NEIGHBOURS ON THE EVE
OF THE HOLOCAUST

Mark Paul

Holocaust Historiography

Over the years, Holocaust historians and apologists have painted a distinctly different picture of Jewish-Polish relations in Poland's Eastern Borderlands from that outlined above (the notable exception here is Israeli historian Ben-Cion Pinchuk).

Jews are portrayed uniformly as loyal citizens of Poland, whose conduct was beyond reproach. Little, if anything is mentioned about their mistreatment of Poles. Occasionally, one hears that a handful of Jewish communists 'disarmed' some Polish soldiers and police, however, there is scant detail given in describing those events.

On the other hand, the vengeful Polish Army is accused of wantonly attacking Jews - according to Dov Levin, they 'savaged' any Jews they encountered. Local Poles, all of them reputedly anti-Semites by nature, are said to have perpetrated unprovoked "pogroms". How much of these charges are based on fact, and how much are steeped in bigotry?

Objective eyewitnesses to those events, who recorded their recollections during the war present a different story.

A Jewish refugee from Warsaw describes his encounters with Polish soldiers during his peregrination in Eastern Poland as the country was on the verge of collapse in mid-September 1939. Although this 22-year-old young man fit the classic profile of a radicalized youth, and would thus appear to be a prime target for suspicion if not revenge, his experiences belie the charge that, despite the turmoil surrounding them, Polish soldiers 'savaged' Jews:

... We set off in the direction of Biala Podlaska.
... The town is in a flurry. One can hear machine gunfire. They say the front is 7 km past Biala. We move on, we want to reach Brzesc. Routed army units move along with us. The attitude of the soldiers toward us is very good, they share their food with us.
[Closer to Brzesc] ... Polish soldiers took cover in the forest from German airplanes ... In the Polish detachment we are offered coffee made from cubes, which revived us somewhat. ... Our group now consists of 11 persons, as five had left it.
... In the evening another terrible experience: the highway is under fire from wandering guerrillas and army units. We approach a small burning bridge where a column of military vehicles is waiting, as it cannot cross.
... On the way we pass the building of a Polish elementary school which is full of people. The principal opens the door and shows us that the main building is packed. ... The principal leads us to the village and makes a villager open his barn for us [the villagers in Polesia were not Poles, whose friendly attitude is contrasted favorably in this account]
... In the morning we march on toward Kobryn. On the way we are stopped by a well-organized Polish military unit. They control all the travellers and check their documents. Single persons are detained.
... We return to Kowel by a circular route. In the orchards we take fruit for free. Polish soldiers treated us in a friendly manner, without any sign of anti-Semitism. They point out the road and tell us: ‘Go and take some’.
... We walk in the direction of Dywin, far from the highway and railroad. ...
[The Jewish inhabitants] ... urge us to remain in the town, [as] the Polish authorities and police outpost are still there. All of a sudden we encounter an unpleasant surprise. Wanting to clear the place of shirkers and various infiltrators and deserters, the commander detains us as well and takes us to a holding centre outside the town.
... We are given more food than we need so we give some back. We ask what they want from us and why we were locked up. No one can answer us. The guards are also newcomers and, honestly speaking, they don't know what's happening. In the morning we are given bread and coffee and are set free.
[The town of Ratno] ... was still in Polish hands. Polish units ride through fully armed and in an orderly fashion, which makes a good impression. The officers are recruiting for the legion that is forming in Romania.
... This does not last long as signs of anarchy and chaos become visible. The police stations demand that people surrender their weapons and threaten to shoot for disobedience.
... People who came from Kowel tell that Kowel and Brzesc are already occupied by the Russians. In Ratno a militia is formed consisting of villagers, Ukrainians and Belorussians, and Jewish activists, who disarm Polish policemen of their rifles. A mixed revkom (revolutionary committee) is formed consisting of villagers and Jews. They greet the Russian army and build a [triumphal] gate. The [Polish] commander flees. The town is decorated with red flags made out of Polish flags from which the white part was ripped away. We lived through a terrible night.
There were still regular Polish detachments in Kamien Koszyrski, 40 km from Ratno. In the evening, they sent out a scouting patrol which took over the police outpost at the edge of the town. The [new] militia greeted them with shots and arrested them ... To everyone's surprise a large detachment of several thousand soldiers soon approached. All night various armed formations marched through, including heavy artillery. The captives were freed, and four Ukrainian militiamen were killed. The shooting lasted all night. The command announced that they would set off through Wlodawa in the direction of Warsaw to relieve the beleaguered capital. Fate did not allow them to reach Warsaw. In the morning they were bombed by the Red air force. Soon after a light Soviet tank appeared in the outskirts and drove through the streets of the town. This was a sign that the Red army was approaching. The people [non-Poles] gathered near the highway to greet them.

