Jewish Nazicollaborators

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michael mills
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Re: Jewish Nazicollaborators

#271

Post by michael mills » 03 Jan 2012, 00:10

Is there anything in the Polish-language document posted by Artur Szulc that indicates WHEN Arek W made his proposal to the Germans?
WM assumes that the proposal was made at the beginning of 1943, ie the date of the document itself.

Of course at the beginning of 1943 mass killing was well underway, and it was widely known, as wm says.

But Artur Szulc's post just says that the proposal to transfer Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to Poniatowa was found among his things, presumably after his execution by the Jewish Underground. The proposal itself might have been written at some earlier date.

If Arek W had made his proposal at, say, the beginning of 1942, there would be no reason to conclude that he was collaborating with the German occupiers in sending Jews to their deaths.

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Re: Jewish Nazicollaborators

#272

Post by Artur Szulc » 03 Jan 2012, 00:19

M Mills,
Is there anything in the Polish-language document posted by Artur Szulc that indicates WHEN Arek W made his proposal to the Germans?
No, no such information is mentioned in the document.


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wm
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Re: Jewish Nazicollaborators

#273

Post by wm » 03 Jan 2012, 00:32

I'm not quite sure. At the beginning of the document they say that these most despicable outcasts of the Jewish community were helping the Germans after the second deportation of the Jews (which led to the Jewish armed insurgency in the Ghetto) on Janurary 18, 1943;
and
these degenerate brains suggested the [Nazi] beasts a plan to liquidate the Warsaw Jews in Poniatowa or Lublin manner.

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Re: Jewish Nazicollaborators

#274

Post by michael mills » 03 Jan 2012, 04:19

Could someone please translate exactly this paragraph>
Przy zastrzelonym dnia 21. lutego, getapowcu ARKU WAJNTRAUBIE znal eziono dokument, stwierdzajacy, ze on i jego "kolezki" podsuneli Niemcom plan "dobrowolnego" i "pokojowego" wysiadlenia Zydow do Poniatowa.
It seems we do not know what that plan consisted of.

Could it be that the ZOB executioners found a copy of this plan, and assumed from it, in the context of their knowledge gained by early 1943, that it was Wajntraub and his colleagues who had suggested to the Germans a "plan to liquidate the Warsaw Jews in the manner of Poniatow or Lublin".

It seems to me hardly likely that the plan to liquidate the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto was suggested to the Germans by some "degenerate" Jews. I am sure that the Germans were quite capable of thinking that up for themselves.

So why would the ZOB believe that the idea for the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto had come from Wajntraub?

Presumably only because they found the plan referred to. But we do not know what Wajntraub's intention was; perhaps he wanted to preserve the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto by having them transferred to a work camp.

The proclamation of the ZOB has all the trappings of some sort of power struggle going on between different factions within the Jewish community.

Just because the ZOB considered some Jews to be collaborators does not mean that they really were collaborators. For example, the ZOB considered all the members of the Judenrat to be collaborators, and assassinated some of them; but everything we know about the Warsaw Ghetto Judenrat suggests that they were trying to do their best to preserve their people in an impossible situation.

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wm
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Re: Jewish Nazicollaborators

#275

Post by wm » 03 Jan 2012, 10:35

on the gestapo man Arek Wajntraub, killed February 21st, a document was found, saying that he and his "buddies" suggested to the Germans a plan of "voluntary" and "peaceful" relocation of the Jews to Poniatowa.

The quotation marks are there to express irony. There is no doubt that the plan was nothing more than a few propaganda tricks to lure the Jews out of their hiding places.
Unfortunately Artur was mislead by the baroque language of the document and completely missed the meaning in this case.

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Re: Jewish Nazicollaborators

#276

Post by Artur Szulc » 03 Jan 2012, 11:24

No, wm, I was not mislead. I only missed to point out the irony since I thought that was obvious.
Beacuse, why the hell would a Jew be killed only for having such a document on him, if it was not intended to lure people.

