Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning (53 page)

Ita Straż, a young woman
Tomkiewicz,
Zbrodnia w Ponarach
, 203. Vova Gdud survived Ponary in the same way. He was helped in the first cottage. See Good, “Yerushalayim,” 17–18.

Who lives in the fourth
For a typical and eloquent record of being turned away multiple times, see Pese Kharzhevski-Zlotnik, “Di Kristlekhe ‘hilf’ far di Kolbutsker yidn,” in Yasni,
Sefer Klobutsk
, 247–49.

Later Zelda was denounced
YIVO, RG 104/MK547/7/200, Zelda Machlowicz-Hinenberg.

At that point the host
YIVO, RG 104/II/5, Alicja Gornowski.

A wife might save
Rubenstein and Altman,
Unknown Black Book
, 60–61. See Fogelman,
Conscience
, 260.

Love for children could also
Romantic relationships that provided a structure for rescue could, of course, be homosexual, as in the case of the rescue of a Jew by a Polish Roman Catholic priest and his Ukrainian partner. See generally Paulsson,
Secret City
, 44.

One day when Katarzyna
ŻIH, 301/1959.

Maria was now working
YIVO, RG 104/MK538/1072.

Men sometimes took in children
Seweryn: ŻIH, 301/2259. Jeromiński: ŻIH, 301/1468.

After climbing out
ŻIH, 301/2877.

The last major transports
For the case, see Ostałowka,
Farby wodne
. On the death marches, see Blatman,
Death Marches
.

And then, after a moment
USHMM, RG-68.102M/2007.372/21/206–47.

In the invasion
Cf. Engelking,
Losy Żydów
, 117.

Noema Centnewschwer
Noema Centnewschwer: ŻIH, 301/2750. Chawa Rozensztejn: ŻIH, 301/1272. On prewar Łomża, see Gnatowski, “Niepokorni,” 156–57.

Szyja Flejsz was a boy
On his life: ŻIH, 301/2739. On the problem of competitive recruitment: TsDAVO, 3833/1/87; AW II/1321/2K; AW II/1328/2K.

The commanders of the UPA
On the origins of the UPA and its mass killing of Poles, see Snyder, “Origins”; and, above all, Motyka,
Od rzezi
. On its motivations, the primary sources are bountiful; see, for example, TsDAVO, 3833/1/86/19–20; TsDAVO, 3833/1/131/13–14. Soviet interrogation protocols offer confirmatory evidence: for example, Protokol Doprosa, I. I. Iavorskii, 14 April 1944, GARF, fond R-9478, opis 1, delo 398. For the rescue of a Pole by a Jew, see FVA, T-1645. On the Soviet continuation of the Ukrainian nationalist project, see Snyder,
Reconstruction of Nations
, chaps. 8–10.

All of the surviving residents
ŻIH, 301/2739; Siemaszko and Siemaszko,
Ludobójstwo
, 280. For additional information on Woronówka, which no longer exists, see
http://wolyn.ovh.org
. These partings are a wrenching subject, very present in the sources. See Shore,
Taste of Ashes
. Sometimes people who loved the children they rescued encouraged them to go, following the same moral instincts that instructed them in the first place. And sometimes they later regretted it.

Seeing the peasant’s reaction
ŻIH, 301/3598.

The Pole who owned the land
ŻIH, 301/451.

The man approaching her
ŻIH, 301/946.

Other rescuers, with more
See Fogelman,
Conscience
, 73, 140.

Rena Krainik found herself
ŻIH, 301/6035.

In the city of Stanisławów
On Janina Ciszewska, see ŻIH, 301/2514; 301/2515; 301/4362.

When he received a request
ŻIH, 301/6335.

Good people broke
ŻIH, 301/1263.

The nature of an encounter
ŻIH, 301/2270.

What Jewish survivors
Bauman: Cobel-Tokarska,
Bezludna wyspa
, 76. Joseph Co: FVA, 1065.

Agnieszka Wróbel, who
YIVO, RG 104/MK536/1064, Bronisława Znider.

If Jews had little to say
Olha R.: FVA, 3268. Cf. Fogelman,
Conscience
, xvi, 6.

Helena Chorążyńska, an uneducated
Chorążyńska: MJH, 1984.T. 137. Cywiński and Żuławska: Bartoszewski and Lewinówna,
Ten jest
, 300, 330. Zboromiski: YIVO, RG 104/MK538/1066. Schmid: Wette,
Feldwebel
, 25, 27, letter at 121.

Karolina Kobylec: “That is just”
“Mam już taki charakter.” Bartoszewski and Lewinówna,
Ten jest
, 318.

