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Ordinary Jews: Choice and Survival During the Holocaust

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Ordinary Jews: Choice and Survival During the Holocaust ORDINARY JEWS ORDINARY JEWS Choice and Survival during the Holocaust EVGENY FINKEL Princeton University Press Princeton and Oxford Copyright © 2017 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TR press.princeton.edu Jacket image: Inhabitants of the Kutno Ghetto. Photograph by Hugo Jaeger/Getty. All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Finkel, Evgeny, 1978– author. Title: Ordinary Jews : choice and survival during the Holocaust / Evgeny Finkel. Description: Princeton ; Oxford : Princeton University Press, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016043204 | ISBN 9780691172576 (hardcover : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) | Jews--Persecutions. | Survival. | Cooperativeness. | Adjustment (Psychology) | Resistance (Philosophy) | Escape (Psychology) Classification: LCC D804.3 .F5664 2017 | DDC 940.53/18—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016043204 British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available This book has been composed in Sabon Next LT Pro Printed on acid-free paper. ∞ Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 CONTENTS List of Tables, Maps, and Figures vii Note on Transliteration ix Chapter 1 Introduction 4 Chapter 2 Setting the Stage: Jewish Ghettos during the Holocaust 21 Chapter 3 What Did the Jews Know? 51 Chapter 4 Cooperation and Collaboration 69 Chapter 5 Coping and Compliance 98 Chapter 6 Evasion 126 Chapter 7 Resistance 159 Chapter 8 Conclusions 191 appendix 1 Data and Archival Methods 199 appendix 2 Distribution of Strategies 208 appendix 3 Beyond the Three Ghettos: Econometric Analysis of Uprisings 212 Notes 223 Abbreviations 245 Bibliography 247 Glossary 263 Acknowledgments 265 Index 269 TABLES, MAPS, AND FIGURES Tables 1.1: State control of Minsk, Kraków, and Białystok 14 2.1: Main differences between the Minsk, Kraków, and Białystok ghettos 36 4.1: Cooperators and collaborators 74 A2.1. Distribution of strategies 209 A3.1. Ghetto uprisings during the Holocaust (1939 borders) 213 A3.2. Variables 219 A3.3. Logit analysis of ghetto uprisings: Percentage change in odds 220 Maps 1. East– Central Europe 1914 1 2. East– Central Europe 1933 2 3. East– Central Europe 09/1939– 06/1941 3 Figures 2.1: Distribution of ghettos by state (1939 borders) 23 2.2: Duration of ghettos’ existence (in months) 24 2.3: Duration of ghettos’ existence by state (1939 borders) 24 2.4: Distribution of ghettos by year of establishment (1939 borders) 25 2.5: Ghettos in Poland by year of establishment (1939 borders) 26 2.6: Open and closed ghettos by state (1939 borders) 26 A3.1: A page from the 1928 Polish Elections Data Book 216 NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION For Polish names and places in Poland I use the original Polish spelling. The only exceptions are places that have a standard internationally rec- ognized spelling. Therefore, I use “Warsaw” instead of the original Polish “Warszawa.” For places in Eastern Poland I use the pre– World War II Polish form, instead of the later Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian, or Lithuanian forms. Thus, Białystok rather than Belostok and Wilno rather than Vilnius. In the transliteration of Hebrew words I do not include special characters, such as dots and accents (thus t instead of ṭ, s instead of ś etc.). Hebrew speakers will recognize the correct word without special characters and others will not be affected by this decision. ORDINARY JEWS East - Central Europe, 1914 St. Petersburg a lg a o V e S c i t Moscow l R u s s i a n a B Do Wilno n Minsk E m p i r e Berlin Białystok G e r m a n y Warsaw Kyiv Dniep er Kraków Lwów Danube A u s t r ia - H u n g a r y 1:12,000,000 0100 200300 km Vienna 0150 00 200 miles Map 1. East - Central Europe, 1933 Leningrad E s t o n i a a lg a o V e S c i L a t v i a t Moscow l a B L i t h u a n i a Do n Wilno 1 2 Minsk U. S. S. R. Berlin Białystok G e r m a n y Warsaw P o l a n d Kyiv Kraków C Dniep z er e c Lwów be h Danu o s l o v a k i a 1:12,000,000 0100 200300 km 1 - Free City of Danzig Vienna 2 - East Prussia (Germany) 0150 00 200 miles Map 2. East - Central Europe, 09/1939-06/1941 Leningrad a lg a o V e S c i t Moscow l a B U. S. S. R. Do n Wilno Minsk Berlin Białystok Warsaw G e r m a n y General Government Kyiv Dniep Kraków er Lwów Danube i a v a k 1:12,000,000 S l o 0100 200300 km Vienna H u n g a r y 0150 00 200 miles Map 3. Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION June 12, 1942, Khmel’nik Ghetto, ReiChskommissariat Ukraine June 12, 1942 divided twelve-year- old Israel G.’s1 life into two unequal parts— before and after the day when the young Jews of Khmel’nik were shot during the Children’s Aktion. Israel’s travails began a year earlier, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. His father was drafted into the Red Army, while Israel, his mother Alexandra, and a younger brother Venyamin, tried to escape to the Soviet hinterland. They reached Kyiv, but needed a special permit to cross the Dnieper River and continue further east. After considerable effort, Alexandra was able to obtain the nec- essary paperwork— only to have it stolen by another Jewish family fleeing Khmel’nik. She and her children were forced to return to their town, which had since been occupied by the Germans. Israel’s family was better off than most local Jews. His grandfather, David G., was a coppersmith and the Germans needed his labor. The family also had money. Israel G. was named after his great- uncle, Israel Pinchefsky, who had immigrated to the United States before World War I, was drafted when the United States entered the war, and was killed in France. Until the German invasion, Israel Pinchefsky’s mother, who remained in Khmel’nik, received a pension from the United States government. On January 2, 1942 the Nazi authorities forced the Jews of Khmel’nik, about 4,500 people, into a ghetto. Two weeks later, only 1,000 to 1,500 skilled workers and their families were still alive; the rest had been shot by German mobile killing squad Einsatzkommando 5 and its local col- laborators. Then, following several uneventful months, the June 12 Aktion came. The Nazis ordered the ghetto inhabitants to the town’s main square, in front of the police building, where all of the children and several old people— 360 people in total— were rounded up. By that time Israel G. had already seen enough to understand what would follow. “I somehow made a decision to escape no matter what. Not go to the pit, not to undress, not to wait submissively (pokorno) to be shot,” he recalled. The police building Introduction • 5 had large pieces of plywood covering the windows. Israel G. hid behind them and then ran away while seven-year-old Venyamin stayed with the other children. Israel thus became the only survivor of the Children’s Ak- tion, but he never forgave himself for not going with his brother toward certain death. “It is naturally my biggest pain,” he admitted in 1995. “Back then, as a child, I didn’t understand that, but the older I become the more painful, sharper [the memory] is.” Having lost her younger son and fearing the imminent liquidation of the ghetto, Alexandra G. decided to make another desperate run for her life. With her remaining money she arranged fake IDs in the names of Alex andra and Vasilii Donets, both ethnic Ukrainians, and fled the ghetto with a non- Jewish guide. They crossed the border into Romanian-occupied Ukraine and snuck into the Zhmerinka ghetto, which was considered rela- tively safe; at this point the Romanians were confining Jews to ghettos but were not killing them en masse. Alas, this sanctuary was short-lived. Alex- andra and Israel were expelled by the local Jewish authorities for trying to obtain food outside the ghetto. The Jewish police of the Zhmerinka ghetto knew perfectly well that, if caught, Israel G. and his mother would be shot, but they also feared that the refugees’ smuggling of food might endanger the entire community. Israel and Alexandra then moved to Murafa, where after bribing Romanian officials they were allowed to remain until libera- tion in March 1944.2 The Puzzle The story of Israel G. and his family is not unusual. Many, if not most, survi- vors have similar stories to tell. Dates, places, and details vary, but the basic narratives are tragically similar: survivors recount losing family members, underscore their grief and pain, and emphasize luck and outright miracles. The underlying, but rarely explicitly stated theme of these stories is that of choice. Even if under impossible constraints, each and every Jewish person had to decide how to react to Nazi persecution. Lawrence Langer famously calls these “choiceless choices,” because no matter what the Jews did, death was the most likely outcome— yet choices they were nonetheless.3 Each Jew had to select a survival strategy, or sometimes several. Israel G. and his mother first decided to escape, then they coped for a time with the evolving situation inside Khmel’nik ghetto, and then finally escaped a second time.
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