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• NIGHT WITHOUT AND END - »FAILED CORRECTION«

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NIGHT without an END. Fate of Jews in selected counties of occupied Poland
ed. Barbara Engelking, Jan Grabowski
Barbara Engelking, Tomasz Frydel, Jan Grabowski, Dariusz Libionka, Dagmara Swałtek-Niewińska, Karolina Panz, Alina Skibińska, Jean-Charles Szurek, Anna Zapalec, 

The two volumes present the fate of the Jews in nine selected counties of Poland, during the 1939-1945 period. The counties, from Węgrów in the north-east to Nowy Targ in the south, to Złoczów in the east, span the entire territory of the occupied land, allowing the readers to seize the dynamics of German policies of extermination and of Jewish resistance, on national scale.  Uniqueness of this study is related not only to the vast research undertaken by the authors but also to their historical methodology, which allowed them to descend to the level of individual trajectories of the tens of thousands of victims of the Holocaust.   The particular focus of the book is on the post-1942 period, once the Germans liquidated the ghettos and the surviving Jews sought shelter among the gentiles, on the “Aryan” side.

One of the most important conclusions of several years of our research concerning the Jewish survival strategies is the wealth of observations which testify to the level of own agency, to the initiative of the Jews in the face of the policies of extermination.  One is struck by their determination, mobility, courage with which the victims undertook the struggle for their own life and for the lives of their close ones. Once the liquidation actions in the ghettos have begun, few could harbor any further illusions as to the final goals of the German policies, and the Jews have intensified the desperate struggle for survival.  On the one hand, people prepared ingenious bunkers and hideouts inside their houses. On the other hand, the Jews started to seek contacts on the “Aryan” side, looking for help among their Christian neighbors.  Wherever possible, smuggling networks were being established, in order to spirit people abroad, especially to Slovakia and Hungary.

In all studied cases, the Jews were more likely to seek and to find help in rural areas, among the peasants, rather than in small towns, where most of them had dwelled. Their survival depended, to a large extent, on their Christian neighbors’ ability to overcome their own fear of all the dangers associated with the continued Jewish presence. The Jews in hiding were perceived as a clear threat to the rural communities and the norms of group behavior, the all-present antisemitism and the mechanism of social conformism, made rescue attempts all the more unlikely.  That’s why the acts of courageous people who decided to save the Jews and – by the same token – to defy not only the German regulations and terror but also the written and unwritten rules governing their communities, have to be appreciated even more.
The numbers speak for themselves: two out of every three Jews who attempted to seek shelter among the gentiles, died.  The studies included in the two presented volumes provide ample evidence of the important, and previously underestimated level s of the scale of the complicity of certain segments of the Polish society in the extermination of their Jewish neighbors and co-citizens.

„Drogie Dziecko, wybaczam Ci i niech Ci też Bóg przebaczy. Schodzę z tego świata jako ofiara dla Ciebie, ażebyś Ty mógł dalej żyć. Adam Wonszyk, ten. Co woził cegły, kiedy budowaliśmy nasz dom, był u mnie, przez kraty rozmawiałem z nim. Powiedział mi, że możesz przyjść do niego, on Cię przechowa. Powiedział też, że szkoda, że my wszyscy nie przyszliśmy wcześniej do niego. Dbaj o siebie, jedz i pij tak, żebyś mógł przetrwać tę gehennę. Uważaj, żebyś się nie przeziębił. Może nam się uda jeszcze wydostać z aresztu i pozostać przy życiu. To są ostatnie słowa Twego ojca, który jest ofiarą po to, żebyś Ty żył”.

List pożegnalny do Szmula Malera, napisany przez jego ojca, złapanego w kryjówce w czasie likwidacji we Frampolu 2 listopada 1942 r i przetrzymywanego przez kilka dni w lokalnej szkole, zanim wszyscy wyłapani w okolicy Żydzi zostali rozstrzelani na cmentarzu żydowskim
 

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