The Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles Under German Occupation, 1939-1944

Hitler hated Poles only slightly less than Jews; exterminating Poles and other Slavs was part of the Nazi master-plan. During the German occupation, three million Gentile Poles (and as many Polish Jews) were killed by mass executions, starvation or in labor camps; there were 2000 extermination and labor camps in Poland for Jews and Gentiles alike. One million non-Jewish Poles were deported in cattle cars to Germany and elsewhere; Polish children were sent to the Reich, where it was determined whether they were suitable for ""Germanization'' or should be slaughtered. This eloquent, gripping account of the Nazis' systematic genocide of Poles, and of the Polish resistance movement, written by a professor at Tennessee Technological University, is exhaustively researched and fills gaps in our knowledge. Lukas disputes Holocaust historians who have portrayed Poles as anti-Semites who did little to help the Jews with evidence that Poles of all classes gave assistance to persecuted Jews. To explain the hostility between Gentiles and Jews in the Polish underground, he cites Jews' close ties to the Communist movement. His arguments will provoke debate, and his important study deserves wide attention. January