FIRST, my thanks to Dariusz Stola for his generally kind words about In the Shadow of Auschwitz, despite his disagreement on certain specific matters. Even more I do appreciate the civil and scholarly tone of his criticism (except for the title of his essay, which, by suggesting that In the Shadow of Auschwitz, has obscured ‘the facts'-something that the body of the essay does not even argue-seems to me just a bit nasty). Too often, as Michael Marrus has aptly observed, ‘Jewish and Polish historians conduct a dialogue des sourdes over the issue of relations between Jews and other Poles during the Holocaust.In my own work I have tried to break this pattern; I believe that I have made a sincere effort to listen carefully to both perspectives, and my perception of the events I describe has been affected, I think, by both of them (although ultimately, I hope, neither has been permitted to outweigh the objective documentary record in determining my conclusions). From Mr Stola's concluding comment that ‘David Engel's book has to be acknowledged as a positive contribution to research into Polish Jewish history, especially if one considers the way in which the issues he raises have been discussed in the past', I get the feeling that he has sensed this effort and appreciated it. Moreover, from the fact that most of the questions he raises about In the Shadow of Auschwitz address themselves to issues that are part of the academic historian's proper bailiwick-viz., whether the evidence adduced as the basis for a particular inference actually justifies that inference, whether additional evidence does not contradict it, and whether cited evidence in fact says what it is claimed to say-I am persuaded that he shares my belief that Polish and Jewish scholars have a primary common interest in bringing to light as many of the documentary traces of Polish-Jewish relations as can be recovered. From such a starting-point Mr Stola has succeeded in raising interpretations of certain parts of the documentary record that differ from my own without the rancour and recrimination that have characterized so much writing on the subject of Poles and Jews. From my point of view, this is a most encouraging development.