Who killed the Jews?

Jews once formed a major thread in the cultural tapestry that was Łódź. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the streets of this booming industrial town would have been peppered with Hasidic sidecurls, the sound of Yiddish, and the cries of Jewish merchants. From one third to one half of the city's population would have been Jewish, joining the Germans, Russians, and Poles who flocked to this 'Promised Land' of work in factories and breakneck capitalism.

Today, only the Poles are left. The Germans, kicked out after World War I, come back again during World War II, and kicked out with gusto again thereafter, have left nothing but bad memories, ill will, and the name "Litzmannstadt." The Russians, shown the door as well after World War I, also came back during the Second World War, this time at the end, as the winners, and stayed around more or less until 1989. Their first visit left a beautiful orthodox cathedral to remember it; the second, endless concrete housing tracts and neglected gargantuan sculptures of sickle-wielding proletarians.

And the Jews? Indeed, what about the Jews? They left only a cemetary, piles of hair, shoes, teeth, ashes, and a fortune in property and businesses snatched up by those who ordered, executed, or watched their destruction.

Killed. By whom? The Germans, of course. No one denies that. But just the Germans?

Everyone could have done more. The Allies, perhaps, could have done a thousand little things, to stop the murder earlier, to save a few lives. Perhaps even to prevent it all, though less likely. The Soviets, surely, never should have agreed to splice Poland up with the Germans, should have tried more and earlier to save the Jews. France, the Netherlands, and all the other occupied nations, not only could have done more, but could have done less collaborating, could have less willfully rounded up their own Jews, could have killed less themselves.

But the Poles? What could they have done?

No one likes to blame a victim. The Poles, for the last 250 years, have been exactly that most of the time, victims of whoever was stronger and more willful. During World War II, they suffered, were singled out by Hitler to be a race of slaves, less than human, denied all rights of self-government, education, adequate food. Hundreds of thousands of Poles were killed, millions more beaten, raped, robbed, repeatedly, everyone forced to go hungry, to submit, to lose chances.

But the Jews were killed. All of them, or thereabouts. Most, on Polish soil. Many, in isolated death camps. But not all; others, as is becoming increasingly clear, were shot down, or clubbed, strangled, drowned, starved to death, in their own homes, sometimes, even, by their own neighbors.

The extent of this is debatable; most Poles didnt kill any Jews, some might have under strong compulsion, many must have died for refusing. Many Poles risked their lives to save them. But many more did less than they could have, less than they easily should have. Still others did much more horror than humanly comprehensible.

I know cowardice, as I have seen it in myself. I know racism, as I have seen it in my own country. I don't know hunger, or chaos, or what it feels like to have an armed man walk into my house, point a gun at my head, and start controlling my life.

I guess Im trying to say, blame is a hard game to play. If the American South had been occupied by some foreign force urging the destruction of all blacks, or, closer to home, if Utah had been occupied by some odd foreign force urging the destruction of all non-Mormons, what would my cocitizens have done? I think we would have been lucky to escape with having perpertrated only the very worst anyone dare accuse the Poles of. I think we would have had little chance of the least of the heroism one can recount of them.

But, still. The Jews were killed. More of them were killed in Poland than anywhere else. More of them came from Poland than anywhere else. A massive butchery, a genocide, a horror on an unprecendented scale, took place. It had to have a place, agents, victims. The victims- 90 percent Jews. The agents- 90 percent Germans. The place?

What is Poland without the Jews? For one thousand years, the society inhabiting this flat plain in the heart of Europe was marked by their presence. Polish culture, unique, wonderful, charming in its own right, was formed, always existed in conjuncion, opposition to Jewish culture. If the Jews were to have just dissapeared one day, been scuttled off to a resort in the Catskills, left without so much as saying goodbye, the hole left in Polish society would have been tremendous. But they didnt just leave. They were brutally murdered, and not far away, but right in the very spot where so many of them had lived for so long.

An outside observer, largely ignorant of both cultures and histories, I cannot begin to say what effects that has had. From my readings, it appears the Poles can't either, as it is a topic they have chosen to ignore. Some say, it made them only hate the departed even more. Others, downplay the loss, emphasize the independence of each culture, honor the tragedy but insist both sides have moved on, continued their independent developements.

Perhaps theyre right.

But it still seems odd to me, that here in Łódź, home to 300 000 Jews in 1939, the only traces of Judeaism left, are the Stars of David graffitied all over any neglected surface as the ultimate insult to an opposing football team.