Documents Show Poles Were Hostile to Jewish Resistance

Authentic documents which indicate the hostile attitude of the Poles during World War II to the Jewish resistance movement were recently recovered and handed over to the Holocaust Museum at Kibbutz Lohamei Hagetaot (Ghetto Fighters Kibbutz) near Haifa. At a press conference here, two former commanders of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Dr. Avraham Berman and Itzhak Zukerman (Antek), presented some of the documents to reporters at Beth Sokolow, the journalists’ center.

One of the documents is an order by the Polish Government-in-Exile in London for the Polish underground to withhold funds collected by Western Jewish groups for the Jewish resistance, “because the Jews are unstable and led by Communists.” The documents include writings by the historian Emanuel Ringelblum who himself perished in the holocaust, and correspondence between Dr. Berman and “Antek,” the chief coordinator and his deputy, who later became commander of the Warsaw Ghetto.

Dr. Berman said that they made efforts to preserve the documents but a German shell destroyed many when it hit the bunker. The wife of Dr. Berman, now deceased, hid the surviving documents in glass jars that were placed with gentile friends. Much work is still to be done before all material can be exhibited at the Museum. Dr. Berman said.