Hunt for the Jews

Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland

Author	Jan Grabowski
Original title	Judenjagd: polowanie na Żydów 1942-1945
Country	Canada / Poland / Israel
Language	English / Polish / Hebrew
Subject	Holocaust in Poland
Publisher	Indiana University Press / Center for Holocaust Studies
Publication date	2011
Published in English	2013
Media type	Print
Pages	303 / 257
ISBN	9780253010872 Polish book is 9788393220205

Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland is a 2013 book about the Holocaust in Poland by Jan Grabowski. The 2013 English edition followed a 2011 Polish-language edition and was in turn followed by a 2016 Hebrew edition.

The book describes the Judenjagd (German: "Jew hunt") from 1942 onwards, focusing on Dąbrowa Tarnowska County, a rural area in southeastern Poland. The Judenjagd was the German search for Jews who had escaped from the German-liquidated ghettos in Poland and tried to hide among the non-Jewish population.

Grabowski asserts that most of the Jews in hiding perished due to betrayal by local Poles, either via denunciation to German authorities or after being taken captive and being delivered by locals to the German gendarmerie or German-run "Polish police".

The book sparked a heated public debate, particularly when first published in Poland in 2011.

Contents

The book describes the Judenjagd (German for "Jew hunt") that began in 1942 and focuses on Dąbrowa, a former rural county in southeastern Poland (till 1939; later part of a German-administered Kreishauptmannschaft Tarnów). Grabowski describes an entire system set up by the Germans to extirpate Jews:

The German policy was based on terror. Poles faced the death penalty for any help they gave to Jews. Also, the Germans created a so-called “hostage” system among the Poles. In every community they designated people who would be rotated every couple of weeks. They were responsible for informing the Polish police, or the Germans, about Jews hiding in their towns. If a Jew was discovered that had not been reported, the so-called hostages would be harshly punished. So everyone was highly motivated to get rid of the Jews.

According to Grabowski, Poles were responsible for the deaths, directly or indirectly, of more than 200,000 Jews during the Holocaust. He held this estimate to be very conservative, as he did not include victims of the Polish Blue Police. "The great majority of Jews in hiding perished as a consequence of betrayal. They were denounced or simply seized, tied up and delivered by locals to the nearest station of the Polish police, or to the German gendarmerie".

The 2013 English edition was based on the 2011 Polish edition, but improved and augmented with additional evidence, cases, and discoveries.

Reception

Awards and public debate

In 2014 Hunt for the Jews was awarded the Yad Vashem International Book Prize. The book sparked a heated public debate, particularly when first published in Poland in 2011, especially for its assertion that Poles were either directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of 200,000 Jews during the Holocaust. Grabowski received death threats.

Polish-language reviews

Dariusz Stola questioned calculations of Jewish victims.

Dariusz Stola, a Professor of History at the Polish Academy of Sciences, reviewed the original, 2011 Polish-language edition of the book. He noted Grabowski's description of the hostage system set up by the Germans in rural Polish towns. "This diabolical mechanism," wrote Stola, "in some measure explains the hostility, observed in many rural communities, to persons who harbored Jews: they could bring disaster not only on themselves but on others." Stola disputed Grabowski's numerical estimates: "First, the author assumed, after an earlier work by Szymon Datner, that the number of fugitives seeking shelter came to about 10% of the number of Jews on the eve of the deportations... That 10% is not, strictly speaking, an estimate but rather a "guesstimate".... Secondly, a pall of ignorance [largely] surrounds the histories of the ghetto escapees who were not murdered but died of malnutrition, exhaustion, exposure, or disease. We will not find information about their deaths in postwar court records.” Finally, Stola noted that “Judenjagd speaks not only about the killing but also about the sheltering of Jews (sometimes by the same persons), about various kinds of aid given [to Jews], about the... disinterested rescuers who risked their own lives to save people who were hunted like animals."

Historian Bogdan Musial criticized the 2011 edition as improperly sourced, lacking in witness statements, archival documents, and German statements; and as improperly generalizing the antisemitic attitudes of the perpetrators to the local populace. He also wrote that Grabowski ignored the economic hardships and deportations suffered by Poles, which he believes affected their attitudes toward Jews. Musial wrote that, while the book elaborated on some Poles' prewar antisemitism, it devoted only three sentences to the Germans' antisemitic campaign. He further wrote that the book underestimated the number of Jewish survivors, while inflating the number of Poles complicit in German crimes. Musial noted that Grabowksi did not question statements from Jewish witnesses, but did take issue with those made by Poles. Grabowski rejected Musial's critique, writing that it was an attempt to disparage serious historical research on the basis of its subject matter and conclusions and that it failed to address the quality of the research methodology.

