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Devin O Pendas, The August Trials: The Holocaust and Postwar Justice in Poland. Andrew Kornbluth, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Volume 39, Issue 1, Spring 2025, Pages 128–129, https://doi.org/10.1093/hgs/dcae055
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Extract
This outstanding study is really two books in one. The first part is a history of Polish collaboration in Nazi crimes during World War II; the second is a history of the so-called August Trials (named after the August 1944 decree authorizing them) designed to prosecute and punish that collaboration. In less deft hands, this sort of divided attention could be a recipe for disaster. Kornbluth, however, does a masterful job of integrating the two strands of his analysis. The key to this balancing act is the fact that the documents used to tell the story of Polish collaboration are the trial records generated by the criminal proceedings discussed in the second half of the book. This is a seamless story of crime and (limited) punishment, and the same witnesses and documents convey both halves of the story.
The story that Kornbluth tells about Polish collaboration is not entirely novel, though it is sure to be deeply controversial in Poland itself. He largely confirms the findings of other historians, such as Jan Grabowski, Barbara Engelking, Dariusz Libionka, and others. At its most basic, Kornbluth argues, Polish collaboration with the Germans was far more widespread than the myths created in postwar Poland allowed. He differentiates between collaboration in Nazi crimes against Jews and crimes against non-Jewish Poles.
