Am I A Murderer?: Testament of a Jewish Ghetto Policeman [Hardcover]

Calel Perechodnik (Author), Frank Fox (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1996

A young Polish Jew chronicles his life under the Nazis. In the vain hope of protecting himself and his family, Calel Perechodnik made the wrenching decision to become a ghetto policeman in a small town near Warsaw, and the tragedy of his decision becomes clear when, during the "Aktion", he sees his wife and child forced onto a train bound for the Treblinka extermination camp. Filled with loathing for the Germans, the Poles, his Jewish brethren, and himself, Perechodnik fled the ghetto to shelter with a Polish woman in Warsaw, and in the course of 105 terror-filled days he poured his story into a diary. Shortly before his death in 1944, he entrusted the diary to a Polish friend, and the document was eventually deposited in the Yad Vashem Archives in Jerusalem. Left nearly forgotten for half a century, it was finally published in Poland in 1993.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Hoping his uniform would provide a shield for his family, Perechodnik, a 27-year-old engineer of agronomy, joined the ghetto police in the Polish town of Otwock during WWII only to find himself participating in the Germans' August 1941 extermination of Jews, including his wife and two-year-old daughter. The author watched helplessly as they were forced aboard a train bound for the Treblinka death camp. In this stunning memoir, written in hiding in Warsaw after he left the police, he expresses his anguish and astonishment at the savagery of the Poles who turned against the Jews. It was, he writes, "the greatest disillusionment that I have endured in my life." Perechodnik committed suicide by taking cyanide in 1944, shortly after the abortive Warsaw Uprising against the Germans, leaving this blistering record of the implementation of the Final Solution by a witness, victim and collaborator. Before his death, he entrusted his diary to a friend, and it eventually found its way to the Yad Vashem archives in Jerusalem. Fox, who edited this testament, teaches history in Britain. Illustrated.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

One of the most painful aspects of the Holocaust was the fact that many Jews became policemen; at the Nazis' insistence, Jewish policemen were responsible for maintaining order in the ghettos. At first they were welcomed, but later they were seen as traitors and collaborators by fellow Jews. Perechodnik was a 27-year-old ghetto policeman in Otwock, a town near Warsaw. In February 1941, he saw that the war was not coming to an end and wanted to avoid the labor camps, so he joined a force of 200 ghetto policemen. He hoped that the job would provide a shield for himself, his wife, and their 2-year-old daughter. But on August 19, 1942, Perechodnik's wife and daughter were among 8,000 Otwock Jews sent to their deaths in Treblinka. He fled the ghetto in 1943, and during 105 days in hiding, he wrote this memoir. Shortly before his own death in 1944, Perechodnik gave it to a friend, and it was eventually deposited in the Yad Vashem Archives in Israel. The book was published in Poland in 1993. Combining elements of a memoir, a chronicle, and a diary, it is one of the most exceptional eyewitness testimonies to come out of the Holocaust. George Cohen

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 255 pages
• Publisher: Harpercollins; First Edition edition (February 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813327024
• ISBN-13: 978-0813327020
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #415,575 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #54 in Books > History > Historical Study > Oral History

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Important Document, June 28, 2001

By 

spideranansie (Singapore - Manchester) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Am I A Murderer?: Testament of a Jewish Ghetto Policeman (Hardcover)

When I read Perechodnik's book years ago, I was profoundly moved by the experiences of the writer in the war years. Having just travelled to Germany and seen some concentration camps, I started reading avidly on the Holocaust and the experiences of survivors and perpetrators. The poignant title of the book was the thing that caught my eye and it remains one of the most startling and powerful accounts of the evil that took place in WWII. It is amazing that this first-hand account survived and I wish it was as highly circulated and read as Anne Frank's diary. Perechodnik's account lets us into the sacrifces one has to make in extreme situations and the guilt he feels throughout the war for abandoning his wife and kid entreats us. A harrowing experience. Let us never forget the humanity in us.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Holocaust Classic, August 18, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: Am I A Murderer?: Testament of a Jewish Ghetto Policeman (Hardcover)

