Thore who risked their lives,Jews of Bialystok,Phirte of Eagles,year 1919-20, batle of warsaw

Jan Peczkis|Sunday, May 23, 2010

               
        The Yad Vashem list, containing personal names, locality information, and short-paragraph descriptions of each of the 5,400 honored Poles, is valid as of the end of 2003. However, the limitations of the Yad Vashem system should be remembered. First of all, numerous Polish rescuers were never honored by Yad Vashem because the ungrateful rescued Jews refused to identify or confirm the names of their Polish rescuers. Second, Yad Vashem refuses to honor the many Poles who were murdered by the Germans in reprisal for aid to Jews. In still other cases, both the hidden Jews and Polish benefactors were murdere                                            

        Those Who Risked Their Lives by Anna Poray
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  A Name-by-Name Catalog of the 5,400 Poles Honored at Yad Vashem and 706 Strongly-Verified Poles Killed for Helping Jews, May 13, 2010 This review is from: Those Who Risked Their Lives (Hardcover) The Yad Vashem list, containing personal names, locality information, and short-paragraph descriptions of each of the 5,400 honored Poles, is valid as of the end of 2003. However, the limitations of the Yad Vashem system should be remembered. First of all, numerous Polish rescuers were never honored by Yad Vashem because the ungrateful rescued Jews refused to identify or confirm the names of their Polish rescuers. Second, Yad Vashem refuses to honor the many Poles who were murdered by the Germans in reprisal for aid to Jews. In still other cases, both the hidden Jews and Polish benefactors were murdered.

Third, Yad Vashem refuses to honor Poles who took money for the upkeep of fugitive Jews. (p. 63). (This constitutes a double standard. Danish rescuers of Jews, relatively well-off under a largely-nominal German occupation, but mostly taking hefty payments to ship Jews to Sweden, are honored by Yad Vashem. In contrast, Polish rescuers who took money to help Jews are not honored because they are deemed to not have acted from altruistic motives. Go figure! The fact that Poles lived at near-starvation levels under the German occupation, and had grave difficulties feeding Jews without payment, to say nothing about risking their lives for the slightest aid to Jews, makes this double standard all the more odious.)

The separate list of 706 Poles murdered for aiding Jews has been made meager by the fact that each death had to be verified by 3 to 4 sources, which was difficult so many decades after the event. (p. 12). (Under less stringent criteria, and when inclusion is made of Poles killed by Germans in collective reprisals for aiding Jews, the total of Polish victims is in the thousands: See the Peczkis review of Martyrs of Charity (Christian and Jewish Response to the Holocaust, A.)). Some of the Poles who were caught hiding Jews (e. g., the Malickis (p. 37) and Wrzosek (p. 58) were dispatched to Treblinka to die with the Jews there.)

Jan T. Gross has leveled the accusation that Polish rescuers of Jews were afraid to later tell their neighbors because the latter were (presumably) anti-Semitic. Actually, there were various motives for such secrecy--when it existed. For instance, Antonina Wyrzykowski relocated because her neighbors were antagonized after learning that their lives had been endangered owing to her Jew-rescuing actions. (p. 349). (However, Gross' argument is largely bogus. There was no systematic secrecy-and-shame afflicting Polish rescuers of Jews. In fact, thousands of Polish rescuers of Jews had publicly identified themselves as such by the late 1960's, when the following work came out: Righteous among nations: How Poles helped the Jews, 1939-1945;).

The estimated total number of Jews rescued by Poles varies widely. According to estimates by Polish Jews, it ranges from 120,000 (Jozef Kermish) to about 200,000 (Szymon Datner). (p. 366). (These totals do not include those Polish Jews who were in the USSR during the war, out of reach of the Nazis, and who later returned to Poland. Nor do they include those Jews who survived in German labor and concentration camps, and subsequently returned to Poland.).

