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Surviving Hitler In Poland: One Jew's Story

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This awkwardly-titled memoir consists of a rather unorganized set of notes written down, often decades after the events, by an emigre Polish Jew. The notes were located and published after his death.

Predictably, much is said about Christian teachings on Jews and the Crucifixion of Christ. Even more predictably, the memoir avoids mention of Jewish anti-Christian teachings and of open provocations against Christians (such as the Purimspiels in Poland: see Reckless Rites: Purim and the Legacy of Jewish Violence (Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the Ancient to the Modern World).

Rynecki complains of Poles seeing Jews as pro-Communist, yet he speaks of Leon Trotsky in glowing terms. Recounting his 9 year-old self's eyewitness experiences, he acknowledges Jewish-Communist affinity, doing so within a framework of transparent Communist ideation: "It must have been late summer during the Polish-Bolshevik war when the Red Armies advanced deep into Poland up to the River Vistula...The Russians have taken Siedlce and were very friendly to the Jews. Trotsky, a Jew himself, was in command of the whole Russian Western front...Trotsky came to town himself and...talked surrounded by all these people; Jews, peasants, and laborers. The landowners, businessmen, and middle class people were in hiding or out of town--refugees." (pp. 46-47)

Many Jewish writers speak of the pro-German orientation of Polish Jews, as does Rynecki: "My father...was displaced in 1940 and deported to Majdanek, near Lublin, in 1943, where most probably he was executed by the Germans in a gas chamber. He believed to the end that no matter what, the Germans were of too high a culture to do the things they did. He represented, in a way, the mind of the Jewish people. They all believed the Germans. They all have made that massive mistake." (p. 63)

Rynecki makes some particularly offensive remarks (pp. 67-68), and it is hoped that no Polish extremist reads them lest his hatred of Jews becomes reinforced. Rynecki actually says that the 1939 Polish defeat proves that Polish history and patriotism mean nothing, and that Polish officers lacked intelligence. (Might not the 10:1 weapons asymmetry favoring the Germans have something to do with it?). To pour on the insults, Rynecki says that the Poles got what they deserved--the heavy Russian boot. (How is that different from saying that the Jews deserved the Holocaust because of their long-term pro-German orientation, often at Polish expense?)

Rynecki even says that, while he may forgive the Germans, he would never forgive the Poles (For what? Wasn't it the Germans who had killed the 5-6 million Jews?). Amazingly, he categorically says that NO Pole would help a Jew out of benevolence, and excoriates Poles for requiring payment (He owes his life to such a Pole). He has no problem with the Danes (whom he glorifies) having taken hefty fees to ship Jews to Sweden, and disregards the fact that the Poles, very unlike the Danes, lived under German-imposed near-starvation conditions, and couldn't readily provide food for free.

Let's end on a positive note. For once, Rynecki recognizes the shared fate of Jews and Poles: "[Hitler]...committed genocide on the Jewish, Polish, Russian people...The Jews were alone. So were the Poles." (p. 66)