The Diary of Samuel Golfard and the Holocaust in Galicia (Documenting Life and Destruction: Holocaust Sources in Context) by Lower Wendy

Author:Lower, Wendy [Lower, Wendy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780759120808
Publisher: AltaMira Press
Published: 2011-10-16T00:00:00+00:00

MARCH 6

I realize that I should not write about politics. The sparse as well as one-sided information does not allow one to form an objective judgment on the situation of the world. Besides, no one is interested in my personal views.

I must, however, mention the conversation I had with an “expert” in Ukrainian affairs. He is an ardent Pole for whom rooted in these eastern borderlands [kresy], which represent to him more than a mere recollection of a historical text because he has witnessed the daily, at times bloody struggles of two peoples living together on these lands from the inception of their annals.

Just as the Allies, without having yet won the war, are already determining our borders, so does my interlocutor define the task of an Independent Poland in relation to its minorities, particularly its Ukrainian minority. He berates the former Polish government for its lenient policy toward the Ukrainians, recommending now as the best solution their mass resettlement, patterned on the forced resettlements organized by the Soviets. The accusation against Ukrainians includes valid points: disarming Polish soldiers in 1939, tracking Polish colonists during the Soviet rule, killings and plunder.

In principle I should approve of Mr. K.’s opinion.55 Why, the injuries the Ukrainians have inflicted upon the Jews alone suffice to make the most severe accusations. The participation of Ukrainians in the murder of hundreds of thousands of Jews is beyond any dispute. To this day they carry out, often ruthlessly, the beastly Hitlerian orders. During the German invasion they themselves initiated terrible massacres compared to which even the cruelty of the Germans pales. It is a fact that the Germans took pictures of Jews being hurled into the flames of burning houses. In Przemyślany the perpetrators of this were the Ukrainians. Had they been allowed, they would even today take apart the entire ghetto in their passion for plunder.

However, I am neither a Polish nor a Jewish nationalist. In the face of such horrid, deadly injuries, I cannot for a moment equate a people with a bigger or smaller minority of its bandits. They can be found in each nation, even among the Jews, who in the past were famous for being repulsed by bloodshed. While in camp, I saw human beasts among Jewish group leaders [grupenführerzy], the Ukrainian militia, and the German Gestapomen. It is they who are guilty of letting loose man’s most primitive animal instincts as the war made human life worthless and all morality a museum relic. People are embarrassed to affirm the former moral “superstitions,” the day-to-day ethics of the prewar.

Every nation possesses its innate traits. The Hitlerites call them racial traits. With the Poles, that trait is their overly hot temperament and recklessness. With the Ukrainians, it is indisputably their hypocrisy and cruelty. These are hereditary traits but by no means constant. They developed in the psyche of the Ukrainian masses as a result of their political situation, always uncertain, and as a response to the methods of ruthlessness and violence that

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.