An Eye For An Eye: The Story of Jєωs Who Sought Revenge For the h0Ɩ0cαųst, by John Sack, 1993 & 2000.
I'd come to Auschwitz and this part of Poland to research this book. I had heard of a Jєωιѕн girl, Lola, who, after one-and-one-half years at Auschwitz, had turned the h0Ɩ0cαųst upside-down by becoming the commandant of the big prison for Germans at Gleiwitz, thirty miles away, and in some ways by imitating the SS women at Auschwitz, and I wanted to write about her.
When the h0Ɩ0cαųst ended, I learned, a lot of Jєωs became commandants like Lola. I understood why, but the Jєωs were sometimes as cruel as their exemplars at Auschwitz, and they even ran the organization that, ran the prisons and - as I learned - the cσncєnтrαтισn cαмρs for German civilians in Poland and Poland-administered Germany.
Once again, I felt that I was confronting something too big for one little three-pound brain, for I was learning that, yes, the h0Ɩ0cαųst happened, the Germans killed Jєωs, but that a second atrocity happened that the Jєωs who committed it covered up: one where the Jєωs killed Germans.
God knows the Jєωs were provoked, but I learned that in 1945 they killed a great number of Germans: not nαzιs, not Hider's trigger men, but German civilians, German men, women, children, babies, whose "crime" was just to be Germans.
Through the wrath of Jєωs, however understandable, the Germans lost more civilians than at Dresden, more than, or just as many as, the Japanese at Hiroshima, the Americans at Pearl Harbor, the British in the Battle of Britain, or the Jєωs themselves in Poland's occasional pogroms: so I now learned, and I was aghast to learn it. This was no h0Ɩ0cαųst or the moral equivalent of the h0Ɩ0cαųst, but I knew that if I reported it, I'd be exhibiting, well, call it chutzpah, for I could guess what the world would say, but I felt I'd be doing the righteous thing both as a reporter and as a man who's a Jєω.
Cover-up
All this was covered up for nearly fifty years. Jєωs who were involved didn't talk about it. For example, the chief of police in occupied Breslau, Germany, in 1945, who was Jєωιѕн, later wrote a book about the h0Ɩ0cαųst. And in telling about his time as chief of police in Breslau, all he says is, "We moved westward to Breslau and ... from there ... to Prague." That's it. And Jєωιѕн reporters who knew didn't write about it. There's a working reporter right now in New York City who was in Poland right after World War II. He told me, "Whatever, whatever the Germans tell you, believe me, it's true." But he himself, he never wrote about it.
The truth was covered up, and was still being covered up. In 1989, I went to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, Israel's central h0Ɩ0cαųst center. As you may know, they have fifty million docuмents there about the h0Ɩ0cαųst. I ask them, "Well, what do you have on the Office of State Security?" They have nothing. I ask them, "What do you have on the Jєωs in the Office of State Security?" Nothing. I say, "Well, there were Jєωιѕн commandants, Jєωιѕн directors, Jєωιѕн ..." The chairman of Yad Vashem responds, "It sounds rather imaginary," and the director of archives says to me, "Imm-possible! Impossible!"
Denial, denial. I know that denial is a very human thing. But historically I don't think it's a Jєωιѕн thing. When Abraham, Isaac and Jacob committed sins, we Jєωs didn't deny it. Yes, Abraham, the father of our people, sinned. God told him to go to Israel, instead he went to Egypt, and we admitted it in the Book of Genesis. Judah (the word "Jєω" comes from Judah) made love to a prostitute. We admitted it in Genesis. Moses, even Moses sinned, and God didn't let him into the Promised Land. We admitted that in Deuteronomy. Solomon -- good, wise, old King Solomon -- did evil. He "worshipped idols." We didn't cover it up. We admitted it in the Book of Kings.
It seems to me that that's the Jєωιѕн tradition. How can we say to other people -- to Germans, to Serbs, to Hutus -- "What you're doing is wrong," if we ourselves do it and cover it up? I wish it were someone else who was here today. Abraham Foxman. Elie Wiesel. I wish he or she would simply say yes, some Jєωs, some Jєωs, did evil in 1945. But when the Jєωιѕн establishment didn't say it, then I had to say it.
I'm a reporter. That's what reporters do. Someone kills sixty thousand people, we report it. If we don't report it, it might become common, or more common, than it already is. But also I'm a Jєω, and the Torah says (Leviticus 5:1), that if someone does evil, and if I know it and don't report it, then I am guilty too.
So I start writing this book