Between the publication of the English and Hebrew editions of our previous issue, Dr. Leon Volovici passed away before his time. Leon was an important scholar of Romanian Jewry and a valuable member of our Editorial Board who made a significant contribution to scholarship and to the work of Yad Vashem Studies. He had very broad knowledge, was expert in many areas of study, read many languages, and had a keen and discerning eye for academic work as well as for issues of public discourse. He published widely on Romania and contributed to the scholarly and public discourse in many other ways, as Raphael Vago sets forth in his article on Leon, which opens this issue. In all of his work, contacts, and in our Editorial Board meetings, Leon brought to the discussion a rare combination of breadth, depth, wisdom, modesty, and humanity. Leon influenced the Editorial Board’s decisions greatly, and his opinion almost always carried the day. He successfully blended historical, literary, social, and other perspectives in his assessments of articles under discussion, and his reviews of articles helped authors bring the most out of their research. Many authors owe much to Leon Volovici. Leon was much admired, a mensch of the highest order, and a good friend. He will be sorely missed.
The research section of Yad Vashem Studies, volume 40, number 1, in which Leon was deeply involved, is devoted to an examination of aspects of the Holocaust in its European context. Through these six articles we seek to contribute to our understanding of the attitudes and policies of governments and various groups and individuals in Europe to the murder of the Jews. Most of the articles focus primarily on the second half of World War II, when the war’s ultimate outcome gradually became clear and when the logic of self-interest might have been expected to lead individuals, societies, and governments to distance themselves from Nazi Germany and its genocidal policies. Was that indeed the case?
We know that Nazi Germany found many partners all across Europe, even at a late stage in the war. Yet, this is certainly not a uniform picture; multiple and often complex factors influenced decisions and actions. The research articles in this issue examine these attitudes and factors regarding a variety of European actors in Poland, Hungary, Romania and Germany itself — a liberal Polish rescuer; rural Poles in southern Poland; the Armia Ludowa (AL) communist underground in Poland; the Hungarian regime under Ferenc Szálasi; the Romanian regime under Ion Antonescu and Romanian society; and German attitudes toward the death marches. What motivated these governments, societies, and individuals in their decision-making regarding Nazi policies and the Jewish fate? What were the roles and interlocking impacts of antisemitism, national or political interests, and personal interests? The articles by Rachel Feldhay Brenner, Jan Grabowski, Joanna Tokarska-Bakir, László Karsai, Ronit Fisher, and Susanne Urban address these subjects and more, and their findings are not always what might be expected. Review articles by Omer Bartov, Stephan Lehnstaedt, Theodore Weeks, and Dimitry Shumsky round out this issue.
Our volume opens with three articles that address three sides of Polish society during the second half of the war — an urban, liberal, intellectual rescuer; rural farmers in southern Poland; and AL underground resistance fighters.
Rachel Feldhay Brenner undertakes an “anatomy of rescue” through her examination of the diary of Polish writer, rescuer, and Righteous Among the Nations, Aurelia Wyleżyńska. As Brenner demonstrates, Wyleżyńska’s rescue activity stemmed from her humanism at a time when such values were being crushed by the occupation and the experience of genocide. She was very disturbed by her Polish compatriots’ acquiescence in the murder of the Jews, which only increased her determination to help Jews. Wyleżyńska’s diary traces the psychological and ethical dynamics of rescue and of the often complex and uneasy rescuer–rescuee relationship. The nature of the Nazis’ “Final Solution” complicated this relationship, where differing psychological and physical needs produced discordant moral perspectives. Wyleżyńska found herself at times sharply critical of her charges’ behavior and even feared that she might come to hate them. Contrary to her original intention, and contrary to what she believed her Polish compatriots would have wanted, the Jews and these issues came to occupy a central place in her diary, which provides both a factual account of events, and a complex, immediate, and remarkably frank presentation of her own evolving consciousness as a rescuer. This rare insight into a rescuer’s inner deliberations includes excerpts from the diary, primarily from the year 1943.
