eBook - ePub
Dance with Death
A Holistic View of Saving Polish Jews during the Holocaust
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub
About this book
More than seventy-five years have passed since the Holocaust and the terrors visited by German Nazis on occupied Europe. Yet this history continues to be the subject of research, debate, and controversy. One particularly delicate issue is the question of whether non-Jews did all they could to help Jews during the war.
In this book, Jaroslaw Piekalkiewicz examines this issue in detail as it relates to Poland—the country that experienced the harshest German occupation and was slated for permanent incorporation into the German Reich. He examines all the different factors influencing the capacity and willingness of Poles to save Jews and documents the efforts made to save them despite these impediments.
Unlike other books on the subject, Piekalkiewicz chooses to start with a chapter on the thousand-year-long history of Jews in Poland. This allows readers to understand why one-third of the world's Jews lived in Poland before WWII and to learn about their rich and diverse culture. Equally clear are the dark clouds that gathered before the war in the form of fascism and antisemitism expanding in Poland and elsewhere in Europe.
Piekalkiewicz is a political scientist who participated in the Polish Resistance as a teenager along with other members of his family. This combination of academic rigor and personal experience gives readers a more realistic understanding than usually available of resistance under German occupation and amid the Holocaust. He provides a detailed understanding of German occupation of Poland and the operations of the Polish Underground and goes on to describe efforts by Poles from many walks of life to save Jews. The text is interspersed with his vivid personal testimonies of surviving and fighting in occupied Poland. At the same time, the author does not shrink from revealing the dark side of the German occupation: fear, envy, greed, demoralization, and collaboration with the Germans to betray Jews, the Poles who hid them, resistance members, and even personal enemies. This book provides readers with the basic elements to understand Polish-Jewish relations during WWII as well as what is probably the last testimony that will ever be published of a former resistance fighter.
In this book, Jaroslaw Piekalkiewicz examines this issue in detail as it relates to Poland—the country that experienced the harshest German occupation and was slated for permanent incorporation into the German Reich. He examines all the different factors influencing the capacity and willingness of Poles to save Jews and documents the efforts made to save them despite these impediments.
Unlike other books on the subject, Piekalkiewicz chooses to start with a chapter on the thousand-year-long history of Jews in Poland. This allows readers to understand why one-third of the world's Jews lived in Poland before WWII and to learn about their rich and diverse culture. Equally clear are the dark clouds that gathered before the war in the form of fascism and antisemitism expanding in Poland and elsewhere in Europe.
Piekalkiewicz is a political scientist who participated in the Polish Resistance as a teenager along with other members of his family. This combination of academic rigor and personal experience gives readers a more realistic understanding than usually available of resistance under German occupation and amid the Holocaust. He provides a detailed understanding of German occupation of Poland and the operations of the Polish Underground and goes on to describe efforts by Poles from many walks of life to save Jews. The text is interspersed with his vivid personal testimonies of surviving and fighting in occupied Poland. At the same time, the author does not shrink from revealing the dark side of the German occupation: fear, envy, greed, demoralization, and collaboration with the Germans to betray Jews, the Poles who hid them, resistance members, and even personal enemies. This book provides readers with the basic elements to understand Polish-Jewish relations during WWII as well as what is probably the last testimony that will ever be published of a former resistance fighter.
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Yes, you can access Dance with Death by Jaroslaw Piekalkiewicz in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in History & Holocaust History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
Information
Table of contents
- List of Tables
- Acknowledgments
- List of Abbreviations and Terms
- Editor’s Introduction
- Introduction
- 1 Christians and Jews in Poland: Cohabitation and Conflict
- 2 The Invasion and Occupation of Poland
- 3 The Extermination of Polish Jews
- 4 The Polish Underground
- 5 Help from Individuals and Legal and Resistance Organizations
- 6 Żegota: The Council to Aid Jews
- 7 Aid from Abroad
- 8 Criminals, Collaborators, and Antisemites
- Conclusions
- Bibliography
- About the Author