Between the Wires: The Janowska Camp and the Holocaust in Lviv, by Waitman Wade Beorn. 2024. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln
New Holocaust Anti-Polonism–Hate Speech. Janowska Camp Undermines Holocaust Supremacy. Farcical German Justice
Author Waitman Beorn is a high-profile American Holocaust scholar who has taught at American and British universities. The book that I am reviewing was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award in the United States. Its messaging therefore has obvious impact on public opinion, including its new Holocaust Polonophobia.
This book at first seems to be largely even-handed and objective. If the reader is one hoping for a “new breed” of Jewish Holocaust scholars, forget it. Waitman Wade Beorn levels this scurrilous cheap shot, “Poles made it clear that if they had not supported the Nazi removal of the Jews, they were not unappreciative of the results; they murdered 150 Jews in liberated Poland in the first four months of 1945. In Kielce…” (p. 236).
Once again, the Kielce Pogrom, which had absolutely nothing to do with the earlier German-made Holocaust, is effectively dragged into the Holocaust. What’s more, the killing of 150 Jews, mostly under unclear circumstances, and done in the context of the Jews’ aiding and abetting the Soviet-sponsored Communist terror, has now become proof that Poles supported the German-made Holocaust or, at best, did not disapprove of it.
Quite a few other Jews have made similar insinuations. Isn’t Jewish logic wonderful?
In recent years, some university professors have been fired for engaging in hate speech. If the law was applied evenly, and Poles were a designated protected group enjoying such special rights, Beorn could face the chopping block. New Holocaust Polonophobia would then have consequences.
What’s more, the new Holocaust Polonophobia is not even “new”. Earlier, Waitman Wade Beorn had made false statements about the 2018 Polish Anti-Defamation Law. See:
https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/zydokomuna-jewish-bystander-guilt-beorn/
THE JANOWSKA CAMP IN GERMAN-OCCUPIED LWOW (LVIV)
Holocaust supremacists make a big deal about Jews dying in gas chambers, making it something that makes Jews special, and thereby entitled to more attention and recognition. Ironically, the Nazis systematically used gas chambers on the handicapped before they used them on Jews, and, as a further irony, the Nazis shot more Jews than they gassed. Furthermore, there were gas chambers not only in the so-called death camps (where mostly Jews were killed) but also in many “ordinary” German concentration camps (where mostly goys were killed). Of course, we never hear about that.
Beorn provides many details on Janowska, and notes the fact that there were no gas chambers in Janowska. (p. 11). Jews were gathered into the Janowska Camp from many locations in German-occupied Eastern Galicia), and Janowska was a rare example of a transit camp in eastern (as opposed to western) Europe. The Germans shot several tens of thousands of Jews locally near Janowska (p. 264), while most of the rest were shipped to the Belzec death camp for gassing. (p. 131).
FARCICAL POSTWAR GERMAN JUSTICE
One thing that Beorn gets right is the laughable leniency of German justice against war criminals. To accomplish this, the Germans used the subterfuge of a few designated perpetrators and many designated accomplices. See:
Beorn unmasks the nature of this German subterfuge: “…’a subordinate is responsible as a perpetrator of a criminal act if he acts with criminal motives [animus auctoris]. On the other hand, if he is only carrying out the will of the order-giver, then he can only be punished as an accessory at most…In order to prove them guilty of murder, the prosecution would have had to prove that they also agreed with the motives behind the orders. THIS WAS NEXT TO IMPOSSIBLE.” (Emphasis added. pp. 252-253). Surely the Germans, of all people, knew this.
So much for the mythical “exemplary German repentance” for Nazism!