A member of a group of six Jewish men, who fled from Warsaw provided a similar description of conditions in Eastern Poland - free of 'savage' Polish soldiers and frenzied Polish mobs - before the arrival of the Soviets:

... In this way we arrived in Chelm and here we hit a dead end: we weren't allowed in. Luckily we accidentally ran into a lieutenant we knew who suggested that we complete our journey on an evacuation train. ... however, it soon turned out that ... the train was bombed ...
In Kowel our group grew by one more companion, an officer of the Polish army who proved to be very useful and resourceful: he somehow managed to obtain a country wagon with a horse ...
About 20 km from Luck (the evening of September 17th), we were unexpectedly shot at from a brush by a group of Ukrainians ...
Fortunately behind us was an army transport and supply column and their commanders allowed us to join it, which we eagerly took advantage of. Around 12 midnight, about 5 km from Luck, we were unexpectedly illuminated by reflectors. Soviet tanks. The first thing we were questioned about was weapons, which we were told to give up immediately.
... After our arrival in Luck we were searched several times by the Citizens’ Militia, created ad hoc, which was recruited for the most part from Jews and armed with weapons taken from Polish soldiers. They took from my military companions their belts and ammunition pouches and ordered their officer's badges be pulled off. The rest of that night ... we spent on the floor of a cinema ...
The following morning we ascertained to our surprise that there was no Soviet army in the city at all, and that only the post office, railway station, provincial offices and other important buildings were taken over by them, and beyond that guard was kept by the Citizens’ Militia which consisted of elements of the town's proletariat, with a distinct preponderance of Jews. It was only on the 19th of September in the morning that the first transports of Soviet infantry arrived by vehicle. They were greeted with flowers and raised fists, and here and there people were even singing the "Internationale". Within an hour all the streets were full of small groups of people who gathered around individual soldiers and spoke with them animatedly, often even in Yiddish.

Herman Kruk, an erstwhile communist and later Bundist, also paints a strikingly different picture of conditions than that suggested by historian Dov Levin:

... another guest stands in the door - our [Jewish] friend Staszek Broder, a partner in a big boardinghouse in Otwock. ... He stands before us in a military uniform - he is a sergeant.
Joyous at meeting everyone, Staszek Broder tells his story:
He is coming from German captivity. He fell into German hands near Prasznice, was there four hours and escaped. He went with a horse and wagon for three days and three nights. He traveled with a priest and two soldiers, who escaped with him. Here [in Kowel] they parted from one another. But he keeps the Christian with the wagon. It is a wagon with two horses, which he got at a farm.
...Albert Kozik, the non-commissioned officer, reports to us that he is putting some of his soldiers at the disposal of the city headquarters. We remain with only him and two of his Christian fellow soldiers.
Thus we again have a wagon with two horses. Our camp is thus: there are 6 of us who have traveled from Warsaw, our friend the silk merchant Dovid Sadowski, the officer Albert and his two colleagues, and Sergeant Broder. With the driver, this is a group of 12 people.
... At sundown we leave Kowel for Sarny.
... At 7 in the evening [September 17th], we arrive in Mielnica.
In the outskirts of the town, a young man meets us and asks if we want to eat. He takes us to a house ...
The house is full of refugees. Refugees are eating there, Jews and Christians, policemen, soldiers. Everyone is grateful and touched by the hospitality. They don't take money from anyone. The host and hostess in the house are busy, they cook soup, they serve. People come and go.
Later we found in that town, the Jews do miracles. For a whole week they have been cooking, baking bread, taking care of lodging - they do that for everyone with no distinction of Jew or Christian.
... Early in the morning [September 18], our non-commissioned officer learned that a colonel called a meeting of officers. ... The order given at the meeting was: the Bolsheviks are taking the entire region; more precise details are not yet known and therefore, for the time being, the orders are as follows:
Not to mount any resistance and even to let oneself be disarmed - but all soldiers had to leave for Luck to join the entire Polish garrison of the Volhynia province.
Once again a turmoil. We don't understand what is going on there. All of us go out to the highway ... We decide to go to Kowel. ... We turn around and take the road to Luck.
The highway becomes fuller from one minute to the next. ... A military truck rushes by ... For kilometers we drive ... On a side, on the right, stands a long line of cars. The soldiers are distributing underwear, uniforms, and shoes to everyone without exception.
A colonel and his officers stand on the side there and watch the soldiers rule. Soldiers, police, farmers, Jews - everyone gets what they want and there is an abundance for everyone.
... We look around. Kozik stands fraternally with yesterday's chief of the Swietokrzysk prison - he is there, too, and persuades my friend to take:
'Should it fall into the hands of foreigners? Better your own people should enjoy it ...'
... The highway is full as usual with police, soldiers, farmers, escaping Jews, etc. Hordes of cyclists are rushing by as if they want to get home as fast as possible.
We stop again, we stop people to talk with them, and we learn:
The Bolsheviks entered Luck; they disarmed and released all Polish soldiers and sent them home.
Ten of thousands of people are now running from Luck; hardly hundreds are now going toward Luck.
About 10 kilometers outside Luck, we learn that the [Ukrainian] peasants all around are attacking the Polish soldiers and disarming them. Suddenly we hear violent rifle shots, everyone runs into the woods and stretches out on the ground. The first ones who run are the soldiers who were passing by.
I am also very frightened:
'We've already had such a difficult trip. We've already overcome such horrible bombings and suddenly, here, to die from a saboteur's rifle bullet?'
Fortunately, things calmed down around us. On the highway a mixed group gathered: soldiers and civilians are standing together there and everyone is consulting about what to do next.
An officer explains:
'The [Ukrainian] peasants are attacking us - we absolutely must get into Luck because here the peasants can slaughter us. I will give rifles to everyone who can shoot; we must absolutely get into the city!'
Many civilians get rifles, others only cartridges. Armed against any attack, we get into a long convoy of soldiers and civilians. Some of us direct our rifles to the left side of the highway, others to the right side.
It is late in the evening when we see the first column of Soviet tanks in front of us. They are drawn up in the field on both sides of the highway.
... In Luck, we came across a new wave of people.
... The day after the entry of the Bolsheviks, groups of the new militia [composed largely of Jews, as known from other accounts - M.P.] disarmed Polish soldiers. A Jewish fellow stopped a high profile Polish officer and challenged him to give him his weapon. The officer gave his revolver, which he carried on his belt. Finally, the young militiaman began removing the medals from the officer. The officer complained that he couldn't take them from him. The fellow threatened him with the rifle. The officer then took another revolver out of a holster and shot the militiaman on the spot. The officer was arrested [he was undoubtedly summarily executed shortly after - M.P.].

According to Holocaust historians, the Jews, who greeted the Soviets, were few in number and did so only out of gratitude for being saved from falling into the hands of the Germans and, to a lesser extent, local anti-Semites.

According to Jan T. Gross, the Jews:

... had a very clear awareness as to what might have happened had the Soviets not arrived.

