Hunt for the Jews : Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland

Judenjagd, hunt for the Jews, was the German term for the organized searches for Jews who, having survived ghetto liquidations and deportations to death camps in Poland in 1942, attempted to hide "on the Aryan side." Jan Grabowski's penetrating microhistory tells the story of the Judenjagd in Dabrowa Tarnowska, a rural county in southeastern Poland, where the majority of the Jews in hiding perished as a consequence of betrayal by their Polish neighbors. Drawing on materials from Polish, Jewish, and German sources created during and after the war, Grabowski documents the involvement of the local Polish population in the process of detecting and killing the Jews who sought their aid. Through detailed reconstruction of events, this close-up account of the fates of individual Jews casts a bright light on a little-known aspect of the Holocaust in Poland. A revealing account of Polish cooperation with Nazis in WWII—a “grim, compelling [and] significant scholarly study” (Kirkus Reviews). Between 1942 and 1943, thousands of Jews escaped the fate of German death camps in Poland. As they sought refuge in the Polish countryside, the Nazi death machine organized what they called Judenjagd, meaning hunt for the Jews. As a result of the Judenjagd, few of those who escaped the death camps would survive to see liberation. As Jan Grabowski's penetrating microhistory reveals, the majority of the Jews in hiding perished as a consequence of betrayal by their Polish neighbors. Hunt for the Jews tells the story of the Judenjagd in Dabrowa, Tarnowska, a rural county in southeastern Poland. Drawing on materials from Polish, Jewish, and German sources created during and after the war, Grabowski documents the involvement of the local Polish population in the process of detecting and killing the Jews who sought their aid. Through detailed reconstruction of events, “Grabowski offers incredible insight into how Poles in rural Poland reacted to and, not infrequently, were complicit with, the German practice of genocide. Grabowski also, implicitly, challenges us to confront our own myths and to rethink how we narrate British (and American) history of responding to the Holocaust” (European History Quarterly). "Judenjagd, hunt for the Jews, was the German term for the organized searches for Jews who, having survived ghetto liquidations and deportations to death camps in Poland in 1942, attempted to hide "on the Aryan side." Jan Grabowski's penetrating microhistory tells the story of the Judenjagd in Dąbrowa Tarnowska, a rural county in southeastern Poland, where the majority of the Jews in hiding perished as a consequence of betrayal by their Polish neighbors. Drawing on materials from Polish, Jewish, and German sources created during and after the war, Grabowski documents the involvement of the local Polish population in the process of detecting and killing the Jews who sought their aid. Through detailed reconstruction of events, this focused account of the fates of individual Jews casts a bright light on a little-known aspect of the Holocaust in Poland."--Publisher description Cover 1 Title 4 Copyright 5 Contents 10 Acknowledgments 12 List of Abbreviations 14 Introduction 18 1 Dąbrowa Tarnowska 26 2 Jews and Poles in Dąbrowa Tarnowska before 1939 33 3 First Years of Occupation 39 4 The Destruction of Dąbrowa Tarnowska 48 5 Judenjagd—Hunt for the Jews 65 6 Rural Society and the Jews in Hiding 80 7 In the Dulcza Forest 104 8 The German Police 110 9 The Polish “Blue” Police 118 10 The Baudienst 138 11 The Last Months of War 147 12 Different Kinds of Help 152 13 The Righteous 166 Conclusion 188 Appendix: Documents and Tables 192 Notes 264 Bibliography 296 Index 308 A 308 B 308 C 309 D 310 E 310 F 311 G 311 H 312 I 313 J 313 K 313 L 314 M 315 N 315 O 316 P 316 Q 316 R 316 S 317 T 319 U 319 V 319 W 319 Y 320 Z 320 Judenjagd, hunt for the Jews, was the German term for the organized searches for Jews who, having survived ghetto liquidations and deportations to death camps in Poland in 1942, attempted to hide "on the Aryan side." This book tells the story of the Judenjagd in Dabrowa Tarnowska, a rural county in southeastern Poland.