1300KS
149
and rank brutality and sadism were normalized." Under these conditions,
some "behaved swinishly" and even delighted in killing Jews, in delivering
them to the Gestapo, while others observed comlllon decency-which
"required uncommon courage ;\Ild selflessness." Hoffil1an does not preach
forgiveness, but cautions that "in survivors' memories one can often discern,
besides the fully justified hate, a kind of elision of hatred, a transference of it
ITom the first-order cause of their suffering to the one nearer at hand."
Indeed, the Illost persistent fact of the common history of the Poles and Jews
of 13ransk is the gap that still divides thel11.
13ecause the world of Polish Jews has disappeared, two sets of memories
are left. Poles recall that they lost three Illillion non-Jewish citizens during the
war and put up lI10re resistance to the Germans than any other occupied
country. Jews recall that the other war, the Holocaust, was soon surrounded
by secrecy and silence and that even afterwards, around
1946,
there were some
nasty outbreaks of ami -Jewish violence--which eventually induced the
rel1laining Jews to emigrate. Later, HoHillan notes, anti-Jewish feelings arose
o'om popular imaginings thatJcws were dominating the COl11lllunist Party. In
the end, despite some individu;lls' feclins" to the contrary, nothing changed
until
1989.
Now, a few Polish scholars are trying to dig into this past, which, as we
know, is the only way to create
,I
ground of conll1lonali ty,
to
arrive at a degree
of goodwill and even fi·il'ndship. For Hoflinan, who grew up in Poland, the
research and wri ting of this book was healing, and the insights she gained have
a similar ettect on readns. If anything is to be learned fi'om both Friedlander's
and Hoffill;lI1'S work, it is that distance rather than Elilliliarity makes
fl.)!'
con–
tempt and worse and that proximity and interaction with the " other" are
conducive to tolerance. And that emphasizing diversi ty may well induce
racism rather than l11ilitate against it.
EDITH KURZWEIL
"Son1.e of his best friends . . . "
HITLER'S WIEN.
By Brigitte Hamann .
Piper Verlag.
$-+9.95.
Jesse Helms might find this
USdLd
information: if Hitler, at
18,
had not
been so shy, he might have bccol11e a set designer-one more convll1clI1g
