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Martyrs of Charity (Christian and Jewish Response to the Holocaust, A.)

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In this painstakingly-detailed work, Zajaczkowski catalogues over 700 locations (listed alphabetically) where Germans murdered Poles for aiding Jews (pp. 119-291). In most of them, there were at least several Polish victims (often tens or hundreds), so the total known Polish death toll is at least in the thousands.

The massive Polish sacrifices refute the odious anti-Polish comments of the likes of Menachem Begin (p. 73), etc., who accused Poles of doing virtually nothing to save Jews. It also upends the absurd implied equation of the possibilities enjoyed by Danes and Poles.

Jews and Poles falling into German hands were frequently tortured to force them to identify other Polish benefactors and/or hidden Jews (e. g., p. 159). For this reason, one shouldn't assume that captured Jews had been denounced, nor should it be assumed that benefactors' secretiveness implied a fear of neighbors' denunciation. What one doesn't know one cannot divulge under torture.

As for the numerous but very limited number of deserving Poles honored at Yad Vashem, Zajaczkowski comments: "There are tens of thousands of similar cases in which Jews saved by the sacrifices of their Christian brothers in Poland, respond with contempt and denigration." (p. 272)

Significant detail is presented about Polish aid to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (pp. 242-250)--almost never shown in Holocaust films! The AK's aid to Jews (e. g., p. 148, 182, 198, 223, 236, 245, 246, 252-254, 272) is also recounted. Did you know that a Polish pilot flew some Jewish parachutists into Hungary in a futile attempt to start an uprising among Hungarian Jews? (p. 287)

This 1988 work is timeless, as the same old Polonophobic arguments keep reappearing. For instance, the postwar Jewish property issue, polemicized recently by Jan T. Gross in his FEAR, was debunked by Zajaczkowski: "In overcrowded Polish cities where one single room had to accommodate two or three families after the war, a reluctance to vacate the premises when they were claimed by the returning Jews was by Jewish historians branded as `antisemitism'..." (pp. 59-60)

In his preface, J. B. Sheerin discusses the Auschwitz Carmelite Convent controversy (pp. 28-30). It is obvious that advocates of the "empty sky" over Auschwitz are attempting to impose their God-rejecting beliefs on those who believe differently!

Other historical tidbits: Every third German family had at least one member in the SS or Gestapo (p. 83). Against the portrayal of medieval Christianity as a prelude to the Holocaust, Zajaczkowski presents evidence (pp. 89-90) that, for much of this time, Jews enjoyed greater privileges than 95% of the Christian population. Also, in prewar Poland, Jewry had enjoyed an unprecedented political and cultural renaissance (pp. 38-39). Members of the Polish Bar Association, who before the war had resented the disproportionate number of Jews among them, later refused a German order to disbar its Jewish members, for which reason they paid with one-way trips to Pawiak and Auschwitz (p. 240)

Zajaczkowski includes a photo of the US Holocaust Museum's exhibit of the Kielce Pogrom (p. 106), although this wasn't even part of the Holocaust. Unmentioned is the fact that it most likely was a Soviet, not Polish, crime.

There is often an unfortunate, and incorrect, portrayal of Poles as indifferent to the fate of their fellow Jews in German-Nazi occupied Poland. This book helps set the record straight. It provides testimonies of Poles, and other gentiles, who helped the Jews avoid death. And only in German-occupied Poland was the death penalty meted out for any gentile who assisted a Jew in any manner. There are more Poles honored at Yad Vashem, in Israel, for rescuing Jews than members of any other European nationality. Furthermore, only a small fraction of rescuers of Jews were ever honored: Most were eventually discovered by the Germans and murdered along with the Jews they were hiding.