THE JEWISH COMMUNITY 193ing 'on the edge of the destruction', or who quote a Warsaw rabbi to the effect
that 'We were waiting for death', are mouthing a very partial view of Polish
affairs. As Isaac Cohen, of the Anglo-Jewish Association pointed out, Jews who
imagined they were maltreated in Poland did not have long to wait for condi-
tions which made Poland look like paradise; and as Sir Horace Rumbold, British
ambassador in Poland was quick to stress: 'It is of very little service to the Jews
to single out for criticism and retribution the one country where they have prob-
ably suffered least.'^21
The destruction of Polish Jewry during the Second World War, therefore, was
in no way connected to their earlier tribulations. The Nazis' 'Final Solution' dif-
fered from other forms of inhumanity not just in degree, but in kind. It was no
mere pogrom on a grand scale; it was a calculated act of genocide executed with
the full authority of the German state, a mass murder committed in full accord-
ance with the dictates of the Nazis' unique, and alien ideology. What is more, it
was not planned in advance. In the first eighteen months of the German
Occupation, more Jews died in campaigns directed against the Polish intelli-
gentsia (which contained a high proportion of Jews) than in actions specifically
directed against the Jewish community. At this stage of the war, the Nazi lead-
ers were intent on herding the Jews into reservations, and subjected them to
innumerable indignities and violences. In some instances, as in the deliberate
burning of the ghetto at Bedzin on 9 September 1939, they committed large-scale
massacres; but they had no clear intention of killing the Jews outright. They still
entertained fanciful schemes of settling them on an unspecified island of the
British Empire, of auctioning them off to the highest bidder, or of deporting
them to Central Asia. As they were still at peace with the USA, they were obliged
to take some minimal account of American sensibilities. They were not faced
with the problems of disposing of the inhabitants of the reservations until those
earlier schemes were invalidated by the emergence of the British—Soviet-
American Alliance of mid-1941. It was at that moment, and no earlier, that the
Final Solution was finalized.^22
One of the meanest of modern historical controversies surrounds the conduct
of the non-Jewish population towards the Nazis' Final Solution. Some Jewish
writers, whether scholars or novelists such as Leon Uris, have spread the view
that the Poles actually rejoiced at the fate of the Jews or at best were indifferent
'bystanders'. Polish apologists have gone to great lengths to publicise the
instances where Jews were helped, or even rescued from the Nazis, by coura-
geous civilians. Historians are absolutely right to chart the heroic work of the
Zegota Organization, the underground Council for Assistance to the Jews
(RPZ).^23 But they are mistaken if they suggest that Zegota was the norm. Both
sides in the controversy overlook the realities of life under the Nazi Terror,
which was so much fiercer and more protracted in Poland than anywhere in
Europe. To ask why the Poles did little to help the Jews is rather like asking why
the Jews did nothing to assist the Poles. The two sides were physically segre-
gated not just by German decrees but by brick walls and high wire fences, and