I was positive that with the text in TVP Weekly I had completed and closed my series of publications on the Jewish Military Union (JMU) which fought in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (1943). However, browsing my home archive I came across my correspondence with Chaja Lazar. If I don’t write about it, no one will.

Letter from Israel

Following my two publications on JMU in the “Plus-Minus” supplement of the journal “Rzeczpospolita” (in 2002 & 2004) I received a letter from Israel, written by Chaja Lazar who had cooperated for many years with the Jabotinsky Institute in Tel-Aviv. For half a century she and her husband Chaim were engaged in restoring the memory of the Jewish Military Union which was established in the occupied city of Warsaw. WWII wasn’t over when the communist apparatus in Poland commemorated the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising’s first anniversary by proclaiming that “the uprising had been organized by progressively oriented forces from the democratic, socialist and communist milieu, with the help of the USSR” and that “the so-called government-in-exile in London as well as the Home Army had adopted a hostile attitude toward the fighting Ghetto”. The Jewish Combat Organization (JCO) under the leadership of Mordechaj Anielewicz was glorified, not a word about the JMU.

SIGN UP TO OUR PAGE Jakub Berman, member of the JCO on the Aryan side within the Jewish National Committee, and, after leaving Poland – an Israeli MP on behalf of the Maki communist party said publicly in 1947: “the Jewish anti-fascist movement stood by the JCO cradle, it organized itself a year before the uprising broke out and at that time received substantial help from the People’s Poland, from valiant Polish workers’ organizations”.

With these quotes Chaja Lazar reminded us that for many years after WWII Poland and Israel were ruled by communists and/or left-wing socialists who, on each anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising anniversary, paid tribute only to Anielewicz and the JCO.

In search of the truth

The Lazars deliberately came from Israel to the Polish People’s Republic for one purpose – to collect evidence of the Jewish Military Union’s conspiracy and participation in the rising. In 2001, after her husband’s death, Chaja, together with her daughter Sara Ozacky-Lazar, PhD in history, printed the results of this research in a Hebrew article in the academic journal “Ha’Uma” (Nation) published by “Misdar Jabotinsky”, Tel-Aviv. The Polish translation of it reads: “New light shed on the JMU. The Jewish Military Union in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising”. She sent me this several-page article translated somewhat clumsily into Polish, asking me to print it. I took it to the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw. Alas, there was no interest in the publication.

Chaja Lazar described how difficult it was for them – her and her husband – to reach Poles cooperating with the officers and soldiers of the Jewish Military Union. “When we arrived in Warsaw for testimonies and written materials about the JMU, we found the former leaders of the [conspiratorial] Security Corps headed by Henryk Iwański, known since the underground under the pseudonym “Bystry”, who was responsible for contacts with the Jewish Military Union in the Warsaw Ghetto during the war. Interviews with him took place in almost underground conditions. It happened that we would come to his place of residence in the Błoto colony near Warsaw, and an unidentified machine [a car] would follow us, stopping near his house and not moving until the end of our visit at the Iwański family’s.

Also at the Jewish Historical Institute, where we received a warm welcome Professor Bernard Mark, the first director and one of the founders of the Institute, we felt the suspicion of some co-workers about our visits. Professor Mark gave us information about JMU only during walks outside the walls of the Institute.

In his publication “Uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto” (Warsaw 1963) Mark gives the origin of the JMU and mentions two leaders of this organization, Dawid Appelbaum (Apfelbaum?), noms de guerre: “Jabłoński”, “Kowal”, “Mietek” and Paweł Frenkel.

The collected evidence and recorded conversations with Poles cooperating and fighting with JMU soldiers and officers were included in the book “Massada Warszawy” [Warsaw Masada] by Chaim Lazar-Litai, published in Israel in 1963. It has not yet been translated into Polish, but has already been published in English (under the title “Muranowska 7” in 1966 and in Russian – “Masada in Warsaw” in 1991).

In Israel, Lazar’s book was received with disbelief and astonishment, because the JMU did not exist in the minds of Israelis. Chaja Lazar quoted two of the few comments from reviewers. Yehoshua A. Gilboa wrote: “Chaim Lazar enriched us all. The characters portrayed by him, despite their great deeds, are probably new faces in the written history of the Holocaust and Heroism. The reader of Lazar’s book has the feeling that a loss has been restored to him, that he has been given back his lost fighters”.

Another reviewer in the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth wrote: “How strange it seems that the memory of the fighters was erased as they themselves died physically almost to the last one ...”. According to Chaja Lazar, her husband’s book failed to penetrate the general consciousness of Israeli society at that time.

In the next book by Chaim Lazar, “Muranowska 7. The Warsaw Ghetto rising” published in Tel Aviv in 1966, the author reached for all possible and available sources, i.e. the sources of the JCO, the Military Organization – Security Corps, the Home Army, and witnesses. The book, also not yet translated into Polish, is a compendium of knowledge about the JMU organization and activities.

