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Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps
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Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps Customer Reviews
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♥♥♥♥♥ |
A Solid Overview of the Nazi Extermination Camps in German-Occupied Poland: Corrections Needed
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Yitzhak Arad provides a great deal of information relative to the extermination of Jews (and also Gypsies), but nothing on the genocide of Poles. He elaborates on such things as German plans for the Final Solution, the construction and function of the death camps, camp "life" for those not immediately gassed, Jewish revolts and escapes, the German cover-up, postwar trials of camp functionaries (well into the 1960's), etc.
The remainder of this review focuses on matters not addressed by the other reviewers.
David Engel has accused the Polish-Government-in-Exile of deliberately understating the extent of, and delaying the publicizing of, Jewish deaths at the hands of the Germans. Arad rejects this insinuation: "The Polish Underground transmitted to London the reports on the death camps and the extermination of the Jews of Poland via its messengers and radio stations. It did not hide these facts nor delay their relay, and the reports reached London and the British Government. But they were received with disbelief, doubt, and distrust. They did not receive the proper sort of publicity..." (p. 359).
Of course, the Polish-Government-in-Exile had to be very careful about the credibility and accuracy of the reports it had available. Ironically, the first reports had inflated the actual then-current Treblinka death toll by 3-fold to 4-fold (p. 355). Also, early reports on the rebellion at Treblinka had grossly exaggerated the number of Jewish escapees and the number of Germans killed (p. 358).
Unfortunately, Arad sometimes lapses into standard Polonophobic formulations, of which only a few can be discussed owing to space limitations. He makes the frankly laughable accusation that the Polish Underground failed to warn the Jews about their fate (p. 359), before refuting himself: "The information about Belzec came mainly from Poles who lived close to the camp, and from Polish railway workers, and it reached the Polish Underground. From their Underground publication, it reached the Jewish Underground." (p. 243). As for Jewish reactions to Polish warnings, Arad quotes Yitzhak Lichtman: "On the train to Sobibor, we were told by some Poles that we were being taken to be burned. We didn't believe them. We thought that the Poles, who were anti-Semites, wanted to scare us." (p. 242). Jewish rejection of Polish warnings was the rule, as Arad comments: "Even when rumors or some information about Belzec and Treblinka, and, to a much lesser extent, about Sobibor, reached the Jews still left in the ghettos of the General Government, the people were reluctant to believe them." (p. 377).
Predictably, Arad faults the Polish Underground for not blowing up the tracks leading to the death camps. This ignores reality. Sabotaged tracks can be repaired in a few hours, and the Germans would have savagely retaliated against nearby Polish villages.
Arad mentions the fact that the Communist AL guerillas had "...a relatively large number of Jews..." (p. 346). This made them instant enemies of the vast majority of Poles. Arad repeats charges of the AK killing fugitive Jews without ever attempting to verify the identities of the killers.
Arad repeats the perennial myth of fugitive Jews being almost never helped by Poles and almost certain to be betrayed by them. His own information refutes this. Of the 100 or so Jews who managed to evade the intensive German-Ukrainian dragnet near Treblinka following the uprising and escape (p. 298), and to scatter throughout occupied Poland, about 70 were still alive at the end of the war (p. 363)! Every surviving Jew was helped by a long series of Poles, as exemplified by Wiernik. Assuming that each of the 100 fugitive Jews had, on average, "run the gauntlet" by encountering a total of only 200 Poles, it follows that 1 in every 561 Poles, at very most, was a denouncer or killer of Jews. This overestimates the actual rate because it doesn't take into account the fact that most denouncers and killers of Jews didn't rely solely on chance encounters, but actively hunted for them. Moreover, this figure completely ignores non-Polish causes of the 30 Jewish deaths (e. g., suicide, wartime misadventures, belatedly caught directly by Germans, denounced by Polish-speaking Ukrainian, German (Volksdeutsche), or Jewish agents sent by the Germans to monitor the Polish countryside, etc.). Other studies (e. g., Paulsson's SECRET CITY and Chodakiewicz' BETWEEN NAZIS AND SOVIETS) corroborate the foregoing-estimated low rates of Polish anti-Jewish actions.
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