Friling, Tuvia. 2014. A Jewish Kapo in Auschwitz: History, Memory, and the Politics of Survival. Walham, MASS: Brandeis University Press. Bibliography. Index. 325 PP.
On May 22, 1948, two years or so after arriving in Israel and just short of turning 40 Eliezer Gruenbaum was killed in the battle of Ramat Rachel. Another far longer “battle” cast a shadow over his death, as back even during the nearly three years he spent as a prisoner in KZ Auschwitz (31 months) and KZ Buchenwald (4 months) Gruenbaum (aka Leon Berger) was in a protracted and dramatic battle to protect his reputation and honor from fierce indictment by certain fellow prisoners who accused him of unforgettable and unforgivable concentration camp collaboration that had cost lives.
Eliezer’s father, Yitzhak Gruenbaum, had been the lead pre-war Jewish politician in Poland, and during the war, had played a major role in the many-faceted effort of the Palestinian Jewish community (Yishuv) to aid European Jewry. After he became the first Minister of the
Interior. These controversial roles had earned Yitzhak the enmity of critics (“pedantic, tightfisted, and unable to acknowledge the limits of his power – failings that his son shared”), and that figured later into Gruenbaum’s case, as did also the fact that his son’s history as an activist dated back to a 1929 sentence of four and a half years in a Polish Prison for allegedly “plotting” with other young Jewish Communist males to radically change Polish politics. Later in the camps Gruenbaum leveraged his Party ties to advantage, though his supporters and detractors put completely opposite labels on his actions (self-serving versus Comrade-supporting). His reputation for independence of thought and his sharp tongue figured into everything.
It should be clear by now that the content of this book is complex and appropriately nuanced. It contains in fact two inseparable stories – a convoluted one of Gruenbaum’s trial by relentless accusation – and another of the unique and exemplary effort by author Tuvia Friling, a Professor of Modern Jewish History at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, to weigh the case made for and against Gruenbaum. This had Friling and his research assistants invest years in analyzing a “sea of details” buried in archival documentation outside of Israel, as from French and Polish sources, along with interviewing scores of relevant parties.
Among its other strengths this artfully written book demonstrates how truly challenging is the question of what do we mean by moral behavior when another human being is struggling to survive the horrifying pressures in a German concentration camp (“ … the mortal danger in which every life at the death camps by definition found itself in”)? (p. 261) In partial answer Friling uncovers four retrospective narratives – Communist, Haredi (Orthodox Jewry), Zionist, and Personal/Family – that are all “the product of another fifty years of polemic over [Gruenbaum’s] memory, heroism, or shame. … [which] to this day struggle with each other for hegemony over a collective memory that is in any case shattered.” (p. 260).
One can take away from this unforgettable volume a sound appreciation for the research work required to “drill down” in a matter as fragile and yet also as robust as an accusation of fatal collaboration. We are reminded not to rush to judgment, not to dismiss out of hand the possibility that the accused might be both hero and villain. We are invited to rethink stereotypes and recognize anew the critical value of what remains still be learned. Above all, we have in this volume an exemplary model for all comparable investigations for decades to come.