From TLS, April 13, 2001:

Sir, -

Tony Judt and Abraham Brumberg (Letters, April 6) may complain that their side in the debate about Jedwabne is being misrepresented. But that is par for the course, especially as they themselves routinely misrepresent others. What is important is that the same standards [novel concept -S.K.] be applied to all parties included. And here one can report a small advance. At the third time of asking, Brumberg has come round to the sensitive issue of misconduct by Jews. He inadvertently confirms what ought to have been the starting point of the discussion about Jedwabne in the first place, namely that vice and virtue are not determined by ethnic criteria.

Judt could learn much from your Latvian correspondent ((Vaiva Pukite, April 6), who writes movingly about "the agonizing choices" and "tragic dilemmas" of nations like Latvia or Poland which were caught in the trap between Hitler and Stalin. Instead, he reveals his true hand by suggesting that his "European mainstream" consists of those who have left "the nationalist rearguard", "anti-Semitic clerics" (and me) behind. In other words, he is not advocating universal values but only a more deferential approach to Jewish matters. This simply won't wash, even in a mainstream. If he were seriously in favour of people "staring their history in the face", he would examine the attitudes of American Jewry, which did so little to help the victims of the Holocaust [! - S.K.], but which is now so ready to point the accusing finger at others. Nationalism and sheer selfishness must be contested everywhere, not just in selective quarters. And accusations are not the end of it. For after the accusations come American organizations demanding apologies, American lawyers demanding compensation and American politicians demanding unconditional support for the State of Israel. This is no fit way either to remember the dead or to disentangle the rights and wrongs of history.

On wartime Poland, Judt is way off target by making comparisons with France, the Netherlands, or Austria. Vichy France, for example, had a French government, a French administration and French officials, who could subsequently be held to account for their malpractices. Occupied Poland had no such luxuries, in either the Nazi or the Soviet zones of occupation. All Polish institutions were abolished, all Polish enterprises confiscated and all Polish law cancelled. As a result, with the possible exception of the Underground Resistance, there was no Polish collective that might subsequently have been held collectively responsible...

What is more, France had only one occupying power to deal with. Poland had two, and both of them run by mass murderers. The consequences should not be too hard to imagine. Those elements of the citizenry who felt themselves in mortal danger from the Nazis were sorely tempted to collaborate with the Soviets. Those who felt threatened with death or ruin by the Soviets were sorely tempted to join the fight against Communism. The different experiences of these different groups lie at the root of differing historical interpretations.

Abraham Brumberg resorts to many ruses. One of them is to pretend that he alone understands plain English. Another is to shout "false equation", if ever Jewish conduct is questioned. The latter is usually enough to stop debate, but deserves examination. On the one hand, it is perfectly true, under Nazi rule, that all Jews were in unparalleled danger. Their predicament can only be discussed with the greatest caution and compassion. On the other hand, it would NOT [emphasis N.D.] be correct to maintain either that Jews were the most imperilled group in all places, or that the rest of the population were at any time free agents. Living at the mercy of the Gestapo or the N.K.V.D. proved a murder-filled nightmare for almost everyone. When the Nazis employed police auxiliaries, for example, they practised both deception and threats. The auxiliaries were first told that disobedience under military regulations was punishable by death. They were then told darkly that they could be assigned to "special duties". When the killing actually began, one could not realistically approach one's SS officer and say: "I'm sorry, mein Gruppenfuehrer, I think that I've changed my mind." Of course, circumstances could vary in degree. The Jewish Police in the ghettos operated under more immediate threats than some of those outside.

But free men and women should not rush to condemn the inhabitants of wartime Eastern Europe by the standards of free countries. And summary justice WAS [emphasis N.D.] regularly administered by the Underground against collaborators. If Brumberg hasn't heard of it, it doesn't mean it didn't happen. [what it does mean is Brumberg's statement to the TLS that he doesn't know about this is shocking for someone they employ as an "expert" on this subject - when I read his statement in the TLS in a bookstore, I went over to a shelf, plucked out Lukas' Forgotten Holocaust and read about how Stefan Korbonski had reported the condemnation of collaborators - S.K.]

Brumberg's criticisms of Jan Nowak on the question of quislings and military service in wartime Poland are based on elementary misunderstandings. He does not distinguish between conscripts (draftees) and volunteers; and he makes no reference to the Nazis' crazy system of pseudo-racial classification. Non-Jewish Poles, in fact, were classed, like their Jewish compatriots, as Untermenschen or "sub-humans". But they were put into three or four special categories. Class I referred to Poles "eminently suitable" for Germanization. Class II referred to those thought "capable" of Germanization and Class III referred to "unsuitables". A fourth category consisted of so-called "Non-Aryan Christians", that is, a large contingent of people who did not regard themselves as Jewish but who were seen as Jewish by Nazi administrators applying the Nuremberg Laws. In 1939-40, the Wehrmacht took only Class I conscripts. By 1944-5, it was taking Class IIs and Class IIIs. Such men had no choice. And, as the British Eighth Army found in Italy, tens of thousands of them came over to the Allied ranks.

Yet Nowak was talking of political and military VOLUNTEERS [emphasis N.D.]. And here the record is unambiguous.

No Polish leader of any standing ever offered to work for the Nazis. And no military unit was formed under German Command from Polish volunteers. By 1942, the Waffen-SS was filling up with volunteer divisions from France, Holland, Russia, Scandinavia, Hungary, Ukraine and even Bosnia. But they never got any Poles. Sad to relate, there were more British volunteers for the Waffen-SS than there were Polish volunteers [! - S.K.]

Werner Cohn (Letters, March 30) thinks that the Kielce Pogrom took place "between November 1944 and December 1945". In fact, it took place in July 1946, in the immediate aftermath of the Communists' falsified Referendum; and about fifty persons are thought to have perished. During the repressions and civil war of 1945-8, an estimated 1,500 Jews lost their lives out of an estimated total of 30-40,000 people.

Mr. Cohn thinks that "thirteen major Polish parties [were] represented in the London government-in-exile". In fact, there were four: the Peasant Party, the Polish Socialist Party, the National Democrats and the Christian Democrats. Poland's exiled government included Jewish representatives and ministers.

Cohn thinks that the ideology of the National Democrats was "barely distinguishable from that of the Nazis".

In fact, it was more akin to right-wing Zionism. The National Democrats believed in "one country for one nation". As a result, they said many horrid things about unassimilated Jews but also about international socialists and especially Poland's Ukrainians and Germans. They came from a tradition which saw Germany as Poland's chief enemy; and they fought the Nazis with exemplary fervor.

Werner Cohn thinks that "we must...talk about Jedwabne, and Kielce and yues, about Endeks". And so we should. And so we do.

But we should not tar whole nations with the sins of individuals, and we should not reduce wartime Poland's ethnic kaleidoscope to a dialectical slanging match between one team of innocents and another team of miscreants.

In Poland, where they tend to know more about Polish history than they do in Brooklyn [or Chevy Chase, MD - S.K.], the debate about Jedwabne is being conducted very thoroughly.

The latest twist came when both the Director of the Institute of National Memory and the Director of the State Archives produced previously unexamined files which appear to throw doubt both on the scale and the authorship of the massacre. The new documentation, which is still being evaluated, may or may not invalidate Jan T. Gross's conclusions. But it certainly underlines the very narrow range of sources which he used.

--Norman Davies
Wolfson College, Oxford, TLS April 13, 2001