Lodz im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Deutsche Selbstzeugnisse über Alltag, Lebenswelten und NS-Germanisierungspolitik in einer multiethnischen Stadt. Hrsg. von Hans-Jürgen Bömelburg und Marlene Klatt. Osnabrück: fibre, 2015. 320 S. = Polono-Germanica, 9. ISBN: 978-3-944870-00-7

Lodz im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Deutsche Selbstzeugnisse über Alltag, Lebenswelten und NS-Germanisierungspolitik in einer multiethnischen Stadt. Hrsg. von Hans-Jürgen Bömelburg / Marlene Klatt. Osnabrück: fibre, 2015. 320 S. = Polono-Germanica, 9. ISBN: 978-3-944870-00-7.

Professor Hans-Jürgen Bömelburg is an expert in the German-Polish relations in modern history. He is also a former employee of the German Historical Institute in Warsaw (Poland) and has some experience in the studies on the Second World War. Dr. Marlene Klatt in her research focuses on overall German-Polish interactions. She is a member of the Historical Commission for the History of Germans in Poland. Furthermore, Marlene Klatt is involved in political activity in Germany since the 80’s.

It has to be stressed that the interest of German academics in the history of Poland, or speaking more precisely in the history of Polish territories during the Second World War from the perspective of daily life, is rather diminishing. The overall holocaust studies take the upper hand (for example, the works of Dieter Pohl). There is also a trend to a biographical approach to the major figures in German decision-making processes in the General Government or in the annexed Polish territories (Dieter Schenk). That is why the reviewed book deserves attention.

In their introduction the authors discuss the state of research, pointing out that the contemporary German historical perception of the years 1939–1945 in Lodz is to some extent still influenced by the post-war narrative of Landsmannschaften. Nevertheless there is also “noise” corroborated in the output of the leading Polish pre-1990 researchers as Mirosław Cygański. In the context of anti-FRG propaganda in communist Poland those historians sometimes instrumentalized or even manipulated historical facts. Moreover the authors also perceive in a critical way some recognized post-1990 researchers in Germany, complaining about their reluctance to take advantage of Polish publications. Bömelburg and Klatt are also suggesting a lack of studies on the Polish side nowadays. They attempt to explain it with insufficient languistic competence among Polish scholars that prevents them from analyzing German documents.

The book is composed of 11 chapters and an extensive introduction. In chapter I Bömelburg and Klatt placed ego-documents from the prewar time that are referring to the German perception of Lodz. Subsequent chapters refer to the following chronological stages, respectively to various dimensions of the occupation. Chapter II covers the capture of Lodz by the German forces in September 1939 going along with the execution of the representatives of the Polish or Jewish elites of the city. One can point out that the authors should have referred to Jochen Böhler’s Auftakt zum Vernichtungskrieg when describing and explaining the behavior of the German soldiers during the campaign of 1939. The lack of this milestone work in the introduction or especially in the extended footnote 4 on page 68–69 (document No 6) is rather peculiar. A short chapter III delivers a sketch of the impressions of the city by Germans, predominantly at the beginning of the war. Chapters IV, V, VII and to some extent VIII multiply discuss the measures launched by the officials and ordinary Germans against Poles and Jews. Among those acts of terror we can find: betraying former enemies to the police authorities, physical and psychological harassment, blackmailing, financial abuses or seizure of Polish and Jewish property.

Two chapters seem to be crucial for the entire story that is told in the book. One (chapter VI) confronts an immense problem of influx of the German settlers from Baltic states, eastern Poland, Romania or Russia (Baltendeutsche, Wolhyniendeutsche, Bessarabiendeutsche). This new (after 19th century) colonization was, however, preceded by mass expropriation and subsequent deportation of Poles and ghettoization along with deportation and extermination of the Jews. The second essential chapter (VII) includes German comments on the Jews and the Ghetto. Authors reminding us that the city was even called “Lagerstadt”, because of the congestion of various types of concentration camps for Poles, Jews, but also resettled Germans. Nonetheless, exactly those vital processes that at least partly make up the subject of chapters VI and VII (resettlements, mass killings, deportations to the General Government or to force labor in Reich) are neglected in this collection of the sources. As the matter of fact, the authors admit this deficiency in introduction (page 43). It is however astonishing that the issues of Ghetto – especially starvation, smuggling, work and shootings, finally deportations of Jews – are almost entirely ignored. Though the authors explain this by lack of ego-documents, they even do not mention in the introduction or later for example the famous Josef Zelkowicz’s In those terrible days. Writings from the Lodz Ghetto (ed. Michal Unger, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem 2002).

