Last revised august 30, 2004

. As pointed out earlier, there were no NSZ forces in this area, but historical accuracy is not a strong point of the Jewish narrative.

280 Arad, The Holocaust in the Soviet Union, 591, n.6.

281 Yitzhak Arad, In the Shadow of the Red Banner: Soviet Jews in the War against Nazi Germany (Jerusalem and New York: Gefen, in association with Yad Vashem, The International Institute for Holocaust Reseach, 2010).

282 Arad, In the Shadow of the Red Banner, 291. Arad gives a different perspective, however, at pp. 193 and 342.

283 Arad, In the Shadow of the Red Banner, 303. These documents were published in Polish in 1994 and in English in 1998.

284 Arad, In the Shadow of the Red Banner, 291.

285 Joshua D. Zimmerman, The Polish Underground and the Jews, 1939–1945 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015). While labeling parts of Zimmerman’s scholarship as “shoddy” may seem harsh, it is certainly more respectful that his outright dismissal of important scholarship on the spurious ground that its authors are “nationalist” historians. This matter is addressed in the following footnote.

286 Of the four major Polish scholars on the Home Army and Soviet partisans in this area, Zimmerman refers to Zygmunt Boradyn and Kazimierz Krajewski very selectively, and not at all to the important scholarship of Jarosław Wołkonowski and Bogdan Musiał. Other important historians Zimmerman ignores are Marek Wierzbicki, Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, Piotr Gontarczyk, Tadeusz Piotrowski, and Alexander Brakel. Zimerman’s uncritical acceptance of Joanna Michlic’s categorization of Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, Bogdan (misspelled by Zimmerman) Musiał, Tomasz Strzembosz, and Marek Wierzbicki as “nationalists” is particularly disquieting. It is precisely this attitude that stifles open and honest historical debate. See Zimmerman, The Polish Underground and the Jews, 1939–1945, 7 n.31. These scholars are acknowledged experts in their fields. In his review in Yad Vashem Studies (vol. 38, no. 2), Israel historian Yehuda Bauer regards Musiał’s book Sowjetische Partisanen: Mythos und Wirklichkeit as “a most important contribution” to the history of the war, the Soviet partisans, and Polish-Jewish partisan relations in Belorussia. Wierzbicki’s articles have been published in the journal Polin and in the collective volume Stalin and Europe: Imitation and Domination, 1928–1953 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), edited by Timothy Snyder. Chodakieiwicz does not fit this “nationalist” mould as his views are best described as classical or even paleoconservative, and he is quite critical of ethnonationalism. The real reason for this branding is to avoid having to deal with the inconvenient arguments and facts these historians raise. This is apparent from Zimmerman’s own glaring omissions—ones that are addressed by the historians he deliberately ignores. Joanna Michlic herself espouses a Jewish ethnonationalist agenda, and Zimmerman even exposes her own pronounced bias on an important matter. Michlic’s take on General Rowecki’s radiogram of September 5, 1941 is rather typical of her highly subjective methodology of sniffing out alleged anti-Semites at every possible turn (ibid., 103–104):
Joanna Michlic maintained that the document was proof of Rowecki’s negative views toward the Jews. “The language of the report,” she wrote, “reflects the emotive distance of its author toward the subject he describes. There is a glaring lack of reference to the Jews as members of the same society as Polish citizens; Jews are simply presented as ‘they,’ not ‘us’.” The radiogram was thus proof of Rowecki’s “anti-Jewish prejudices.” Jan T. Gross derived an entirely different interpretation. “Rowecki,” Gross wrote regarding the above-cited radiogram, “was not a politician, he did not speak on behalf of a party program, and he did not advocate an ideological point. He was a well-respected, unprejudiced, moderate, very well informed, dedicated public servant advising his government on a matter of public interest. And it was his best judgment that the government should stay away from anything that could be construed as advocacy on behalf of the Jews.” Rowecki, Gross concluded, “was by no stretch of the imagination an anti-Semite.” The basis for Gross’s claim was a personal one. His mother, Halina Szumańska Gross, was a member of the Home Army’s Burueau [sic] of Information and Propaganda during the war and had known Rowecki personally. She, along with others who knew him, told Gross that Rowecki had never demonstrated any anti-Jewish tendencies.
Among the historians Zimmerman likes to cite is Šarūnas Liekis, who is no expert in this area and whose writings display a pronounced anti-Polish bias. Liekis attempts to equate the Home Army with murderous Lithuanian Nazi collaborators and the Soviet partisans. Liekis and Michlic are prime representatives of a school of historians who thrive on making crude generalizations about Poles, without any consideration of the behaviour and attitudes of Lithuanians or Jews toward Poles. Rather than expose alleged Polish “nationalism,” which is their goal, they underscore their own nationalistic proclivities.