Jan Grabowski’s examination of rural Poles’ attitudes toward Jews and their murder in the small southern Polish county of Dąbrowa Tarnowska in the second half of the war paints a very different picture from Wyleżyńska’s diary. Neither intellectuals nor liberals were to be found here, but rather people who had known their Jewish neighbors intimately for years. Grabowski traces these people’s attitudes to Jews who escaped ghettos and murder operations and then sought help among the local people. Here, Grabowski finds not only acquiescence in the murder of the Jews, but also willing and active participation. From rural regional leaders to village elders, from people serving on night watches to ordinary citizens, the attitude was harsh and generally murderous. The Jews were hunted and when caught, they were either turned over to the German police, or killed by their captors for personal gain. Grabowski notes that not all were antisemites, but the manhunts, persecution, and murder required only a small number of people, who had some authority or could “inspire,” to take the initiative, and the others went along. Jewish life was worthless at best, and the frequent hunts for Jews provoked no known negative emotions or moral dilemmas. Rather, during the second half of the war, these Jews fleeing for their lives came to be viewed as less of a human problem or threat and more a matter of problem solving, so killing them locally amounted to committing neither a sin nor a crime.
Joanna Tokarska-Bakir analyzes a different segment of Polish wartime society — Armia Ludowa underground fighters in the Kielce District of Poland. She looks at both their wartime activities regarding Jews, and at the postwar legal proceedings against those charged with murdering Jews in their area of operations. At the center of TokarskaBakir’s examination is the trial of an AL officer, Tadeusz Maj, and the role of his regional commander, Mieczysław Moczar, an antisemite and murder suspect who later became Poland’s interior minister and oversaw the 1968 antisemitic campaign that led to the emigration of most of Poland’s remaining Jews. Tokarska-Bakir presents in detail the murderous activity of Tadeusz Maj and the Świt unit that he commanded in the Starachowice area. When Maj was investigated and tried in the 1950s, this ensued from factional struggles within the Polish Communist Party and not from any interest in learning the truth about the Holocaust or to seek justice for the murder of innocent civilians who were fugitives from the occupying Germans’ efforts to murder them. All of the murders of which Maj was accused were committed in the second half of 1944, as the Soviet army approached. And, as Tokarska-Bakir demonstrates, these were not rogue operations. Rather, they were well known to Moczar’s regional high command and reflect the antisemitic attitudes endemic to parts of the AL and that divided Polish communists even during the war.
László Karsai dissects the “Jewish policy” of sworn antisemite and Hungarian Nazi leader, Ferenc Szálasi, who seized power with German assistance on October 15, 1944. Szálasi’s regime is known for its rabid, racist antisemitism, shooting murders of thousands of Jews into the Danube River in Budapest, and death marches of Jews. What is left to discover about this man and his murderous regime? Quite a bit, it seems. First, Karsai points out a fact that should be obvious yet is still important to emphasize today — most of Hungary’s Jews were rounded up and deported by Szálasi’s predecessors, the regime led by Regent Miklos Horthy and Prime Minister Döme Sztójay. Karsai notes ironically that whereas Szálasi’s name is well known today, Sztójay, the far greater murderer in terms of sheer numbers, is hardly remembered at all except among a few experts. Karsai shows that Szálasi’s pragmatism even extended to the Jews as he sought to prevent or postpone their destruction if they could serve practical needs. Szálasi planned to exploit many of the remaining Jews in Budapest as forced labor for the war effort, and accordingly negotiated with the Germans to allow rather more than fewer Jews to remain in Hungary. He also used the remaining Jews as a bargaining chip in his overtures to the neutral countries whose recognition of his sovereignty and regime he greatly desired in return for allowing their diplomats to engage in rescue activity. Szálasi was in no way a rescuer of Jews, but his policies did limit the absolute nature of the murder for purely opportunistic reasons. Karsai’s article might stir debate, but his extensive and meticulous research will make it difficult to develop counterarguments to his findings.
