Holocaust literature: Reviewing four recent books

SEPTEMBER 1, 2024, marked the 85th anniversary of the Nazi invasion of Poland and the outbreak of World War II, which led to the Holocaust. New books about that horrendous period are still emerging. Some are written as witness testimonies by Holocaust survivors in the twilight of their lives, and some by the children and grandchildren of survivors.

Only time will tell whether biographical books about Holocaust survivors will continue to be written and published, though some books written and published over the past decade are being republished as a means of illustrating what can happen to humanity when the dormant evil inside all of us rises to the surface and overcomes the good. 

Four such recent books include On Duty: The Polish Blue and Criminal Police in the Holocaust by Prof. Jan Grabowski; Living among the Dead by Adena Bernstein Astrowsky; Irena’s Gift by Karen Kirsten; and Holocaust Heroines by Beverley Chalmers and Dana Solomon. 

On Duty: The Polish Blue and Criminal Police in the Holocaust

JAN GRABOWSKI is the son of a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother. Bernstein Astrowsky and Kirsten are each the granddaughters of survivors. Chalmers and Solomon are both academics who have written extensively on factual Holocaust-related themes. Whether such writings will extend to fourth-generation survivors remains an open question.

For the most part, second- and third-generation survivors knew their parents and grandparents and heard their stories firsthand. Fourth-generation survivors at best knew one great-grandparent with whom they didn’t have a sufficiently close relationship to take an interest in what happened during the Holocaust; and if they have grandparents who are survivors, those grandparents were young children during the war and remember very little. Most of what they know is hearsay or based on what they may have read.

Grabowski, a noted controversial historian, was born in Warsaw and lives in Canada. He specializes in Polish-Jewish relations in German-occupied Poland throughout the years of the Holocaust. Passionate about researching and revealing the involvement of Polish Catholics in cooperating with the Germans in hunting down and murdering Jews, he is far from the flavor of the month in his native country, though he has not been barred from returning there occasionally, nor does he overlook those Poles of all faiths who rescued and sheltered Jews. 

The data which he has discovered on the collaboration by Poles with the Germans is quite harrowing, but one can’t help wondering whether he would be quite as zealous in his quest if his father was not Jewish and had not been among the resistance fighters who survived the Holocaust. Many people become involved in specific causes in response to something they or their nearest and dearest have experienced. In Grabowski’s case, even though he is not Jewish according to Halacha, his Jewish genes are obviously stronger than his Catholic genes.

The Blue Police force was a unit established by the Germans. The Poles don’t make a distinction between Nazis and German citizens who were not Nazis. Many Poles still harbor hostile feelings toward anyone who is German. Originally published in Polish in 2020, Grabowski’s book was recently translated into English under the Yad Vashem imprimatur. Other than a profusion of footnotes, it does not read like an academic thesis. It has a wealth of information and fascinating vignettes that Grabowski acknowledges he collected with the help of his students. In fact, there is so much of it that no single individual could have accumulated so much without help from other sources that include newspapers, online material, private collections, unpublished manuscripts, archives, libraries, survivor testimonies, police and court records, and various institutions – mainly in the US, Poland, and Israel. The multi-page bibliography at the end of the book provides an inkling as to the extent of the research.

As an academic, Grabowski is a stickler for detail, but for the ordinary non-academic reader there’s really too much detail to absorb. While focusing primarily on Warsaw and Krakow, Grabowski takes his readers to many parts of Poland, including small towns and villages – among them my parents’ hometown, Czestochowa, which is famous for its statue of the Black Madonna. 

In connection with Czestochowa, where very few Jews were saved or survived, Grabowski notes that even before the war, there was extreme hostility toward the Jews, which was exacerbated by antisemitic incitement in the Polish press.

Among the many places that he mentions is Piotrokow Tribunalski, where the first ghetto was established. It is also the birthplace of two very famous child Holocaust survivors – former Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel Yisrael Meir Lau; and Rena Quint, who as a nine-year-old sole survivor of her family went to America, where she was adopted by a Jewish couple who gave her love and restored her sense of security. (Quint has been living in Israel for close to 40 years. An eloquent speaker, she is in frequent demand to lecture to local and visiting groups about her Holocaust experiences. Coincidentally, both she and Lau spent time in a forced labor camp in Czestochowa, and both have for decades been heavily involved with Yad Vashem.)

