Miranda Brethour’s latest article, Jewish–Gentile Relations in Hiding during the Holocaust in Sokołów County, Poland (1942–1944) is a relevant and poignant piece that explores “the experience of Jews in hiding with gentile Poles during the Holocaust through the geographical lens of one county in eastern Poland, Sokołów, which was situated a few kilometers south of the Treblinka death camp.” We asked Miranda a few questions about this micro-historical research, the importance of studying Jewish-Gentile relations, and the impact she hopes the work will have on the field.
Specifically, Miranda’s work draws “on the written and oral testimonies of Jews from the region, the following pages illustrate the attempts of Sokołów Jews to survive after the liquidation of the ghettos in 1942 by finding shelter with Gentile neighbors, looking into their divergent experiences of hiding. This article shows that there were very few cases in which Jews received shelter from Polish Gentiles without providing something in return: For many Jews in hiding, financial exchanges were the lifeline connecting them with their aid-provider, and, at times, offers of shelter were rescinded gradually or immediately once financial resources ran dry. It further exposes that the roles of ‘rescuer’ and ‘perpetrator’ could be performed simultaneously, complicating the notion of the Gentile rescuer as a one-dimensional actor of moral good, which has dominated public spaces of memory in contemporary Poland and appears in pieces of academic writing. Finally, this article pays homage to the community of Sokołów Jews destroyed in the Holocaust by exploring the memory of Sokołów’s Jewish past in the region today.”
Miranda Brethour is a doctoral student in the Department of History at The Graduate Center, City University of New York.
JHR– You note that the proximity of Treblinka was, naturally, a considerable influence on Jewish mobilization efforts, but how, if at all, did it affect the behavior and decisions of the rescuer/helper? And if so, for the good or for bad?
MB– The Treblinka death camp had a deleterious impact on the attitudes and behavior of local Gentiles. However, I did not find any evidence pertaining to Gentile helpers in particular. In my article, I discuss the robbery of Jews near the railroad tracks, referring to the work of Jan Gross and Jan Grabowski who have elaborated on this theme in much greater detail. Such a short piece of writing cannot do justice to this complex topic. In recognition of this, my next project is devoted to the influence of the Sobibór death camp on both Jewish survival strategies and Gentile aid-provision in the town of Włodawa.
JHR– Your article places emphasis on the “active role” that Jews undertook in the hiding process, be it the courage to seek and establish a relationship, economic exchange, and ongoing trust, or indeed lack of, in the rescuer. With this Jewish agency in mind, what do you hope this research will lead to outside of this micro-history?
MB– In contributing to the existing literature on Jewish-Gentile relations in hiding, I wished to foreground the (often destructive) intimacy that characterized relationships between Poles and Jews in hiding and the strenuous context in which these relations developed. To do so, it was most useful to focus on the individual historical actors and recognize the particulars of each hiding arrangement. Such a choice highlighted unique cases wherein Jews paid for shelter by knitting clothing or making other goods. Of course, I cannot emphasize enough that any decisions made by Jews throughout the hiding process were wholly limited, as those in hiding were completely vulnerable to and at the whim of their Gentile helpers.
JHR– Considering your concluding remarks that rescuers and helpers “could, at the same time, be perpetrators”, how do you believe your findings will contribute to the contemporary discourse surrounding Polish perpetration and rescue in the Holocaust?
MB– While the paradigm of bystander (or witness), perpetrator, and victim was highly influential in structuring approaches to the history of the Holocaust for many years, my conclusion is further evidence that this structure is, in many ways, illusory, as the evidence does not reflect such solid classifications. I hope that my article, along with the recent literature on challenging the notion of a Gentile ‘witness’ or ‘bystander’, can contribute to re-conceptualizing Jewish-Gentile relations during the Holocaust in ways that more accurately reflect the historical evidence.
Read Miranda Brethour’s full article in the latest issue of The Journal of Holocaust Research.
The Journal of Holocaust Research 