Israel Shahak about collaboration of Jews and Poles

The Second World War - Testimonies

The famous Israeli intellectual, Professor Israel Shahak, in the pages of "The New York Review of the Book", opposed the tendency to idealize the attitudes of Jews at the expense of demonizing Poles' attitudes towards collaboration:

Of course there were Polish policemen who rounded up Jews, and of course there were Poles who blackmailed Jews (...). However, there were also (...) Jewish blackmailers, many known even by their names, living outside the ghetto, who were neither better nor worse than Polish ones. There were also Jewish policemen in the ghetto. In the first weeks of extermination in the summer of 1942, each of them was responsible for supplying a sufficient number of Jews destined to die. Today, years later, I believe that Polish and Jewish associates of the criminals are equal in the great amount of evil, and that the greatest disgust with which they are remembered does not depend on their nationality. However, my memory, the memory of all saved Jews, when they talk honestly "in their midst", does not allow me to forget that at that time we Jews hated Jewish policemen and Jewish spies more than anyone else.
—„The New York Review of the Book” (29 stycznia 1987 roku)

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