From: sethr@cbnewsl.cb.att.com (seth.r.rosenthal)
Subject: Re: Have the american Jews done enough?
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 16:50:40 GMT
Followup-To: soc.culture.jewish

In article <matthew.717648659@mugga>, matthew@stats.mu.oz.au (Maciek Blasikiewicz) writes:
> bc744@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Mark Ira Kaufman) writes:
> 
> >   There are many lessons to be learned from the Holocaust.  Most
> >important is the lesson to be learned from the Righteous Gentile.
> >The Righteous Gentiles were those exatraordinary individuals who,
> >to one degree or another, risked their lives to save Jewish life.
> >Many of these people were caught and murdered along with the Jews
> >they were protecting.
> >   The message is that each of us always has a choice.  It was no
> >accident that the death camps were located in Poland.  The Polish
> >people had, over the centuries, exhibited rabid anti-semitism, so
> >the nazis knew that they would not have a problem operating death
> >camps in Poland.  There were Poles who saved Jews.  But they were
> >the exception rather than the rule.
> >   Maybe the most important lesson of the Holocaust is that we as
> >individuals always have choices.  They may be difficult, but they
> >always exist.  It has been said that for evil to thrive, one does
> >not have to do evil things, but, rather, enough people have to do
> >nothing in the face of evil.  
> >-- 
> >   "One can be a racist.  Or one can be a human being.  But one
> >may not be both."
> >                                 - Rabbi Abraham Joshua heschel
> 
> The main reasons for the placement of the camps in occupied Poland were
> logistic: that's where most of the people to be exterminated were. I do
> not believe the Nazis had major problems operating their camps whereever
> they were located (and there were some outside occupied Poland). So I
> don't think that rabid polish antisemitism exhibited over the centuries
> had much to do with the decision to place the camps in occupied Poland.
> 
> But then again, I'm probably wrong, blinded by the centuries-old rabid
> polish antisemitism which I ingested together with my mother's milk...
> 
> 

Without speculating on the effect of local anti-semitism on the
placement of the Death Camps, let me add the following reasons
for their location in those parts of Poland.

1) The Nazi leadership didn't want to have the deathcamps placed
where the general German public could see them.  Although anti-semitic
in much of its makeup, the German public also had cultural and
military heroes being gassed, as well as many of their friends
and neighbors.  I don't think the Nazis cared what the Polish
public saw.

2) The rail lines were pretty good in these areas of Poland, and
Jews from the Balkans, Austria, Holland, etc. could all be
transported there without much difficulty.

3) There were substantial industrial complexes in the area
that were used by the Nazis with Jewish and Slavic slave
labor.  Having Jews deposited nearby meant that Jews fit
for labor could be housed close to the factories (at least
in terms of Aushwitz).

Most of the Jews actually didn't live in Poland, by the way.
Polands 3.5 million Jews was a large community, but the
total in the Soviet Union was larger, and
the Czech and Hungarian communities were substantial
(though smaller than Poland's) and in easy transport distance
of Aushwitz and Treblinka.  I suspect the Nazis expected
to hold on to Poland longer, and probably intended to use
the camps on Western Poles after the Jews were gone had
they been more successful in war.


	Seth Rosenthal

Disclaimer: All opinions are my own not my employers'.

Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish