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Rating: 
Summary: A Strikingly-Balanced Eyewitness Account of German Crimes
Review: Abraham Lewin, the author, is a Jewish eyewitness of events the Warsaw Ghetto. His narratives are in striking contrast to most popular-level Holocaust materials, which portray Poles in a unilaterally negative light while also completely ignoring the negative aspects of Jewish behavior. Lewin, for instance, focuses on the marked depravity of the Jewish collaborators, especially the Jewish ghetto police, and strongly condemns them for helping send then-200,000 Jews to their deaths. Lewin demonstrates, with examples, that large-scale Polish behavior of helping Jews far exceeded the few Poles who harmed Jews. And, despite observing the sufferings and deaths of his fellow Jews firsthand, Lewin refrains from a purely Judeo-centric approach to the Holocaust. In several places in his narratives, he speaks of German crimes against Polish gentiles. In particular, he discusses the widespread German terror (murders of Polish gentiles, and the destruction of Polish villages) in the Zamosc region. He even acknowledges that, after the Jews, Poles were in second place as victims of the Nazi Germans. He concludes: "Jewish and Polish blood is spilled, it mingles together and, crying to the heavens, it demands revenge!"
I only wish that modern approaches to Holocaust education displayed the same attitude, and balance, that Lewin did.
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