# Complicity for the Holocaust in occupied countries
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/complicity-for-the-holocaust-in-occupied-countries/718157
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [April 21, 2015, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/complicity-for-the-holocaust-in-occupied-countries/718157 "2015-04-21T02:20:36Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@Nelson\_Pike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nelson_Pike)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2015, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/complicity-for-the-holocaust-in-occupied-countries/718157/21 "2015-04-21T15:22:52Z")
> [@Boyo\_Jim](#):
>
> You would be wrong. The Jews in the camps certainly noted a great deal of Polish collaboration with the Nazis. My only cite is personal experience, interviewing former prisoners at a Holocaust Survivor conference with 10 thousand attendees. There were about 20 of us collecting oral histories, and we collected hundreds, and in a debriefing after the even we were all surprised to learn virtually everyone we spoke to seemed agrier at Polish collaborators than German guards. We spoke to people from every camp.
**10000** attendees? There should be plenty of citation besides you for anything _that_ big, as in dozens of Google hits. Hundreds maybe. Let’s have them.
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### Author:  [@Nelson\_Pike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nelson_Pike)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2015, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/complicity-for-the-holocaust-in-occupied-countries/718157/22 "2015-04-21T15:24:40Z")
> [@Boyo\_Jim](#):
>
> I don’t know what happened to the tapes – these were recorded in the mid 80s. Last I heard they were being added to a Jewish history library in California, and I have no clue whether they were ever digitized and put on line.
Unacceptable- see post #21.
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### Author:  [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2015, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/complicity-for-the-holocaust-in-occupied-countries/718157/23 "2015-04-21T15:28:33Z")
Upon second thought, _interview_ may be too strong a word. We had some people out on the floor recruiting people to some to us to share their stories. We sat at tables with recorders and invited them to talk. There were a few standard question, mostly so we were sure we had their names, and which camp or camps they had been in. Other than that it was pretty free form. Sometimes we prompted them if they paused or seemed stick, sometimes we turned off the recorders and held their hands for a while if they broke down and cried, which many of them did.
Nobody asked them, I’m pretty sure, “How did you feel about Polish collaborators?” I certainly didn’t. Which made it all the more surprising that these same feelings came pouring out of so many of them spontaneously.
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### Author:  [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2015, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/complicity-for-the-holocaust-in-occupied-countries/718157/24 "2015-04-21T15:29:40Z")
> [@Nelson\_Pike](#):
>
> **10000** attendees? There should be plenty of citation besides you for anything _that_ big, as in dozens of Google hits. Hundreds maybe. Let’s have them.
Go find them yourself. Or don’t. Apparently you think I’m lying.
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### Author:  [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2015, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/complicity-for-the-holocaust-in-occupied-countries/718157/25 "2015-04-21T15:30:49Z")
> [@Nelson\_Pike](#):
>
> Unacceptable- see post #21.
I genuinely don’t care whether this is accceptable to you.
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### Author:  [@Nelson\_Pike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nelson_Pike)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2015, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/complicity-for-the-holocaust-in-occupied-countries/718157/26 "2015-04-21T15:31:19Z")
> [@Boyo\_Jim](#):
>
> Go find them yourself. Or don’t. Apparently you think I’m lying.
Give me the name of the damn conference and I will go find it, if it’s there.
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### Author:  [@Haberdash](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Haberdash)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2015, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/complicity-for-the-holocaust-in-occupied-countries/718157/27 "2015-04-21T15:49:54Z")
No person who has ever learned about the Holocaust _at all_ can possibly be unaware that Polish collaboration is an enormous controversy. You don’t have to be a historian to know this, you just have to have visited a museum or read a book ever. Denying that these claims are _even made_ is ridiculous Polish nationalist apologism.
I literally don’t know where to start out of the thousands of possible links to give you. Here’s a random one: [http://tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/101123/nazi-collaborators-or-victims](http://tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/101123/nazi-collaborators-or-victims)
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### Author:  [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2015, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/complicity-for-the-holocaust-in-occupied-countries/718157/28 "2015-04-21T15:51:03Z")
[This is the woman who organized the oral history](http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Lani-Silver-dies-Holocaust-Oral-History-founder-3174522.php). I didn’t know she died until I saw this a few minutes ago, so thank you for that. I visited her at her home in CA the year after the conference.