Historian Krystyna Samsonowska of the Jagiellonian University wrote in her review that Grabowski did not use all available sources, and "gave up" on actual field research; for example, by not trying to contact the families of Jewish survivors from Dąbrowa Tarnowska, or the Poles who hid them. Samsonowska argues that, by using broader resources, she could identify 90 Jews who had survived the war in hiding in Dąbrowa County, as opposed to the 38 cited by Grabowski, and notes the number of survivors was probably much higher. She also claims Grabowski understated the number of Righteous from Dąbrowa County by half.

Przemysław Różański, a Professor of History at the University of Gdańsk, reviewed the 2011 edition of the book and had a number of reservations, including Grabowski's presentation of forced participation of peasants as "cooperation", and his disregard, in relation to paid rescue of Jews, of the harsh economic conditions faced by Poles. While agreeing on the nature of prewar antisemitism in Poland, he disagreed with Grabowski's suggestion of a causal relation between that and the events described in the book, instead explaining it as a result of Nazi propaganda. Różański concludes that, despite his reservations, the book is a "valuable and useful work" which "[illustrates the] changes in local pathology taking place under German occupation in... the Generalgouvernement".

Łukasz Męczykowski, in a histmag.org review of the 2011 book, wrote that, while some historians try to seek truth calmly and impartially, others prefer passing condemnatory judgments, and Grabowski had chosen the latter path: Grabowski largely focused on finding those supposedly guilty of collaboration, and was averse to acknowledging those who had shown commendable behavior. Męczykowski wrote that Grabowski incorrectly accused Poland's Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) of trying to inflate the number of Polish citizens who helped Jews. Męczykowski wrote that Grabowski contradicted himself on certain points. Also that Grabowski, in calling upon Poles to admit their guilt, seemed unaware that there had long since been an ongoing debate in Poland, including educational programs prepared by Poland's IPN, about Polish participation in atrocities against Jews, which contradicts Grabowski's derogatory assertions about the Institute.

Tomasz Szarota, former director of the Department of Research on the History of Poland after 1945 at Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences, contrasted Grabowski's narrow focus with that of German historian Daniel Brewing: “while these authors [i.e., Jan Grabowski and Barbara Engelking] blame anti-Semitism and the desire for wealth for causing Poles to join the hunt for Jews, Brewing attributes a causative role to the occupation authorities who sought to use Polish peasants to fight all forms of resistance. In his opinion, several factors stood behind this ‘cooperation’ with the occupier: submission to the repeated calls from the Nazi authorities, the use of coercion, rewards offered for denouncing hidden Jews and the fear of punishment for failing to follow the occupier’s orders.”

German-language reviews

Yad Vashem historian Witold Mędykowski reviewed Judenjagd by Grabowski, It Was Such a Beautiful Sunny Day by Barbara Engelking, and Golden Harvest by Jan T. Gross. Mędykowski notes that Grabowski concentrates on a specific geographical area in attempting to trace the fates of Jews, which Mędykowski thinks is important as it permits statistical analysis of a demarcated set of persons. Mędykowski writes that a heated debate has taken place in Polish historiography about the rescuing of Jews, but that both sides have relied not on statistical analysis but on illustrative examples that are easily manipulated. Mędykowski writes that this debate has been ongoing for decades despite the limited validity of casting the Poles in a positive light. According to Mędykowski, being a victim of Nazi occupation does not exclude complicity in the deaths of Jews. Mędykowski writes that historian Bogdan Musial, who according to Mędykowski is a native of Dąbrowa Tarnowska County, responded harshly to the book, which provides a different picture than that conveyed in his parents' home. Mędykowski writes that Holocaust survivors Shevah Weiss and Samuel Willenberg confirm the negative attitudes toward Jews, which are well known to historians involved in Holocaust research. Mędykowski concludes that a "shock therapy" to demolish myths about the rescuing of Jews is due.

