Bieganski in Sweden? "Morkt Vatten" or "Dark Water"

Blog reader Artur Szulc sent this in, and granted permission for me to post it.

"I do not know if you ever have studied the Bieganski stereotype in countries other than US, but I can tell you that it is alive and kicking in Sweden. One obvious example is the movie "Mörkt vatten" (in English, "Dark Water").

The movie is in Swedish cinemas right now.

It is about a couple of real estate brokers who go to stay in a big house which is up for sale. Their job is to check that everything is ok before the sale. Short after their arrival, a Polish craftsman presents himself and says he is to do some finishing jobs on that house. Of course, the man is a psycho. He is depicted as lazy, scruffy, thickheaded and as a Peeping Tom who stands outside and looks at the young couple in bed.

I have not yet seen the movie, only read reviews, and some of the Swedish reviewers are very harsh in their criticism, because the movie is based on prejudice against people from the East."

Neither Artur nor I has seen "Morkt Vatten." Has anyone out there seen it, or seen press about it, who might be able to tell us more? Thank you.

The trailer for "Mokt Vatten" is here.


***


I thank blog reader Mieszko for drawing our attention to a 2010 Canadian film, "The Shrine," that depicts cult-based human sacrifice in modern-day Poland. 


"The Shrine" exemplifies for me why I work on Bieganski, the Brute Polak stereotype in its entirety, rather than any one manifestation of it, and why any response to it must address the entire stereotype, rather than just one phrase (e.g. "Polish concentration camps") or one demonized, purported enemy (Jan Tomasz Gross.)

The Bieganski, Brute Polak stereotype is culture-wide, it is pervasive, and it pertains to every aspect of EE Bohunk identity, not just discussions of the Holocaust, not just discussions between Poles and Jews. Blaming the Jews or the leftists, as two recent books have done (reviewed on the blog here and here) gets us nowhere. We must do the hard work of uniting, supporting each other, organizing, and acting strategically, not randomly, as described in this series of blog posts. 

If you are a Canadian and you want to make a film today about a scary place where weird cult members sacrifice human beings, your location of choice is Poland, exactly because of the Brute Polak stereotype.

As ever, I encourage people who want to better understand this phenomenon, and who wish to be intellectually equipped to begin to address it, to read Bieganski and this blog. 


Please have a look at the trailer for "The Shrine" here.

The State-Mandated Sterilization of a Polish-American Teenage Girl

Ewa Holody Pacosz with 4 of her living children, circa 1919. 

Walter Pacosz, Christina Pacosz's father, born in 1914, is in the sailor suit. 

Janina is a toddler in her mother's arms.

Aunt Janina

by Christina Pacosz

Janina Pacosz was the youngest of five living siblings and my father's sister. But not the very youngest. An unnamed baby girl died from meningitis or possibly flu in St. Louis and was buried in an unmarked grave after the family's flight from Leadwood, Missouri because of the 1917 Leadbelt Riot. My father was only four when that sister died and he couldn't recall her name.

But he never forgot his sister Janina who had been committed to the state institution for the mentally retarded in Lapeer, Michigan. She tumbled out of her high chair and was never right, my father said, afterwards. The official sterilization order survived the terrible fire that took Walter Pacosz' life October 16, 1987. My mother kept important papers in a fireproof, steel box.

The University of Michigan Bentley Historical Collection has the papers now.

My father told me his father, Antoni Pacosz, didn't know what he was signing, and when he did understand what he'd done, it was too late. Dated May 1, 1933 "The Order for Personal Service" (Sterilization Law ‑ Act 28l, P.A. of 1929) declaring "Janine Pacosz" to be "an alleged mentally defective person" had already been carried out as ordered by Glen L. Hollenbeck, Judge of Probate in Lapeer County. Antoni Pacosz signed the petition and was her "duly appointed guardian ad litem". Her mother, my grandmother, Ewa Pacosz, was notified by registered mail. Two dates were noted in the official papers, April 13 and May 1, 1933. No one had a car or the ability to drive, so it is doubtful the family had any representation at either of the proceedings. Years later my grandmother signed her social security card with "her mark" – an X – and it is very likely she was illiterate in both of her spoken languages, English and Polish.