[This is the organization she founded](http://www.ushmm.org/online/oral-history/detail.php?SurveyId=241&letter=B&ord=9). I suspect it has the originals or copies of the tapes. It mentions that copies of the tapes also go to the Holocaust museum in DC, but the museum didn’t exist at the time and I don’t know if the entire collection was sent there. I don’t even know if she had created the organization yet. As I recall, she was looking for a home for the tapes.
As to the name of the conference I don’t know. It was at the DC Convention Center in the early or mid-80s.
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### Author:  [@Nelson\_Pike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nelson_Pike)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2015, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/complicity-for-the-holocaust-in-occupied-countries/718157/29 "2015-04-21T20:09:41Z")
> [@Haberdash](#):
>
> No person who has ever learned about the Holocaust _at all_ can possibly be unaware that Polish collaboration is an enormous controversy. You don’t have to be a historian to know this, you just have to have visited a museum or read a book ever. Denying that these claims are _even made_ is ridiculous Polish nationalist apologism.
>
> I literally don’t know where to start out of the thousands of possible links to give you. Here’s a random one: [http://tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/101123/nazi-collaborators-or-victims](http://tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/101123/nazi-collaborators-or-victims)
The author of this link is able to mention one and only one wartime pogrom carried out by Poles during the war (Jebwabne, 1940). It is sad that there was even one, but considering it was open season on Jews and that there were 3 million Jews, one pogrom must be considered evidence against significant Polish complicity rather than evidence for it.
I had never heard of the _Szmalcownicy_. They may have been responsible for significantly more Pole-on Jew harm than I previously considered likely. Still, expert opinion (per Wiki) places their numbers at only 2-3000 in Warsaw, the biggest city in the country, and the regular Polish resistance considered their activity to be a capital crime, so it is fair to wonder how extensive their depredations were.
Finally, this quote from the link is needed for balance:
_“It should be noted without equivocation that Poland’s Holocaust record, while far from perfect, is better than most countries under Nazi occupation. Unlike most of Germany’s European colonies, Poland produced no native SS division. Those who served with the German army were primarily Volksdeutsch (Polish citizens of German extraction), and, unlike citizens of other countries under occupation, no Poles eagerly worked as death camp guards.”_
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### Author:  [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2015, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/complicity-for-the-holocaust-in-occupied-countries/718157/30 "2015-04-21T20:15:25Z")
> [@](#):
>
> … no Poles **eagerly** worked as death camp guards."
Well, that’s definitive.
I’m telling you that as far as Jewish survivors were concerned, many Poles worked eagerly with the Germans.
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### Author:  [@Nelson\_Pike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nelson_Pike)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2015, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/complicity-for-the-holocaust-in-occupied-countries/718157/31 "2015-04-21T20:18:23Z")
> [@Boyo\_Jim](#):
>
> [This is the woman who organized the oral history](http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Lani-Silver-dies-Holocaust-Oral-History-founder-3174522.php). I didn’t know she died until I saw this a few minutes ago, so thank you for that. I visited her at her home in CA the year after the conference.
>
> [This is the organization she founded](http://www.ushmm.org/online/oral-history/detail.php?SurveyId=241&letter=B&ord=9). I suspect it has the originals or copies of the tapes. It mentions that copies of the tapes also go to the Holocaust museum in DC, but the museum didn’t exist at the time and I don’t know if the entire collection was sent there. I don’t even know if she had created the organization yet. As I recall, she was looking for a home for the tapes.
>
> As to the name of the conference I don’t know. It was at the DC Convention Center in the early or mid-80s.
Well, I hope someone eventually gets around to publishing at least some of the interviews. It sounds like a priceless collection and thanks to you for your part in its creation.