Grabowski quotes extensively from the famous Ringelblum archives of renowned Warsaw historian Emauel Ringelblum, who together with his wife and daughter, was murdered in 1944. The archives, which were buried in clay pots, were discovered in the rubble of the Warsaw Ghetto soon after the war and are among the most valuable records of life in all its facets inside the Warsaw Ghetto.

But above all, the book gives many excruciating examples of the cruelty of the Blue Police and their role in implementing anti-Jewish policies dictated by the Germans, the zeal with which they hunted down Jews and killed them, and the inexcusable fact that after the war, those members of the Blue Police who had also been in the Polish resistance forces were hailed as heroes, and in some places monuments were erected in their honor.

To Grabowski, this is yet another distortion and falsification of Polish complicity in the final solution to the Jewish problem. What pains him particularly is that after the war, these murderers in blue uniforms returned to their lives, careers, and social circles as if nothing amiss had happened.

In his search for truth, Grabowski has incurred the animosity of the Polish authorities, whom he castigates for their denials and conflicting stories, insisting that they should admit to the truth. But he does point out that there were also many Polish individuals and families who helped Jews at the risk and often the cost of their own lives. Freeing itself from distortions of Holocaust history would enable Poland to begin a new clean chapter.

Irena’s Gift

THE BLUE Police are also mentioned in Karen Kirsten’s book Irena’s Gift, which melds several stories into a factual book that reads like fiction. When the book arrived at the office of The Jerusalem Post (the parent company of The Jerusalem Report), I was surprised that it was specifically addressed to me and not the literary editor. But then the penny dropped. Though printed by Citadel in the United States, it was originally published by Penguin in Australia, and a large part of the book is set in Melbourne, where the author and I were born, although she now lives in the US, and I live in Israel.

The American edition remains true to Australian spelling and expressions. For instance, a sweater is called a “jumper” in Australia, and words such as “theater” are spelled with an “re” at the end, and not an “er.”

Essentially, this is the story of Kirsten’s mother, who was born in Poland during the Holocaust to an assimilated Jewish family, surviving members of which immigrated to Australia. Although the family’s social circle is composed of other assimilated families of Polish Holocaust survivors in what Kirsten refers to as “the Polish circus,” they do not live in predominantly Jewish neighborhoods but in outer suburbs in which Jews are an acute minority. The author’s grandmother has never set foot in a synagogue – not even on her wedding day. An atheist, she remains bitter over the fact that she was hounded, eventually caught, and sent to an extermination camp only because she is Jewish.

In Australia, Kirsten’s grandparents rebuild their lives but fail to attain the degree of affluence and social standing that they enjoyed in pre-war Poland. There is an inexplicable distance between Kirsten’s mother and grandmother. Affection shown by Kirsten’s grandmother is toward her grandchildren, especially Kirsten, though Kirsten neglects to explain how her mother and grandmother became reconciled after her mother went against her grandmother’s wishes and married out of the faith. It’s not surprising that Kirsten’s mother married out. She didn’t live among Jews; she had no knowledge of Jewish customs and traditions; and her friends were not Jewish. In need of something spiritual in her life, she found Jesus and became deeply immersed in the Christian faith.

One day, when Kirsten’s mother was long married with children, a letter arrived from Canada revealing a family secret of which all the elders in the family had been aware, but not Kirsten’s mother. It transpired that she was adopted, and that the woman she thought to be her mother was actually her aunt, the sister of her deceased biological mother.

The letter was from Kirsten’s biological grandfather, who after some 30 years wanted to make contact with his daughter, who he wrote was constantly in his thoughts. He had apparently promised his sister-in-law that he would never reveal himself to his daughter, and she was furious that he had broken his promise. 

After absorbing the shock, Kirsten’s mother took her immediate family to Canada for a long overdue reunion. Curiously, just as she had a close relationship with the woman she believed to be her grandmother, out of all the family Kirsten had the closest relationship with her biological grandfather. which she maintained until his death. He too was assimilated, but to a lesser extent. When he died, Kirsten arranged for both a rabbi and a Catholic priest to officiate at the funeral.

