This invited review was published in Humanity and Society 24(1):47

POLAND’S HOLOCAUST
Tadeusz Piotrowski. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company Publishers. 1998. 437 pp.
Lisiunia A. Romanienko
Louisiana State University and University of Wroclaw, Poland

Motivated perhaps, as a response to recent scholarly denunciation of the role of Polish people in the
horrors that occurred upon Polish soil during World War II, Tadeusz Piotrowski attempts to set the historical and
sociological record straight in Poland’s Holocaust. Using a strategy of combining ethnographic, demographic,
policy, and archival data drawn from primary and secondary sources extracted through government documents,
eye witness accounts, and interviews conducted in several languages and across several continents; Piatrowski’s
book is one of the most comprehensive, well documented, multimethodological contributions to scholarly work in
the area.

He begins by attempting to redefine rhetorical parameters and requests that the term ‘holocaust’ be
expanded to include all systematic genocidal victims of World War II, no longer restricted to those of the Jewish
faith. Focusing the analysis to events that occurred within and around Poland’s borders, he proceeds by
identifying the changing face of Poland’s perpetrators, as well as a clarification of her victims over the period
examined. In addition to the explanation of the political entities involved in Poland’s World War II, the most
important contribution of this book is the elucidation of the unique relationships among these entities forged under
a rubric of evil that facilitated genocidal policies. It is precisely these incomprehensible, changing, complex
collaborations among military and quasi-authoritarian regimes surrounding Poland, Piotrowski argues, that made
these horrifying events on Polish soil possible.

To that end, the book is organized not by chronological events, aggregations of villains, typologies of
blame, or ethnographic tales of sole surviving heroes; but simply of cultural coordination or collaborations among
ethnic groups. This approach demands that the reader keep focused on complex relations among and across
nation-states, and avoids the reductivist tendency toward binary vilification (i.e. good guys/bad guys) as well as
anti-Semitic agenda setting recently evident among media-savvy sociologists breaking into holocaust scholarship
(see ASA proceedings 1997). This strategy also provides a refreshing departure inhibiting further ill feeling
regarding the role of Ukrainians, Russians, Germans, Poles, Jews, Lithuanians, and Belorussians in each culture’s
contribution to the Polish holocaust. Although his research indicated that each group’s involvement in
victimizing Polish Jews and Catholics was pervasive and at times ubiquitous, Piotrowski prohibits widespread
censure of entire cultures. He maintains throughout the book that his units of analysis are not representatives of
cultures of accomplices, but rather groups of individuals of particular ethnicities, who, for a time, found
themselves capable of implementing unspeakable atrocities against the Poles.

In attempting to bring understanding to the reprehensible, the author argues that membership in ethnic
groups, class factions, political factions, religious denominations, military or other institutions facilitated the
horrors of the Polish holocaust. For example, Poles identified other Poles to Germans for interment in Rembertow
concentration camp (p. 104), poor Jews identified rich Jews to SS guards for profit (p. 67), zealous Lithuanian
Police killed Polish people for speaking their native language (p. 168), and Russian volunteers estimated at
40,000 were gathered in one day by the Orthodox church to assist Germans in their genocidal efforts (p. 155).
The author further suggests that historic animosity against the Polish people was used by some ethnic groups to
substantiate aggressive acts and policies of excessive violence (i.e. infamous Ukrainian guards at Treblinka
concentration camp). In other documented instances, barbarity against Polish people was used to foster
nationalism and purity among perpetrators (i.e. winter expulsion of Belorussian Poles to Siberia by the Russians).
In these as well as the thousands of cases outlined in the book that stem from Polonophobic or anti-Polonial
policies, Piotrowski provides documented evidence of systematic and organized genocidal policies against the
Polish people, but with little interpretation or theoretical analysis.

One might consider this egregious absence of theory or interpretive assessment to be a weakness of the
manuscript. One may even consider the author’s use of multiple data sources with excessive levels of scrutiny
and triangulation for accuracy to be overstating the point. This reviewer, however, found the straightforward
(albeit sometimes vapid) presentation of factual documented evidence to be precisely the highlight of the book.
The strength lies not so much in what Piotrowski has said, but in what he has not. All ideological, philosophical,
and spiritual interpretation is left solely to the reader. It is my belief that sociological theory would surely have
convoluted this thick, descriptive, historical text. Esoteric framing is not provided, and in this way, Poland’s
Holocaust has the potential to be a unifying manuscript to heal the deep divisions between affected communities
around the world. Given his own cultural background and personal family losses disclosed in his Preface, the
interpretive restraint exercised by Prof. Piotrowski is necessary and notable.

If future generations of children continue to harbor resentment of the past, then those who have suffered
would have given their lives in vain. To continue to foster ill feeling among any of the affected cultures is an
undesirable goal for sociological research pertaining to World War II. Unifying those with direct, personal
involvement should instead be the underlying motivation behind future scholarly analyses. Poland’s Holocaust
can be a useful tool to facilitate dialogue and heal deepening divisions among affected cultures both in Poland and
abroad. It is hoped that further Western treatments of the facts surrounding the holocaust in Poland will follow
in this new tradition established by Piotrowski, so that we may finally illuminate, through peaceful and
constructive dialogue, this shameful period of our human history.