A number of trends are evident in this work. Many of the known denouncers of fugitive Jews and their Polish benefactors are identified as Volksdeutsche. Also, very many of the Polish rescuers of Jews are identified as members of the Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa: A.K., or AK). This refutes the contention that the AK had been systematically anti-Semitic, and realizing some secret plan to exterminate Poland's surviving Jews. (e. g., Yaffa Eliach). Mention is made of the Jews who were transferred, by the Germans, from Pawiak Prison to Gesiowka concentration camp in Warsaw. The latter were freed (August 5, 1944) by the A.K. during the Warsaw Uprising.

Several paragraphs of biographical detail are given to better-known Polish benefactors of Jews. This includes Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, one of the founders of ZEGOTA. (p. 71). Henryk Wolinski was a long-term liaison between Poles and Jews, including with the ZOB (Z.O.B.) as related to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. (pp. 340-341). The Iwanski brothers, Roman and Zbigniew, actually died fighting in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising alongside the ZZW (Z.Z.W.). (p. 28). In addition, Jozef Wilk of the AK died performing a futile mission to blast a hole in the ghetto wall on April 19, 1943. (p. 52).

 Comment | Permalink       The Jews of Bialystok During World War II and the Holocaust (Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry Series) by Sara Bender
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  1 of 1 people found the following review helpful: A History of the Jews of Bialystok, Poland, May 11, 2010 This review is from: The Jews of Bialystok During World War II and the Holocaust (Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry Series) (Hardcover) Israeli historian Sara Bender traces the life of Bialystok's Jews from the 19th century, through the early 20th century, the Polish Second Republic (1918-1939), the Soviet occupation (1939-1941), and the Nazi occupation and Holocaust (1941-1944).

Some Polish historians have described organized anti-Semitism, and pogroms, as imports from tsarist Russia, and Bender's analysis supports this position. In describing the 1906 Pogrom, she comments: "The truth, however, soon emerged when Jews who had survived the pogrom testified that not only had the Poles refused to participate in the riots, but they had actually sheltered Jews. The Russian authorities, it transpired, were blaming the Poles to divert suspicion from themselves and to stir up hatred between the Poles and the Jews." (p. 16).

Unlike the situation at Warsaw, Jewish support for the Poles' January (1863) Insurrection had been negligible. (p. 4). Jewish economic dominance in Bialystok was considerable (for facts and figures, see p. 11). Although not described by Bender as such, various Jewish actions by the time of WWI clearly partook of seeking special rights (using modern parlance). For instance, Bialystok's Jews continued to adhere to Yiddish, and resisted using Polish even in public life. They also sought exemption from the infant Polish Army. (pp. 43-45).

There are a number of flaws in Bender's work, of which I mention only two. She glosses over the magnitude of Jewish-Soviet collaboration against Poland during the 1920 Polish-Soviet War (p. 46)--a fact corroborated by British and American observers (see the Peczkis review of The Jews in Poland; Official Reports of the American and British Investigating Missions). She engages in the customary misrepresentation of the WWII-era Polish-Underground NSZ (N.S.Z.) as a pro-fascist organization that indiscriminately killed Jews, to which she adds the twist that they also indiscriminately killed Poles! (p. 236). Against this nonsense, see the Peczkis review of Narodowe Sily Zbrojne: Dokumenty, struktury, personalia (Polish Edition).

Bender employs an absurdly-elastic definition of the word pogrom. In recounting the 1920 war, she speaks of a "massive pogrom" by Poles in which ONE Jew was killed. (p. 46).

Fast-forward to WWII. Some Nazi German officials had opposed the liquidation of the Bialystok ghetto because of the value of its workers for German war production. (p. 186, 221, 243, 283). Otherwise, this ghetto is described as unique in that the local Jewish ghetto police refused to obey German orders to round up the Jews for the trains to Auschwitz and Treblinka. (p. 203). The roundups were done by the Germans along with the Ukrainian and Byelorussian collaborationist police. (p. 198, 250, 261, 274). Certain Jews, promised their lives, pointed out to the Germans the hiding places of Jews. (p. 202, 211). All along, the Germans had been served by various Jewish Gestapo agents (p. 161, 292), including those who had acted against Poles as well as Jews. (p. 212).

In his FEAR, Jan T. Gross has attempted to make a profound issue of Poles acquiring post-Jewish properties. Actually, looting is common in wartime, and is not particular to any one nationality. In fact, some ghetto Jews looted the properties of the earlier-deported Jews. (e. g., p. 202, 211).