The paper my grandfather signed authorized Janina's sterilization, too. Unable to read English, he didn't fully understand what he was doing. Neither could my grandmother. Translators for official state business weren't required by law.

According to Philip R. Reilly in his book, "The Surgical Solution: A History of Involuntary Sterilization in the United States" (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991) more than sixty thousand mentally retarded or mentally ill individuals, most of them residents of large state institutions, were sterilized for eugenic reasons in the first six decades of the twentieth century. My Aunt Janina was in good company.

Documents regarding the sterilization and incarceration of Janina Pacosz at Lapeer State Training Home until she died.

Janina was filled with a high‑pitched excitement when we visited her. I went with my father, not just for the train ride, which I barely remember now, but for her, this aunt with the childlike simplicity and joy which exceeded my own. I was five or six, and mentally so was Janina, or possibly younger.

I'd take a favorite doll or teddy bear for company on the long journey. Janina and I would sit on the lawn beneath a huge elm – they weren't yet sick and dying from Dutch elm disease – and, screaming with delight, Janina tossed my bear into the air.

She was always dressed in institutional clothes. A green and white checked cotton dress, starched and pressed, its collar solid green, as were the short‑sleeved cuffs. On her legs and feet, thick, cotton hose and brown oxford shoes. Janina looked like a waitress in one of the hamburger joints my mother took me to during our outings to downtown Detroit.

I don't recall what my father talked about with his sister but I do remember the sun pouring down through the leaves and the sweat beading her upper lip and her forehead. Her eyes were blue jewels that matched my father's and my grandmother's eyes. Bright and inquisitive as a bird she'd lean toward me, our faces just inches apart. When she laughed it was impossible for me not to.

Janina was locked behind red brick walls and died in that awful place. Sterilized. At fourteen. When I was fourteen my head was filled with the thrill of boys, though few paid attention to me. When I was fourteen, Janina was forty‑one years old, just a year and a month from her death.

I don't remember ever setting foot inside the Lapeer State Home and Training School. We visited Janina outside, on the lawn. It was always summer and hot.

I can only imagine what it was like inside the state home and training school. Each day a dull repetition of the one before no matter the season. The stench of ammonia and urine. Of neglect and loss. The lack of privacy. The starchy sameness of the food. Making potholders for recreational time. The numbing gray paint on the scarred walls. The strong steel grills on the windows. The harsh, artificial light.

My father brought her home to our house on an outing once, after he had learned to drive and could make the long trip by car and back with her. She was lost outside her familiar surroundings, though she seemed happy enough to be with us. Busia was there, too, crying and smiling as she took this lost, stolen daughter into her arms.

I wonder what those visits cost my father who had spent ten years behind bars for petty crimes. The forcible and violent loss of rural community both in Missouri and then again in Modliborzyce, Poland with a decade-plus separation from his father in Detroit had left my father emotionally scarred. That family separation had been caused by U.S. anti-immigrant laws. He and my grandmother came back to the U.S. in December 1929. Not a good time for a fifteen- almost-sixteen year old boy seeking his own way in the world. He had been locked up when their father signed Janina's life away.

His being jailed may have been what led to scrutiny of the family and, ultimately, Janina being removed from the family home on Otis Street.

Included in the Order was the stipulation that an additional "order be made for an operation or treatment to render said Janine Pacosz incapable of procreation." And, also, "that the Court appoint two reputable physicians to make an investigation of the mental and physical condition and personal and family history of said Janine Pacosz." These individuals listed on the court documents were Dr. H.G. Merz and Dr. J.A. Spencer.

