The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945 by Saul Friedländer
Authors: Saul Friedländer
Tags: History
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In Warsaw in April 1940, according to statistics found in the Ringelblum archives, “some 107,000 men were forced laborers while during the six months that followed, 33,000 persons payed for the exemption.” 150
How did the “Jewish masses” respond to the hail of physical and psychological blows that descended on them from day one of the German occupation? Of course each individual response was different, but if we look for a common denominator among a substantial majority, the prevalent reaction was a belief in rumors, even the most absurd, as long as they offered hope: Germany had suffered grievous losses at the hands of the French, Hamburg had been occupied by British forces, Hitler was dead, German soldiers were abandoning their units at a growing rate, and so on and on. Bottomless despair gave way to frantic expectations, sometimes in recurring sequences on one and the same day. “The Jews have reached the stage of messianic prophecies,” Sierakowiak noted on December 9, 1939. “A rabbi from Gora Kalwarii supposedly announced that a liberation miracle will happen on the sixth day of Chanukah. My uncle says that very few soldiers and Germans can be seen in the streets. This tendency to take comfort from nothing irritates me. It’s better not to say anything. In the evening a rumor spread about an armistice,” and so it went. 151
IX
While the German grip on the Jewish population of the Warthegau and the General Government was tightening, in the Soviet-occupied zone of Poland, the 1.2 million local Jews and the approximately 300,000 to 350,000 Jewish refugees from the western part of the country were getting acquainted with the heavy hand of Stalinism. A muddled Polish military announcement calling on men to reassemble in the east of the country, broadcast on September 7, had triggered an eastward exodus, accelerated by the rapid German advance. On the seventeenth, both the refugees and the local population suddenly discovered that they were under Soviet rule. Jews, albeit in much smaller numbers, continued to escape to the Soviet zone until early December, and a trickle of refugees managed to cross the new border until June 1941. 152 The elite of Polish Jewry—intellectuals, religious leaders, Zionists, and Bundists among others—fled the Germans but did not feel safe from communist persecution either: They moved on from eastern Poland to independent Lithuania, particularly to Vilna.
There is little doubt that many local and refugee Jews in eastern Poland, threatened by the Germans and long-suffering victims of the Poles, welcomed the Soviet troops. So did many Ukrainians. Moshe Kleinbaum (later known as Moshe Sneh, a commander of the Jewish underground army in Palestine [the Haganah] and ultimately, although he had started as right-of-center liberal, the leader of the Israeli Communist Party) reported on March 12, 1940, that the Jewish population of Luck, where he was at the time, watched the rolling in of the Red Army with curiosity, like everybody else. The young Jewish communists, not particularly numerous, represented the unpleasant exception: “Their behavior on that day was conspicuous for its vociferousness, which was greater than that of other groups. In this fashion it was possible to obtain the erroneous impression that the Jews were the most festive guests at this celebration.” 153
The sense of relief among Jews was certainly more widespread than Kleinbaum admitted, and their initial attitude to Soviet presence more enthusiastic than he reported. We shall see further on how the Poles perceived the issue. In the late 1970s historian Isaiah Trunk went further than Kleinbaum in his severe assessment of Jewish communists. According to Trunk, these Jewish communists were both tactless and treacherous: Their enthusiasm had a triumphant tinge; they penetrated the local Soviet apparatus and did not hesitate to denounce Poles and Jews (“bourgeois” or “socialist”) to the NKVD [the Soviet
How did the “Jewish masses” respond to the hail of physical and psychological blows that descended on them from day one of the German occupation? Of course each individual response was different, but if we look for a common denominator among a substantial majority, the prevalent reaction was a belief in rumors, even the most absurd, as long as they offered hope: Germany had suffered grievous losses at the hands of the French, Hamburg had been occupied by British forces, Hitler was dead, German soldiers were abandoning their units at a growing rate, and so on and on. Bottomless despair gave way to frantic expectations, sometimes in recurring sequences on one and the same day. “The Jews have reached the stage of messianic prophecies,” Sierakowiak noted on December 9, 1939. “A rabbi from Gora Kalwarii supposedly announced that a liberation miracle will happen on the sixth day of Chanukah. My uncle says that very few soldiers and Germans can be seen in the streets. This tendency to take comfort from nothing irritates me. It’s better not to say anything. In the evening a rumor spread about an armistice,” and so it went. 151
IX
While the German grip on the Jewish population of the Warthegau and the General Government was tightening, in the Soviet-occupied zone of Poland, the 1.2 million local Jews and the approximately 300,000 to 350,000 Jewish refugees from the western part of the country were getting acquainted with the heavy hand of Stalinism. A muddled Polish military announcement calling on men to reassemble in the east of the country, broadcast on September 7, had triggered an eastward exodus, accelerated by the rapid German advance. On the seventeenth, both the refugees and the local population suddenly discovered that they were under Soviet rule. Jews, albeit in much smaller numbers, continued to escape to the Soviet zone until early December, and a trickle of refugees managed to cross the new border until June 1941. 152 The elite of Polish Jewry—intellectuals, religious leaders, Zionists, and Bundists among others—fled the Germans but did not feel safe from communist persecution either: They moved on from eastern Poland to independent Lithuania, particularly to Vilna.
There is little doubt that many local and refugee Jews in eastern Poland, threatened by the Germans and long-suffering victims of the Poles, welcomed the Soviet troops. So did many Ukrainians. Moshe Kleinbaum (later known as Moshe Sneh, a commander of the Jewish underground army in Palestine [the Haganah] and ultimately, although he had started as right-of-center liberal, the leader of the Israeli Communist Party) reported on March 12, 1940, that the Jewish population of Luck, where he was at the time, watched the rolling in of the Red Army with curiosity, like everybody else. The young Jewish communists, not particularly numerous, represented the unpleasant exception: “Their behavior on that day was conspicuous for its vociferousness, which was greater than that of other groups. In this fashion it was possible to obtain the erroneous impression that the Jews were the most festive guests at this celebration.” 153
The sense of relief among Jews was certainly more widespread than Kleinbaum admitted, and their initial attitude to Soviet presence more enthusiastic than he reported. We shall see further on how the Poles perceived the issue. In the late 1970s historian Isaiah Trunk went further than Kleinbaum in his severe assessment of Jewish communists. According to Trunk, these Jewish communists were both tactless and treacherous: Their enthusiasm had a triumphant tinge; they penetrated the local Soviet apparatus and did not hesitate to denounce Poles and Jews (“bourgeois” or “socialist”) to the NKVD [the Soviet
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