Jagiellonian University associate professor Piotr Weiser reviewed Hunt for the Jews by Grabowski, It Was Such a Beautiful Sunny Day by Barbara Engelking, and Golden Harvest by Jan T. Gross. Weiser writes that the Polish debate on the Holocaust seldom went beyond a simple dichotomy – the Jews, of course, suffered unspeakably, but the Poles no less. Weiser contrasts Grabowski and Engelking with Gross, saying the former employ a strictly scientific approaching writing monographs, not essays. Weiser describes Grabowski's approach as positivist, taking the seat of a neutral observer, and notes that Grabowski's ability to read German sources is rare among young Polish researchers, understanding what Jean Améry called the logic of annihilation, describing how the Germans rewarded antisemitism. Weiser concludes by saying that all three texts are important contributions to a counter-narrative that rivals the heroization of Poles in the context of the Holocaust.

Ingo Loose reviewed Grabowski's Hunt for the Jews, Barbara Engelking's It Was Such a Beautiful Sunny Day, and Jan T. Gross's Golden Harvest. Loose wrote that all three works relate to the open wound of Polish-Jewish relations during the Holocaust, a very sensitive point in Polish historical memory. Loose wrote that Grabowski's study is excellently written and more coherently structured than Gross's work. According to Loose, Grabowski's pars pro toto study illustrates a theme whose tragic significance was pointed out by Emanuel Ringelblum and emphasizes the effectiveness of the Germans' use of menace and rewards to persuade Poles to give up hidden Jews. Loose wrote that this aspect had previously been dismissed or marginalized, but that Grabowski's study showed it to have involved tens of thousands of escaped Jews. Loose noted that Polish critics have accused Grabowski of underestimating the Germans' intimidation campaign; however, Loose writes that, while it is true that hiding Jews was punishable with death, this was too often used in political debate in lieu of drawing a more complex picture of German-Polish cooperation or neutrality regarding Jews. Loose concluded that "Jewish property" and "German-Polish cooperation" are two fields with ample room for future research into a more complex model of the German occupation in the General Government.

Historian Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe, writing in H-Soz-Kult, reviewed three books: Judenjagd by Grabowski, It Was Such a Beautiful Sunny Day by Barbara Engelking, and Golden Harvest by Jan T. Gross. He wrote that all three studies are noteworthy explorations of the Polish participation in the Holocaust, challenging both the German tendency to neglect non-German perpetrators and the Polish perspective of viewing Poles solely as victims. According to Rossoliński-Liebe, Grabowski demonstrates that a broad spectrum of Polish society took part in Judenjagd (hunts for the Jews). But Rossoliński-Liebe wrote that he did not think these 2011 works would trigger a new Holocaust debate, as had occurred following Gross's Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland, a decade prior.

English-language reviews

Glenn R. Sharfman, a professor at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, wrote that Grabowski's book complemented recent works by Jan T. Gross about murders of Jews away from the primary killing centers, providing evidence of the important role of Poles in aiding the Nazis. Sharfman wrote that any student of the Holocaust will find the testimonies and excerpts in the text useful, but readers with little background might require more context. He noted that Grabowski jumps from testimony to testimony without analysis. According to Sharfman, while most Poles were victims of Nazi aggression and have wanted to see themselves as purely its victims, Grabowski shows how some Poles played an official or unofficial role in the murder of tens of thousands, if not more, of Jews.

Timothy Snyder of Yale University called Judenjagd "the most important in the recent Polish debates about Polish responsibility for the Holocaust", and wrote that Grabowski and Barbara Engelking had recorded the "undeniable fact that most of [the Polish Jews who had escaped from the ghettos and camps] were murdered as well, perhaps half of them by Poles (following German policy and law) rather than by Germans."

Historian Shimon Redlich, writing about the book in Slavic Review, criticized the book's structure, in particular the lengthy quotations and appendix, the careless "claim of 'hundreds of thousands' of Jews seeking shelter among the Polish populace", which according to Redlich cannot be extrapolated to the whole country based on one single area, as well as language that at times betrayed emotional involvement. However, Redlich said the book "should become required reading for scholars and students of Polish-Jewish relations".

Sociologist Larry Ray's review of Grabowski’s book called it "a highly systematic and scholarly study of atrocities and collaboration", and "an essential contribution to knowledge of the Holocaust and Polish-Jewish relations".

