Wołanie krwi brata twego. Rekonstrukcja ludobójstwa w lokalnej skali
The Voice of Your Brother’s Blood: Reconstructing genocide on the local level

Summary/Abstract: Bartov describes the annihilation of the Jews of Buczacz during 1941–1944. Using various sources, the author reconstructs the evolution of the cultural and social structure of that small town located on the Polish eastern frontier, and then reconstructs the process of the annihilation of its Jewish population. Almost half of the Buczacz Jews were deported to the death centre in Bełżec, while the remaining ones were executed on the spot by functionaries of the Security Police (Sicherheitspolizei) aided by the Ukrainian functionaries of auxiliary police, local German and Ukrainian gendarmes, and Polish policemen. The classic division into victims, perpetrators, and witnesses was fluid in Buczacz, as some of those who sheltered the persecuted Jews later denounced them, some murderers provided shelter to potential victims, and some collaborators with time joined the resistance movement. In 1944 the Soviet authorities led to an exchange of the population of Buczacz. Few of the present inhabitants of Buczacz know their town’s history.

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