But she wanted to know more about the mystery of what happened to her family during the Holocaust and the lives they had lived before. She embarked on an extensive search which took her to Warsaw, Krakow, Owosk, Lwow, Nowy Sacz Milanowek, and beyond. Her command of Polish is very scanty. So when going by train to search for her biological grandmother’s grave, she asked a young man on the railway platform if he spoke English, which he did. She wanted to make sure that she was catching the right train. He was surprised because her destination was not one that was frequented by tourists. When she told him where she was going, he asked the reason for her visit. When she told him, he asked if she was Jewish. To her own surprise, she answered in the affirmative. Technically, she is Jewish but was raised Christian and is married to a non-Jew. The young man was very excited. He had never met a Jew before, but he did know something about Judaism and plied her with questions to which she didn’t know the answers, though she does know them now.

One thing that Grabowski and Kirsten often found in their research was the frequency with which Jews were swindled by Poles to whom they paid large sums of money to be hidden or taken across the border; and they had been betrayed by people who had been their friends, business associates, and acquaintances before the war. However, both acknowledged that there had been decent Poles with humanitarian instincts and high morals who had helped Jews in many ways.

Both also noted that it had been dangerous for Jews with stereotype features such as dark hair and eyes, hooked noses, and very full lips to go out into the street because they would be instantly apprehended by the Germans or the Blue Police.

Kirsten is no less detail conscious than Grabowski and is thus meticulous about naming streets, as well as cities, towns, and villages, so that anyone on a roots mission to Poland can use material from both books as guidelines.

Kirsten’s mother became caught up in Kirsten’s search and her journey into the past, and decided that she too wanted to go to Poland. Kirsten’s father was opposed, fearing that his wife might have a nervous breakdown, but mother and daughter ignored his anxiety and went to Poland together to close a circle. But it eventuated in more than that. Kirsten’s mother was deeply affected by her heritage. After many years of being a believing and practicing Christian, she couldn’t relinquish Christianity, but she joined something similar to Jews for Jesus and actually had a bat mitzvah.

As for Kirsten, she hasn’t got that far yet, but she writes and travels the world lecturing on genocide, hatred, and reconciliation. 

Living amongst the Dead - My Grandmother’s Holocaust Survival Story of Love and Strength

ANOTHER BOOK in which the author writes about her grandmother is more in the form of a tribute to courage, determination, clear thinking, and resilience. Originally published in 2020, Living amongst the Dead - My Grandmother’s Holocaust Survival Story of Love and Strength by Adena Bernstein Astrowsky is based on her grandmother’s diary. It tells the true story of Mania Lichtenstein and the community in which she was raised. It touches on so many survival issues, that it has been translated into Polish and Spanish and is in the process of being translated into Russian. The book, which has won several awards, has been republished by Amsterdam publishers and is particularly pertinent in light of what has been happening over the past year in the Middle East.

An experienced public speaker and government attorney, Bernstein Astrowsky in June of this year, at the invitation of the Embassy of Poland and the Polish Foreign Ministry, participated in a week-long study tour as the representative of American Jewish communities.

“Eighty years after liberation, we are still witnessing acts of cruelty born out of hatred and discrimination,” says Bernstein Astrowsky. “Living among the Dead reminds us of the beautiful communities that existed before WW II, the lives lost and those that lived on, and the importance of never forgetting these stories so that history does not repeat itself.”

Unfortunately, we have seen history imitating itself, and it threatens to get a lot worse before it gets better. Jews have for centuries been the scapegoats for societies’ ills in nations around the world and were early victims of fake news. Jews did not kill Jesus, despite a falsehood that has been perpetuated and handed down from generation to generation. Not only that, but it is surprising how many antisemites are unaware that Jesus himself was a Jew, descended from King David, and the son of a Jewish mother and a Jewish father. 

Holocaust Heroines: Jewish Women Saving Jewish Children

SOON TO be released is a book published by Grosvenor House titled Holocaust Heroines: Jewish Women Saving Jewish Children. Rena Quint, who is mentioned above, was one such child, or “a child of many mothers” as she is called in the biography written about her by Barbara Sofer. Quint was cared for by one woman after another in the concentration camp. When whoever cared for her disappeared, another woman took the child under her wing. The last to do so took Quint to America.

This new book by Beverly Chalmers and Dana Solomon tells of exceptional Jewish women who, although themselves targets of Nazi murderers, managed to save a large number of Jewish children. According to the authors, very few of these women have been officially recognized or honored. This book tries in part to amend the lacuna and seeks to highlight the role played by Jewish women in saving the lives of Jewish children during the Holocaust.

When they grew up, some of those children made significant contributions to the arts and to science. One can only imagine how much more the world might have benefited if 1.5 million Jewish children had not been the victims of the genocidal policies of the Third Reich. ■