JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
After reading my quick post from yesterday (on Oswiecim, Camp of Death, March 1944, a very early work published on the Holocaust) my friend Andy Moursund made several good points on other pieces of very early Holocaust literature (those being books or pamphlets rather than newspaper or journal articles), which I note below with links to their full text.
Andy went directly to Jan Karski's extremely early (1942 and 1944) works--they were potentially momentous, though they missed their true moment, the reasons of which will no doubt be long discussed and debated. Karski (1914-2000) performed an heroic duty reporting on the mass extermination of Jews, ethnic Poles, and other nationalities in Poland in 1942-3, and wrote on the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto. He was a professor at Georgetown University for a while, and lived on or near MacArthur Blvd--I saw him a couple of times in Georgetown (where my store was for years) back in the mid/late 1980's but never spoke to him...he had very penetrating eyes in a sharp and angular face, exceptionally striking in a Samuel Beckett sort of way--his Story of a Secret State was well known to our circle, and Karski was very easily recognized, but not necessarily easily approachable. In any event, I regret not speaking with him.
The earliest work by Jan Karski is The Mass Extermination of Jews in German Occupied Poland. First official government-documented alert about the Holocaust and genocide of Poles addressed to the wartime allies of the then-United Nations.Government of the Republic of Poland, Ministry of Foreign Affairs MSZ, published in 1942. I should point out that "extermination" used in the description of mass execution of human beings seems to predate the recorded OED first-usage by three years. ("Extermination, attributive, as extermination camp n., a concentration camp for the mass murder of human beings, applied esp. to the camps set up by Nazi Germany in the war of 1939–45.1945 [First usage] Atlantic July 55, "Among the workers a threat of being sent to an extermination camp has its uses."--OED)
We get to the "extermination in the opening paragraphs of Karski's paper:
"In the Note of May 3rd, 1941, presented to the Governments of the Allied and Neutral Powers the Polish Government gave a comprehensive survey of the acts of violence perpetrated against the population of Poland, of offences against religion and cultural heritage and destruction of property in Poland. An extract of this Note , together with a large amount of corroborating material, has been published in the form of a White Book...
Since the publication of the White Book , however, many increasingly brutal acts of violence and terror have been committed by German authorities in Poland. In recent months these persecutions have been directed with particular violence against the Jewish population, who have been subjected to new methods calculated to bring about the complete extermination of the Jews, in conformity with the public statements made by the leaders of Germany."
The links for Mass Extermination...
- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:The_Mass_Extermination_of_Jews_in_German_Occupied.pdf&page=0
- (text version) https://archive.org/stream/TheMassExterminationOfJewsInGermanOccupiedPoland/The%20Mass%20Extermination%20of%20Jews%20in%20German%20Occupied%20Poland_djvu.txt
Also, Karski's Story of a Secret State (1944); (Andy has what seems to be something approaching a near-unique printing of that book, but I leave it to him to tell that story.)
- https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.53111/page/n5
Additionally, there are the following works from 1941/2:
German Occupation of Poland. Extract of Note Addressed to the Allied and Neutral Powers, Auguste Zaleski in London on May 3, 1941, published in New York in 1941, 243pp.
- Full text: https://archive.org/stream/GermanOccupationOfPoland/German%20Occupation%20of%20Poland#page/n1/mode/2up
The Black Book of Poland (1942), is a 750pp collection of eye-witnesses accounts and hard documentation proving that to 1941 there were 400,000 murders committed by the Nazis in Poland. There was also a London edition published the same year under a different title--The German New Order in Poland--with 585 pages. From the book:
“Massacre of the Jews. Mr. Zygielbojm, representing the Jews, said:
“…I heard Greiser’s official New Year 1940 message declaring that while foreseeing for Poles only a role of German slaves he could see no part for Jews in human society. Jews must be wiped from the face of the earth. The plan is now being actually carried out. Minister Mikolajczyk in his report gives a number of towns where massacres of men, women and children have taken place. In many of these towns not a single Jew is alive. Germans have slaughtered the population by hand grenades, machine-guns and gas. We possess detailed description of how thousands have been poisoned by gas. According to reports more than forty thousand were killed thus. The nightmare still continues in Poland. The exact number of murdered Jew’s cannot be given yet. Reports received at various times total to many hundreds thousands. Assuming that German occupants are also using starvation as a means for the extermination of Jew's in Poland we must accept the estimated figure of 700,000 mentioned in one report. In the ghetto of Warsaw alone 50,000 died of starvation in 1941. The deathrate now is 6,000 a month. Undoubtedly the monstrous plan to exterminate all Jews is being carried out in Poland. Actually all Polish Jews live in closed ghettos like in prisons awaiting execution.”
--from The Black Book of Poland (1942).
There's more of course--this addendum was just meant to include a few examples of some other very early works.
And just for the record, here's the OED entry for "the Holocaust", which for some reason has an earlier first-use modern usage date than "extermination camp":
“the Holocaust: the mass murder of the Jews by the Nazis in the war of 1939–1945. Also used transf., of the similar fate of other groups; and attributive.
The specific application was introduced by historians during the 1950s, probably as an equivalent to Hebrew ḥurban and shoah ‘catastrophe’ (used in the same sense); but it had been foreshadowed by contemporary references to the Nazi atrocities as a ‘holocaust’ (sense 2c “Complete consumption by fire, or that which is so consumed; complete destruction, esp. of a large number of persons; a great slaughter or massacre”, with first usage in this sense recorded as 1671.)
- 1942 News Chron. 5 Dec. 2/2 Holocaust...Nothing else in Hitler's record is comparable to his treatment of the Jews...The word has gone forth that..the Jewish peoples are to be exterminated...The conscience of humanity stands aghast.
- 1943 Hansard Lords 23 Mar. 826 The Nazis go on killing..If this rule could be relaxed, some hundreds, and possibly a few thousands, might be enabled to escape from this holocaust."
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