Bondage to the Dead: Poland and the Memory of the Holocaust (Modern Jewish History) [Hardcover]

Steinlauf recognizes the mutuality of Polish-Jewish prejudices: "For the Jew, both peasant and noble, each in his own way, manifested those characteristics of brutality, ignorance, and loutishness that were the antithesis of the Jewish ethos; they were, in a word, goyim (gentiles)."(p. 6). He realizes the fact that the 1918-era and 1945-era pogroms occurred within the context of generalized violence (p. 19, 45). Remembering that Polish Jews constituted only 10% of the prewar general population, Steinlauf is rather candid about prewar Jewish economic dominance:"Jews were vastly overrepresented in commerce and in the professions. In 1921, more than 60 percent of those in commerce were Jews; in 1931, more than half the doctors in private practice and one-third of the lawyers were Jews. Although foreign investment and state-run enterprises had begun to displace Jewish-owned industry, on the eve of World War II Jewish firms still employed more than 40 percent of the Polish labor force, while certain industries, textiles and food most notably, were predominantly in Jewish hands."(p. 16).

Steinlauf faults: "...American and British Jews, who found denouncing Polish anti-Semitism easier than criticizing their own governments' inaction in saving Jews."(p. 37). He admits that there is no way of even estimating how many Polish Jews survived the Holocaust (p. 46). Steinlauf (p. 129) cites an example of postwar Polish reluctance to acknowledge the hiding of Jews as being motivated by fear of being robbed of the suspected Jewish wealth left behind.

Steinlauf attacks various historians, notably Richard C. Lukas and Norman Davies, for "blurring" the deaths of Poles and Jews (p. 105, 153). This is not surprising because, as so many others before him, Steinlauf tries to exalt the deaths of Jews above that of all others, using the time-worn but fallacious "Not all of the Victims of the Nazis were Jews, but all Jews were victims of the Nazis" argument. To begin with, nearly 2/3rds of the world's Jews were out of Germany's reach and, short of literally conquering the world, neither Hitler nor his successors could possible have killed all the world's Jews. (In contrast, nearly all ethnic Poles were at Germany's complete and permanent mercy in the event of a German victory). Moreover, far from all accessible Jews were killed. Finland's (Germany's ally) Jews were never molested, and Bulgaria's Jews were only pursued halfheartedly. The neutrality of Switzerland and Sweden was consistently respected despite their Jewish populations (notably the famous escaped Danish Jews sheltered by the latter). Known Jewish Allied POWs were spared. Thousands of European Jews were used by Germany for forced labor and, with some exceptions, were not killed in the latest days of the war. As for permanent acceptance of known Jews by the Nazis, thousands of full-blooded German Jews were arbitrarily declared Aryans, and thereby spared (the Schutzjuden).

Steinlauf cites figures that degrade the number of Poles killed by Germans from 3 million to 2 million (p. 152) without mentioning the fact that Jewish deaths can also be reduced (e. g., from 6 million to 5.1 million: Hilberg). Steinlauf then tries to discount the eventual extermination of Poles by claiming that Poles were only to be resettled. But everyone knows that "resettlement" is a euphemism for extermination. In fact, Jews were supposed to only undergo "resettlement". Finally, Hitler, Himmler, and others had repeatedly stated that all Poles must be destroyed, not merely relocated.

Steinlauf clearly takes the contra side in the Carmelite Convent controversy, as if the fact that Jews were 90% of the victims at Auschwitz entitles them to dictate terms to all others. Disappointingly, Steinlauf takes the low road of blaming Christianity for the Holocaust, even though Nazism had been a racist, secularist, pan-German ideology that had nothing to do with Christianity, and historical Jewish attitudes towards Christians had been no less negative than historical Christian attitudes towards Jews. Finally, exterminationist philosophies originated not with Christianity but with the Jacobins of the French Revolution.