In the second edition of Dawid Wdowiński’s book on the JMU, “And we are not saved”, Jerusalem1986, a chapter on the JMU written by Chaim Lazar was included. Also this item has not been translated into Polish.

The knowledge about the Jewish Military Union is still more extensive in Israel than in Poland.

Imaginary heroes?

The Center for Holocaust Research has been operating at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences since 2003. Director of the Institute Prof. Henryk Domański appointed Barbara Engelking-Boni with a PhD in sociology as the director of the center. One of the main goals of the Center was to prepare and publish translations of the world’s most important publications in the field of Holocaust research. Currently, she leads a team of eight scientists.

The director and her close collaborator Dariusz Libionka, a history graduate from the Catholic University of Lublin, have questioned the existence and later the activities and leaders of the Jewish Military Union from the beginning. In 2012, in an interview for the Polish Press Agency, Dariusz Libionka said that “the Apfelbaum case is just one of the many distortions that have accumulated around this organization over the years”.

In the book “Bohaterowie, hochsztaplerzy, opisywacze” (Warsaw 2011), the authors Libionka and Laurence Weinbaum wrote: “Mieczysław Apfelbaum, the patron of one of the Warsaw squares, the alleged commander of the Jewish Military Union, was invented by two clever liars who were believed by serious historians”. And they mention Prof. Tomasz Strzembosz and Władysław Bartoszewski.

Dzieje.pl quotes his statement: “The attitude of the Polish underground to the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto can be described as indifferent, and after the war Iwański perfectly sensed the situation, the need for a narrative about Polish-Jewish brotherhood. According to his stories, he personally delivered more weapons to the Ghetto than the Polish People’s Army, People’s Guard, and Home Army combined, he helped Jews for free, he lost his father, two sons and a brother fighting alongside them. The trust with which his stories were received by historians shows how much such a figure of a Pole helping the Ghetto fighters was needed. To this day, in most dictionaries and studies, the name of Iwański and the nonsense he told are repeated next to the JMU entry.

Dariusz Libionka ignores or mocks scientific and military authorities, such as colonel Kazimierz Iranek-Osmecki (“Kto ratuje jedno życie… Polacy i Żydzi”, Londyn 1968; English edition – “He Who Saves One Life. The Complete, Documented Story of the Poles Who Struggled to Save Jews during World War Two, London 1971), Dawid Wdowiński, PhD and other describers of the JMU, whom he calls charlatans. For what purpose?

In an interview with the Polish Press Agency, he confessed that writing about the Jewish Military Union and glorifying it has one goal – to diminish the role and merits of the Jewish Combat Organization led by Mordechaj Anielewicz in the Ghetto fights. In this situation, can we trust the views and theses advocated by the director and employees of the Center for Holocaust Research?

Fortunately, the Center does not have a monopoly on writing the history of JMU. Two historians, August Grabski and Maciej Wójcicki, in the publication “Jewish Military Union – history restored” (2008) pointed out to Dariusz Libionka and Laurence Weinbaum that they showed too much trust in the content of the post-communist archives of the Society of Fighters for Freedom and Democracy, the Ministry of Public Security and the Security Service (now in the Institute of National Remembrance’s collection).

On the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Wojciech Rodak, a journalist from Wirtualna Polska, described the findings of researchers from the Menachem Begin Heritage Center, Jerusalem. Referring to Yossi Suede, one of the Center’s employees, he wrote that it was possible to determine with 90% certainty the course of service in the Polish Army of Paweł/Jakub Frenkel, one of the commanders of the JMU.

In the Military Historical Office in Rembertów, Israeli historians found Jakub Frenkel, born on August 11, 1911 in Bialystok, where he graduated from high school. In 1932, he served in the 76th Lida Infantry Regiment. He excelled in shooting and horsemanship. Two years later, he joined the reserve with the rank of lieutenant.

Israeli scientists also found a photo of Jakub (in descriptions and accounts from the occupation period he appears with the name Paweł) from a Betar sailing course and the voyage to Palestine at the turn of 1937-38. In the September Campaign he fought in his 76th Infantry Regiment. He was taken prisoner by the Germans. There is no evidence of getting out of captivity, getting to Warsaw, where he joined the activities of the JMU.

Israeli historians, to put it mildly, embarrassed Professor Barbara Engelking and her team with their discoveries made in Poland. Dariusz Libionka boasted of penetrating archives in Israel, London and elsewhere, instead of starting with Rembertów.

Now Dawid Moryc Apfelbaum is waiting for his military service to be determined; Dariusz Libionka writes about him that he is an imaginary, non-existent person, and he writes his military rank – major (awarded to him posthumously by the Commander-in-Chief in exile) in quotation marks.

Columnist Michał Okoński asks in one of this year’s, May issues of “Tygodnik Powszechny” – who is disturbed by Barbara Engelking. After her public statements about Poles handing over hiding Jews to the Germans.

Well, the historical truth is disturbed.

– Maciej Kledzik
– Translated by Dominik Szczęsny-Kostanecki

TVP WEEKLY. Editorial team and jornalists