policies such as those designed to isolate Jews, or the foreign workers brought to Germany after 1939, with such apparent ease? Addressing these questions, Gellately argues that the key factor in the successful enforcement of Nazi racial policy was the willingness of German citizens to provide authorities with information about suspected "criminality." He demonstrates that without some degree of popular participation in the operation of institutions such as the Gestapo, the regime would have been seriously hampered in the "realization of the unthinkable," not only inside Germany but also in many of the occupied countries.Offering an intriguing examination of the everyday operations of the Gestapo and the product of extensive archival research, this incisive study surveys the experiences of areas across Germany, drawing out national, local, and regional implications.

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Did the Children Cry: Hitler's War Against Jewish and Polish Children, 1939-1945 Review

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This book is known less for its content than for the controversy that has surrounded it. Nominated for the Janusz Korczak Literary Award, it was subsequently beset with a flurry of Jewish protests. After a spate of bad publicity, and the threat of legal action, the award was belatedly presented--but without any ceremony.
One reason give for challenging the Janusz Korczak Literary Award is the transparently bogus charge that this book "sanitizes" Polish behavior. Even a cursory reading of it reveals just the opposite. Lukas criticizes Polish conduct many times. For example, he discusses Polish-German collaboration (e. g., pp. 141-142), even citing an Israeli study that estimates that there were 7,000 Polish collaborators in all (p. 152; which, incidentally, means that about 1 in every 4,000 Poles had been a collaborator). Another reason given for challenging the Janusz Korczak Literary Award is the claim that this book is "borderline anti-Semitic". Indeed it is--if one understands anti-Semitism to be any criticism of Jewish conduct under any circumstances. Lukas, for example, points out that Jews were commonly prejudiced against Poles just as Poles were commonly prejudiced against Jews (p. 152). He also gives examples of Jewish selfishness against fellow needy Jews at the same time that he gives examples of Polish selfishness against fellow needy Poles (p. 28). Lukas also cites a Jewish historian who faults the method that Jewish organizations used to recover Jewish children after the war (p. 220). Is all this anti-Semitism? Let the reader decide.
And, far from overstating the extent of Polish assistance to Jews, Lukas quotes a wide range of estimates (both Polish and Jewish) of how many Poles were involved in such aid (pp. 155-157). Lukas also provides figures for the deaths in some of the extermination camps. The collective death toll at Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka ranges from 1.65 million to 2.54 million (p. 230).

The genocide against Jews is well known, but Lukas makes it clear that Poles were also victims of genocide. The genocide of Poles does not spark the imagination as much as the industrial-scale gassing and cremation of Jews by the millions, but it was no less real. Heinrich Himmler stated (p. 17) that all Poles will disappear from the world and that all Poles will be destroyed. Martin Bormann (p. 21) asserted that Slavs should be kept alive only as long as they are needed as forced laborers. 2-3 million Polish gentiles, including roughly half of the Polish intelligentsia, were already murdered. Of course, since the Polish population was much larger than the Jewish one, the genocide of Poles had to be a long-term German project, with greater emphasis placed on passive genocide, at least until Germany won the war. Hitler spoke of reducing the Slavs' fertility and, by 1942, the Polish birth rate had fallen by 80% relative to its prewar level (p. 87). SS General Odilo Globocnik noted that the mass killings of Poles and their replacement with German colonists meant that Poles would be gradually crushed "economically and biologically"(p. 107). Heinrich Himmler wanted the General Government (German-occupied central Poland) to be completely Germanized within twenty years (p. 107).
Throughout this book, Lukas consistently relates the experiences of Polish and Jewish children to each other. Both, for instance, experienced the horror of the German conquest of Poland. Both experienced a breakdown of morality caused by the privations of the German occupation. Both learned how to lie and steal to survive. Both quickly learned not to trust anybody. Both were in German concentration camps. Both were used in sadistic experiments conducted by Dr. Mengele. Both experienced sexual assaults (including homosexual assaults) by German guards and officials (pp. 95-96, 202). Both were sent to secret schools in their respective communities. Both took part in clandestine cultural activities. Both enjoyed the childrens' books written by Polish Jew Janusz Korczak. Both held odd jobs to help their parents. Both were forced to work in Germany as forced laborers under appalling conditions. Both were involved in the rescue of their compatriots. Both served in their respective guerilla movements. Both had to watch their parents die, and both experienced death at the hands of the Germans in large numbers. Both were commonly left orphaned. Both experienced difficulties in locating still-surviving relatives (with postwar Germans commonly resisting attempts to identify kidnapped Polish children: pp. 211-214). Finally, both experienced adjustment problems after the war. For example, both Polish and Jewish children commonly internalized the German hatred directed against their respective nationalities, scorning their respective heritages, and sometimes actually believing that their nationalities had deserved their sufferings.
Let us return to the contrived fuss surrounding the Janusz Korczak Literary Award. The reader can clearly see that this book does not fit with the template of modern thinking--where the genocide of Jews is given disproportionate attention, is accorded a special term (Holocaust), and any attempt to compare it with any other genocidal event is called "relativizing the Holocaust." In contrast to all of this, Lukas consistently juxtaposes the experiences of Polish and Jewish children. Perhaps that is what motivated the outburst of hostility to this book. So long as Jewish sufferings are thought to be higher than those of others, or at least more worthy of public attention than those of others, specifically the Poles, any such juxtaposition will be unbearable, especially for a book that is to receive any special recognition.



