Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles Under German Occupation 1939-1944 by Richard C. Lukas Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles Under German Occupation 1939-1944
Book Review: Excellent overall study of the Nazi occupation of Poland
Summary: 4 Stars
The ordeal of the Polish gentiles during WW2 tends to be overlooked despite their overall suffering being much worse than that endured by people in Western Europe, Czechoslovakia or Britain. Certainly they did not suffer as much as the Jews - nor does Lukas ever claim they did - but I think they can justifiably aggrieved that in the focus on Jewish suffering, their own suffering has been virtually ignored. This book goes some way towards addressing this.
Of course as pointed out in other reviews, this book does not just talk about the "Forgotten Holocaust" and covers that aspect all too quickly. A historian could easily write a book about that aspect alone but despite it's title this book covers more broadly all aspects of the Nazi occupation of Poland. Overall it does an excellent job, but I'll focus on probably it's most contentious aspect - that of Polish Jewish relations.
Lukas does do an excellent job of discrediting some of the extremist Polonophobic myths ("majority of Poles were happy the Jews were being killed" "concentration camps located in Poland due to local support" etc etc) that are out there. However if you are just looking for a book that discredits those myths then my first recommendation would still be Gunnar Paulsson's Secret City about the hidden Jews of Warsaw . Paulsson's estimates on Polish helpers betrayers etc have greater credibility than Lukas' - partly because Paulsson goes into great detail as to how he arrives at his estimates and also because Paulsson, unlike Lukas, definitely could not be accused of Polish bias (indeed Paulsson slips into anti Polish generalisations occasionally but that is another story).
Despite probably understating the extent of Polish anti-semitism (and note that Polish anti-semitism as a factor in the holocaust is massively exaggerated), Lukas' work is an important study. I recommend it.
Book Review: Forgotten Holocaust
Summary: 4 Stars
A very factual book about the Holocaust in Poland and the atrocities that both the Polish Jews and Gentiles suffered. This book is very well laid out and all comments are linked to sources of information.
This would be an ideal book for anyone studying the history of WW2 in Europe.
Some of the content is very distressing to read but in my opinion it's a topic that should never be forgotten.
Book Review: Outstanding book about forgotten history
Summary: 5 Stars
I read this book in college as part of one of my history papers. Being 2nd generation Polish, it was important to read the full story of the genocide in Poland, and that it was not just limited to the Jews. Lucas does a fine job of showing all aspects of life under occupation, and that ALL Poles suffered, regardless of religion, gender, occupation, etc. Poland lost 15-20% of her population during the war, the most of any country, and they came from all walks of life. I was glad to see somebody finally wrote a boook about the "forgotten" millions who were murdered simply because they were born Polish. This is a must read for anyone interested in Poland or European history.Book Review: Poland's Catholics vie for status as Holocaust's victims
Summary: 3 Stars
Generally speaking, when people think of the victims of the Holocaust they think of the six million Jews who perished. Millions of European non-Jews were also murdered by the Nazis, most notably two to three million Polish Gentiles. Polish Catholic traditionalists, who have a historic bias against Jews to begin with, are particularly resentful that their sufferings during the Nazi terror have been overlooked.
On the other hand, Jews naturally take exception to other peoples sharing in their unique victimization. They view the Holocaust as the calculated genocide of only one group, Europe's Jews, with the deaths of others being a by-product of general Nazi brutality.
Both sides have legitimate points.
In "Forgotten Holocaust," Lucas makes the case for Catholic Poland by addressing the following:
* The slaughter of political, religious, and military leaders and intelligentsia.
* Millions deported to German slave labor camps
* Tens of thousands of children kidnapped from their parents and sent to the Reich to be Germanized.
* Obliteration of cities and infrastructure
But was it genocide? Obviously Catholics were victimized but they weren't targets of absolute obliteration as were the Jews.