Eugenics was an up and coming pseudo‑science and had its scientific community of devotees and adherents in most states across the United States and then later in Germany. Janina was an early victim of Nazi ideology, only she lived in Detroit, not the Third Reich, and she took a long time to die from the State's neglect.

***

The noon sun spills an abundance of gold on the green expanse of lawn beyond the shade of the elm.

Head tossed back, Janina brays with laughter, yellow teeth flashing. Her light brown hair, cut in a utilitarian Dutch Boy style, swirls across her rosy cheeks. She squeals and throws my brown plush teddy bear into the air; it falls into her lap.

Eyes gleaming like the first stars at dusk, she clutches the stuffed toy to her breast.

My father smiles at his sister's obvious delight and opens the brown paper bag of food my mother has prepared.

Beneath the elm, poised on the brink of blight and death, we eat our lunch: ham sandwiches, hard-boiled eggs, potato chips.

Ignoring the crowded, bloody bed of our familial history, we tilt our heads back, and gulp fizzy Faygo strawberry soda.

Years later the phone rings late in the night. An anonymous call from a Training Home employee. Janina is dead.

No one in the family had been notified she was ill.

She died all alone in that place where the life was cut out of her by a knife wielded by the authority of the state.

Cause of death: encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain resulting in paralysis of the respiratory centers. According to the death certificate mental retardation contributed to her death.

That death certificate should have read: Abandoned, lost and lonely. Imprisoned.

She lay in her coffin, bright blue eyes shut forever.

I wanted to put a teddy bear beside her, some comfort for her long sleep in the earth. Instead, I kissed her cold cheek, remembering how she'd laughed during our visits.

This aunt who was not right, but never wrong, though the wrongs of the bloody bed blossomed red about her.

© Christina Pacosz

First published on the West Side Detroit Polish American Historical Society member newsletter, April 2012.

Christina Pacosz's new book of poems is published by Seven Kitchens Press. Ordering information here. 

Janina Pacosz in the middle with her mother Eva Miazga (r) and her sister-in-law Elizabeth Pacosz (l),
date unknown.

***   ***   ***

I'm honored that Christina Pacosz granted me permission to post her essay about Aunt Janina here.

The essay is especially timely.

There is a tendency among some Polonians to blame Jews for the Bieganski, Brute Polak stereotype. I've recently reviewed two books, one a rather good book, the other not so good, that either state or imply that Jews and leftists are either partially or fully responsible for the Brute Polak stereotype. One of those reviews can be found here, the other here.

I regularly receive emails, and see posts on Polish-interest internet discussion sites, naming Jews or Leftists as responsible for the Brute Polak stereotype.

This identification of Jews and leftists as responsible for the Brute Polak stereotype is wrong, and it must stop.

It is factually wrong. Jews and leftists are not responsible for the Brute Polak stereotype. This is demonstrated in "Bieganski."

It is morally wrong.

It is strategically wrong. It does Polonia no good, and much harm, to scapegoat Jews and leftists. It does Polonia no good, and much harm, to turn Polonians against each other: Catholics v. non-Catholics, right-wingers v. left-wingers, Christians v. Jews.

The Brute Polak stereotype is produced, supported, and disseminated by Jews and non-Jews, by left-wingers and right-wingers, and indeed by some Poles themselves.

The Brute Polak stereotype has been resisted by Jews and non-Jews, by left-wingers and right-wingers, and by some (but not enough) Poles.

A case in point. Art Spiegelman's book "Maus" is used to teach the Holocaust to young people. "Maus" depicts Poles as pigs. I've joined others in protesting the use of this book, for example here and here.

Several years ago, a Polish-American professor politely protested the use of "Maus" to teach English as a foreign language to visiting Japanese tourists. That professor lost his job. He had been teaching at St. Mary's, a Catholic institution. The person who defended his firing was Brother Craig J. Franz, a Catholic man of the cloth.