Elsewhere, however, Gross concedes that there was a lot of 'confusion' as to what was happening, when the Soviets entered Poland - it was not at all clear that they came as liberators. The fact that 'a few' Jews served in the Soviet "militia" was blown out of all proportion by Poles, and was later used by them to reinforce their long-standing hatred of the Jews. There was in fact no collaboration on the part of the Jews, we are told. The local "militias" that sprang up, were merely self-defence groups set up to stave off local 'pogromists' and were soon disbanded. There is no truth to the claim that Jews played any significant role in the Soviet administration, or that they were privileged in any way or treated more favourably than the Poles. That was just a false perception held by anti-Semitic Poles.

Gross contends that it was actually the Jews, who most openly manifested their opposition and resistance to communism - a claim that is amply discredited by Jewish sources which readily acknowledge that there was no organized or intentional opposition to Soviet rule to speak of.

Gross also contends that it was the Jews, who suffered the most at the hands of the Soviet regime - a claim that has been addressed and dismissed earlier. As has been pointed out, initially the Polish and Jewish elite bore the brunt of the expropriation, though the communists generally employed Jewish shopkeepers in warehouses, local artisans in technical positions and others in the bureaucracy. Afterwards, the hardest hit were the 250 000 [according to Soviet figures - for discussion see chapter Arrests, Executions, and Deportations] Polish civilians, deported to the "gulag", who lost their property and most of their possessions. On the other hand, of the 70 000 Jewish deportees, more than 60 percent were refugees from the German occupation zone and thus had few material goods to lose.

Contemporary observers, such as Prof. Maurycy Allerhand, a renowned jurist and erstwhile president of the Jewish community in Lwow, had no difficulty in discerning the true state of affairs in his wartime diary, where he recorded in July 1941:

... Poles suffered the most, then the Jews, and the Ukrainians the least.

What is more, recent historiography accuses the Poles of insensitivity to the fate of the downtrodden Jews under Soviet occupation. Such views have acquired a prolific life of their own in popular writings and many authors go even further in demonizing the Poles.

Basing himself on hearsay conveyed by his father, one influential journalist - Max Frankel, the executive editor of The New York Times from 1986 to 1994 - went so far as to charge the Poles of becoming eager pawns in the Soviet designs (designs, which take a strange twist in that author's mind), and rushing to denounce Jews and benefit from their misfortune:

... When the Russians closed down private businesses as decadent relics of another era, many Poles tried to save their own possessions by turning in Jews as the preeminent "capitalists". The Soviets gratefully accepted their confiscatory assistance, but they were not primarily interested in planting Marxism or spreading revolution. They wanted half of Poland as a buffer to secure their hold on the Ukraine and the recently seized territories of Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania in the north and Bessarabia in the south.

Thus most Holocaust historians and Jews writing on this topic are singularly reluctant to come to terms with problematic aspects of Jewish conduct vis-a-vis Poles, or to view the conduct of Poles as determined by anything other than an endemic, irrational anti-Semitism divorced from Jewish actions.

The fact that many Jews were actively involved in the persecution of Poles in the Soviet zone, and not vice versa, is dismissed out of hand as being either untrue or thoroughly exaggerated and, in any event, inconsequential.

These attempts to explain away Jewish conduct are, however, largely unsuccessful. The story of a uniform, considered, and tempered reaction (on the part of Jews) that fully anticipated future events (the possibility that German occupation would bring genocide) is no more convincing than a historical approach that treats Jews not as players but as a passive monolith. Furthermore, as Gross has observed, it is impossible to dispute the reality of autonomous dynamics in the relationships between Poles and Jews within the constraints imposed by the occupiers.

Were there, in fact, only 'a few' Jews, who took part in activities directed against the Polish State, Polish officials and soldiers, and Poles in general? And, were these Jews mostly 'persecuted' prewar communists who had little, if any, connection with the Jewish community?

