Customer Reviews

Poland's Holocaust: Ethnic Strife, Collaboration with Occupying Forces and Genocide in the Second Republic, 1918-1947

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Piotrowski masterfully discusses and documents many topics usually avoided in traditional Holocaust education. These include: the collaboration of Jews with both Nazis and Communists, the murder of 3 million Polish gentiles by the Germans, and the deportation of 1.5 million Polish gentiles to Siberia by the Russians (where most of them died--not in gas chambers, but from disease and starvation). Must read for anyone interested in then FULL account of the Holocaust.

If you are looking for a comprehensive overview of the atrocities committed on Polish territory during the 1939 to 1945 period you could not do too much better than Piotrowski's book. Those that don't like it (see above) are not interested in the facts coming out. The German's were not the only group committing atrocities and this book meticulously sets out the full narrative. My mother and father both lived through these times and were witness to many of these events. My mother was deported to Kazakhstan by the Russians and her father was taken away and murdered. This is one of the few books that tackles this crime. Much like the murder of Polish officers at Katyn woods which the Russians recently ackowledged, the Soviet "ethnic cleansing" of eastern Poland is a story that is slowly emerging from unneath the fog of Communist lies and deception. For those researching this topic Allen Paul's 1991 book, "Katyn-Stalin's Massacre and the Seeds of Polish Resurrection" is also a "must have".

This book has everything! If you think, for instance, that Poles refuse to ever admit any wrongdoing, you will be disappointed, as Piotrowski has an entire chapter on Polish collaborators (along with corresponding chapters on the collaborators of other nationalities). He also discusses the genocidal murder of some 100,000 innocent Polish civilians by the UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army) during World War 2. To say that this was a "war of liberation" of "Ukrainian lands" from "Polish colonialism" is a falsification of history. Fact is, these lands have had a mixed Polish-Ukrainian population for centuries, if not from antiquity. And to say that this was retaliation for the treatment of Ukrainians in interwar Poland is ludicrous in the extreme. In fact, the grand total of Ukrainian nationalists put to death during Polish rule (for acts of murder) comes out to a grand total of 29. And acts of Polish discrimination against individual Ukrainians have no moral or tactical parallel whatsoever with the systematic murder of 100,000 Polish civilians by Ukrainian fascists.

In my opinion, the main value of this book lies in its uncompromising debunking of the Holocaust propaganda which is so prevalent in many other treatments of this historical event. After reading Piotrowski's lucid, grounded in facts presentation, no sane person can believe in the "Polish complicity" in the Holocaust, or in the total innocence of the Polish Jewish minority. This book should be made required reading for the Holocaust studies everywhere in the world.

Only that one book offers to full undesrstanding the different factors and all events related to Poland's Holocauts, which included Jews, Poles, Ukrainian and other nations. The "reasons" and vows to ethnical cleansing were shown very thoroughful. If you compare your "standard" knowledge taken from mass media to that one offered in the book, you'll find a big difference.

For me that book makes more sense to understand events of that time. Too bad that this book is out of print !

If you are prepared to learn little-known facts about the Holocaust, and on World War II in general, this book is for you. If, however, you are comfortable with stereotypes, this book is NOT for you.

As in his other works, the author describes the terror in wartime SE Poland. The area's volatility was sown after the First World War. Poland - back again after the Partitions - had to fight for its freedom against the Red Army. The Ukranians could have thrown in their lot with Poland against the bigger threat, but the concept of 'my enemy's enemy is my friend' was too touchy-feely for the all or nothing hardliners among the Ukranian leadership. The Poles beat the Russians who beat the Ukranians, so what a surprise the land was divided between the two. To describe this as colonialism is incredible ignorance! And pathetic! This was the country that had been MIA for over a century! Siding with the Nazis is understandable, as for the Ukranians the Russians were the real enemy. The inhumane zeal they applied is quite a another matter. He who sides with monsters does not have to become a monster...

The following review is based on the original (1998) edition. There is so much content in this book that it is hard to decide what to discuss!

One soon learns that members of ALL nationalities engaged in unsavory conduct in the face of the Nazi and Soviet oppressors. There are entire chapters on Jewish, Polish, Belorussian, Lithuanian, and Ukrainian collaboration. Prewar Polish-Jewish prejudices had been fully reciprocal (pp. 39-40).

Piotrowski provides considerable detail on the Poles deported by the Soviets into the interior of the USSR. He presents evidence for the large-scale nature of the Zydokomuna (Jewish-Communist collaboration against Poles) before (pp. 36-38), during (pp. 48-58), and immediately after WWII (pp. 58-65).

He addresses accusations, directed against the AK and NSZ, of having killed fugitive Jews. In some cases, it can be shown that these units weren't even in the areas at the time (p. 102). Other accusations aren't even nominally corroborated by knowledgeable Jews who were in the area at the time (p. 335). Piotrowski (p. 324) refutes Krakowski's argument that Bor-Komorowski's "anti-bandit" order had been a veiled order to kill fugitive Jews (p. 324). Finally, there were Jews serving openly in the ranks of the AK (including its elite; p. 335) and the NSZ (pp. 96-97).

Significantly, Piotrowski shows that many Jewish recollections were written decades after the events. They have a tendency of mixing up their personal experiences with what they heard or read about the Holocaust (p. 328).

Piotrowski includes TIME Magazine's 1994 "retraction" of its false Polonophobic statement that there had been many Poles in the SS (p. 321). He also presents intriguing evidence that the so-called Kielce Pogrom had been a Soviet-staged provocation (p. 141).

This book requires much in-depth study to appreciate fully!

It is surprising to see Mr. Piotrowski give us such a broad and mostly fair analysis of the issues in Poland during the 1918-1947 period. Having read his "Genocide and Rescue in Wolyn", in which he presents such a biased and distorted Polish view of Ukrainians and their struggle for independence, (which he terms as "genocide", but which in reality was a struggle against Polish colonialism in Ukraine), I had to check and see if perhaps there were two Mr. Piotrowskis. In this book, Mr. Piotrowski examines the role played by the various ethnic groups, and in particular, focuses on the role played by the Jews, both in their complicity with the Nazis and, most of all, with the Soviets and the International Communist movement. This book helps to debunk the myth of Jewish exclusivity of the Holocaust.

This book is a must read for those who are interested in deepening their knowledge of the true history of WWII--and, of course, Poland's history. The slaughter of three million Polish Jews during the war is an established--and horrific--fact. But, unfortunately, the fate of the additional three million Poles who were slaughtered during the same time frame, has been, for the most part,ignored. The world is ignorant of the huge role the Polish Army played in the Allied victory. It was the fourth largest of the Allied forces, helped win the Battle of Falaise, and made the taking of Monte Casino possible. Hopefully, this book will increase the public's understanding of the unprecedented suffering Poles endured during WWII and the tremendous sacrifices they made during the German and Russian occupation of their land. It's a largely untold story. Until this informative book.