I could cite many such examples. In 2012, I was allowed to read a pre-publication manuscript from a Catholic publisher. The book addressed Polish issues. BIG Polish issues. The book was rife with errors about Polish matters. On other matters, the book was fine. When it came to Polish matters, from the smallest (borscht is made from turnips) to the largest (the source of anti-Semitism in Poland) the book was rife with errors. I blogged about this here.

Another example – Commonweal's treatment of Polish-Jewish relations and the convent controversy. I blog about this here.

Another example: Bill Tammeus, author of the Bieganski-style book "They Were Just People," covered in this blog post, is himself a liberal Protestant of German descent. He is now a blogger at the National Catholic Reporter.

Another example. James Carroll, as "Bieganski" describes, went out of his way to misrepresent Polish history in his own blockbuster bestseller, "Constantine's Sword." James Carroll is not just Catholic, he is a former priest.

These examples and others demonstrate that Catholics have been all too ready to support and disseminate the Bieganski stereotype.

In my own work, I can say that many Jews have supported me and my work financially, emotionally, academically, and in every other way they could.

Why I mention all this in relation to Christina Pacosz's heartrending essay about her aunt.

A few reasons:

Christina Pacosz is a leftist, and she is not a practicing Catholic. John Guzlowski, who has also supported my work on the Brute Polak stereotype is also a leftist and is not a practicing Catholic. Danuta Reah, who has also supported my work is a leftist and is not a practicing Catholic.

Every one of these people: Pacosz, Guzlowski, and Reah, have taken public stands against the brute Polak stereotype, and paid the price.

When it comes to religion or politics, I argue with leftists. I argue for Catholicism. I have argued with Pacosz, Guzlowski, and Reah.

When it comes to the Brute Polak stereotype, I put my political and religious arguments aside. I do that because Polonians can and should unite to eliminate this stereotype.

Aunt Janina was not victimized by a Jewish or a leftist ideology. Her story is not isolated. She is not one of thousands. She is one of millions of people victimized by Scientific Racism. "Bieganski: The Brute Polak" outlines this history. More Polonians need to read it. They need to understand the roots, rationalizations, and applications of the Brute Polak stereotype. The Brute Polak stereotype is more than the phrase "Polish Concentration Camp." When Polonia decides to educate itself, Polonia will be able to have an impact, and not before.

We Polonians need to overcome our failings, which I have outlined in a three-part blog post entitled "The Crisis in Polonian Leadership, Organization, and Vision." You can read those blog posts here.

Blaming others for our failings, scapegoating leftists and Jews, is a no-win approach. We must reject it utterly. We must focus on victory against the Brute Polak stereotype, and unite with others similarly focused on victory.

BBC: Poland's Achievements in Education

The role of Martial Law in today's educational reforms

Education Minister Zbigniew Marciniak

Poland Scores Late Goals in Education
By Bill Hicks
BBC Knowledge Economy
June 12, 2012

The eyes of the football world have turned to Poland, as it plays co-host to Euro 2012.

But the country has been winning international approval for a different kind of league table success - as Poland has become one of the rising stars in education.

Among eastern European, former-Communist countries, Poland has been the biggest education success story - following modernising reforms launched at the end of the 1990s.

It has also been more successful than most countries at one of the holy grails for education reform, equality of opportunity.

Poland's schools are succeeding, more than many others, in narrowing the gap between the weak and the strong, the gifted and the challenged.

No other European country has climbed the international education tables quite so consistently as this nation, which emerged so recently from decades of totalitarian rule and economic hardship.

Read the entire article here.

Thank you to the blog reader who sent this in.

University of Missouri Press Slated to Close

Polish American author and poet Christina Pacosz wrote to report that the University of Missouri Press is slated to close. This is sad news, but all too typical of the times. University presses are sources of knowledge. They subsidize books that might never, otherwise, get published. That is a good thing. Many presses are in danger of closing today, given the rapidly changing publishing climate.