Ronit Fisher places the Romanian regime’s murder of its Jews in the context of what today would be called “ethnic cleansing.” Romanian antisemitism was visceral and brutal, and the start of their murder campaign against the Jews was vicious, extensive and independent of the Germans. This might have led us to expect the murder of the Jews here, too, to be total. Yet, the widespread Romanian murder of the Jews stopped well short of total annihilation. Fisher seeks to explain this, arguing that Romania’s selective mass murder policy, which distinguished between “our” Jews in the Regat and the “foreign” Jews in the provinces of Bessarabia, Bukovina, and Moldavia, entailed the same ideology that drove other populations out of the provinces. To be sure, the policy toward the Jews was a unique Romanian blend of ethnic cleansing and genocide, determined by ethnic and geopolitical considerations, she argues. The Jews of the recently annexed provinces were dual “others,” that is, both Jewish and inhabitants of the suspect regions in which Romanian arch nationalists feared that Romanian culture and control were threatened; also, they accused these Jews of being pro-Soviet. Thus, not only could foreign Jews not be trusted, but they could (and should) be destroyed.
Susanne Urban presents a collection of documents attesting to the death marches from the holdings of the International Tracing Service (ITS) in Bad Arolsen, Germany. The death marches took place before the eyes of German society, which gave its complicit approval of, and even participated in these events. Whereas, historians have estimated that some 250,000 of the approximately 700,000 inmates forced on the death marches died of exhaustion, sickness, starvation, shootings, and other violence meted out by their guards, it is only recently that the ITS documentation has become easily accessible to scholars, thereby making it possible to analyze this subject more thoroughly. Urban here analyzes a specific type of documentation — the camp administrations’ registration of prisoners who arrived dead in trains and trucks. All incoming inmates were registered on arrival both by name and on a separate form that recorded their personal possessions. The ITS records show that this was done also for prisoners who arrived dead, whom the camp system referred to as “persons who cannot be questioned.” Yet, the ITS documentation indicates that not only were dead prisoners registered, but they were also given a new prisoner number. Urban examines extant forms from Buchenwald and Dachau in particular, and sets out to identify these “unknown dead” by cross-referencing their registration with their previous prisoner numbers, which were also recorded. With these illustrations, Urban demonstrates just one aspect of the great research potential of the ITS documentation.
This issue also includes four review articles by Omer Bartov, Stephan Lehnstaedt, Theodore Weeks, and Dimitry Shumsky, addressing eight recent books. Bartov’s thoughtful essay examines the question of the purpose of Holocaust fiction based on his analysis of the recent novels by Steve Sem-Sandberg and Jonathan Littell. These two books result in portrayals of a humanized monster on the one hand (Littell’s Dr. Maximilien Aue) and a monstrous Jew (Sem-Sandberg’s Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski) on the other, and Bartov questions whether the authors’ purpose in these portrayals of evil and depravity is apt. Stephan Lehnstaedt looks at the three recent publications of documentation from the Oyneg Shabes Archive and the series of publications underway from this collection. Theodore Weeks compares and contrasts Adam Puławski’s book on the information that the Armia Krajowa had regarding the murder of the Jews in 1941–1942 with Robert van Voren’s study of the Holocaust in Lithuania and public discussion of the Holocaust in that country. Dimitry Shumsky praises and critiques David Engel’s book on the place of the Holocaust in the work of scholars of general Jewish history.
The research articles and reviews in this issue of Yad Vashem Studies help answer some of the questions about personal and societal motivations regarding Jews seeking asylum during the Holocaust. The picture that emerges is not pretty — even as Germany was collapsing on all fronts, local and national murder of Jews was still taking place. Radical nationalism, racism, antisemitism, sovereignty, greed, and ideals — whether liberal for Aurelia Wyleżyńska, or otherwise for other actors in this terrible drama — or an abandonment of earlier ideals, as with some of Wyleżyńska’s friends, were among the factors that came into play in influencing attitudes and behavior toward Jews in need. Leon Volovici would have pushed us all to penetrate still deeper in search of explanations and comprehension of the multiple motivations of these complex human beings and societies. Hopefully, the challenging articles in this issue represent only the first salvo in this search.