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Based on eye-witness accounts, interviews, and prodigious research by the author, who is an expert in the field, this is a unique contribution to the literature of World War II, and a most compelling account of German inhumanity towards children in occupied Poland.

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Contested Memories: Poles and Jews during the Holocaust and Its Aftermath Review

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(More customer reviews)This book mixes historical facts and stereotyped generalizations. Owing to space limitations, only a few of the latter can be reviewed. The prewar economic boycotts and numerus clausus at universities are mentioned, but not the fact that Polish Jews, at 10% of the Polish population, owned over 40% of Poland's wealth, and were over-represented at universities. These anti-Jewish policies were, using modern parlance, a form of affirmative action designed to get more Polish gentiles into Jewish-dominated institutions.
Although Poland was only one of two German-occupied nations in which the death penalty was imposed for aiding Jews, certain writers (cited by Zimmerman) have attempted to minimize its significance by disingenuously arguing that it didn't decisively constrain Polish behavior. But concealing an inanimate object (e. g., a gun) is far less risky than hiding a human being! We keep hearing that Poles did not "do enough" to save Jews. But who is to be the judge of this, and on what basis is the judgment to be made? As for Poles having failed a moral test, this additionally implies the uniqueness of Jewish suffering, a view that did not develop until long after WWII. How was the average Pole, trying to survive under the lash of the Germans, realize that his conduct would be subject to an ex post facto moralization? No convincing evidence is presented to support reflexive claims that Poles were disinclined to help Jews owing to prewar attitudes (and church teachings). In fact, the acknowledged anti-Semitic beliefs of many rescuers of Jews argue for the opposite.
Polish inaction towards the Jews is simplistically generalized as indifference. Polish help to Jews, Zegota aside, is characterized as "only individual and unorganized". Yet discussion of Zegota (Pawlikowski) makes it clear that the Germans would only have more easily penetrated a larger underground rescue network. Furthermore, substantially more Polish assistance to Jews would have triggered a correspondingly greater German terror against the Polish population with little net additional saving of Jewish lives. Complaints about the AK (Polish Home Army) lacking a systematic program for aiding fugitive Jews are misunderstandings. It was a clandestine guerrilla organization, devoted to military objectives and, exceptions aside, unable to save individual Jewish (or Polish) lives. Poles outside of the AK wanting to fight procured arms themselves, never waiting for outside assistance or "moral support" [for instance, the Peasant Battalions combating draconian German colonization, and rural Poles of Volhynia thwarting genocidal attacks by the UPA (so-called Ukrainian Insurgent Army)]. The AK did not become involved until later.
The usual inaction of Poles and occasional betrayal of Jews is portrayed as a violation that provoked a degree of Jewish pain and anger incapable of being assuaged by the actions of those Poles who did assist Jews. But could not the same be said about Polish reactions to earlier long-term comparable Jewish behaviors? Bearing in mind that loyalty is the expected conduct, the sacrifices of patriotic Polish Jews could not counterbalance the actions of a large fraction of Polish Jews who acted indifferently to Poland's centuries-long struggle for independence, and even supported Poland's enemies. While this book touches on the latter (Lwow 1918, disproportionate Jewish involvement in Communism 1939-1947) it fails to inform the reader about the significant pro-Russian orientation of Polish Jews going far back into the 19th century.
