Rescue Attempts During the Holocaust - Proceedings of the second Yad Vashem International Historical Conference April 1974
by Yad Vashem, Yisrael Gutman, Israel Gutman
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Book Summary Information
Author: Israel Gutman, Yad Vashem, Yisrael GutmanEditor: Efraim Zuroff
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 1978-06
ISBN: 0870683454
Number of pages: 679
Publisher: Ktav Pub Inc
Book Reviews of Rescue Attempts During the Holocaust - Proceedings of the second Yad Vashem International Historical Conference April 1974
Book Review: The Earth is Round, and Poles Aren't Responsible for the German Nazi Death Camps
Summary: 3 Stars
One malicious Polonophobic Holocaust myth is the one about the Nazis' choice of Poland as the site of the death camps because Poles welcomed them or at least wouldn't object much to them. No doubt, this libelous canard is facilitated by the countless misleading accounts in the western press of "Polish death camps". At the risk of belaboring the obvious (e. g., the spherical Earth), one must consider the anti-Polish Israeli Holocaust historian Yisrael Gutman, who nevertheless repudiates this malignancy: "It is indeed true that the Poles were not granted any form of autonomy--even within the reduced boundaries of the General Government--as was the case in other occupied countries such as Belgium and Holland. Consequently, they were not asked to express their consent--in one form or another--to the various decrees enacted by the Germans, nor were they consulted regarding the establishment of the extermination camps on Polish soil and the initiation of the murder campaign against Polish Jewry and the Jews of other countries, which was carried out in these places." (p. 400).
Sijes shows that the virtual nonexistence of prewar Dutch anti-Semitism is a myth (p. 528). Leni Yahil alludes to the unbelievable degree of freedom in "German-occupied" Denmark that permitted the much-romanticized October 1943 shipments of Danish Jews to safety in Sweden: "After the escape of a group of Jewish fishermen to Sweden in the spring of 1943, the Germans threatened the Danish authorities, and the latter in turn warned the Jewish community against a repetition of such acts. Yet, at a later date, it was the ambivalent nature of the relations between the Germans and Danes which made the existence of the rescue organization possible. The Germans did not make a serious attempt to suppress it." (p. 621). (In German-occupied Poland, such a situation would have been unimaginable in the least!)
Henry Feingold (p. 168) defends the genuineness of Nazi plans, from 1938 through (at least) mid-1941, to massively resettle European Jews instead of exterminating them. Yehuda Bauer, a proponent of Holocaust uniqueness, unwittingly undermines his position when he admits that Jews (just as Slavs) had a "right" to live as long they had utilitarian value to the Nazis (and beyond that already held as forced laborers): "One part indicates that the Nazi policy was the total annihilation of the Jewish people, while another part views the Jews as an object, which can be exchanged for merchandise." (p. 120).
In discussing the mid-1941 Soviet evacuations, Dov Levin (in contrast to Jan Tomasz Gross) tacitly affirms the large scale of Zydokomuna: "Since many Jews were members of the Communist Party, one can assume that the proportion of Jews among those evacuated was greater than their percentage of the population, especially since in many instances their families accompanied them." (p. 233).
Yitzhak Arad informs us that Soviet partisans killed fugitive Jews (pp. 345-348), and then levels the same charge against the Polish Underground. He mentions, but actually tries to belittle the fact (p. 341), that bands of fugitive Jews frequently robbed Polish peasants!
A better title for this volume is: "Disparaging Polish Rescue Attempts During the Holocaust", as the two articles dealing with Poles carry a pronounced Polonophobic bias. Indeed, the informed reader may be amazed at the creativity of the pseudo-reasoning used by Joseph Kermish (Kermisz) and Yisrael Gutman in their belittling of Polish rescue attempts at every turn and the impugning of Polish motives behind aid to Jews. Not surprisingly, they offer no constructive counterproposals as to what Poles were presumably able to do, considering their situation. Interestingly, during WWII, Stanislaw Kot reportedly hinted that, if Jews didn't stop portraying Poles as anti-Semites, the Poles would respond by publishing details about the ignominious deeds of the Jewish ghetto police (p. 457).
Ironically, Gutman is exhibiting the same mentality towards Poles as Hitler did towards Jews. In HITLER'S TABLE TALK, the Fuhrer rejected the idea that there are some good Jews. He contended that, whenever Jews (such as Jewish philanthropists) do something good, it is always for some ulterior motive, such as positive publicity for Jewry. In a similar vein, Gutman and Krakowski disparage Zegota, insinuating, among other things, that Poles helped Jews for public relations purposes. In a published discussion, Miriam Peleg (p. 455) soundly rejects this insinuation.
In a similar manner to David Engel, Yisrael Gutman accuses the Polish government-in-exile in London of deliberately delaying, and then understating, its knowledge of the spring-summer 1942 gassings of millions of Polish Jews (pp. 408-409, 461), allegedly to escape responsibility for saving Jews. But if the Polish government-in-exile couldn't lessen the German murders of 2-3 million Polish gentiles, how was it supposed to have lessened the murders of 3 million Polish Jews?
Consider the fact that Germans usually murdered Poles openly, but gassed Jews secretly. Note also that observations of Jews being deported is not yet proof of them all being murdered, and such things as odors of burning flesh emanating from the death camps don't lend themselves to a close approximation of the number of victims. So why invoke nefarious motives to explain the fact that the Polish government-in-exile knew much more about the extent of Polish deaths than Jewish ones, and did so much sooner? Also, recall the incredulity which had already greeted its June 1942 report of the murders of 700,000 mostly-Soviet Jews. Does it not make sense that the Polish government-in-exile, to protect its credibility, would prolong its collection of evidence? And then it would present, in November 1942, a death toll of Polish Jews based only on the most incontrovertible evidence it had? Given these factors, and still others that could be mentioned, is it surprising that it undercounted the actual Jewish death toll by a factor of two?
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