"The question is whether these two images of Poland—a country of heroes
and a country of collaborators—can be combined. The difficulty stems
from the occupation itself. Rarely has a society been more violently
divided than Polish society was during the war: Jews divided from Poles,
but also Poles divided from other Poles. "
"The Polish Jewish writer
Janina Bauman, who escaped the Warsaw Ghetto with her mother and sister
and lived among Poles, described the process."
“Some time and several
shelters passed,” she recalled, “before I realised that for the people
who sheltered us our presence also meant more than great danger,
nuisance, or extra income. Somehow it affected them, too. It boosted what was noble in them, or what was base. Sometimes it divided the family, at other times it brought the family together in a shared endeavor to help and survive.”
Read the whole thing-well worth your time.