For all his fantastic thesis (see ensuing paragraphs) Steinlauf at least puts Polish post-Jewish property acquisitions in proper perspective: "While the Germans certainly took the lion's share of factories, warehouses, luxury residences, fancy furniture and clothing, the leftovers went to Poles."(p. 31).

Steinlauf quibbles with semantics (guilt vs. responsibility). The reader may be amazed to learn that Steinlauf (pp. 57-61, 114-117) actually believes that Poles are responsible in a sense for Jewish deaths, not for having caused them, but for having witnessed them! He fails to inform the reader if those Jews (especially those who did not like Poles) who witnessed the death of Poles in the hands of the Germans are therefore responsible in some way for the Poles' deaths. Instead, Steinlauf (and, more recently, Jan Thomas Gross) take Judeocentric thinking to new levels of absurdity by "psychoanalyzing" the Poles. As if Jews were higher beings of some sort, anyone witnessing their deaths or acquiring post-Jewish properties is now supposed to be ipso facto responsible for their deaths, and/or uniquely and permanently traumatized. The fact that Poles generally do not think this way is only proof that they are engaging in denial and repression. How convenient! Moreover, any movement of modern Poles towards Judeocentric thinking is therefore hailed as a Polish overcoming of the foregoing psychological defenses.

Finally, the psychoanalysis of an entire ethnic group invites another. Conspiracy theories and the Holocaust Industry aside, how does, for instance, one explain the persistence of Jewish Polonophobia so many decades after real or imagined Polish injustices to Jews had ceased to be relevant to the Jewish experience? How about this: There exists a centuries-old German-Jewish symbiosis. For instance, most Polish Jews came from Germany, and Yiddish is modified German. The murder of 5-6 million Jews by Germans created in intractable conflict. It is circumvented by the "de-Germanization" of the Nazis and by the displacement of Jewish anger and hatred from Germans unto Poles. The fact that Poles lack the political clout to fight back effectively makes this displacement all the more attractive.

Yitzhak Shamir's statement had disgraced him - anti semitism in Europe cannot be denied - what also cannot be denied is that Poland was the only European country to give Jewish citizens rights, and had the only government which publicly stood up for its Jewish population when other countries scoffed. I resented statements that seem to project the idea that Poland was somehow to blame for the Holocaust - the German Army was to blame. I think although the author provided some excellent information and history not readily available elsewhere, he also forgot that Hitler's policy was to also exterminate Poles - and that in many concentration camps the first victims were Poles. There wasn't enough comparative info in the book, for example about America's role in denying the Holocaust during the war - even though Polish people cried out about what was going on.

I've read hundreds of books and articles on Polish-Jewish relations, published in several different countries and languages. In that avalanche, Michael C. Steinlauf's "Bondage to the Dead: Poland and the Memory of the Holocaust" stands out. It is one of the most fair.

"Bondage" is the best one-volume introduction to Polish-Jewish relations in the post-Holocaust era. There is an amazing amount of information, treated swiftly, deftly, and responsibly. Much of the material is from underground or hard-to-find sources. If you don't read Steinlauf, you may miss this goldmine.

Not just persons interested in Polish-Jewish relations would benefit from this book. Anyone interested in the human psyche under the worst conditions imaginable will find much to challenge, sadden, and, ultimately, inspire.

Writing about Polish-Jewish relations is hard. Both Poles and Jews have a tradition of disputativeness. David Ben Gurion is said to have said, "Two Jews, three opinions." Poles are similar. Debate, verging into contrariness, is a value. No matter what you say about Polish-Jewish relations, there is a Pole or a Jew who will stand on a chair and shout that you are completely wrong, and voicing some conspiracy theory.

Traditional disputativeness was exacerbated by the unparalleled suffering endured during the Holocaust. Had the Shoah not taken place in Poland, and had Poles "merely" endured what the Nazis and Soviets did to them, Poles would be acknowledged as one of the most martyred, and heroic, peoples in history. But, even as Poles were being rounded up into camps like Auschwitz, tortured, and murdered, even as Polish churches, museums, and even factories and forests were being methodically destroyed, even as Polish children were being gassed or deported, Jews were being annihilated. That planned, and almost completed, total annihilation of Jews has caused the world to be less aware of Polish suffering.

