Roads to Extinction: Essays on the Holocaust

626 Pages·1980·16.723 MB·English

by  Philip Friedman

ROADS TO EXTINCTION:
ESSAYS ON THE HOLOCAUST
CONFERENCE ON JEWISH SOCIAL STUDIES
THE JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY OF AMERICA
New York and Philadelphia 5740 • 1980
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edited by ADA JUNE FRIEDMAN
with an introduction by SALO WITTMAYER BARON
Copyright © 1980 by The Jewish Publication Society of America
and the Conference on Jewish Social Studies, Inc.
All rights reserved First edition
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Friedman, Philip, 1901-1960. Roads to extinction.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)—Addresses, essays,
lectures. I. Friedman, Ada June. II. Title.
D810.J4F739 1980 940.53T503'924 79-89818
ISBN 0-8276-0170-0
Designed by Adrianne Onderdonk Dudden
CONTENTS
353030
Foreword by jeannette m. baron | vii
Preface by ada June friedman | ix
Acknowledgments | xi
Abbreviations | xiii
Introduction by salo wittmayer baron | 1
1939-1945 Segregation and Brutal Discrimination
part one
1 The Jewish Badge and the Yellow Star in the Nazi Era | 11
2 The Lublin Reservation and the Madagascar Plan: Two Aspects
of Nazi Jewish Policy During the Second World War | 34
3 The Jewish Ghettos of the Nazi Era | 59
4 The Fate of the Jewish Book | 88
5 Aspects of the Jewish Communal Crisis in Germany, Austria,
and Czechoslovakia During the Nazi Period | 100
6 Social Conflicts in the Ghetto | 131
7 The Karaites Under Nazi Rule | 153
8 Ukrainian-Jewish Relations During the Nazi Occupation | 176
1941-1945 Extermination
part two
9 The Extermination of the Polish Jews During the
German Occupation, 1939-1945 | 211
10 The Destruction of the Jews of Lwow, 1941—1944 \ 244
11 Crimes in the Name of “Science” | 322
12 Pseudo-Saviors in the Polish Ghettos: Mordechai
Chaim Rumkowski of Lodz | 333
13 The Messianic Complex of a Nazi Collaborator in a
Ghetto: Moses Merin of Sosnowiec \ 353
14 Jacob Gens: “Commandant” of the Vilna Ghetto \ 365
15 The Extermination of the Gypsies: Nazi Genocide of
an Aryan People | 381
16 Jewish Resistance to Nazism | 387
17 “Righteous Gentiles” in the Nazi Era | 409
18 Was There an “Other Germany” During the
Nazi Period? | 422
Methodological Problems
part three
19 Polish Jewish Historiography Between the Two Wars 467
20 European Jewish Research on the Holocaust | 500
21 American Jewish Research and Literature on the
Holocaust I 525
22 Preliminary and Methodological Aspects of Research
on the Judenrat | 539
23 Problems of Research on the Holocaust: An Overview I 554
APPENDIX
Outline of Program for Holocaust Research | 571
Index I 577
FOREWORD
It has been a long-cherished hope of the board of directors of the Confer­
ence on Jewish Social Studies and the editors of its quarterly journal to
publish a volume of the collected essays of Philip Friedman, “the father
of the Jewish Holocaust literature.” This, we felt, would constitute a sig­
nificant service to the Jewish community. We are therefore pleased that
such a volume is now a reality.
The late Philip Friedman was uniquely qualified for his task, com­
bining, as he did, immediacy with sound historical methodology. He began
his scholarly researches into the Holocaust just after World War II; himself
a survivor of the catastrophe, he had the advantage of being personally
acquainted with many of the persons involved in trying to keep the Polish
Jewish communities alive during the Nazi occupation and could therefore
obtain from them much important documentation as well as first-hand
recollections. Later, when he served for two years as the educational
director of the Displaced Persons camps in Germany, he had the oppor­
tunity to interview survivors and to elicit from them a great deal of oral
and written information. Ultimately, an extensive archival collection he
amassed was presented to the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research by his
widow, Ada June Friedman, the editor of the present volume; there it has
been used by numerous students of the great tragedy.
The results of some of his labors over the years are presented here
Roads to Extinction: Essays on the Holocaust | viii
in sober essays that appear to us as a much-needed corrective to predom­
inantly emotional but often factually incorrect outpourings that mark so
much Holocaust writing today.
Like the editor of this volume, we also are indebted to all those
persons who have given of their time and effort to lend to these diverse
essays, written under varying circumstances over a span of years, a sense
of unity and continuity. We are also grateful to those individuals and organ­
izations who have made this publication possible. We especially want to
thank the Wurzweiler Foundation, Mr. Leon Jolson, the Memorial Founda­