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Re: Jewish Nazicollaborators

#277

Post by Artur Szulc » 03 Jan 2012, 20:01

Probaly, the first action of the ZOB was the killing of Jakub Lejkin, the deputy chief of the Jewish Ordnungsdienst in the getto. He was shot late november 1942.

According to one Polish document from the Delegatura network in august 1942 Maurycy Kohn and Zelig Heller were shot inside the getto. Kohn and Heller had been accomplices of Gancwajch, the man behind the "Thirteen", but separated from him and made some own buisness arrangements with the Germans. In the getto they were seen as "Gestapomen"

Wladyslaw Szpilman writes in his memoirs that Kohn and Heller was shot by the SS.
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wm
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Re: Jewish Nazicollaborators

#278

Post by wm » 03 Jan 2012, 21:01

Artur Szulc wrote:Probaly, the first action of the ZOB was the killing of Jakub Lejkin, the deputy chief of the Jewish Ordnungsdienst in the getto. He was shot late november 1942.
It is interesting that his grave has survived to this day, but it seems nobody is taking care of the grave-site.
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Topspeed
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Re: Jewish Nazicollaborators

#279

Post by Topspeed » 19 Jan 2012, 14:36

I did not know Sondercommando AS people were considered as nazi collaborators since their life expectancy was only 2 months after arriving Auswitz.
For instance Henryk Mendelbaum's whole family was executed by the nazis at the camp...being in the Sondercommando AS gave him a chance to live to tell the story. Saying no to orders at the camp would hve meant instant death for him. Would there be a more propriate name for these poor people than a jewish nazicollaborator...like a mercyjew...given a chance to survive at those circumstances was an ordeal...labelling them as nazicollaborators won't ease their burden a bit.
There was a document of the Sondercommando AS worker Henryk Mendelbaum and seemed like he had no other chance to survice.

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Re: Jewish Nazicollaborators

#280

Post by Artur Szulc » 18 Feb 2012, 10:45

For instance Henryk Mendelbaum's whole family was executed by the nazis at the camp...being in the Sondercommando AS gave him a chance to live to tell the story. Saying no to orders at the camp would hve meant instant death for him. Would there be a more propriate name for these poor people than a jewish nazicollaborator...like a mercyjew...given a chance to survive at those circumstances was an ordeal...labelling them as nazicollaborators won't ease their burden a bit.
I agree, to call members of the Sonderkommando in a death camp nazicollaborators is not apropriate.

But in this thread the main focus have been on Jewish agents, spies and informers.

Between 1947 and 1950 the Central Committee of the Jews in Poland organised so called Citizens courts in which trials were held against Jews were suspected of criminal acts during the war. This included former members of the Judische Ordnungsdienst, Judenrats or informers. Even kapos in camps were investigated and for the most part the accusation included bad behavior when no German were around. For instance, the former Jewish police and kapo in Plaszow camp, A Ajntracht, were accused of being brutal against other inmates. He was found guilty and his punishment was that he was excluded from the Jewish community.
(Archiwum Zydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego, sygn 313/1 Sady Spoleczne, akta w sprawie Aleksandra Ajntrachta.)

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Re: Jewish Nazicollaborators

#281

Post by Artur Szulc » 19 Feb 2012, 20:47

During the last years Polish historians (among them prof Jan Grabowski, prof Barbara Engelking-Boni, Alina Skibinska) from the Center for Holocaust Studies in Warsaw have done some pretty unique work regarding Polish-Christian participation in the third stage of the Holocaust, the so called Judenjagd. It is an undisputed fact that the Polish police (Policja Granatowa) and polish peasants or locals from small villages or towns participated in the hunts for hidden Jews. Some Poles were indeed forces to participate, and some did it voluntarily since they counted that they could robe the murdered Jews of their clothes, money or jewelry.

There are many cases of Polish brutality against Jewish refugees. Some were murdered with axes or sticks. Many were beaten to death. And Jewish women raped before they were killed.