A less than stellar publication of the University of Missouri Press drew the attention of this blog. Bill Tammeus' and Jacques Cukierkorn's book "They Were Just People" resorted to the Bieganski, Brute Polak stereotype. That book's problems are outlined in an open letter to Clair Willcox. That letter can be seen at this blog post.

Interestingly, in the news article that Christina sent me, "They Were Just People" is cited as a worthy book, one that testifies to the worth of the University of Missouri Press. I am sorry that Polonia has not yet been successful in communicating to a wider audience the problems with a book like "They Were Just People."

Below please find an excerpt from the news article reporting on the slated closing of the University of Missouri Press.

Kansas City Star
June 7, 2012
"Supporters work to save University of Missouri Press University of Missouri plans to shut down 54-year-old publisher." by Blake Ursch

"Now the “Save the University of Missouri Press” Facebook page has more than 1,300 “likes” so far as supporters take the fight to their keyboards.

“I see this as an attack on everything that I care about,” said Bruce Miller, who created the Facebook page on Memorial Day. “It’s an attack on publishing, scholarly publishing, editors, authors and ultimately the citizens of Missouri.”

Miller, a publisher’s representative based in Chicago, sells titles from more than 25 university presses around the Midwest to bookstores.

Since its founding in 1958, the University of Missouri Press has published books on world history, philosophy and literary criticism, among other scholarly topics…In 2009, the press published “They Were Just People: Stories of Rescue in Poland During the Holocaust,” by former Star columnist Bill Tammeus and Kansas City area rabbi Jacques Cukierkorn.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/06/07/3645955/supporters-work-to-save-university.html#storylink=cpy"

Bystanders, Blackmailers, and Perpetrators: Polish Complicity during the Holocaust

A blog reader sent this in: "Bystanders, Blackmailers, and Perpetrators: Polish Complicity during the Holocaust": by Jacob Flaws. A thesis submitted to the graduate faculty in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in History at Iowa State University. Advisors: John Monroe, Major Professor, Kevin Amidon, Charles Dobbs. January 1, 2011.

Perhaps someone would like to read this thesis and report back with a summary. It Can be found here:

http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2938&context=etd

Bieganski, the Brute Polak and Debbie Schlussel

Recently blogger Debbie Schlussel voiced the Bieganski, Brute Polak stereotype. You can read some of Ms. Schlussel's voicing of the Bieganski, Brute Polak stereotype here.

And Polonia is shocked, shocked.

Me? I'm not shocked.

I wrote a book on the Bieganski, Brute Polak stereotype. It describes how the stereotype came about, how it is used, and why this stereotype has so much power. I've devoted this blog to the stereotype. There is a three-part blog post outlining how Polonia can overcome the stereotype. That three-part blog post, entitled "The Crisis in Polonian Leadership, Organization, and Vision," is here.

I don't understand why Polonia behaves as if it is shocked when the Bieganski, Brute Polak stereotype rears its ugly head. I don't understand why Polonia flounders desperately, and fails in its efforts to respond.

I don't understand why people say they care so much about this topic, and yet they tell me that they haven't read the only scholarly book on the topic, "Bieganski," and why when I suggest that they invite me to speak, they say it's too hard to do that. As one Polonian put it, "I can't invite you to speak. I live in New York and you live in New Jersey." (To my readers in Poland: New York and New Jersey are bordering states.)

I've spoken to Jewish groups, Unitarians, a Bruderhof, on university campuses … and never to a Polish-American group. One Polish American cultural leader told me that her "Board of Directors said there was no interest – with the subject [the Brute Polak stereotype] being too heavy, too negative, and too American-centered." Whom does this woman invite to speak? People who talk about Chopin and Kosciuszko and Marie Curie. How nice.

I don't understand why after years of trying, I am still unable to find a Polish publisher for "Bieganski."