287 Zimmerman, The Polish Underground and the Jews, 1939–1945, 7, 10 (emphasis added). This unfortunate shortcoming is characteristic of the school of historians, centred around the Polish Centre for Holocaust Research (Centrum Badań nad Zagładą), which Zimmerman champions.

288 Abraham Melezin’s testimony is woven into the narrative (and at times overtakes the narrative to its detriment), in an attempt to diminish Soviet blame for the conflict with the Polish underground and to bolster Zimmerman’s argument that anti-Semitism was the driving force behind the behaviour of the Polish underground. In his Shoah Foundation interview (Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, Interview code 3382), Abraham Melezin, who went by the name of Adam Mielżyński (spelled incorrectly by Zimmerman as Melzyński) during his stint with the Home Army, discredits himself as an objective witness. The only villain he perceives is ubiquitous Polish anti-Semitism. Almost all the Poles Melezin encountered were allegedly “highly anti-Semitic.” Although ostensibly a “loyal” member of the Home Army, Melezin, remarkably, is unaware of any hostilities by Soviet partisans directed at the Home Army, the civilian population, or even Jewish fugitives hiding in the forests. Can someone who fails to notice the massacre of 80 partisans by Soviet and Jewish partisans in August 1943 be considered an informed and impartial source of information? Rather, Melezin alleges that it was Home Army, incited by their local commanders, that initiated attacks against Soviets partisans and Jews for no apparent reason other than their own anti-Communism and anti-Semitism, and did so repeatedly. Despite his claim that he processed or screened all new recruits in the Lida subdistrict, Melezin (Mielżyński) is not mentioned in any of the many publications on the Home Army in the Nowogródek District, nor is his superior, Captain Eustachy Chrzanowski. (For the record, there was a Captain Eustachy Chrzanowski, who was the director of the Regional Military Court in Lida in the interwar period.) Melezin claims that he and Chrzanowski met Lieutenant Adolf Pilch (code name “Góra”) in Lida in the spring of 1943 and debriefed him on local conditions. Melezin also claims that, despite his lowly rank, he felt compelled to lecture Pilch on his role when Pilch allegedly stated that his first and foremost “duty is to fight the Żydokumuna [Judeo-Communism].” See Zimmerman, The Polish Underground and the Jews, 1939–1945, 282. In all likelihood, Melezin never met Pilch. Pilch did not arrive in the Nowogródek area until the end of August 1943, at which time Melezin, according to his own testimony, had been arrested by the Germans. After being parachuted into Poland in February 1943 as part of the Polish special forces, Pilch remained in Warsaw and was assigned to the Nowogródek District only in July 1943. He was debriefed in Warsaw at the end of that month by Second Lieutenant Stanisław Sędziak (code name “Warta”), the chief of staff of the Nowogródek District in Lida. Pilch did not leave Warsaw until the middle of August 1943. He arrived at the Home Army base in Naliboki forest on September 6, 1943, and assumed command of the Stołpce Battalion on an interim basis on September 9, until the arrival of Major Wacław Pełka at the beginning of November 1943. On the way there, Pilch stayed in several towns and had a very brief stopover in Lida where he met up with Sędziak. See Adolf Pilch, Partyzanci trzech puszcz (Kraków: Mireki, 2013), 73, 79, 82. In Lida, Pilch was again debriefed by Sędziak and Second Lieutenant Aleksander Warakomski (“Świr”), the commander of the Stołpce subdistrict. See Marian Podgóreczny, “Góra”, “Dolina”—partyzant niepokonany: Wywiad rzeka z cichociemnym Adolfem Pilchem: Wspomnienia cichociemnego (Warsaw: Askon, 2014); Marian Podgóreczny, Zgrupowanie Stołpecko-Nalibockie Armii Krajowej: Oszczerstwa i fakty: Wywiad z dowódcą Zgrupowania, cichociemnym, mjr Adolfem Pilchem ps. “Góra”, „Dolina”, Internet: