From: kkniaz@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (Krzysztof W. Kniaz)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish
Subject: Re: Hiding Jews and Governments-in-exile
Keywords: Shoah Effiectiveness of Governments-in-exile Protecting Hiding Jews
Date: 27 Sep 92 20:01:49 GMT
Organization: University of Pennsylvania

Very well Adam! Master Schopenhauer would be proud of you! Very skillful
use of the technique called "focusing" or "narrowing". Shall I remind you
,that you demanded "just one example" of complicitity with Nazis?

I have still to grasp the reasoning of Adam Reed as to why the activity of 
Vichy or Dutch police was better from the moral point of view than the one 
of organized or unorganized Poles who hunted down the Jews in Poland, but 
let us leave this problem for a moment.

Adam has not yet proven his very definite claim that ALL allied 
governments-in-exile made strong statements regarding the persecution of 
Jews in their respective countries in the first days after the 
persecutions were started. I understand this requires a thorough research 
and must take a lot of time. However, if one makes such claims publicly, 
one should be ready to back them up, as Adam will undoubtedly do.

Neither has Adam substantiated his claim that Polish underground loyal to 
the London government killed tens of thousands of Jews. I have in the 
meantime consulted a major source to this problem, the book by Yisrael 
Gutman and Shmuel Krakowski, "Unequal Victims. Poles and Jews During World 
War II" (Holocaust Library, New York, 1986). I believe Adam will agree 
that this source is credible, although its balance might be a subject 
of discussion.

Anyway, Gutman and Krakowski make a distinction between Polish underground 
fighting organized Jewish partisan units (Chapter 4: "The Polish 
underground and the Jews in 1943-1944), and murders and other crimes 
on Jewish fugitives committed mainly by the NSZ (units *not*recognizing the 
authority of the London government) (Chapter 6: "Jewish fugitives outside 
Warsaw"):

P. 216: "The largest numbers of such murders were perpetrated by the units 
of National Armed Forces; but some groups of the Home Army also shared 
this guilt. Obviously most of these units may have belonged to that part 
of the National Armed Forces which joined the Home Army".

Gutman and Krakowski also give an estimate of the number of Jews killed by 
the Poles or turned over to the Germans [mind you, the authors are not 
politically correct and write `Germans' instead of `Nazis'] as over 3,000 
authenticated cases (p. 238). Also, they give an estimate of the number 
of Jews *rescued* by Polish gentiles as 2652 persons, i.e. approximately 
the same (same page). Being real scholars, the authors remark that both 
numbers are probably way too low. 

Altogether, although the first of these numbers fills me with sorrow and
shame, it is still far cry from Adam Reed's informations, particularly
since Adam claims that theses crimes were committed by the units
affiliated with the Polish government-in-exile.

Even regarding the fights between the AK and Jewish (armed) units Gutman 
and Krakowski write "Still, the Home Army attacks on Jewish partisans were 
not the rule (p. 132)".

To conclude this posting, let me once again turn to the article of 
Istvan Deak "The Incomprehensible Holocaust". Deak writes: "It is another 
question what benefit, if any, the Poles derived in the long run from 
their unrelenting heroism." It appears they derived one Adam Reed calling 
their government-in-exile a "supposedly anti-Nazi one". (sigh)




--

Krzysztof Kniaz, University of Pennsylvania |Due to circumstances beyond
Lab for Research on the Structure of Matter |your control, you're master of 
Philadelphia, PA, 19104, USA                |your fate and captain of your soul
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish,soc.culture.polish