The copious accounts gathered in this study show that even in the smallest community at least a score of activists from various political backgrounds could be readily found in the community to organize a welcome for the Soviets and to take over the local administration and militia. This groundwork then facilitated the installation of the new regime on the local level and the carrying out of the necessary orders and arrests of targeted Poles.

What is more, the Jewish activists could garner significant support, both active and passive, from the entire spectrum of the Jewish community. Some of this support was doubtless attributable to anti-Polish rather than, or in addition to, pro-communist or pro-Soviet sentiments.

According to Jaff Schatz, in the 1930s there were between 6200 and 10 000 Jewish communists in Poland and only a small portion of these had been imprisoned. It is also worth noting that the Communist Party of Poland (KPP - Kumunistyczna Partia Polski), a subversive organization sponsored by the Soviet Union which was dominated, especially in small towns, by Jews, did not recognize Polish dominion over the Eastern Borderlands even before the war. However, popular support of communism among Jews ran much higher, though it was certainly not widespread.

According to historian Peter D. Stachura:

... Only a small percentage of the Jewish community had been members of the Communist Party of Poland during the inter-war era, though they had occupied an influential and conspicuous place in the party's leadership and in the rank and file in major centres, such as Warsaw, Lodz and Lwow.
But a far greater number of younger Jews, often through the pro-Marxist Bund (General Jewish Workers' Union) or some Zionist groups, had possessed an underlying sympathy for Communism and an affinity with Soviet Russia, both of which had been, of course, prime enemies of the Polish Second Republic.
For these Jews Communism had an almost messianic appeal, while the Soviet Union was regarded as their natural homeland. As a result of these ideological, political and anti-Polish factors they found it easy after 1939 to join the Soviet bandwagon in Eastern Poland, and soon occupied prominent positions in industry, schools, local government, police and other Soviet-installed institutions. They went about their business with revolutionary zeal and an consuming hatred [sic] for all things Polish.
As Soviet-Bolshevik commissars, they were the most fanatical. Hence, the argument that their frenzied participation in the new Soviet administration was motivated by gratitude for being saved from the Nazis is patently unconvincing.

The accounts cited in this study fully bear out that, in September 1939, pro-Soviet sentiments became far more encompassing and even extended to Zionists. In light of this evidence, it is difficult to quarrel with one authoritative wartime estimate that perhaps thirty percent of the Jewish population of the Poland's Eastern Borderlands identified with the new regime.

Dov Levin advances the following explanation for the clashes between the Poles and Jews at the time of the Soviet entry:

... Polish anti-Semites found this an opportune time to settle scores with the Jews. As vestigial units of the Polish army fled into Romania, they savaged any Jews who happened to be in the way, especially after they discovered that the Soviet forces were closing in from the east. The pretext for this behavior was their association of Jews with the Bolsheviks and their belief that the Jews had 'stabbed Poland in the back'.

While it is true that turbulence and lawlessness soared as the Polish state was collapsing and the resultant power vacuum provided criminal elements, mostly non-Poles, with an opportunity to rob Polish estates and Jewish shops, the testimonies gathered in this volume shed an entirely different light on this period. There were no random attacks of any significance carried out by Poles, whether soldiers or civilians, on the Jewish population.

On the contrary, there are scores of reports of Ukrainian, Belorussian, and Jewish snipers firing at Polish soldiers - hundreds of bodies of Polish soldiers murdered by their fellow Polish citizens lay strewn throughout this region. In many localities, these minorities seized control of the administration, disarmed Polish policemen, arrested Polish officials and even attacked the Polish Army.

The Stepan Memorial Book offers a somewhat selective description of the armed rebellion, staged in that town by local Ukrainians and Jews on the eve of the Soviet invasion. While attempting to exonerate the Jewish participants and stressing the retaliation of the Polish forces, it nonetheless concedes that the Polish response was not sweeping and wanton, but rather focused on those believed responsible for the shooting and tempered by the local Polish population, who were quite capable of distinguishing between "fifth columnists" and ordinary Jews and Ukrainians. Indeed, a delegation led by the Catholic priest convinced the Polish military officials to let most of those seized go free.