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### Author:  [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2015, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/complicity-for-the-holocaust-in-occupied-countries/718157/32 "2015-04-21T20:31:27Z")
An interesting [historical note from Wikipedia.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogrom#Outside_Russia)
“72 Jews were killed and 443 injured by Polish troops, militia, and civilians in Poland in the 1918 Lwów pogrom.[19][20][21][22][23] The following year, pogroms were reported in several cities in Poland.[24]”
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### Author:  [@Nelson\_Pike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nelson_Pike)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2015, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/complicity-for-the-holocaust-in-occupied-countries/718157/33 "2015-04-21T20:41:24Z")
> [@Boyo\_Jim](#):
>
> Well, that’s definitive.
>
> I’m telling you that as far as Jewish survivors were concerned, many Poles worked eagerly with the Germans.
There is a baffling tension between your interviews and two thread cites. I do not think you or your subjects would make something up, but I am not going to just dismiss the cites either.
One thing mentioned in the latest cite upthread was a particularly awful Pole-on-Jew pogrom which took place shortly _after_ the war. Imagine a Jew surviving all those years and then coming to such an end. The hatred of all things Polish arising from knowledge of such an event might have distorted many survivors’ memories. Not that there were no “eager” Poles, but that the weight attached to them was far greater than their numbers or their real share of the responsibility.
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### Author:  [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2015, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/complicity-for-the-holocaust-in-occupied-countries/718157/34 "2015-04-21T20:53:27Z")
It is certainly possible that Polish Jews were angrier at Polish collaborators than Germans because they considered them traitors as well as tormentors. Wiki claims that a lower percentage of Jews collaborated than natives of other occupied countries, and that may be true, but that could still mean tens or hundreds of thousands of collaborators, and contact between tham and Jewish prisoners and/or ghetto residents may have been very common.
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### Author:  [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2015, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/complicity-for-the-holocaust-in-occupied-countries/718157/35 "2015-04-21T20:58:24Z")
> [@Nelson\_Pike](#):
>
> One thing mentioned in the latest cite upthread was a particularly awful Pole-on-Jew pogrom which took place shortly _after_ the war.
My cite was WWI.
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### Author:  [@Nelson\_Pike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nelson_Pike)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2015, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/complicity-for-the-holocaust-in-occupied-countries/718157/36 "2015-04-21T21:10:29Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#):
>
> My cite was WWI.
I was speaking of the cite in post #27.
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### Author:  [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2015, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/complicity-for-the-holocaust-in-occupied-countries/718157/37 "2015-04-21T21:21:11Z")
I beg your pardon. 🙂
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### Author:  [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2015, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/complicity-for-the-holocaust-in-occupied-countries/718157/38 "2015-04-21T23:17:59Z")
> [@Nelson\_Pike](#):
>
> Finally, this quote from the link is needed for balance:
>
> _“It should be noted without equivocation that Poland’s Holocaust record, while far from perfect, is better than most countries under Nazi occupation. Unlike most of Germany’s European colonies, Poland produced no native SS division. Those who served with the German army were primarily Volksdeutsch (Polish citizens of German extraction), and, unlike citizens of other countries under occupation, no Poles eagerly worked as death camp guards.”_
That’s not true. Schutzmannschaft Battalion 201 and 14th SS-Volunteer Division “Galician” were both made up of Polish Ukranians, and, the Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz, made up of Volksdeusche Poles, was under SS command.
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### Author:  [@Haberdash](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Haberdash)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2015, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/complicity-for-the-holocaust-in-occupied-countries/718157/39 "2015-04-21T23:39:18Z")
> [@Nelson\_Pike](#):
>
> Imagine a Jew surviving all those years and then coming to such an end. The hatred of all things Polish arising from knowledge of such an event might have distorted many survivors’ memories.
Yes, truly the greatest tragedy of the Holocaust was that Jews who survived it might be angry at the perpetrators.
You are skirting perilously close to denial here – Polish collaboration is a rock solid historical fact. The only controversy is how much and how under German duress it was.
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### Author:  [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2015, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/complicity-for-the-holocaust-in-occupied-countries/718157/40 "2015-04-21T23:45:11Z")
I marvel at the kapos, prisoners who worked for the Nazi guards to live a few more days.
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