How do Polonians respond to the Brute Polak stereotype? In ways that don't help. They write outraged letters, usually as individuals, rather than as organized groups, pounding their chests, saying how great Poland is, and how bad her enemies are. Newsflash: people who aren't Polish won't care. Further: the truth is much more complex than "Poland is really, really great and her enemies are really, really bad." Only sad old chauvinists, marginalized from, and utterly inconsequential to the mainstream of society, will embrace that message.

Further: the real truth of the Bieganski, Brute Polak stereotype is actually pertinent to all of humanity, not just Poles, not just Jews. Didn't know that, did you, you angry letter writers?

How else do Polonians respond to the Brute Polak stereotype? Polonians sign internet petitions. Newsflash: the Kosciuszko Foundation petition against the "Polish death camp" charge was so ineffectual that President Barack Obama, eager to curry favor with Polish-American voters, badly bungled an award to Jan Karski when he, Obama, voiced that very stereotype. Get it? The petitions have zero impact. Stop sending them to me.

How else do Polonians respond to the stereotype?

Polonians post sarcastic, obscene, and angry internet posts. One Polish man, in response to my suggestion on Facebook that Polonians might consider buying and reading "Bieganski" in order that they could respond to this stereotype in a reasoned way that would reach the widest possible audience and carry the most weight, said, merely, "Debbie Schlussel wouldn't know the truth if it bit her in the ass." No doubt he expelled some anger by typing up that obscene, angry internet post. No doubt he appeared manly to his fans. No doubt he accomplished nothing in the struggle against stereotyping. If anything, his resorting to obscenities, his inability to follow the drift of a conversation, his anger and his lack of self-control reinforced the stereotype.

What good do the strategies that Polonia has tried so far done? Debbie Schlussel, President Barack Obama, and commentators on the upcoming UEFA Euro 2012 soccer matches have all voiced the Bieganski, Brute Polak stereotype in the past month. And we stand by, helplessly.

So, no, I'm not going to post about Debbie Schlussel's voicing of the Bieganski, Brute Polak stereotype. I've already said everything I would say about this topic in the book itself and on this blog.

Concerned blog readers, though, have been sending me pages of incriminatory material about Debbie Schlussel. I invite those readers to post them in the comments section here, rather than sending them to me. If nothing else, more people will see your material that way. Thank you.

Gathering of material is a good thing. Maybe someday Polonia will be ready to take this struggle seriously, to unite, support each other, organize, and behave strategically. In the meantime, we can gather ammo. The intellectual kind.

Witold Pilecki "The Auschwitz Volunteer"

Buy this book!
Available at Amazon here

"The Auschwitz Volunteer" is the single most extraordinary tale of heroism I have ever read. Next to what Witold Pilecki voluntarily endured at Auschwitz, Sir Ernest Shackleton, the famously gritty Antarctic explorer, was enjoying a day at the beach.

To say that Witold Pilecki was a "man's man" is to understate the case considerably. We don't have words to adequately convey the kind of heroism Pilecki displayed. Language is a common possession and Pilecki was entirely uncommon. Witold Pilecki is one of the greatest heroes our species has produced. You're going to come away from this book wondering why Hollywood has not yet celebrated him. In fact that is a very good question to ask, and the answer reveals much about how stereotypes of Brute Polaks have been used to distort history.

"The Auschwitz Volunteer" belongs on the very short shelf of the classics of Holocaust literature, next to Anne Frank's "Diary of a Young Girl," Elie Wiesel's "Night," Primo Levi's "The Drowned and the Saved" and Tadeusz Borowski's "This Way to the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen." Most people, including most teaching courses on the Holocaust at US universities, have never heard of Witold Pilecki. This is a scandal, one Polonia is duty-bound to correct. "The Auschwitz Volunteer" must be on the core syllabus of Holocaust study.

