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Poland’s Holocaust: Ethnic Strife, Collaboration with Occupying Forces and Genocide in the Second Republic, 1918–1947 is a 1998 book by sociologist Tadeusz Piotrowski. It concerns the topic of Poland's history in the interwar period as well as in World War II, with particular focus on the uneasy relations between various ethnic groups of the Second Polish Republic.[1][2]
 | |
| Author | Tadeusz Piotrowski |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | history of Poland |
| Publisher | McFarland & Company |
Publication date | 1998 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Pages | xiv, 437 |
| ISBN | 9780786403714 |
| OCLC | 37195289 |
The book discusses the suffering of Polish citizens under Nazi and Soviet military terror and analyses how Polish Jews, ethnic Poles, Belarusians, Lithuanians, and Ukrainians in the Polish territories resisted or cooperated with the occupying forces.[3] It includes tables, maps, primary source documents and a bibliography.[3]
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum listed the book in its bibliography for the topic of "Poles", describing it as follows: "Discusses the terror and oppression of Polish citizens by both the Nazi and Soviet militaries. Includes analysis of cooperation and resistance to the occupiers by Jews, Poles, Belorussians, Lithuanians, and Ukrainians in the Polish territories. Includes tables, maps, primary source documents, endnotes, a bibliography, and an index.".[4]
Klaus-Peter Friedrich writing in Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung considers the methodology in Poland's Holocaust to be questionable. Friedrich writes that the book is critical towards ethnic minorities in Poland and apologetic towards ethnic Poles.[1] Overall, Friedrich considers the work to be "unbalanced" as Piotrowski "considers collaboration exclusively under ethnic terms as if it was ethnically determined".[5]
Judith Olsak-Glass in Sarmatian Review views Piotrowski's book as a valuable contribution to the field, while seeing the chapter on Jewish collaboration as provocative. Also, she appreciates his detailed examination of the massacres of Poles by Ukrainian nationalists.[6]
Lisiunia A. Romanienko in Humanity & Society (2000) praises Poland's Holocaust as "one of the most comprehensive and well documented, multi-methodological contributions to scholarly work in the area", highlighting its fresh approach to the role of various ethnic groups in wartime collaboration.[7]
Anna M. Cienciala reviewed it for Nationalities Papers in 2001. Her review described the work as "a solid study of the suffering, resistance, and collaboration."[2]
Adele Valeria Messina devoted a chapter to Piotrowski's book in her work American Sociology and Holocaust Studies: the Alleged Silence and the Creation of the Sociological Delay.[8] She places Piotrowski's book between the works of Celia Stopnicka Heller and Jan T. Gross as an important voice in understanding what the Holocaust in Poland was.[9] According to Messina, Piotrowski shows how the nationalist policies of the Polish government before the war and the national ambitions of minorities led to a split and the outbreak of ethnic conflicts after the start of the World War II. Ethnic minorities turned to collaboration with the occupying powers and against the interests of the Polish state.[10] Piotrowski emphasize the role of collaboration of all national groups as an important factor contributing to the extent of the extermination of Jews in Poland.[11] Messina highlights Piotrowski's effort to document through the voices of witnesses both Polish collaboration and the assistance offered to persecuted Jews.[12]
Gwido Zlatkes, reviewing the work for Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, criticized the work for being biased towards the Poles; throughout the work, Piotrowski's "polemical passion" shared an uncomfortable relationship with "scholarly discipline."[13]
Jeremy Black found the work to be a "seriously unbalanced account" that had "hijacked" the terminology of Holocaust to include victims of Soviet regime and portray the Jews as colloborators.[14]
Jan Grabowski mentioned the book in passing, characterizing it as a "collection of quotations taken out of context" with ahistorical claims.[15]
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