While describing the situation facing escaped Jews, Bender wrote: "It should not be forgotten that at that time [late 1943], the Germans were combing the forests in search of Jewish fugitives." (p. 295). (This reminds us that the Germans were perfectly capable of finding Jews on their own, and that fugitive Jews who perished were not necessarily the victims of locals' denunciations.)
 Comment | Permalink       Flight Of Eagles: The Story of the American Kosciuszko Squadron in the Polish-Russian War 1919-1920 by Ross S. Fenn
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  The American Kosciuszko Squadron: A Fascinating Account of American Heroism on Behalf of a Newly-Resurrected Poland, May 2, 2010 This review is from: Flight Of Eagles: The Story of the American Kosciuszko Squadron in the Polish-Russian War 1919-1920 (Hardcover) Besides its obvious significance, this work provides priceless details on the resurrection of the Polish state in 1918, the Polish-Ukrainian War of 1918, and the 1919-1920 Polish-Soviet War.

Although Poles and Soviets had fought earlier, the first official military encounter of the 1920 Polish-Soviet War was as follows: "At seven a. m. on February 14, 1919, in the town of Bereza Kartuska...five Polish officers with 57 men engaged a small unit of Bolsheviks occupying the remote Lithuanian site. In the course of the skirmish, 80 Red Army soldiers were taken prisoner..." (p. 11).

Eight young American airmen, veterans of the American and British air-combat units, chose to come to Poland as compatriots, not as mercenaries. None of the Americans were of Polish descent. (p. xi). Karolevitz and Fenn continue: "The Kosciuszko flyers--a bit brash, a bit idealistic and a bit impatient--were dedicated to the Polish cause, but to them the antagonist was Bolshevism with all its attendant evils. On the other hand, Pilsudski, the ex-socialist revolutionary and ardent nationalist, at that time was not particularly concerned about political ideologies or world revolution. His foe--Poland's age-old enemy--was Russia the nation, pure and simple, whether her leaders at the moment were Communists, Tsarists, or anarchic freebooters." (p. 80).

The use of aircraft for combat purposes was in its infancy, and the challenges of creating a fighting squadron in such a short time were formidable. A motley collection of mostly-obsolete aircraft was available. The infant Polish Air Force ended up relying largely on stocks of German aircraft abandoned during the latter's WWI retreat. (pp. 41-42).

The Squadron played a major role in the Polish-Ukrainian War of 1918 and then the Bolshevik War of 1920. Many combat details are provided. A map (p. 125) shows the locations where the Squadron was based during Pilsudski's drive into the Ukraine. Amazingly, one of the American men, downed behind Soviet lines, managed to evade his captors and return to Poland. (p. 222). Polish women's battalions also distinguished themselves in both wars. (p. 176).

The Pilsudski-Petlura (Petlura) alliance was intended to culminate in an independent Ukraine and withdrawal of Polish forces from the Ukraine. (p. 91). Its practical goals were as follows: "In simple terms, he [Pilsudski] wanted to meet and defeat the Soviet forces south of the Pripet Marshes before the enemy had time to organize and launch an attack of its own. By winning a notable victory, the Polish leader hoped to establish an independent buffer state in the Ukraine, to convince the Allied Powers (especially an overly skeptical England) that Poland was a nation capable of directing its own destiny, and to win badly-needed support from his own people who were divided by Communist propaganda, torn between political philosophies and--more than anything else--weary and apathetic because of a seemingly endless subjection to the miseries of war." (p. 105).

The American flyers were honored by the likes of Paderewski (p. 27) and Pilsudski (p. 36, p. 153). They received many kinds of military decorations. (see p. 121).

