Book Reopens Question of Jewish-Nazis Collaboration
Poland’s Holocaust Law. which bans blaming Poland for the Jewish halocaust, raises the question of Jewish culpability.
In a review of a book, From Ghetto to Deathcamp
below, by a Jewish Ghetto policeman, Jan Pekzkis shows that Jews may face more guilt
than Poles, many of whom actually protected Jews.
In his book, Holocaust Victims Accuse, Rabbi Shonfeld called the Zionists
“war criminals” who usurped the leadership of the Jewish people,
betrayed their trust, and after their annihilation, reaped the moral
capital. The more Jews died, the stronger the moral case for Israel.
In the 1960′s the Jewish philosopher, Hannah Arendt was slandered and ostracized when she concluded from Hilberg that “almost without exception” the Jewish leadership cooperated with the Nazis.
Rabbi Gunther Plaut suspected Illuminati Jews were behind the rise of Nazism. Nazi general revealed the Jewish role in holocaust.
by Jan Pekzkis
We hear a lot nowadays of “Polish complicity in the Holocaust”
and so, in the same spirit, we must fairly inquire about “Jewish
complicity in the Holocaust”. I analyze this book in the broader context
of the implications of collaboration with the Germans (Nazis). In doing
so, I try to avoid the usual double standard, wherein a Pole who in
some way assisted the Nazis in persecuting the Jews is reckoned a
collaborator, but a Jew who in some way assisted the Nazis in
persecuting the Jews is not reckoned a collaborator.
Collaboration
is usually defined as willfully performing deeds in service of the
enemy, at the expense of one’s countrymen, in exchange for favors from
the enemy, for one’s personal benefit. Nowadays, Jewish collaboration is
arbitrarily and sweepingly defined-away by means of the mystification
of the Holocaust and especially the “All Jews were victims of the Nazis”
meme.
And,
although Chari does not consider himself a collaborator, others
certainly did. Thus, Jewish ghetto policemen were widely resented, by
other Jews, during and after the war. (p. 68). Upon arriving at
Auschwitz, Chari wisely did not wear his police uniform, because the
Jewish inmates commonly killed arriving Jewish ghetto policemen on the
spot. (p. 84). Chari also expressed concern that the liberating Soviets
would send him to Siberia as a Nazi collaborator. (p. 77).
I
first consider the meme of “choiceless choices”–a common but very
overgeneralized line of exculpation for Jews who served the Nazis. From
there, I examine less clear-cut situations–ones involving long-term
survival under a brutal enemy.
THE MANY PERKS OF BEING A JEWISH GHETTO POLICEMAN
Anatol
Chari writes, “I was a policeman from autumn, 1942, when the
SONDERKOMMANDO force was enlarged, until late summer, 1944, when the
Lodz ghetto was liquidated…Wearing the uniform gave you a sense of
authority and prestige. In a ghetto filled with nobodies, you were a
somebody. We walked into stores that were off-limits to the general
population. We received special ration cards, which meant larger
rations, better quality food, and no standing in a long line at the
general distribution store. My grandparents and I would get enough to
eat. Sonders [SONDERKOMMANDO] didn’t have to worry about being
deported–at least not at first–and we didn’t have to perform difficult
physical labor. We were the food police, with lots of opportunities to
organize extra food. This wasn’t a dog guarding the apples. This was a
dog guarding the meat!” (p. 46).
THE MYTH OF THE KILL-OR-BE-KILLED CHOICELESS CHOICE IN SHIPPING JEWS TO THE DEATH CAMPS
It
is commonly, but erroneously, supposed that the Jewish ghetto policeman
obeyed the Germans, in loading and dispatching his fellow Jews to the
death camps, out of a desperate attempt to avoid his own death in being
sent there himself. The facts are otherwise.
Anatol
Chari, the Jewish ghetto policeman, implicates himself in the roundup
and loading of Jews onto the trains. (e. g, p. 73). However, in doing
so, he could not possibly have been trying to save his own life, for the
simple reason that he did not realize–at least not fully–that boarding
the train was usually synonymous with death! He thus candidly admits
that “We didn’t know where the transports went, we didn’t know about the
gas vans and gas chambers, so a person could pretend it was just a new
work assignment.” (p. 73).
To
be sure, there were indirect clues, such as the initially-exclusive
shipment of the young, old, and infirm (inconsistent with labor
requirements at the destination); the arrival of bullet-ridden clothing;
and (later, in 1944), notes in the returning empty trains with “We are
at Auschwitz. It’s not good.” (p. 73, 76).
However,
by Chari’s own admission (p. 73), the Jews were usually in denial in
the face of these clues. (p. 73). In addition, according to Chari, “Most
people in Lodz had never even heard of it, so ‘Auschwitz’ meant nothing
to us.” (p. 76). Consequently, the Jews, of the Lodz ghetto at least,
had at most a vague concept of their impending collective annihilation.
Clearly, their collaborative acts with the Germans could not have been
motivated by a desperation in the face of an annihilation that they did
not believe in.
