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Title: Secret City: The Hidden Jews of Warsaw, 1940-1945 by Gunnar S. Paulsson ISBN: 0-300-09546-5 Publisher: Yale Univ Pr Pub. Date: 01 March, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (4 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Author is naive about Stalin
Comment: (...)
Steve Paulsson used to post regularly on H-Holocaust and he was a
peace-maker, trying to lower tempers of people discussing Polish
anti-Semitism.
His book, a welcome addition to the history of the Holocaust, holds
that many Jews survived the German attack on Warsaw, the forced
ghettoization, the revolt in the Ghetto and the doomed Polish
Uprising by hiding (openly or underground).
But he is still a peace-maker as can be seen in this observation
about why the Red Army did not cross the Vistula:
"With Soviet forces on the other side of the Vistula, no one expected
that more than three months would elapse before they were freed. (It is indeed a curiosity that it took the Red Army longer to get across the Vistula than to reach Warsaw from the pre-war Polish-Soviet border, or to cover the distance from Warsaw to Berlin.)"
Of course, Stalin was not Paulsson's subject, but the statement in
the quotation verges on naivete. We all know why the Red Army waited for the Germans to eradicate as many as possible "London" Poles.
_Secret City_ is a whole new chapter in the writing of the history of
the Holocaust. Paulsson takes particular aim at the work of Raul
Hilberg, whose work I blasted some 20 years ago in my "Mala's Last
Words," which is available on line at
http://www.ideajournal.com/articles.php?id=15
Unlike Prof. Hilberg, Paulsson does not rely on German records for
his finding that Holocaust historians have missed a significant
number of Jews who survived the German raids on Warsaw and outlived the Ghetto Uprising. They simply disappeared, both from the Germans and from the history books.
In "Mala," I listed the four aims of Jewish resistance. Foremost of
these was survival, if for nothing else than to say Kaddish for those
who did not survive. Not all who disappeared survived. But each
survival is a joy, not something to be bewailed.
Paulsson says that they were missed because historians could not wrap them in the flag of valor for armed resistance and because the
survivors themselves had guilty feelings about their survival.
According to Paulsson's careful data, some 28,000 Jews simply
vanished by hiding or by finding shelter on the "Aryan" side (usually
for a hefty fee). Complicating this is that many Polish Jews were
Yiddish speakers who did not know proper Polish, and for others, they "looked" Jewish.
But the careful data, alas, are one of the weaknesses of the book.
Paulsson offers up scads of statistical data to prove his thesis. He
even begins a chapter with an apology for the statistics that follow.
That does not mean that 28,000 survived the entire war. Paulsson
posits that 17,000 Jews survived to the eve of the Warsaw Uprising.
He does not know how many lived through the war.
But there are huge strengths, too. Paulsson drops little gems without trying to exploit them for better reading. For instance, Jews had to fear discovery because they were circumcised, but some were able to pass themselves off as Karaites and, yes, there were Karaites in Poland. Some passed as Moslems. It would be nice to know more about these, especially in view of the liturgical difficulties Paulsson lists for Jews who went to church while passing as Catholics.
Then there is the story of the Hotel Polski, a trap set by the
Germans to catch Jewish survivors. Paulsson estimates that 3,500 died because of it, but there is not even a touch of drama in his
retelling of this episode.
Throughout the book, even a peace-maker like Paulsson, could not hide the fact that many Jews were killed by Poles, even in the relative freedom of the Polish Uprising. He documents the blackmail and extortion by Poles, too. It does not emerge as a book that makes one love Poles.
One of Paulsson's stronger arguments is his use of the "dog that did
not bark," which, in this case, points to Poles who did not denounce
Jews, even when they knew where they were. He relates many such
instances.
But there are other weaknesses in the book too. There are maps that are useless because the type is too small, or because they do not explain points made in the text.
Rating: 4
Summary: Debunks Some Anti-Polish Stereotypes, But Parrots Others
Comment: Paulsson mixes highly original and very unoriginal thinking. He uses quantitative approaches, backed by simple statistics, in order to avoid the selective quoting of anecdotes to support predetermined conclusions. He also factors what he calls "the dog did not bark" situations (where only atypical events were recorded).
Further development needs to be made of the theme, based on quotes from Germans (p. 240) that German hatred of Poles was natural, whereas German hatred for Jews was "according to orders". If accurate, it undercuts the special victim status that many Jews claim relative to Poles, as it underlines the eventual genocidal intentions that Germans had for Poles. Parenthetically, the sentiments are probably mutual, which helps explain why Jewish hostility towards Poles appears, to this day, to be much more common and intense than Jewish hostility towards Germans.
The belittling of Polish aid to Jews, typical of Holocaust materials and discussions, evaporates in the face of Paulsson's analysis, which indicates an unexpectedly high 7%-9% Polish participation rate in the substantial aid to Jews. Pointedly, this figure would be even higher had 1) More Jews fled the ghetto (p. 35, 248), 2) There been no death penalty for aiding Jews, and 3) The privations of Aryan Warsaw had not been so severe (p. 248). Oft-repeated insinuations that Polish indifference and/or betrayals (see below) had been THE limiting factors of Jewish survival are clearly incorrect and inflammatory, and must be withdrawn.
