2005-06-02—Book Review: Smoke in the Sand |
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Book
Review What happened to Lvov's Jews |
Smoke in the Sand by Eliah Yones;
Gefen Publishing House; 390 pages; $29.95.
There have been numerous Holocaust histories, memoirs and other
detailed studies of that catastrophic era, but relatively few case studies of
particular Jewish communities - how they were attacked and how they
reacted in the face of the overwhelming danger they were faced with. Thus,
this study, subtitled the "Jews of Lvov in the War Years,
1939-1944," is a valuable addition to the voluminous list of works about
that era.
While much of what transpired in Lvov - a fairly large city in
eastern Galicia that at various times was part of Poland, Austria-Hungary and
Ukraine - probably is typical of the horrific happenings throughout
nazi-occupied Europe, it would appear that some of the persecutions and other
events differ from what took place in most other communities.
There appear to be some historical reasons for this difference.
Firstly, Lvov and the surrounding area was a longtime battleground between
Poles and Ukrainians, with the Jews literally caught in the middle and
persecuted to varying degrees by both factions. Secondly, Lvov was in that
part of Poland that came under Soviet control under secret terms of the
infamous nazi-Soviet pact of August 1939, which immediately precipitated World
War II. While the almost two years that the area was under Soviet control were
not a happy time for the Jews, they were sheer bliss compared with
the years that followed, after the Wehrmacht swept through eastern Poland in
its 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union.
Eliah Yones lived through the Holocaust in Lvov - he managed to
escape to the nearby forests and joined the Partisans in fighting the Germans
- and then immigrated to Israel. The book is based both on his personal
experiences and his research for a Ph. D., which he earned at Hebrew
University at the age of 79.
The generally held viewpoint about the Holocaust in Eastern
Europe is that Jews were first herded into tightly controlled ghettos, where
they led highly constricted lives, and at a certain point (usually in
1942 or early 1943) they were led onto freight trains headed for
Auschwitz, Treblinka or the other death camps. The story in Lvov is quite
different. Here, starting with the nazi takeover in the summer of 1941, they
were subjected to a series of Aktionen, during which
significant numbers would be murdered. As time went on, these became virtually
continuous,
shrinking the size of the ghetto considerably. While some Jews
were sent to the death camp at Belzc, it appears that large numbers were slain
in and around Lvov, many in a slave-labor camp called Janowska on the
city's outskirts.
Also there was a dispute in nazi ranks between civilians,
mostly businessmen, who wanted to "save" at least the able-bodied
Jews for use as slave labor, and the Gestapo and SS, who were determined to
conduct the final solution - the latter group of course won out.
Yones writes in considerable detail about the Judenrat
(Jewish council) and its multiple departments, a massive bureaucracy employing
5,000 people at its peak. Gradually, it was transformed into a tool to
implement the Germans' anti-Jewish schemes and for the Jews to perform the
Germans' dirty work. He is most critical, however, of the Jewish police, who
collaborated with the nazis to the extent that survivors have severely
condemned them. One of them wrote that they "left an ineradicable stain
on the history of the ghetto in Lvov."
No punches are pulled in this account, so that Yones leaves us
with a decidedly mixed picture of Lvov Jewry's actions under the extreme pressure
of a ruthless enemy. A few terms are not properly explained, and some are left
unexplained until later chapters, leaving the reader somewhat puzzled. But
overall, this is a very well researched, carefully documented study of a
community in a time of unbearable stress and strain.
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