The Road to Katyn: A Soldier's Story
by Salomon W. Slowes
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Book Summary Information
Author: Salomon W. SlowesEditor: Wladyslaw T. Bartoszewski
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 1992-01
ISBN: 0631179674
Number of pages: 256
Publisher: Blackwell Pub
Book Reviews of The Road to Katyn: A Soldier's Story
Book Review: A Jewish Perspective on the Disappearing (Katyn-bound) POWs, the Soviet "Amnesty", Anders Army, etc.
Summary: 4 Stars
Polish Jew Salomon Slowes describes his experiences in the 1939 war, Soviet captivity at Kozielsk camp, the unexpected relocation of POWs from this camp (mostly to their deaths, it later turned out), his arrival at Griazoviets camp, the German attack and partial amnesty, etc. He then met General Anders (pp. 112-113) and other released Poles. For a time, they were headquartered in the town of Yangi-Yul ("New Way")(pp. 154-165). (My mother, aunt, and grandmother were also there). From there, his travels took him to Teheran, Baghdad, Haifa, Cairo, Monte Cassino, and finally Palestine.
On the one hand there is anti-Semitism; on the other hand there is Jewish particularism and conflicted loyalties. Slowes sporadically experienced Polish anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union, but found it mitigated by higher-level officers (p. 96, pp. 124-125; p. 140). In a document now at the Hoover Institution, General Anders repeatedly condemned anti-Semitism (pp. 216-218).
While a college student at Wilno (Vilnius), Slowes had belonged to Jordania, an organization opposed to Jewish assimilation (p. 57). After the Soviet "amnesty", Slowes, in opposition to the Bundist Ehrlich and General Anders himself, favored the formation of a separate Jewish legion to fight under Polish command (pp. 132-134). Slowes expressed hostility to Poland taking a regional leadership role after the war (p. 142).
Slowes himself never condemns Communism, and has no problem calling Comsymps his friends--whose existence among the ranks of pre-amnesty Polish-Jew POWs he readily acknowledges: "A group of Jews, mostly university trained, with well-formed leftist views and sympathies for the Communist regime, were profoundly despondent and disappointed. Several of them had been friends of mine at the university...Relentlessly they tried to find someone who would listen to their demand for liberation as Soviet sympathizers." (p. 63)
In the previously-mentioned document, Anders attributed the persistence of anti-Semitism in his ranks to: The 1939 Jewish-Soviet collaboration (which Anders said was not isolated; p. 216, 218), a series of anti-Polish incidents while in Soviet captivity, the limited slots in the Polish Army filled by the disproportionately-surviving (as it turned out) Jews (p. 216; also mentioned by Slowes--p. 124), the use of the Polish Army not out of loyalty to Poland but as a convenience by some Jews to leave the Soviet Union, etc.
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