Facing the Catastrophe This book is part of the European Science Foundation (ESF) programme ‘Occupation in Europe: The Impact of National Socialist and Fascist Rule’. ISSN: 1753-7894 The ESF is an independent, non-governmental organization of national research organizations. Our strength lies in the membership and in our ability to bring together the different domains of European science in order to meet the scientific challenges of the future. The ESF’s membership currently includes seventy-seven influential national funding agencies, research-performing agencies and academies from thirty nations as its contributing members. Since its establishment in 1974, the ESF, which has its headquarters in Strasbourg with offices in Brussels and Ostend, has assembled a host of research organizations that span all disciplines of science in Europe, to create a common platform for cross-border cooperation. We are dedicated to supporting our members in promoting science, scientific research and science policy across Europe. Through its activities and instruments ESF has made major contributions to science in a global context. The ESF covers the following scientific domains: • Humanities • Life, Earth and Environmental Sciences • Medical Sciences • Physical and Engineering Sciences • Social Sciences • Marine Sciences • Nuclear Physics • Polar Sciences • Radio Astronomy Frequencies • Space Sciences This series includes: Vol. 1 Surviving Hitler and Mussolini: Daily Life in Occupied Europe Edited by Robert Gildea, Olivier Wieviorka and Anette Warring Vol. 2 The War for Legitimacy in Politics and Culture 1936–1946 Edited by Martin Conway and Peter Romijn Vol. 3 People on the Move: Forced Population Movements in Europe in the Second World War and its Aftermath Pertti Ahonen, Gustavo Corni, Jerzy Kochanowski, Rainer Schulze, Tamás Stark and Barbara Stelzl-Marx Facing the Catastrophe Jews and Non-Jews in Europe during World War II Edited by Beate Kosmala and Georgi Verbeeck Oxford • New York English edition First published in 2011 by Berg Editorial offices: First Floor, Angel Court, 81 St Clements Street, Oxford OX4 1AW, UK 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA © ESF 2011 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of Berg. Berg is the imprint of Oxford International Publishers Ltd. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978 1 84520 471 6 (Cloth) 978 1 84520 825 7 (Paper) 978 1 84788 848 8 (e-inst) 978 1 84788 847 1 (e-ind) Typeset by JS Typesetting Ltd, Porthcawl, Mid Glamorgan Printed in the UK by the MPG Books Group www.bergpublishers.com Contents Notes on Contributors vii Acknowledgements ix Introduction Georgi Verbeeck and Beate Kosmala 1 1 Jews and Non-Jews in the Aryanization Process: Comparison of France and the Slovak State, 1939–45 Jean-Marc Dreyfus and Eduard Nižňanský 13 2 Pogroms and Massacres during the Summer of 1941 in the Łomża and Białystock District: The Case of Radziłów Andrzej Żbikowski 41 3 Holocaust in the Lithuanian Provinces: Case Studies of Jurbarkas and Utena Christoph Dieckmann 73 4 Facing Deportation in Germany and the Netherlands: Survival in Hiding Marnix Croes and Beate Kosmala 97 5 Jews and Their Social Environment: Perspectives from the Underground Press in Poland and France Daniel Blatman and Renée Poznanski 159 6 Cultural Memory and Legal Responses: Holocaust Denial in Belgium and Romania Georgi Verbeeck and Mariana Hausleitner 229 Index 261 Contributors Daniel Blatman is the head of the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry and the Max and Rita Haber Professor in Contemporary Jewry and Holocaust Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has published books and articles on the Jewish Labour movement in Eastern Europe, the holocaust and its aftermath and Nazi Germany. Marnix Croes, PhD, is a researcher at the Scientific Research and Documentation Centre of the Netherlands’ Ministry of Justice. His research and publications focus on the chance of survival of Jews in the Netherlands during the German occupation of 1940–1945. Christoph Dieckmann, Lecturer for Modern European History at the University of Keele in the UK, has published on concentration camps, Himmler’s appointment calendar and widely on Lithuania under the German occupation. He was a researcher for the Lithuanian State Commission Investigating Soviet and Nazi Crimes in Lithuania. Jean-Marc Dreyfus, a graduate of the University of Paris 1 – Panthéon – Sorbonne, is a specialist in the economic Aryanization of property during the Holocaust. Currently he is a Lecturer in Holocaust Studies in the Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Manchester. Mariana Hausleitner, PhD, is a Lecturer in the Department of History and Cultural Studies at the Free University of Berlin and is currently working for the Berlin-based project ‘The Police in the National Socialist State’. She has published on inter-ethnic relations in the twentieth century in Romania, Hungary, the Republic of Moldova and the Ukraine, and on the Holocaust and its aftermath in Romania. Beate Kosmala, PhD, is a historian and senior researcher currently working for the German Resistance Memorial Centre, Berlin, and was previously at the Centre for Research on Anti-semitism, Berlin. She also assisted in creating the new Silent Heroes Memorial Centre, Berlin. Her research focuses on the history of Jews in hiding during the Holocaust. vii viii • Notes on Contributors Eduard Nižňanský is Professor in the Department of History at the Comenius University in Bratislava. He was a member of a team of Slovak historians who edited seven volumes of documents on the Holocaust in Slovakia, which cover almost all basic aspects of the history of the anti-Jewish measures and policies in Slovakia from 1938 to 1945. He is editor of Acta historica posoniensia-Judaica et Holocaustica. Renée Poznanski is the Yaakov and Poria Avnon Professor of Holocaust Studies in the Department of Politics and Government at Ben-Gurion University (Beer Sheva, Israel), which she created and has headed for several years. She was born and studied in France and graduated from the Sorbonne and the Institute of Political Science (Paris). She has published books and many articles on the Shoah in France. Georgi Verbeeck is Professor of German History at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium) and a Senior Lecturer at Maastricht University (the Netherlands). His research and publications focus on modern and contemporary German history, the theory of history, historiography and political culture. Andrzej Żbikowski is Professor of History at the University of Warsaw. He is associated with the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute and the Polish Centre for Holocaust Research. He has been chief specialist in the Public Education Office of the Institute of National Remembrance in Warsaw. His research focuses mainly on the persecution of the Jews in Northern and Eastern Poland during the Second World War. Acknowledgements The process of producing this book has been highly complex. The project has been part of the European Science Foundation (ESF) programme ‘Nazi Occupation in Europe: The Impact of National Socialist and Fascist Rule in Europe’. As the first result of our collaborative work, the volume Facing the Nazi Genocide: Non-Jews and Jews in Europe (Berlin: Metropol Verlag) appeared in 2004. Various editorial meetings have been held in such places as Trento (2000), Loveno di Menaggio (2001), Budapest (2002), Warsaw (2003), Bratislava (2004) and Amsterdam (2005). Additional meetings took place in Berlin and Maastricht. Special thanks go to the project initiators, Wolfgang Benz and Hans Blom, and the project management of the European Science Foundation, in particular Madelise Blumenroder. Decisive support was provided by Conny Kristel of the Netherlands Institute of War Documentation in Amsterdam, and substantial editorial assistance by Simone Labs and Paul Stephenson. Our thanks also go to colleagues with whom we have collaborated at earlier stages of the project but whose contributions are not included in the book. The editors wish to honour the memory of our distinguished colleague Karl Stuhlpfarrer, who passed away too early in his life in 2009. Beate Kosmala and Georgi Verbeeck ix