Much later, during WWII, the Kresy (Poland's eastern half) was handed over to the USSR as part of the Churchill-Roosevelt Teheran-Yalta betrayal of Poland. The destruction of everything Polish on these lands continued decades after almost all of the indigenous Poles had been expelled. For instance, in August 1971, the Soviets sent tanks into the Cemetery of the Defenders of Lwow (Lvov, Lviv) to crush the Polish monuments, including those dedicated to the American flyers. (p. 236).
 Comment | Permalink       Year 1920 and its climax: Battle of Warsaw during the Polish-Soviet War, 1919-1920 by Jozef Pilsudski
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  1 of 1 people found the following review helpful: An Exceptionally Comprehensive Work on the 1920 Polish-Soviet War, May 1, 2010 This review is from: Year 1920 and its climax: Battle of Warsaw during the Polish-Soviet War, 1919-1920 (Library Binding) This work is loaded with facts, tables, and maps. The latter are large-scale, foldout ones, showing the movements of Polish and Soviet troops in considerable detail. Pilsudski also provides a detailed rebuttal to the writings of Tukhachevski on the 1920 war.

Many misconceptions related to the overall 1918-1920 period of Polish history are clarified. For instance, the March 20, 1921 plebiscite that awarded Upper Silesia to Germany was bogus. The Germans had imported 180,000 Germans to vote. (They had been born there but did not currently live there). (p. 20). Later German propaganda, especially from the Nazi era onwards, portrayed the western powers as unduly harsh towards Germany and indulgent towards Poland. Such was far from the case. Part of Upper Silesia was given to Germany. Instead of being handed over to Poland completely, Danzig (Gdansk) became a free city. (p. 20).

Zeligowski's taking of Wilno (Vilna, Vilnius)(October 1920) has commonly been misrepresented as a unilateral grab for Poland. It was not. Wilno was taken as part of the plan that it would become part of some form of Polish-Lithuanian-Byelorussian federation. Only much later (March 1922), long after the federation plans had fallen through, and the Polish majority demanded that this happen, was Wilno attached to the Polish state. (p. 18).

Throughout the period of Polish independence (and later in the form of the Polish Government in Exile in London during WWII), Communist propaganda incessantly painted the Polish government as one composed of the wealthy and nobility. Actually, the peasant party (e. g., Witos and Daszynski) was the dominant force in at least the early Second-Republic Polish government. (p. 202).

The lull in the fighting following the Armistice that officially ended WWI (November 11, 1918) has fallaciously been taken as proof of the absence of a Soviet-Polish War, and twisted into the accusation that "Poland started it" in 1920. What actually caused the lull? Pilsudski explains that: "As the German withdrew, in mid-November [1918], Soviet troops started moving westwards in their wake...By the end of 1918, Soviet armies had occupied a considerable proportion of the territories of Lithuania and Byelorussia, and parts of Latvia and Estonia. At the time, Poland could not provide any effective counter-action to the advance of Soviet armies, as the Germans refused to let Polish troops cross the demarcation line in an easterly direction. The only resistance put up against the Russians came from...a spontaneous organization formed locally. In the face of overwhelming superiority of Soviet forces, these units were able to put up a fight lasting but a few days, and on the 5th January 1919, they were forced to pull out of Wilno." (p. 23). Another cause of the 1919 lull in the fighting was the fact that both the Soviet and Polish armies were too weakened to systematically engage each other. (pp. 24-25).

This Soviet aggression, however mostly unopposed, was intolerable to Poland. Pilsudski comments: "As for Poland, she could not look on impassively as Soviet troops occupied her eastern territories, which had a centuries-long tradition of common statehood with Poland, and whose inhabitants, in the great majority, were opposed to Communism, and just like other nationalities conquered by Russia, strove to achieve an independent existence." (p. 25).

Officially, "The Polish-Soviet War began in mid-February 1919". (p. 24, 266). Pilsudski was well aware of the fact that, as soon as the Bolsheviks had regained their strength, they would attack Poland. It was for this reason that he launched his preemptive attack into the Soviet-ruled Ukraine. (p. 12, 14).

Oddly enough, Pilsudski's 1920 drive into the Ukraine has sometimes been misrepresented as a veiled "Polish imperialist" attempt to revive Poland in her pre-1772 boundaries. It was not. The protocol on which the Pilsudski-Petlura (Petlyura) alliance was based explicitly called for the withdrawal of Polish troops from any successfully-established independent Ukraine. (p. 14).
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