In the interwar era, between WW I and II, various factors, outlined by Steinlauf, contributed to a rise of unprecedented anti-Semitism in Poland. This historic "perfect storm" -- so contrary to Poland's tradition of tolerance -- could not have occurred at a worse time. America, overwhelmed by immigration, responded with Scientific Racism, and closed its doors to Jews. And Hitler was just next door, in Germany.

Poles and Jews are performers on a world stage. Their audience: Americans and Western Europeans -- whose leaders responded all too late to the Holocaust, and where the "dumb Polack" stereotype impedes understanding -- have often been eager to make profoundly unhelpful and unintelligent comments. One example, cited by Steinlauf, is the tendency for even canonical newspapers like the "New York Times" to refer to "Polish concentration camps." Steinlauf also points out that Poland was effectively betrayed and abandoned by its Western allies at Yalta.

Many "isms" are at play here: Fascism, Racism, Zionism, Catholicism, Communism, Judaism, Nationalism. People who have a problem with Christianity use Polish failures during the Holocaust as a cudgel to beat Christians. Propagandists who wanted to support the post-war Soviet hegemony over Poland point to the Kielce pogrom as proof that Poles are beasts who can't govern themselves. Polish nationalists won't allow any mention of Poles' failures.

People more deeply wedded to the triumph of their own particular worldview than to truth have used isolated, decontextualized facts of 20th century Polish-Jewish interaction to support their own worldview, and have ignored facts that might weaken their worldview. Steinlauf struggles, and largely succeeds, to present all pertinent facts, and to let truth, rather than any given worldview, predominate.

During WW II, as Steinlauf recounts here, some Poles did hand Jews over to Nazis; some Poles did take advantage of "post-Jewish" properties; some Poles did respond with approval to the extermination of the Jews. Steinlauf is ever careful to report that some Poles, at great risk to themselves, helped Jews. That being acknowledged, something else must be acknowledged -- Poles witnessed the most notorious and methodical genocide in history. Steinlauf asks, "What impact did this horrible witness have on Poles?"

Steinlauf draws on the work of psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, who, as Steinlauf writes, "has devoted decades to studying the effects of massive, traumatic exposure to death in various situations including the Holocaust" (57). Lifton wrote of a "death imprint" that imposes itself on the psyches of "survivors of massive death trauma." "Death guilt" "arises from the encounter with a situation in which the possibilities for physical and even psychic response are nonexistent." Steinlauf quotes Lifton: "one feels responsible for what one has not done, for what one has not felt, and above all for the gap between that physical and psychic inactivation and what one felt called upon ...to do and feel" (57). Psychic numbing and a repetition compulsion follow.

The book does not focus exclusively on Lifton's theories and their application to Polish-Jewish relations. Lifton's theories, though, do offer Steinlauf's understanding of how and why some Poles have behaved, in the post-Holocaust era, in a way that defies outsiders' understanding. Why, for example, did Poles who saved Jews so often choose to keep that fact hidden?

In the end, this book is valuable to anyone interested in plumbing the depths of the human psyche. During WW II, Poles and Jews lived the worst of the human experience. How did they respond? This book reports the worst, but it also reports the best. As this book shows, courageous Poles, both Jewish and non-Jewish, like Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, Jan Blonski, Czeslaw Milosz, and Adam Michnik, have been confronting Poland's nightmarish 20th century legacy not only since the end of WW II, but even during that war. Their testimony defies the self-congratulatory Western insistence, so often heard in response to J. T. Gross' "Neighbors," that Poles are nothing more than stereotypical brutes who require the guidance of more developed peoples to deal with their own history.

In the end, the heroes mentioned above and others like them, and Steinlauf's compassionate, fair approach, make this book an inspiring read.