Jadwiga Biskupska examines life in German-occupied Warsaw (1939–1945) through a prism of experience of the intelligentsia, the most educated, elite stratum of the Polish society. The author investigates the behavior of intelligentsia members; how they navigated the brutal reality of the German occupation, adapted to and opposed its conditions. The book is organized into two parts. The first four chapters examine different stages of persecution targeting the intelligentsia. The following five chapters address a variety of the intelligentsia's responses to persecution and occupation.
Starting with the defense of Warsaw in September 1939, Biskupska paints a picture of the most educated social stratum as the main actor in holding out against the Nazi invasion. Abandoned by the central government and the Catholic Church – top figures of both institutions vital for Polish independence went into exile – the Warsaw intelligentsia was left on its own. Those who remained in the bombed-out city “defended themselves because there was nobody else to defend them” (47). This experience of the early days of the war only added another layer to the intelligentsia's cultural capital originating from the long nineteenth century, when it played a pivotal role in maintaining Polish national culture as Poland was nonexistent on the map of Europe, and in the early twentieth century when the intelligentsia was crucial for consolidating the reborn independent Polish state.
This importance of the educated elite did not remain unnoticed by the German occupier, who launched two ruthless campaigns targeting precisely this stratum of Polish society. The first, Operation Tannenberg – parallel to military conquest of Poland – involved mass arrests and killings of civilians perpetrated primarily by the Einsatzgruppen, mobile killing squads infamous for their later role in the “Holocaust by bullets.” As the German occupation authorities settled in Poland, in mid-1940 another campaign was launched under the codename AB-Aktion. Although both anti-intelligentsia campaigns took place across the entire German-conquered territory, the elite of Warsaw suffered particularly. Mass executions of the Warsaw intelligentsia took place in the Palmiry forest just north of the capital, among them politicians, social activists, intellectuals, lawyers, physicians, pharmacist, clergy, artists, and even athletes (including two Olympic medalists). Biskupska argues that this initial targeting of the intelligentsia was genocidal and, together with the German ban on secondary and university education for Poles, aimed at depriving the conquered nation of its elite. Furthermore, it set the tone for further German occupation of the country. The mass killings of Warsaw's political and cultural elite, together with mass arrests and incarceration in the infamous Pawiak prison, with about 100,000 imprisoned throughout the occupation did not, however, suppress Polish efforts to oppose the occupation. As the author shows, the extreme terror inflicted upon the Polish intelligentsia was counterproductive and, in fact, pushed many into anti-Nazi underground work. In a city where terror was omnipresent and random, involvement in clandestine efforts added meaning to sacrifice.
The second part of the book examines a variety of endeavors undertaken by Warsaw's intelligentsia to oppose the Nazis and the occupation. Biskupska argues that “The bedrock of intelligentsia response was the recording, collection, and sharing of information” (140). She discusses ways in which the Warsaw intelligentsia successfully challenged Nazi control over information, from a wide range of illegal newspapers published by underground resistance organizations, to rumors, satire, graffiti painted around the city, and couriers carrying messages within the occupied country or smuggling them outside, to the government-in-exile and the Western Allies. During the occupation, information was shared and passed around the same intelligentsia circles as before the war. Networks built by elites through family, friendship, school, or political connections proved vital for all other kinds of opposition against the German occupation. Maintaining these networks amid constant persecution of the intelligentsia required an influx of new members to the stratum. This was secured by an illegal school system that allowed for reproducing the educated stratum of the society, through introducing illegal curricula to primary and vocational schools the Nazis allowed to operate, as well as clandestine teaching at high-school and university levels.
While discussing internal couriering of information and illegal education, Biskupska points to a gender aspect of resistance. Both aforementioned activities were carried out predominantly by women, while men dominated in armed resistance. Biskupska argues that the Home Army (Armia Krajowa; an institutional umbrella for most underground organizations) in its aspirations to become a combat organization emphasized its predominantly male character. While this statement seems true, it is also fair to acknowledge that Polish prewar society was rather traditional in its treatment of gender roles. This was particularly true to much of its elite. Thus, gender roles set for resistance members to some extent also reflected the society in which underground institutions were born. When one takes this into account, the Home Army can even be viewed as progressive, since among its ranks were women officers and women involved in blowing up railway lines or executing Nazi officials – both activities were as close to combat as possible in Warsaw before August 1944 (at least in the part of the city that was not the ghetto).
The book's last two chapters are dedicated to armed resistance and the intelligentsia's role in it. The first one tells the story of multiple armed opposition efforts and their consolidation into the Home Army. The second focuses on the “mature” Home Army capable of perpetrating violence against the occupier, from executing particularly harmful members of the Nazi personnel or their collaborators to the 1944 Warsaw Uprising. While since 1943 the Home Army was gradually becoming a mass movement and expanded its membership beyond its original social base, its leadership “carried an elite stamp from its origins until its postwar disbanding” (246).
Both parts of the book contain a chapter each that seems less connected to the rest. In the section concerning Nazi terror, this is the chapter examining the Warsaw Ghetto, Nazi persecution of Warsaw's Jewry, and the Polish non-Jewish intelligentsia's reaction to the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising – most of which can be described as paralysis, lack of sympathy and solidarity. Biskupska aptly concludes that Jewish suffering and Jewish struggle were commonly perceived by the Polish intelligentsia as happening in Poland but not as Polish, and those murdered in the course of the Holocaust as not really co-citizens. Perhaps the Polish-Jewish intelligentsia, which Biskupska discusses briefly, could have been more integrated into the main narrative on Warsaw's elite. Implicitly but significantly, this chapter touches upon deep ethnic divisions and prejudice present in the Polish wartime elite and a dire lack of sense of community centered around citizenship rather than ethnicity. In the section of the book concerning the intelligentsia's responses to the occupation, the chapter that fits somehow awkwardly is the one on the Catholic Church and the intelligentsia's relationship with it. Nevertheless, Biskupska powerfully shows that in the absence of the Catholic primate, with the remaining Church hierarchy working closely with the German administration and rank and file clergy persecuted by the Nazis, the intelligentsia's entanglement with religion shaped people's attitudes, though oftentimes in different ways. The author uses the example of two conservative Catholic conspirators: nationalist Jerzy Braun, who dreamt about rebuilding a more Catholic Poland without the Jews after the war and Zofia Kossak, who was deeply involved in organizing resistance against the Nazis and co-founded the Council to Aid the Jews Żegota.
Survivors focuses on Warsaw's intelligentsia and through the experience of this particular social stratum tells the story of the German occupation. When immersing oneself in a dense narrative of this well-researched book, one should not forget that the society of the city did not comprise exclusively the intelligentsia, and the analysis of this elite stratum does not represent the experience of all Warsaw dwellers. Moreover, the resistance in its different forms, which remains in the center of this book, was not the only one of the intelligentsia's responses to the occupation. Instead of resisting, many members of the elite were simply preoccupied with securing their or their loved ones’ survival, and in one way or another adjusted to the new reality of the occupation. Such people and their strategies are virtually absent from Jadwiga Biskupska's narrative. This, however, does not change the fact that Survivors is a major contribution to the field and a must-read for anyone interested not only in the history of Warsaw but more broadly in the history of German-occupied Poland, for the book offers a fresh perspective on relations between the occupier and the occupied.
