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Review
| World War II through Polish Eyes: In the Nazi-Soviet Grip, by M.B. Szonert. Boulder, Colorado: East European Monographs, 2002. 408 pp. $45.00, cloth.
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| This is an extremely interesting book. The title is somewhat misleading, as it presents the experiences of a single family in Warsaw rather than the Polish people in general. In essence, this book is a biography of Danuta Binienda and her family. Their story is a moving example of the Polish experience during World War II, and the book chronicles how they tried to cope with the humiliating demands and inhumane treatment by Nazi Germany from 1939 through 1945 and the Soviet Union after it occupied Poland in 1945. Poland's history during this period has been relatively neglected and this book is a valuable attempt to fill that gap. |
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The story begins and ends with a tragedy emblematic of the brutality the Germans and the Soviets visited upon Poland. The Katyn Massacre, in which approximately 12,000 Polish military officers (including Danuta's boyfriend) were murdered, was discovered by the Nazis in 1943. The bodies had personal information which indicated the massacre had occurred during the summer of 1940, when the area was under Soviet control. The Germans therefore blamed the Soviet Union, which in turn blamed the Germans. We now know the Soviets were responsible, but the point is that either of them could have committed this monstrous crime against the Polish people. The family suffered a great deal during the war, and their experiences are probably broadly representative of what most Polish families underwent. Danuta married shortly after the German invasion, but her husband Jozef was caught in one of the random dragnets which the Germans periodically organized. He was miraculously released from Auschwitz in 1942 but quickly found himself afoul of the Gestapo and was gunned down in the streets of Warsaw in early 1943. The family participated in low-level Resistance activities such as attending the secret high schools (the Nazis had abolished education for all Poles), regularly reading the illegal underground press, and listening to an illegal radio (all Poles had been required to turn their sets over to the authorities). The liberation of Poland by the Red Army in 1945 brought no relief. Danuta's father, a staunch Polish patriot, was murdered by a Soviet commissar after he refused to become a communist agent and her brother nearly disappeared forever into one of the Soviet prisons. These stories are well worth reading. |
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Educators who choose to use this book in class will find it challenging, especially those whose audience is unfamiliar with World War II. All students will find themselves very sympathetic to the main characters, especially Danuta. But this book presents the story of one family and their perception of what was happening, and individuals often believe things which have little connection to facts. For example, in September 1939 the Nazis claimed Polish armed forces had violated their mutual border, killed a few Germans, and had broadcast anti-German propaganda on the radio. This was the pretext for the German invasion. No one at the time believed this feeble attempt to sway public opinion, but the book says that it was "trumpeted throughout the world.... It was only many years later that international public opinion had no choice but to face the truth." (p. 138) The implication, repeated several times throughout the book, is that the West believed the German ruse and used it as an excuse to do nothing. Some Poles may have believed that the West abandoned them in 1939 (no Allied army or warplanes, for example, saved them from the Nazi onslaught). But this neglects the declaration of war by France and Britain two days after the invasion and the enormous sacrifices and contributions to Polish independence which both made over the next six years (the book makes a much better argument that the West abandoned Poland to the Red Army in 1945). There is a subtle distinction between contemporary opinion and historical fact and this book is studded with such issues. It may therefore convey false impressions and might not be suitable for students who are unfamiliar with the history of World War II. This book should be read by anyone who teaches World War II as it will enrich their views of life in Poland under the Nazis, but I would recommend this book for classroom use only in conjunction with other sources of information. |
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| University of Cincinnati, Raymond Walters College |
Lee Baker |
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