Personally I am having a hard time to understand this vicious acts of violence since they had not been at all common in Poland before the war. Sure, acts of violence against Jews had occurred but they were not as common as some western historians claim they had and not as uncommon as some Polish historians claim.
What happened in occupied Poland from 1942 and to the end of 1944 was something else. At one end of the scale thousands of Christian Poles, even hardened anti-Semites, risked their lives to save Jews and at the other end, Christian Poles were killing them.

No historian can present accurate numbers of Jews killed by Poles, directly or indirectly (handing over them to German gendarmes or Polish police, or denunciations) . Some figures go as high as tens of thousands but this seems to me to be highly overestimated. For sure, we are talking about several thousands.

But what strikes me is that none of these Polish professional historians are researching how many Polish Jews were denounced by other Polish Jews? The fact that most of them acted to save their own skin cannot be used as an argument not to research the matter since the actions of Jewish denouncers resulted in the deaths of other Jews.
Some years ago, in a magazine which is published by the Center, had several articles in it which focused on Jewish collaborators but since then the Center do not spend any time researching this matter deeper.

Take for instance the city of Cracow. A documented fact is that several Jews were in the service of different German police agencies. Information about these Jewish informers can be found in both Polish wartime documents and eyewitness accounts, both Jewish and non-Jewish. For instance, In one report, written in the autumn of 1943, from a member of the Zegota in Cracow one can read that: “… the greatest plague for hidden Jews are Jewish confidents in the service of the Gestapo and German Police.” (Source: AZIH, sygn 230/136 Varia okupacyjne. Materialy Zegota. Sprawozdanie KZ Krakowa za okres VII i VIII 1943 roku, strona 17.)
(And in Polish: Jednakowoz najwieksza plaga dla ukrywajacych sie zydow sa zydzi konfidenci stojacy na uslugach Gestapo i policji niem.)

According to a later report one Jewish confident Brottman/Brodman was responsible for the deaths of 25 Jews who he had denounced to the Germans because they had practiced illegal religious rituals.
Tadeusz Pankiewicz, a Christian Pole awarded the Righteous medal by Yad Vashem, who had had a pharmacy in the Ghetto, wrote in his memoirs about another Jewish informer who had denounced several Jews.
And I have already written about Stephania Brandstätter.

Jewish denunciations must be regarded as a factor if one seriously wants to research why and how hidden Jews were found and killed by the Germans. A historian who only researches the behavior of Christian Poles and omits what Jewish confidents did, can never present a full picture of the horrors which faced Jews in hiding. Of course, all Jews - confidents or nor - were condemnd to die, but what relevance does this have for those who were denounced and killed? I would say, no relevance at all. From the perspective of the victim the result was death, regardless if the denouncer were non-Jewish or Jewish and thats why both kind of "perpertrators" should be exposed.

PF
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Re: Jewish Nazicollaborators

#282

Post by PF » 28 Jun 2013, 20:18


Sid Guttridge
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Re: Jewish Nazicollaborators

#283

Post by Sid Guttridge » 29 Jun 2013, 13:39

I would submit that collaboration implies a degree of voluntarism and/or shared beliefs or goals.

Willing collaborators should be distinguished from reluctant tools.

I would suggest that the former worked with the Nazis, while the latter worked for the Nazis.

Cheers,

Sid.

Piotr Kapuscinski
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Re: Jewish Nazicollaborators

#284

Post by Piotr Kapuscinski » 27 Jan 2015, 01:04

Aswaan Rafaat wrote:In Polish tradition there was no hatred of Jews. In polish literature, Jews were even national heroes, pure characters. For example, Jankiel in "Pan Tadeusz" of Adam Mickiewicz, Meir Ezofowicz in Elisa Orzeszkowa's writings.
English translation of "Pan Tadeusz" by Adam Mickiewicz is available for free in the link below:

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/28240?m ... e_stranger
There are words which carry the presage of defeat. Defence is such a word. What is the result of an even victorious defence? The next attempt of imposing it to that weaker, defender. The attacker, despite temporary setback, feels the master of situation.

PF
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Re: Jewish Nazicollaborators

#285

Post by PF » 27 Jan 2015, 02:22

related Link of Group 13 of Warsaw
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_13

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