tion for Jewish Culture, Mr. Benjamin Cohen, the J. M. Kaplan Fund, Inc.,
and several Conference directors for their generoufc contributions.
Finally, we are happy to be able to publish this volume as a joint
venture with The Jewish Publication Society of America.
Jeannette M. Baron, President
Conference on Jewish Social Studies
PREFACE
The history of the Holocaust has now become a vital part of general and
Jewish scholarship. Indeed, within recent years this relatively new his­
torical discipline, of which the late Philip Friedman was a pioneer, has
burgeoned, gaining the attention of an increasing number of researchers
and the interest of a growing readership.
The present volume contains a selection of essays and studies on the
subject of the Holocaust written by Philip Friedman over a period of fifteen
years, from 1945 to I960. In selecting the material for this collection,
culled from approximately 200 bibliographical entries, the following
criteria were considered: (1) to present those essays that are the most
comprehensive and fundamental for the study of the Holocaust; (2) to
include those which are of lasting value; (3) to show the author’s approach
to the problems of the Holocaust and indicate his method of work.
Many of the essays included in this volume are not readily accessible
elsewhere. Only some were originally published in English. For the rest,
they are to be found, in their original form, only in scattered journals and
books in different parts of the world and published in various languages—
Polish, Yiddish, and Hebrew. The present translations from Polish and
Yiddish are my own. Considering that each language has its own idiom,
the task for the translators was made doubly onerous as I tried, insofar as
possible, to retain the original nuances. For the sake of uniformity, the
translated material had to undergo a thorough stylistic revision. Much
Roads to Extinction: Essays on the Holocaust | x
repetitious material was deleted, except in a few cases where comprehen­
sion of the essay as a whole would have suffered.
A constant problem in preparing the volume was the presentation of
the footnotes. These, in some instances, are now dated in the sense that
they were prepared at a time when research into the Holocaust was just
beginning. Many documentary sources known today were not available to
the author, and those existent were not yet published. I chose to reproduce
the footnotes in their original form. However, many sources only frag-
mentarily cited can be supplemented easily by the data in Guide to Jewish
History Under Nazi Impact by Jacob Robinson and Philip Friedman (New
York, 1960) and in the Bibliographical Series published jointly by YIVO
and Yad Vashem, as well as in other handbooks.
The idea to publish a collection of Philip Friedman’s studies and
essays on the Holocaust was put forward right after his death in 1960 by
Salo Wittmayer Baron, the author’s former teacher and lifelong friend.
I am most grateful to Professor Baron for his unswerving belief in the
importance of this project and for his efforts in bringing it to realization
after so many years. I consider it a debt which can never be repaid. I am
infinitely thankful to Jeannette M. Baron for her invaluable help and her
personal dedication to the task of obtaining publication for the volume, as
well as for her stimulating support and expert assistance in all the time-
consuming stages of preparing the manuscript, including its final reading.
I also wish to express my gratitude to the Board of Directors of the Con­
ference on Jewish Social Studies for their contribution toward the publica­
tion of this volume.
I am truly obliged to the translators of the Hebrew essays. Theirs was
a painstaking task requiring much familiarity with the subject matter and
the linguistic subtleties of the original texts. I am grateful to Dalia Berman
and Dr. Jane Gerber for their translations of essays 13 and 14; to Dr. Ber­
tram Schwarzbach for the translation of essay 12 and for linguistic and
stylistic corrections in essay 11; and to Dr. Amiel Ungar, who translated
essay 10, the longest in the volume. I also wish to express my sincerest
thanks to Henry Sachs, my friend and colleague, for his expert help in the
translation of some complicated German texts that are quoted in various
essays and for his knowledgeable advice; and to Dina Abramowicz, the
librarian of YIVO, for her ungrudging assistance.
The copy editing and stylistic refinements are the work of Michelle
M. Kamhi. I extend my deepest appreciation for her high degree of pro­
fessional competence. Above all, she must be commended for involving
herself with so much interest, understanding, and compassion in the
myriad details that comprise the painful subject of this book.
Ada June Friedman