Lower Silesia from Nazi Germany to Communist Poland, 1942-49 by Sebastian Siebel-AchenbachReview by: Richard BlankeThe American Historical Review, Vol. 100, No. 5 (Dec., 1995), pp. 1628-1629Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2170017 .

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1628 Reviews of Books

The translation from the Hebrew (this book origi- nally appeared in Israel in 1982) is fluent; there are occasional awkward moments, such as "he hoped that the encounter with the scholars of Vilna would enrich and fructify his own scholarship" (p. 80). This splen- did, definitive book provides the fullest account avail- able of the intellectual life of East European rabbinic Judaism in the nineteenth century and the most original of its (scrupulously meticulous and pious) innovators.

STEVEN J. ZIPPERSTEIN Stanford University

NECHAMA TEC. Defiance: The Bielski Partisans. New York: Oxford University Press. 1993. Pp. xiii, 276. $27.50.

The main aim of the non-Jewish resistance in Europe during World War II was to prepare underground forces to liberate their occupied countries. All other deeds were secondary, according to Yitzhak Arad, former director of Yad Vashem. They all received arms from their governments-in-exile, such as the Armie Krajova of Poland. Yugoslavia, Italy, France, as well as Poland all followed this "liberation model."

By contrast, the main aim of the Jewish resistance was revenge and the chance to die with honor and dignity. They had no support from any government. At first the struggle was not even a matter of revenge but simply of survival. Eventually the aims expanded to include saving as many Jews as possible: ghetto escapees, hidden Jews, lucky Jews who avoided the German mobile killing units. The elderly and the ill and women with children were especially vulnerable and were the most difficult to save.

The Jewish partisans in the Soviet Union arose under similar circumstances, but for a time they were allowed to maintain separate bands within the context and control of the larger communist-dominated So- viet partisan movement, which eventually absorbed them until no clear case of all-Jewish otryady ("fight- ing groups") existed by the end of the war. (For a more complete analysis of this dilemma, see Moshe Kahanowitz, "Why No Separate Jewish Partisan Move- ment Was Established during World War II," Yad Vashem Studies, vol. 1 [1957]: 153-67.)

Sadly, most resistance took place when the situation became the most hopeless; and when did they know this? In Warsaw, only fifty to sixty thousand Jews were left when the ghetto revolt began. In Vilna, only one-third were still alive. In Bialystock, the majority had already been murdered. Still, the aim was ne- kumeh (revenge). Better to fall with honor in the ghetto or the forests than to be taken to the death camps like sheep to slaughter.

I will echo Vladka Meed, who, at a conference at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1994, called for more research on the daily life of ghetto dwellers, the simple people who faced the Draconian measures of the Nazi terror, and then had to make the difficult

and complex decision to fight back. It took strength to resist: some measure of health, good food, clothes, leadership, access to guns, and a strong spirit to defy one's elders. (See examples of revolts in the death camps in Primo Levi's The Drowned and the Saved [1992].)

That is why this book by Nechama Tec is so important. We know little about the Jewish resistance among the Soviet partisans, and we have too easily reduced all action in the Holocaust to those of victims, perpetrators, or bystanders. We need two more categories: rescuers and resistance fighters such as the Bielski partisans. I am often asked, "Were your parents in a concentration camp?" This is the stereo- type of the Jews, that they were all passive victims. But as the examples of my parents, Irving and Faye Porter-Srulik and Faygeh Merin Puchtik in the Kruk and Max Family Camps (he was known by his nom de guerre "Zalonka")-as well as the Bielski brothers, Vladka Meed, Benjamin Meed, and so many others like Abba Klurman, Berl Lorber, Sender Lande, and Charlie Zarutski have shown, not all Jews went like sheep to slaughter. Thousands resisted.

For examples of such resistance, see works such as They Fought Back by Yuri Suhl (1967, 1975) and Never to Forget by Milton Meltzer (1975), as well as my own research in such volumes as Jewish Partisans: A Docu- mentary of Jewish Resistance in the Soviet Union during World WarII (2 vols., 1982) and Confronting History and Holocaust: Collected Essays; 1972-1982 (1983).

JACK NUSAN PORTER The Spencer Institute, Newton Highlands, Massachusetts University of Massachusetts, Lowell

SEBASTIAN SIEBEL-ACHENBACH. Lower Silesia from Nazi Germany to Communist Poland, 1942-49. (St Antony's/ Macmillan Series.) New York: St. Martin's. 1994. Pp. xx, 381. $49.95.

Canadian historian Sebastian Siebel-Achenbach ex- amines the circumstances that led to the replacement of the homogeneously German population of Silesia by a mainly Polish one at the end of World War II. His account is factually dense and based on research in German, Polish, British, and American archives; many of the documents are reproduced in the body of the text. Although limiting his attention to Silesia, he tells a story that pertains just as well to the other German territories east of Oder-NeiBe assigned (minus their populations) to Poland and Russia at the Yalta Con- ference.