Grzegorz Berendt criticized Grabowski in Haaretz.

Following the book's publication in Israel in 2016, Grzegorz Berendt, professor of history at the University of Gdańsk and historian for the Polish government's Institute of National Remembrance, wrote in Haaretz, in February 2017, that, in contrast to several other European countries, Poland's elite groups, in the underground or in exile, opposed Germany's policies toward the Jews, and expressed and acted on this opposition repeatedly. Anyone holding an official position inside occupied Poland, including the police, was obliged to follow German orders or face harsh punishment, which might be a beating or public execution. Conversely, prizes, including property plundered from Jews, were awarded for compliance. German-induced poverty in Poland—rationing of 400–700 calories per person, leading to black-market food at exorbitant prices—meant that "thousands of people discarded moral constraints and decided to assist the Germans in rounding up Jews for economic reasons". Berendt referred to Grabowski's statement in Hunt for the Jews that "the number of victims [in Poland] of the Judenjagd could reach 200,000" as "hot air", in that it substantially exceeds, he wrote, the approximately 50,000 Jews thought to have escaped from the ghettos in occupied Poland.

The following month, Grabowski responded in Hararetz that, until recently, Poles who were made Righteous Among the Nations often asked Yad Vashem to allow them to remain anonymous, so fearful were they of their fellow Poles' reaction. He argued that, although the Polish government-in-exile (which was based in London from 1940 until 1990) had indeed spoken out on behalf of the Jews during the Holocaust, they were not supported in this by the Polish resistance or the general population in Poland. Key members of the Polish resistance had referred to the "Jewish problem" or "Jewish question": Grabowski quoted one prominent member of the underground: "The mass murder of Jews in Poland carried out by the Germans will diminish the Jewish problem but it will not remove it altogether." As for the estimate that up to 200,000 Jews were killed by Poles, Grabowski defended the figure, claiming that it derives from careful research conducted by the Polish historian Szymon Datner. Datner, however, wrote that 200,000 was the total number of Jews who had escaped from the ghettos, of whom about half subsequently died from various causes. Grabowski later admitted in a subsequent interview that Szymon Datner had not made the claim he attributed to him.

Reviewing the book in April 2016, Michael Fleming, a British historian specializing in Polish history, wrote in support of Grabowski, describing the criticism as attempts to "reinstitute the old, discredited heroic narrative of unimpeachable Polish conduct". Arguing that these tales of heroism are common in Europe, he wrote that Grabowski's book is part of a "growing body of corrective scholarship" that discusses the indifference or complicity of European populations. He continued that Grabowski highlights the courage of the rescuers in Dąbrowa County, while demonstrating that "those who were complicit in genocide were more successful than those who sought to shelter their Jewish co-citizens." But this observation also applies to populations beyond Poland's borders. Fleming warned readers and reviewers not to "reinforce orientalist narratives about 'Eastern' Europe" or the idea that only populations close to the genocide could stop it, which he calls "fetishiz[ing] spatial proximity".

Historian Jack Fischel in a Jewish Book Council review, wrote that "One concludes from Grabowski’s important study that without the often unforced, and sometimes enthusiastic support of non-German volunteers and helpers, the Germans would not have succeeded as completely as they did during the Holocaust."

Historian Samuel Kassow, in a review essay in Yad Vashem Studies, wrote, of Grabowski's book and those of three other scholars (Alina Skibinska, Barbara Engelking, and Dariusz Libionka), that they "are a historical achievement of the first order." He described them as undermining "the self-serving myths about Polish-Jewish relations in World War II", and as being works of careful and objective scholarship.

Rosa Lehmann, writing in The American Historical Review, found Grabowski's work to be outstanding and firmly grounded in solid research. According to Lehmann, the book illuminates the struggle of survival and circumstances of death of the some 10 percent of the 2.5 million Polish-Jews who attempted to seek refuge on the "Aryan" side among hostile peasant gentiles. According to Lehmann, Grabowski shows how this created a dichotomy between Jewish and gentile perceptions of the Holocaust, Jews holding Polish peasants responsible for Jewish suffering and death, while Polish accounts trivialize the Polish involvement and paradoxically stress the "helping phenomenon" in wartime Poland. Lehmann writes that the evidence in the book shows that the category of "bystander" should be reevaluated, as the attitudes of the local population had fundamental and existential importance for escaping Jews. Lehmann finds interesting Grabowski's conclusion that the murder of some 700 Jews in incidents and pogroms in post-war Poland are an inherent continuation of the wartime practice of Judenjagd. Lehmann concludes by recommending the book for those interested in Polish-Jewish relations and Holocaust studies.

