In Enemy Land : the Jews of Kielce and the Region, 1939-1946.

In Enemy Land examines the fate of Jews in Kielce, a minor central Polish city, where Jewish residents made up a third of the population prior to the Holocaust, although barely 200 of them survived the genocide. The book concludes with an examination of the postwar event that made Kielce a notorious byword for mass murder, motivating most surviving Polish Jews to flee the country. "Liberated" by Soviet forces in 1945, postwar Poland experienced a virtual civil war against the establishment of communist rule in the predominantly Catholic country. About 30,000 Poles died, including 1,500 Jews. Enduring prejudices mixed with allegations that surviving Jews were actively pro-communist. Together with greed to claim property "inherited from" dead Jews, these events sparked murderous attacks on Jews across Poland. On July 4, 1946, a Kielce mob of Christian Poles attacked surviving Jews, injuring scores and brutally murdering 42 men, women, and children, including pregnant women and infants. The book details contributing factors, such as police and military complicity and the apathetic failure of the Catholic Church leadership to speak out against such violence. This otherwise worthy book suffers from some weaknesses in editing, grammar, and translation. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. --Robert Moses Shapiro, Brooklyn College