To be sure, beginning the story in 1942 seems odd; the material on German Silesia before 1945 remains tangential to the main body of the work, which begins with the arrival of the Soviet Army. (Similarly quirky is the sudden switch from all-German to all-Polish place- names at precisely that point, giving the impression that the action has moved to a different place.) Most

AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW DECEMBER 1995

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Modern Europe 1629

of this work, including its most interesting and signif- icant aspects, deals with developments in 1945 and after, in Silesia itself and in relations among the major powers. It includes much new material on the privations of the German expellees and the chaotic beginning of Polish rule. The author also confirms what others have noted about the behavior of the Red Army, which apparently had carte blanche to commit atrocities against a conquered civilian population on a scale unsurpassed by any modern European army. With respect to the new Polish administration, the author estimates that Germans in Silesia died, of starvation or on "death marches," at the rate of 10,000 per month in 1945; 12 percent of the entire civilian population may have perished in the course of Red Army conquest, early Polish occupation, and subsequent expulsion.

In other respects, this work tends to second the pioneering English-language work of Alfred de Zayas (even as it fails, for some reason, to include that- work in the bibliography). In contrast to de Zayas, Siebel- Achenbach focuses more on Joseph Stalin (and less on the reluctant Western powers) as the main force behind the transfer of Silesia to Poland. Although Stalin had no particular interest in satisfying the Polish appetite for additional territory, he did see a Soviet interest in creating a condition of permanent Polish-German enmity. Control of the "regained ter- ritories" could also be used by Polish Communists to enhance their small base of support and allow them to posture as agents and protectors of Poland's en- hanced "living space." As Siebel-Achenbach also notes, Stalin was simply lying when he told his West- ern partners at Yalta that the number of Germans remaining east of Oder-NeiBe (and so subject to formal expulsion westward) was only 1.5 million; the actual figure was closer to 5 million; the total de- prived of homes east of Oder-NeiBe was closer to 9 million; the total expelled from Eastern Europe as a whole closer to 15 million.

One can only welcome this addition to the still small English-language literature on one of the cen- tury's less-publicized atrocities. But as one turns back to the current stories about the former Yugoslavia, it is hard to ignore the awkward fact that the same governments that profess to be shocked by the com- paratively small-scale ethnic cleansing currently tak- ing place in the Balkans cooperated with Stalin fifty years ago in carrying out history's largest and most systematic ethnic-cleansing project. As this account makes clear, the Big Three wrote the book on the subject of ethnic cleansing at Yalta and may well have established the model for Serbs and Croats and others yet to come.

RICHARD BLANKE

University of Maine

JAN KUBIK. The Power of Symbols against the Symbols of Power: The Rise of Solidarity and the Fall of State Socialism in Poland. University Park: Pennsylvania State Univer-

sity Press. 1994. Pp. xiv, 322. Cloth $42.50, paper $14.95.

Anyone interested in the birth of Solidarity in Poland could easily assume that by the mid-1990s the topic, as an object of academic research, has been beaten to death. I am not aware of the existence of any pub- lished bibliography focused on Solidarity, but if one were to be produced, it would be very long. This, in turn, would suggest that nothing of interest, could ever be written offering a fresh insight or a new interpretation of this phenomenon.

And yet, Jan Kubik has convincingly shown that this assumption is plainly wrong and that the rise of Solidarity, which led within a decade to the collapse of the Communist order in Poland, could indeed be interpreted in a novel and exciting way. Undoubtedly, Kubik's unique approach stems from the fact that, although he teaches political science, his academic training is grounded in anthropology, which allows him to move easily across disciplines to throw new light on the emergence of Solidarity.

This approach may not please everyone, especially as the study does not make for easy reading and tends to be overloaded with theoretical references, familiar perhaps to anthropologists but of little meaning to political scientists. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that this is a highly original study that makes an important contribution not only to our knowledge of recent Polish politics but also to our understanding of the crucial role of symbols in influencing political processes. All students of East Central European politics will benefit from reading this book.

The study focuses on two key questions: Why did Solidarity emerge in Poland and not elsewhere in East Central Europe, and how did the organization survive to come back with a vengeance nine years later to bring down the Communist order in Poland, initiat- ing the domino effect in the rest of the region? In answering these two questions, Kubik concentrates on two concepts-legitimacy and hegemony-and shows how both of them, seemingly under the firm control of the Communist Party, were gradually eroded in the second half of the 1970s with the help of a variety of cultural symbols. The seemingly indestructible power of the party-state was ultimately destroyed by two other institutional actors-the Catholic church and the organized opposition-which succeeded in im- posing counterhegemonic culture on the state, open- ing the door to Solidarity.

I have no major problem with the book, and any differences I may have with the author tend to be more of emphasis rather than substance. I do believe that Kubik has overstated the importance of the Catholic church in the process of delegitimizing Communist rule in Poland. To be sure, the visit of Pope John Paul II to his homeland in 1979 proved to be a catalyst that initiated the birth of Solidarity a year later, but in just about every other respect the policy of the church vis-a-vis the government and the oppo-

AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW DECEMBER 1995

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