We keep hearing of fugitive Jews as having almost zero chance of survival owing to numerous fanatically anti-Semitic Poles determined that not a single Jew escape the Holocaust. By contrast, Paulsson estimates that 6 in 7 fugitive Warsaw Jews were NOT betrayed. Furthermore, he proves that most Polish blackmailers (szmalcowniki) just wanted money and that very few of them actually turned Jews in to the Germans. Moreover, the szmalcowniki comprised only 0.4% of Warsaw's Polish population. Poles who would actually murder Jews or turn them in occurred at a rate of one individual per many thousands (probably little different from the Polish-on-Polish fatal betrayal rate).
The gravitation of szmalcowniki to fugitive Jews (p. 162), rather than simply a manifestation of anti-Semitism, is readily explicable by blackmailers' natural preference for vulnerable targets. Also, Paulsson's claim that nearly all szmalcowniki were ethnic Poles is contradicted by Yitzhak Zuckerman, who, in his memoir, reported being accosted by Jewish szmalcowniki about as often as Polish ones.
The oft-repeated charge of the AK (Polish underground army) killing Jews is examined by Paulsson and, at least for the Warsaw Uprising, shown to be a very marginal phenomenon. Some 100 Jews were killed out of over 15,000 fugitive Jews. Less than 100 and probably less than 50 AK soldiers perpetrated the killings, a drop in the bucket of 42,000 armed men. In fact, one potential "rotten apple" (Stykowski's unit) is alone allegedly responsible for 23 Jewish deaths. Moreover, the Jewish deaths all occurred under unclear circumstances, and at least some of the killings were for legitimate reasons. Contrary to Paulsson's comments, Jewish espionage on behalf of the Germans, and enemy forces masquerading as AK units, were definitely real. So was Jewish banditry directed against Poles. Finally, the armed conflict between the patriotic AK and the Communist AL (the latter largely Jewish), incompletely submerged by their "alliance" during the Uprising, is not even mentioned.
Unfortunately, Paulsson cheapens his seminal work by lapsing into the simplistic generalizations that typify books on this subject. The customary reference to prewar Polish discriminatory policies against Jews, job-creating properties of Jewish entrepreneurship notwithstanding, neglects the magnitude of Jewish economic dominance. At 10% of the prewar Polish population, Jews owned over 40% of Poland's wealth, and were comparably over-represented at universities. The prewar economic boycotts and numerus clausus at universities were, using modern parlance, a form of affirmative action designed to get more Polish gentiles, recently emergent from peasant backwardness aggravated by 123 years of foreign rule, into Jewish-dominated institutions.
As usual, Cardinal Hlond's 1936 statement about Jews being "freethinkers, vanguards of atheism and Bolshevism" is presented unanalyzed. Rejection of the religious aspects of one's heritage, often with concomitant involvement in radical political-social movements, has always been much more common among Jews than Poles, and this was keenly felt in the mostly religious Polish society. Also, don't Hlond's sentiments find parallels to the opinions of many Orthodox Jews towards secularized Jews, notably in modern-day Israel?
Paulsson's almost obsessive focus on church teachings (e. g. "Christ killers") overlooks the virtual universality of religious prejudice of pre-ecumenical times. How many Jews, based partly on Talmudic teachings, looked down at Christians as deluded worshippers of a mere Bastard, and of three gods? Ditto for anecdotes of individual Poles regarding "deserved" Jewish suffering. Invoking Divine displeasure has always been a common response to tragic events. Remember Job's "friends"? Didn't some rabbis (e. g. Eliezer Schach) also suggest that the Holocaust was God's punishment for Jewish sins (e. g., for having become "too Christianized", insufficiently Zionistic, etc.)? As for some individual Poles found rejoicing at Jewish deaths, the sword cut both ways. Certain Jews, Polish and not, had rejoiced at Poland's tragic fate in 1939.
All the while, Paulsson completely misses the mark about the true source of Polish animosities towards Jews. He cites several anecdotal reports of Poles who regarded Jews as Poland's enemies. Contrary to his claim, neither church teachings nor prewar attitudes had been the primary root of these animosities. It was, instead, the large fraction of Polish Jews who had collaborated, in 1939-1941, with the Soviet invaders of eastern Poland, helping send hundreds of thousands of Poles to Siberia. Consequently, as is evident from some Polish statements that Paulsson quotes, more surviving Jews translated into more servants of the Russian Communists, a polemic that, unfortunately, proved prophetic in the immediate postwar years (1944-1947). Overall, though, Paulsson's work is a major step forward, and I trust that he will eventually acquire a more balanced view of mutual Polish-Jewish antagonisms.
Rating: 5
Summary: Best book on the subject
Comment: This well-researched, well-documented and well-written book is a masterpiece. It is also unique in the way it deals with the subject of escape in Nazi-occupied Poland. The author desribes in great detail the life and experiences of those who chose evasion - hiding under false identities - as a response to the Holocaust. He also presents accurately and with an amazing perceptivity the relationships between the Jews in hiding and the Poles who hid them. As one who survived on the Aryan side of Warsaw, Paulsson's writings resonate with my own experiences. A terrific book!
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