THE “GET ENOUGH FOOD ANY WAY POSSIBLE” CONSIDERATIONS: IMPLICATIONS FOR JEWS–AND POLES
At
no time did Chari face immediate death if he failed to perform a
collaborative act, but the performance of such acts increased his
likelihood of survival in the long-term sense. However, the reader must
realize that this is true of collaborators in general: Other factors
being equal, performing deeds in service to the enemy generally
increases one’s chances of surviving the enemy occupation!
Anatol
Chari thus accounts for his conduct in serving the Germans as a Jewish
ghetto policeman, “I’m not claiming to be innocent of selfish behavior.
But everyone was trying to survive as best they could under conditions
not meant for survival. I’ll say again if you only ate the standard
allotment of food, you weren’t going to live. If you did live, if you
made it through the ghetto, and through the camps after the ghetto, if
you came out alive, then you couldn’t have been among the worst off in
the ghetto. If you really had it bad, you’re not here to tell about it.”
(p. 68).
Thus,
Chari did not face immediate death from hunger, but the acquisition of
sufficient food for survival was a long-term problem. However, Poles
also did not get enough food allotments on which to live long-term! They
functioned under near-starvation conditions under the brutal German
occupation and were forced to resort to black market activity in order
to acquire sufficient food to remain alive. Not surprisingly, some also
turned to collaboration.
If
Chari can validly adopt a “get sufficient food no matter what” mindset,
then so can the much-condemned Pole who betrayed a fugitive Jew in
exchange for a bag of sugar from the Germans. Or the Pole who got some
the fugitive Jew’s belongings in return for denouncing him to the
Germans. The booty would be used by the Pole to barter on the black
market for sufficient food in order to help survive long-term.
[Jewish-denouncing Polish acts, featured above, were very much distorted
in the media-acclaimed writings of neo-Stalinist authors such as Jan T.
Gross and Jan Grabowski vel Abrahamer, as manifestations of (what
else?) Polish anti-Semitism. They were not.]
Both
the Jewish and Polish German-serving acts involved win-lose situations
in which the collaborator sought to win at the expense of some Jew.
Thus, Chari’s appropriation of more than his share of food diminished
the survivorship of other Jews, because it meant that there was less
food available to them. This is no less true than the Pole, who
denounced a Jew in order to directly or indirectly get more food for
himself, thereby diminishing the survivorship of the Jews he denounced.
HOLOCAUST ENVY? VICTIMHOOD COMPETITION? THE GYPSIES (SINTI AND ROMA), AND NOT THE JEWS, WIN THE VICTIM TROPHY
The author describes the Lodz Ghetto about 1942, “The Germans treated Gypsies worse than they treated the Jews.” (p. 42).
Now
consider the year 1944, in Auschwitz, after liquidation of the Lodz
Ghetto. “Jews, with their red and yellow Star of David, were at the
bottom the pecking order. Only Gypsies were lower.” (p. 86).
“JEWISH PASSIVITY”: PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS
Consider
the situation at Ahlem, located near Hildesheim, and in the area of
Bergen Belsen. “Third, we had the night shift and weren’t closely
supervised. The Germans thought that non-Jewish prisoners–Poles,
Ukrainers [Ukrainians], Russians–were more likely to escape, so only
Jews worked at night.” (p. 133).
For other examples of Poles deliberately being guarded, by the Germans, more strongly than Jews, see Harvest of Hate.
NO SELF-CONSISTENT NAZI GERMAN POLICIES ON LAST-MINUTE KILLINGS OF JEWS
As
the Third Reich was collapsing in 1945, the Germans killed Jewish
inmates in some locations, while at other locations they did not. In
addition, the Germans often killed non-Jewish inmates. Thus, the authors
write, “In 2009, quite by accident, Tony learned of a victims memorial
in Radogoszcz, a suburb of Lodz, where a Gestapo prison once stood. In
January, 1945, the day before Soviet troops arrived, the Germans set
fire to the prison, killing hundreds of Polish prisoners.” (p. 185).
MORE ON JEWS WHO SERVED THE NAZIS:
(Click on, and read my reviews of):
Ordinary Jews: Choice and Survival during the Holocaust
Israel’s Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood (Cambridge Middle East Studies)
A Narrow Bridge to Life: Jewish Slave Labor and Survival in the Gross-Rosen Camp System, 1940-1945
International Humanitarian Law and International Human Rights Law (The Collected Courses of the Academy of European Law)
The Holocaust in Israeli Public Debate in the 1950s: Ideology and Memory
A Surplus of Memory : Chronicle of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising(Hardback) – 1993 Edition
Gates of Tears: The Holocaust in the Lublin District
Kasztners Crime (Jewish Studies)
The Portable Hannah Arendt (Penguin Classics)
See also:
Jewish Honor Courts: Revenge, Retribution, and Reconciliation in Europe and Israel after the Holocaust
How to Accept German Reparations (Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights)
Eichmann in Jerusalem : A Report on the Banality of Evil (Revised and Enlarged)
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