Jan Lipke was a Latvian
Lipke: USHMM, RG-68.102M/2007.372/21/165–205. Beyond the limits: Silberman, “Jan Lipke,” 100. Most normal thing: MJH, 1987.T.65. This confirms a finding of Monroe,
Compassion
, 221, and de Jong,
Netherlands and Nazi Germany
, 21. Cf. Arendt: “only ‘exceptions’ could be expected to act ‘normally.’ ”
Eichmann
, 26.

Deep in the forests
A peasant who gambled a bit more than usual might also be thought to be taking money from Jews. See Good, “Yerushalayim,” 38.

Rescuers were risking
USHMM, RG-31.049.01.

Miron Lisikiewicz, who
Lisikiewicz: Rączy,
Pomóc Polaków
, 282. Sewer worker: USHMM, RG-68.102M/2007.372/29/2027–164. Kawka: YIVO, RG 104/MK538/1053. Ringelblum:
Polish-Jewish Relations
, 226. Lipke and money: USHMM, RG-68.102M/2007.372/16/150–63. On the issue of money and risk, see also the recollections of Blanche C. and Liubov Svershinskaia at FVA, 262, and USHMM, RG38/49/70, respectively. See also Tec,
When Light
, 88.

It is true that many
Cf. Gross,
Golden Harvest
, 81.

Within this set of incentives
Ringelblum,
Polish-Jewish Relations
, 77, 121; Grabowski,
Judenjagd
, 136; Good, “Yerushalayim,” 18.

In the darkest of times
I was led to this formulation by a paper on Teresa Prekerowa by Jadwiga Biskupska. Similar conclusions are reached by Tec,
When Light
, 154; Oliner,
Altruistic Personality
, 6; Fogelman,
Conscience
, 58. A profound study by a historian who was once a rescued child leads in the same direction: Redlich,
Together and Apart
.

In the small photograph
Wanda Grosmanowa-Jedlicka: Bartoszewski and Lewinówna,
Ten jest
, 487. At least fifteen thousand Warsaw Jews never entered the ghetto. See Kermish, “Activities,” 374.

Most of the Jews of Warsaw
Grossman,
Life and Fate
, 409. He continues: “Kindness is powerful only while it is powerless.” See Monroe,
Compassion
, 258.

Wanda J.’s judgment
Compare Bauer,
The Death of the Shtetl
, 97.

Science in fact possesses
At a methodological level, I have opposed forms of historical writing that permit exits into prior emotional convictions or newfound teleological comfort. That said, on the substantial issue of the relationship between technique and experience, I am with the Kantians and against Heidegger. For a close historical examination of a crucial debate: Gordon,
Continental Divide
, on the issues most pertinent to this study at 15, 17, 31, 35, 217, 220, 225, 238. The rapid conquest: Hitler was formed by but did not partake in the age of the frontier. See Webb,
Great Frontier
, 280. Even the German victories over the Herero were due in part to the spread of disease in cattle. See Levene,
Rise
, 247.

When science is disengaged
Food prices: Evenson, “Economic Consequences,” 473. See also Federico, “Natura Non Fecit Saltus,” 24. For a history of these improvements, see Olmstead and Rhode,
Creating Abundance
, especially 64–66 and 388–98.

At precisely this point
Mazower,
Hitler’s Empire
, 594. Cf. Maier,
Unmasterable Past
, 7: “For almost four decades the Federal Republic has lived, so to speak, by bread alone.” Also Bartov,
Mirrors of Destruction
, 167: “Studying the Holocaust is the best means to prevent its mystification.” On the special 1950s: Federico, “Natura Non Fecit Saltus,” 21. Consider the word “calorie,” which in the West almost always means something of which people get too much. In the 1930s, people and planners counted calories to ensure that a household had enough of them to survive, or that laboring men, women, and animals received enough of them to power the economy.

The Green Revolution
China net importer: Aliyu, “Agricultural Development.” Few months’ supply: Denison,
Darwinian Agriculture
, 11. Food riots: Moyo,
Winner Take All
, 109.

Though the world is not
Of course, simple deprivation of food is bad enough; in the world of today, a child starves to death every five seconds. Ziegler,
Betting on Famine
, xiii.

It seems reasonable to worry
Cf. Gumbrecht,
Nach 1945
, 245, 264, 305. See also Rousso,
La dernière catastrophe;
Berger,
After the End
.