This is one of the most important books ever published on The Holocaust. It is the Anne Frank of the Polish Jewish Experience. You have to keep reminding yourself that this was written in 1943 as you read it. It is the most compelling and unforgiving personal account written by a Holocaust nonsurvivor.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Thought-Provoking Memoir of a Jewish Ghetto Policeman from the Otwock Ghetto, August 16, 2008

By 

Jan Peczkis "Scholar and Thinker" (Chicago IL, USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

Before WWII, Perechodnik failed to be admitted to a Polish university, yet he concluded: "Besides, I want it clearly understood that I personally did not come in contact with anti-Semitism." (p. xxii). This adds to the refutation of the claim that prewar Polish anti-Semitism had been an inevitable and constant companion of Polish Jews, and that assimilated Polish Jews suffered from anti-Semitism as much as the unassimilated Jewish majority.

The author provides eyewitness comments on the 1939 war, while in eastern Poland: "I don't deny that there were Jews--old-time Communists--who disarmed Polish detachments, but can one blame this on all the Jews? I believe that the number of Jews who fell with arms in hand while defending Poland was larger than the number of Jews disarming Polish detachments." (p. 2). [Probably true, but military service was compulsory and, in any case, loyalty is not a favor but a due.]

Perechodnik believed that the 1939 war had brought Poles and Jews close together (p. 1), although this cooled somewhat in the following year or so (with Polish denunciations of Jews being "scattered incidents": p. 5). And, despite his later bitterness towards Poles, he recorded observations that don't support the modern notion of Poles habitually delighting in Jewish sufferings. Poles in trains passing the Ghetto lowered their heads, made the sign of the cross, and prayed: "May they rest in peace." (p. 41). On another occasion, Poles stood silently as they saw the blood marks on the pavement of murdered Jews. (p. 55).

In a scene reminiscent of Lanzmann's SHOAH, Polish Jews gave a warning (not mockery) you-will-die gesture to Belgian Jews, who scoffed at it. (p. 107). And, unlike Jan T. Gross and his fans, who speak from their safe perches, Perechodnik didn't think that Poles had some kind of a general duty to risk their lives by hiding fugitive Jews. (p. 101).

Perechodnik cuts the Polish Blue Police (Policja Granatowa) some slack in their thefts from Jews by recognizing the fact that the wages they were paid were non-livable. (p. 31). He doesn't go far enough. Poles themselves lived in crushing poverty under German occupation, and this fact readily explains their eagerness to acquire Jewish properties. In fact, Poles who stole from Jews said that: Jews were already doomed by the Germans, Jewish wealth had originated from Polish soil, and, were Poles not to take Jewish property, it would be taken anyway--by the Germans. (p. 6, 57, 72, 99). Of course, stealing is virtually universal in wartime, and even the Jewish ghetto policemen frequently stole from each other. (p. 88).

The Ukrainian police was vicious. They often shot Jews in the Ghetto, at close range, for sport (pp. 33-35, 44, 105). As for Perechodnik's own Nazi collaboration, which included the dispatching of his relatives to their deaths at Treblinka, he wrote of having a stony heart (p. 104), of believing that he would outlast the Nazis (p. 106), and asking the question of the memoir's title. (p. 54). He then fled the Ghetto and was aided by a succession of Polish benefactors (e. g., p. 101, 159-167, 182-183) before his eventual reputed suicide.

Ironic to the modern thinking that blames Christianity for the Holocaust, Perechodnik, an atheist, concluded: "We are puzzled about where such hatred by Germans of Jews comes from, how much of it is the fault of the Jews. My opinion is that, setting aside inborn German sadism, the desire to murder for the enjoyment of killing, and the lust for gold, I ascribe the entire blame to the Jewish religion. One cannot enjoy the hospitality of other peoples and consider oneself a chosen people, better and wiser...Yes, the Jewish religion has divided us from other people with a Chinese wall, had inculcated in us a psychology of distinctness..." (pp. 171-172; see also p. 151).