Many readers who should read this book will shrink from it. I want to assure readers that, the entire time you are reading, you know you are in the hands of a heroically good man who endured everything he endured because he was committed to a higher cause: serving humanity, his country, and his God. Indeed, in describing events in 1943, when he had been in Auschwitz since 1940, Pilecki wrote, "Above all, I was a believer." Pilecki described how his belief in God, and his commitment to service to Poland, got him through. Pilecki is proof that as low as humanity has sunk, the light shone in the darkness. When humanity scoured the depths of depravity, it also reached the heights of heroism. In this, Witold Pilecki is like Jan Karski, Maximilian Kolbe, Irena Sendler and thousands of other heroes, who, knowing the risk they were undertaking, defied Nazism.

Captain Witold Pilecki was a forty-something officer in the underground Polish resistance movement during World War II. He was in what would eventually coalesce into the Armia Krajowa, or Home Army. Pilecki came from a long history of Polish resistance: his grandfather had been exiled to Siberia, and Pilecki formed resistance groups as a youth, and fought against the Russians in 1920, being twice decorated. He fought again when the German Nazis invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, and again against the Russian Soviets when they invaded Poland on September 17, 1939. When open, armed struggle became impossible, Pilecki co-founded a group that eventually would become part of the Home Army.

In 1940, Pilecki volunteered to be imprisoned in Auschwitz. He did so to serve his country, and humanity. Pilecki was a prisoner in Auschwitz from 1940-43. The entire time he was there, he organized prisoners, gathered information, and planned to work for the Nazi defeat.

Pilecki's report is an eyewitness, journalistic account of everyday life in a concentration camp. The material is highly disturbing, of course, but it is also fascinating. Pilecki describes the tortures the Nazis and their minions resorted to, but he also describes moments when he felt happy because he was able to overcome some obstacle, including the spiritual obstacle of the temptation to succumb to despair. These moments truly are examples of the arguments about human nature that Viktor Frankl, another Auschwitz prisoner, made in his classic, "Man's Search for Meaning."

One objective fact follows another in Pilecki's account: accounts of torture and mass murder, how Auschwitz handled its mail, sewerage, and lice infestations. How male barbers reacted to shaving the bodies of women. How prisoners being sent to their deaths greeted their former comrades they passed on the way to execution.

Pilecki's report was written in 1945, before the world had assimilated the Holocaust, before that word was even widely used, before accurate tallies of the dead had been drawn up, before powerful forces began to dictate the approved World War II narrative. His report was written for military and humanitarian purposes. His style is journalistic. He strives to provide the facts, in an unemotional manner.

His humanity seeps through nevertheless. As Pilecki himself put it, "They have told me, 'The more you stick to the bare facts, the more valuable it all will be.' Well, here I go. But we were not made of stone. It sometimes seemed as if even a stone would have broken out in a sweat."

The book is not crafted to provide the rising suspense, climax, and denouement one gets from reading a modern American bestseller. There is no Hollywood ending.

All these features of Pilecki's report, which some will assess as drawbacks, are actually the great strengths of the book. Pilecki's writing is utterly raw. He writes as someone who is confronted with atrocity first-hand would write, before he had been to grief counseling, before he had been through the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder workshop, before a committee of academics went over his document with a fine-toothed comb in order to make sure that his treatment of demographics and statistics and religions and ethnicities meets the current guidelines of Political Correctness. This is what the Holocaust looked like to an Auschwitz prisoner, on the ground, watching it happen. This is not Hollywood's or even American academia's Holocaust.

Jarek Garlinski's translation of Pilecki's work is peerless. The language is smooth and appropriately idiomatic. Garlinski is himself the son of an Auschwitz survivor. The book contains much supportive material to aid the reader. There are maps, many photographs of Pilecki and his family before, during and after the war, his underground comrades, his fellow prisoners and his Nazi tormentors, and Auschwitz. There are introductions that walk the reader through Pilecki's life story, and several appendices and an excellent index. Aquila Polonica has every reason to feel very, very proud of this book, of its substance, its style, and its unique importance.

Given how important Pilecki is, one must ask, why is he unknown? I think much of the answer can be found in my own book on the importance of the Brute Polak stereotype in Western culture.