Recurrent charges of Poles turning in or killing fugitive Jews neglect a number of factors, one of which is the latter's significant involvement in the plunder (and sometimes murder) of Polish villagers. Contrary to Krakowski's claims, Jewish (and, for that matter, also gentile) banditry was very real, and subject to Polish counter-action.
The Jedwabne massacre is presented uncritically, along with the citation of some Polish authors who lament "the loss of Polish victimhood and innocence". But are Poland's centuries of tragic history so easily disposed of? And how many tens of Jedwabnes would be needed to rival the number of Jews killed by Horthy's Hungary or Petain's France? Pinchuk objects, on the basis of the fact that Jews were killed indiscriminately, to the notion of Jedwabne being Polish revenge for the recent Jewish-Soviet collaboration. But the Poles sent earlier to horrible slavery and death in Siberia, largely facilitated by Jewish denunciations, were hardly limited to those Poles guilty in Jewish eyes, and included numerous children. Finally, the evidence does not support Gross' storytelling. There were 200-400 Jewish victims, not 1,600. Very likely, the Germans orchestrated this atrocity, with the Poles relegated to a compelled subsidiary role (perhaps 40 Poles, certainly not "half the town"). Who actually torched the barn is unclear.
Perhaps the weakest part of this book is the rather superficial treatment of continued mutual Jewish-Polish prejudices (Gitelman), with no factoring of its extreme asymmetry. When a Pole makes negative comments about Jews, his audience is relatively small and almost always Polish. In contrast, a vast, diverse audience was exposed to the Polonophobic remarks of such prominent Jews as Carole Burnett, Alan Dershowitz, Yitzhak Shamir, Eppie Lederer (Ann Landers), etc. The Polack joke syndrome is mentioned, but not its origin from Jewish comedians. No mention is made of the usual anti-Polish slant of Holocaust-related films. (The Pianist is the exception that proves the rule. Free of Pole-bashing, it was widely criticized by Jewish commentators for this reason). The widely acclaimed educational cartoon Maus has pigs representing Poles, an inexcusable choice, while comparatively innocuous animals (cats, mice, etc.) represent all other nationalities. British scholar Norman Davies was denied tenure at Stanford University, as a result of Jewish pressure, all because of the opinion that he was "too pro-Polish".
The persistence of Polish anti-Semitism is simplistically attributed to the continued presence of negative characterizations of Jews in the Polish language, even though such characterizations, unfortunately, are virtually universal (e. g., the phrase "To Jew someone down" in the English language). Clearly, this book leaves much to be desired.

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Few issues have divided Poles and Jews more deeply thanthe Nazi occupation of Poland during the Second World War and thesubsequent slaughter of almost ninety percent of Polish Jewry. ManyJewish historians have argued that, during the occupation, Poles atbest displayed indifference to the fate of the Jews and at worst werewilling accomplices of the Nazis. Many Polish scholars, however, denyany connection between the prewar culture of antisemitism and thewartime situation. They emphasized that Poles were also victims of theNazis and, for the most part, tried their best to protect the Jews.This collection of essays, representing three generations of Polish and Jewish scholars, is the first attempt since the fall of Communism to reassess the existing historiography of Polish-Jewish relations just before, during, and after the Second World War.In the spirit of detached scholarly inquiry, these essays fearlessly challenge commonly held views on both sides of the debates. The authors are committed to analyzing issues fairly and to reaching a mutual understanding.

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