The planet is changing
Internal combustion engines and factories produce gases that trap the sun’s heat within the atmosphere. The ongoing destruction of forests and wetlands accelerates this warming, since plants absorb carbon dioxide and emit oxygen. A mass of global data demonstrates an increase in annual minimum temperatures of the surface of the earth, of the air at the surface of the earth, of the higher atmosphere, and of the surface of the oceans. Causality: Maslin,
Global Warming
, 1, 4, 57. Temperatures and causality: Alexander, “Global Observed Changes,” 31; Rohde, “A New Estimate,” 22; Rohde, “Averaging Process,” 1; Zhang, “Detection of Human Influence,” 461. Predictions too modest: Rahmsdorf, “Comparing Climate Projections,” 1;
Economist
, 22 September 2012;
Guardian
, 27 November 2012. Nonlinear effects: Maslin,
Global Warming
, 112, 116; Mitchell, “Extreme Events,” 2217; Latif, “El Niño,” 20853. The basic point about regionalism in Pitman, Arneth, and Ganzeveld, “Regionalizing,” 332. Species: Maslin,
Global Warming
, 99; also Clarke, “From Genes to Ecosystems,” 6. Coastlines: Cayan, “Climate Change Projections,” S71; Helmuth, “Hidden Signals,” 191; Rahmsdorf, “Comparing Climate Projections,” 1. Storms: Tebaldi, “Modelling Sea Level Rise,” 1. For an extremely impressive history of climate change in an earlier period, see Parker,
Global Crisis
.

Perhaps the experience
Cf. Tooze,
Wages of Destruction
, 477, 544, 549. As Mount points out, realist theories of international politics will have to account for the real changes on our real planet: “Arctic Wake-up Call,” 10.

Hitler was a child
First globalization: Trentmann: “Coping with Shortage,” 15, 22, and passim; Federico, “Natura Non Fecit Saltus,” 23. Most affected: Brown and Crawford, “Climate Change,” 2. Useful in the future will be Kiernan’s reminder that all historical episodes of mass killing are connected in one way or another to an account of the value of land.
Blood and Soil
, especially chap. 4.

Mass killing in Rwanda
The exhaustion of:
New York Times
, 14 December 1989. 1993: Campbell, “Population Pressure,” 2. Overpopulation and land motivation: Newbury, “Background,” 13. Land motivation: Rose, “Land and Genocide,” 64. Organization: Stanton, “Could the Rwandan,” 211–15; Hintjens, “Explaining,” 249, 261, 270. Organization and numbers: Straus, “How Many Perpetrators,” 86–87. Loyalty to group: Sémelin,
Purifier
, 314.

The starvation in Somalia
Moyo,
Winner Take All
, 32–33;
Economist
, 21 May 2009; Brautigam, “Land Rights”; Horta, “Zambezi Valley.” 60 percent of world’s untilled arable land:
Economist
, 4 September 2013. Madagascar: Ziegler,
Betting on Famine
, 200.

One Asian country exhibits
Land and water: Diamond,
Collapse
, 362–65. Hectares: Moyo,
Winner Take All
, 29. Famine: Dikötter,
Mao’s Great Famine
; Yang,
Calamity and Reform
, 21–42.

In twenty-first-century China
As during the drought of 2010: Sternberg, “Chinese Drought,” 8. Sensitivity: Ziegler,
Betting on Famine
, 41.

Facing some future crisis
Sudan: Reeves,
Dying
, 3. Chinese involvement: Doriye, “Next stage,” 25; King, “Factoring Environmental Security,” 151. See also Zafar, “Growing Relationship,” 119.

China also faces
Tropical regions and water cycle: Stern,
Economics of Climate Change
, 70, 74. Water shortages: Sullivan, “National Security,” 15–16. General crisis by 2050, current shortages, riots: Solomon,
Water
, 368, 370, 371. China: King, “Factoring Environmental Security,” 104; Moyo,
Winner Take All
, 41; Stern,
Economics of Climate Change
, 78; Solomon,
Water
, 440.

Less peaceful approaches to the problem
Russia: Blank, “Dead End”; Kaczmarski, “Domestic Sources”; Lotspeich, “Economic Integration.” Test case of relations: Eder,
China-Russia
, 130–131.

Yet as climate change
In 2007, the number of Chinese in low-elevation coastal zones was estimated at 11 percent of the population; if that percentage held in 2015 the figure would be about 149 million. The entire population of Russia is about 145 million. McGranahan, Balk, and Anderson, “Rising Tide,” 26.

None of these Chinese
Voluntary targets:
New York Times
, 11 November 2014.

Russian governments of the early
On Russian revenue from hydrocarbons: Gustafson,
Wheel of Fortune
, 1, 5.

In a new Russian colonialism
, For maps see the newspaper
Novorossiia
, for example 1 August 2014.

President Vladimir Putin of Russia
See Riabov and Riabova, “Decline of Gayropa?” For a chronicle of Russian policy to Ukraine in 2013 and 2014, see my forty or so articles in English, French, and German as collected on
timothysnyder.org
or in Ukrainian or Russian translation in the editions listed in the bibliography.

As Russia demonstrated
I discussed this connection in several of the publications cited above, as well as in the
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
of 15 December 2014. Many of the fundamental connections were drawn by Anton Shekhovtsov in a series of important commentaries.