The remaining chapters are devoted to the Deutsche Volksliste (DVL) with its consequences in the ethnic structure of the Lodz communities (chapter IX) and to overall interactions between various categories of citizens – Reichsdeutsche, Volksdeutsche, Settlers, Poles (chapter X). The last chapter presents the atmosphere among the German population in the eve of breakdown of the Third Reich and oncoming of the Red Army.

The documents originate from several archives in Poland and Germany. Perhaps the most remarkable trait of this work is not the historical essence itself, but the unique nature of the documents that were explored and selectively presented. Each edited ego-document was produced before the spring of 1945. Probably that is why authors resigned on documents stored in the German Federal Archive’s branch in Bayreuth, Bayern (Lastenausgleichsarchiv) with its impressive collection of German testimonies from the annexed territories (so called Ostdokumentation), that were, however, collected usually a couple of years after the end of the war. Bömelburg and Klatt do not refer to this archive at all.

Nevertheless as the book is based entirely on a very specific category of sources one can complain about insufficient explanation of the ego-documents characteristic. After providing readers with short definition and enumerating individual types of ego-sources, authors of the book are ensuring that at least in the western methodology those documents are intensively discussed and attract attention of research since long ago. However one has to distinguish between ego-documents produced from the position of institution and the ego-documents written for entirely private purposes. As a matter of fact, every document with a personal signature or prepared by a single person (which is a very common situation) can be defined as ego-document. Many of the quoted documents are in fact quasi-official, For example the reports of an EWZ employee (No 11), or several reports of VoMi officials in chapter VI). The “Ego” requires more exact clarification. There is also a kind of paradox concerning the internal specification of the ego-documents. The authors claim that among the presented documents, there are missing in particular such types as diaries and private correspondence. Whereas due to the definition (theory) given on page 44, those types are among the most precious, making up the core of ego-documents at all (compare also: (http://www.egodocument.net/egodocument/).

Some doubts emerge concerning the construction of the work. The content of individual chapters is not always coherent with their titles. It seems that some vital aspects of daily life are missing – for instance food supply, cultural life or the activity of the Polish underground with its consequences. Chapters IX and X are referring to quite similar problems and should have been either arranged according to another, more sophisticated rules or integrated together into one substantial chapter about the implications of DVL. It is also disputable whether the sources covered by chapter VIII are really referring to the “violent transformation of the city” as the grandiloquent title is pretending, or perhaps are they simply showing the seizure of property and financial extortion. The problem of Raumplanung (Raumordnung), for instance, is almost completely omitted in the work. One can express same concern about chapter IX, where there is little to learn about “multinational” relations. The mentioned chapter focuses rather on mutual, “bilateral” German-Polish contacts. The Jews are not involved. Chapter IV in turn seems to be too heterogeneous and ambiguous. It is sometimes hard to conceive any significant or direct connection between career on the one hand and revenge and retribution on the other. Certainly one can always attempt to combine various remote concepts within a chapter, but it should be explained in the introduction.

Now coming to the level of edited documents, one has to admit that there are many really interesting and sometimes even stunning pieces. We find, for example, the impressions of Gauleiter Greiser’s daughter about the city; standard stories involved Rassenschande or quite usual crime stories. Special attention should be given to documents showing various clashes and frictions between Reischsdeutsche, Volksdeutsche and the settlers from Eastern Europe. Worth of mentioning is, for instance, an astonishing letter of a German woman who gave her Polish husband out to the German police authorities for clandestine listening a foreign radio station (No 102). This resembles the famous case of Pavlik Morozov in the USSR. Another fascinating category of accounts are the requests for obtaining the status of Polish nationals submitted by Germans or half Germans who refused to enter the DVL-procedure (No 118).

Lodz was the biggest concentration of Germans in the annexed Polish territories and in the entire Eastern Europe during the war. It was also at the beginning of the occupation, before the mass deportations started, the sixth biggest city of the Third Reich. Authors point out that Lodz-Germans left much more informative traces in the form of ego-documents, post-war testimonies and memoirs than their counterparts in other German minority areas eastward from Oder river – in Warsaw, Katowice or Poznan (actually also Bielsko/Silesia was regarded a center of German minority in the pre-war period). The authors convincingly managed to prove that Lodz makes up for a fascinating, though horrifying, episode of the Second World War. For that reasonthe publication of new sources is not only justified but also necessary in order to deliver ‘fuel’ to broader circles of researchers, inspire and encourage them to tackle the question and set up new projects. Book makes significant contribution to such areas of studies on the Second World War as: occupation, colonization, daily life, annexed territories of Poland, German-Polish relations, or “German-German relations”, and, last but not least, the history of Lodz.

Mirosław Sikora, Katowice