It's extremely important to point out that Poland has its own sordid history in regards to its Jewish population prior to the war and at the time of the Holocaust. The ideology of Roman Dmowski and the National Democratic Party (Endecja) tapped into centuries-old Catholic anti-Semitism and gained increasing support throughout the interwar years. There were boycotts of Jewish businesses, restrictions on Jews attending university, segregation of Jews in classrooms, increasing Catholic-on-Jew violence, restrictions on Jewish religious practices passed into law, discussions of deportations, hiring and promotion restrictions in the public sector, etc. This anti-Jewish fervor carried into the war years. Members of the National Democrats held leadership positions in the government-in-exile, the underground Delegatura, and the Home Army. Of the four political parties that comprised the Delegatura, the National Democrats refused to support the Council to Aid Jews (Zegota) in any way. Yes, tens of thousands of Catholics assisted Jews in German-occupied Poland, however much of the population was indifferent to the genocide while others viewed it favorably. Rescuers often feared their Catholic neighbors as much as they feared the Nazis. For Polish Jews, the terror of the Nazi persecution was intensified by the general indifference of their Gentile neighbors. Obviously, Lucas omits any reference to these important aspects of pre-war Polish history and the Holocaust.
Why has the world heard so little about the plight of the Catholic population in German-occupied Poland? The Soviets were hardly sympathetic to the story of Poland's suffering at the hands of the Nazis. Soviets randed the Second Republic a fascist oppressor. Since Poland has shed communism, more and more books like "Forgotten Holocaust" are appearing. Poles also jealously accuse the Jews of manipulating their Holocaust legacy for political purposes. Well, I don't think anyone would disagree that the Jews have skillfully leveraged their victimization. Who would begrudge them that?
Richard Lucas has become a bit of a rock star in conservative Polish American circles for having the audacity to defy the Jewish monopoly on Holocaust martyrdom. But as Poland's Catholics appeal to the objective light of history to illuminate their victimization, their roles as victimizers and indifferent onlookers are likewise exposed with equal intensity.
Below is a list of books which discuss Polish anti-Semitism before, during, and after the war:
"Poland's Threatening Other: The Image of the Jew from 1880 to the Present" by Joanna Beata Michlic
"Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland" by Jan Tomasz Gross
"The Neighbors Respond : The Controversy Over the Jedwabne Massacre in Poland" edited by Antony Polonsky and Joanna B. Michlic.
"Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz : An Essay in Historical Interpretation" by Jan T. Gross
"The Catholic Church and Antisemitism: Poland, 1933-1939" by Ronald Modras
"Contested Memories: Poles and Jews During the Holocaust and Its Aftermath" edited by Joshua D. Zimmerman
"Secret City: The Hidden Jews of Warsaw, 1940-1945" by Gunnar S. Paulsson
"Shtetl: The life and death of a small town and the world of Polish Jews" by Eva Hoffman
"Bondage to the Dead: Poland and the Memory of the Holocaust" by Michael C. Steinlauf
"Karski: How One Man Tried to Stop the Holocaust" by E. Thomas Wood, Stanislaw M. Jankowski
"My Brother's Keeper?: Recent Polish Debates on the Holocaust" edited by Antony Polonsky
"Polish-Jewish Relations During the Second World War" by Emmanuel Ringelblum
"On the Edge of Destruction: Jews of Poland Between the Two World Wars" by Celia S. Heller
"The Convent at Auschwitz" by Wladyslaw T. Bartoszewski
"Rethinking Poles and Jews: Troubled Past, Brighter Future" edited by Robert Cherry and Annamaria Orla-Bukowska
"When Nationalism Began to Hate: Imagining Modern Politics in Nineteenth-Century Poland" by Brian Porter
"The Pages In Between : A Holocaust Legacy of Two Families, One Home" by Erin Einhorn
"Rome's Most Faithful Daughter: The Catholic Church and Independent Poland, 1914-1939" by Neal Pease
"The Populist Radical Right in Poland" by Rafal Pankowski
"Polish-Jewish Relations in North America" (Polin Vol. 19) edited by M. B. Biskupski and Antony Polonsky
"Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland: A Beleaguered Church in the Post-Reformation Era" by Magda Teter
"From Assimilation to Antisemitism: The "Jewish Question" in Poland, 1850-1914" by Theodore R. Weeks.
"Antisemitism And Its Opponents In Modern Poland" by Robert Blobaum
Book Review: Poles win the prize?
Summary: 1 Stars
So the Poles were the first victims of the Nazis? Really? The Holocaust started with them and not the Jews? Fascinating. I've been reading international scholarship on the Holocaust for thirty years, and this is pathetic revisionism. Of course the Poles suffered terribly at every level, of course they were murdered in Auschwitz, of course Hitler loathed them and all Slavs--but to claim some sort of superior victim status, and to deny or explain away Polish historic anti-Semitism--which predates Communism and thrives with barely no Jews--is disgusting.