All forms of counterglobal
Poverty: Xenopoulos, “Scenarios,” 1562. Cf. Gerlach,
Extremely Violent Societies
, 263. Egypt and Libya: King, “Factoring Environmental Security,” 99, 100, 117, 359; Klare, “Climate Change Battlefields,” 358–59. Drought: Femia, “Climate Change,” 31. ISIS and water:
New York Times
, 14 October 2014.

The ambivalence of interwar Polish
Spector,
Evangelicals and Israel
, 187–88; Clark,
Allies for Armageddon
, 5, 151, 170; Weber,
On the Road to Armageddon
, 191. On attitudes towards climate change: Smith and Leiserowitz, “American Evangelicals,” 4; and Anthony Leiserowitz, personal communication, 26 August 2013.

As prime minister of Israel
Weber,
On the Road to Armageddon
, 148; Clark,
Allies for Armageddon
, 190, 229.

Americans, when they think
For wartime antisemitism, see Abzug,
America Views the Holocaust
, 87–92, 99–103, and passim. Mauthausen trial: Jardim,
Mauthausen Trial
, 123, 144, 189, 210. Bergen-Belsen: Damplo, “Prosecuting,” 24. For a balanced assessment of Roosevelt, see Breitman and Lichtman,
FDR
, 315–30.

A misunderstanding about
One can infer from Collier’s
Bottom Billion
, especially at 126, that military intervention makes more sense after a state has failed than with the goal of making a state fail.

Mass killings generally
Regime changes and civil wars: Goldsmith and Semenovich, “Political Instability,” 10.

The dominant stereotype
Cf. Arendt,
Origins
, 310. In
Bloodlands
, I discuss all of these policies.

On the Left, the dominant
Horkheimer and Adorno,
Dialektik der Aufklärung
, especially 212, 217; quotations at 1, 15. See also Horkheimer,
Eclipse of Reason
, 176–77. The same mistake in a less radical formulation can be found in Neumann’s reports to the OSS:
Secret Reports
, 28, 30. See Habermas,
Der philosophische Diskurs der Moderne
, 135, 138; Kołakowski,
Main Currents
, 347; Zehnpfennig,
Hitlers Mein Kampf
, 129.

On the Right, the dominant
See the longer discussion in Judt and Snyder,
Thinking
.

The ideal capitalism
Rand: Burns,
Goddess
, 175.

As all economists know
See generally Powell,
Inquisition
, 63, 98, and passim; Oreskes and Conway,
Merchants of Doubt
, 169–215;
Economist
, 15 February 2012; Tollefson, “Sceptic,” 441. In 2011, the fossil fuel industry spent about $300 million to muddy the waters: Silver,
Signal
, 380. See Farley, “Petroleum and Propaganda,” 40–49. See also Union of Concerned Scientists, “Got Science?,” 18 October 2012; and Weart, “Denial,” 46, 48. Capitalism certainly registers the data of climate change. Insurance companies keep precise records of storms as they restrict the availability of flood insurance. Parker,
Global Crisis
, 691–92. The error of the libertarian Right is echoed, in a certain way, by some members of the Christian Right. Creationists oppose the theories of Darwin, as amplified by generations of scientists, with respect to nonhuman animals, instead applying the term “science” to their static portrait of a natural order created by God. This is one more conflation of science and politics. Meanwhile, in their support of unrestricted capitalism, many creationists apply Social Darwinian concepts to their fellow human beings. Humans have the right to dominate nature, and more competitive humans have the right to dominate less competitive ones. This is yet another merger of science and politics.

Though no American would deny
Hitler denial:
Hitler and His Generals
, 62. See Thomä, “Sein und Zeit im Rückblick,” 285; Genette,
Figures I
, 101; Robbe-Grillet,
Pour un nouveau roman
, 133. The denial of climate science poses serious problems for the U.S. Navy, which faces the likelihood of flooding bases and the reality of competition for the waters of the melting Arctic.
Christian Science Monitor
, 2 March 2010.

The popular notion
The market is not nature: Bloom,
Closing
, 84; Bauman,
Modernity
, 235. Cf. Moses, “Gespräch.” At this point in the argument I am demonstrating the relationships between the concepts rather than educing the historical relationship. Cf. Moyn,
Last Utopia
, 82–83.

When states are absent
Nazi Germany murdered chiefly the citizens of other countries. What about the states that carried our mass murder of their own citizens? The three most horrifying twentieth-century cases—the People’s Republic of China, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and Cambodia under Pol Pot—were all party-states, where both ideology and practice demanded that the state institutions be secondary to party institutions, and where the legitimacy of the state was completely undercut by the ideological appeal made by party leaders to the future of the collectivity. These histories follow a different trajectory than that of Nazi Germany and its neighbors but in one respect teach the same lesson: the significance of the state in the banal conservative sense of a monopolist of violence and an object of reciprocal duties and rights. The subject is vast and requires separate treatment; some of the relevant issues are raised in the Soviet chapters of my
Bloodlands
.