Historian Joshua D. Zimmerman's review in The Journal of Modern History found Grabowski's work to be a "weighty, superbly researched study" that punctuated the myth of Polish innocence during the Holocaust. According to Zimmerman, Grabowski's study was not about defaming or glorifying Poland, but rather about the evidence.

Historian John-Paul Himka's review in the East European Jewish Affairs journal, found "Grabowski's exploration of how the moral climate in rural Poland became fatally skewed during the Nazi occupation" to be innovative and enlightening. Himka noted that the young Polish men of the Baudienst yunaki took part in Jew hunts with particular relish, Grabowski recording the atrocities in chilling detail. Himka concluded: "This is a well-written, well-researched, highly illuminating study that takes us deep into the mechanisms of the Holocaust in rural Poland. In short: a brilliant book, and a harrowing read."

Historian William W. Hagen's review notes that Grabowski was harshly attacked by the Polish right-wing media. According to Hagen as with the "pre-Holocaust explanations for the incontrovertible existence of aggressive, violent, and criminal antisemites in Poland", historians who promote a view of "fundamental national innocence" portray Polish collaborators as "scum", unconnected to mainstream society. Grabowski's study which portrays normative Poles viewing the harboring of Jews as a crime or sin challenged Polish self-understanding.Hagen notes that Grabowski "pushes beyond historiographical frontiers" and that his book is a "radical revision" on views regarding hiding Jewish fugitives. Hagen concludes by noting that the book is a landmark work, filled with somber and honest reckoning.

Controversy

The Polish website Fronda.pl ran a piece with the headline, "Sieg Heil, Mr. Grabowski", accompanied by a photo of Joseph Goebbels, following the publication of a favorable review of the historian's book in a German newspaper. Grabowski sued the website's owner for libel and won in 2017.

In June 2017, the Polish League Against Defamation released a statement signed by 134 Polish scientists protesting the "false and harmful portrayal of Poles and Poland during the Second World War and attempts to blame the Polish Nation for the Holocaust", which was sent to Grabowski's employer, the University of Ottawa, to all the colleges with which he was affiliated, and to all the publishers of his books. The statement pointed to German efforts to exterminate the Polish population itself, which made its occupation by Germany different from western Europe's occupation; numerous examples of Poles' assistance given to Jews; Poland's many wartime international protests at the plight of the Jewish population in German-occupied Poland; and the complexity of Polish-Jewish relations, aggravated by the Soviet occupation of eastern Poland.

Grabowski has been boycotted by the Polish-Canadian community, and Polish groups have attempted to have him fired from his academic position. According to multiple media reports, Grabowski has faced harassment and death threats, leading to increased security patrols in his department at the University of Ottawa.

Other historians quickly responded in June 2017 to defend Grabowski's work: the Polish Center for Holocaust Research, which Grabowski co-founded, released a counter-letter signed by seven historians, saying that "None of the 134 signatories is a Holocaust historian" and that "All these economists, linguists, oncologists, chemists, nuclear physicists, engineers, constructors of electromechanical appliances, environmental geologists, ethnomusicologists, theatrologists and priest professors present themselves as Holocaust experts, but cannot even quote the sources they refer to." In addition, some 180 international historians of modern European history signed an open letter in June 2017 in Grabowski's defense, saying his work "holds to the highest standards of academic research" and that the Polish League Against Defamation puts forth a "distorted and whitewashed version of the history of Poland during the Holocaust era". The historians further said they considered the campaign against Grabowski to be "an attack on academic freedom and integrity."

Tomasz Frydel reviewed and reassessed the perpetrator role of ordinary Poles, discussed in Hunt for the Jews. Frydel described the whole Nazi German terror system that was directed not only against Jews but also against Soviet prisoners of war, Roma, the Polish underground, even any newcomers. German police in Poland used sting operations to find and kill rescuers of the Germans' quarries.

See also

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