The description of the Poles' reaction to the treachery in Stepan (Volhynia), penned by a Jewish eyewitness, is hardly damning:

... The Ukrainians in our town and in the nearby surroundings raised their heads with their great hatred for the Poles, they took arms and rebelled. They took over the police station, the government buildings, and the whole town very quickly. When they heard that the Russians were approaching, they raised red flags, even though their real intention was nationalistic. It turned out that the Polish guard force [Korpus Ochrony Pogranicza], which guarded the Russian-Polish border, retreated from the Russian border in the west direction, and had to go through our town. The Ukrainians, who did not have a great amount of weapons, organized themselves on the hills near the river on one side of the bridge, and came toward the Polish army, who retreated with gunshots.
A night of terror fell upon the people of the town, and I remember how the bullets whistled by us. ... until sunrise, the time the shooting stopped and the Polish army retreated to the town.
... The Polish soldiers roamed the streets of the town in search of rebels ... They approached the door of our apartment, and ordered all the tenants of the house to go outside.
... with our hands above our heads ... we walked to the Market Square under heavy guard. There we joined a group of Jews and Ukrainians who were organized in a long line in which there were on both sides of them rows of soldiers with rifles ...
They aimed the rifles at the Communist traitors.
... We stood there ... there appeared a high officer accompanied by a Pole from Stepan, the son of Roman Hakolbasnik. He was the one who sorted out the guilty and the innocent. Because he knew us well, he said we were innocent, as he decided for most of the Jews, except a few young Jews.
... The few Ukrainians and Jews that were not freed were chained and led outside of the city to be brought to trial for rebellion and treason. Their end was of course death.
Immediately after the evacuation of the army, the distinguished people of the town met: Poles, Ukrainians, and Jews. They thought how to save those who were taken who really had no part in the uprising. Then it was decided to send a delegation of Polish teachers and at their head the Catholic priest, in search of the army that had retreated, in order to convince the generals.
... This delegation was successful in releasing all the Jewish boys and even the Ukrainians. A number of Ukrainians were tortured and killed by shooting.
... When the Soviets entered, the Ukrainians took revenge on the son of Roman Hakolbasnik and informed on him and expelled him and his family ... to Siberia. This was in spite of the fact that many had much sympathy for him as he saved many from death [according to Polish sources, Boleslaw Roman, the Pole, who identified the armed rebels, was denounced by Ukrainians, arrested and executed].
Within a day or two after the Polish Army left the town, ... a rumor spread in the morning that the "Bolsheviks" were coming. We, the children, pushed our way to the head of a large group of Ukrainians and Jews toward the bridge to see the "Bolsheviks".
... A delegation of the honorable people of the town walked toward them and received them with bread and salt ...
The crowd received them with cheers and clapping of hands.
... Several days after the entrance of the Army, people of the civilian regime came and began to organize the town. The "small-Soviet" was formed. This was the town council whose real leaders were the craftsmen - the proletarians amongst the Jews. A militia was formed which was headed by a Soviet police officer.

There was no marked antagonism between Poles and Jews under the Soviet occupation. The author of the above account recalled that his father was able to switch Saturday for Sunday at work and attend synagogue:

... since the head of the office was not a confirmed communist, but a local Pole, an acquaintance of my father from before the war. Moreover, there was no Polish revenge at the time of the German invasion in June 1941.

Throughout Eastern Poland, Polish landlords and settlers were attacked by Ukrainians and Belorussians, and Polish (and Jewish) refugees, fleeing for their lives between two hostile fronts, were frequently set upon by robbers and nationalist gangs. Thousands of Poles (as many as 15 000 according to some estimates) fell victim to these widespread assaults at the hands of their non-Polish neighbours. It was to this reality that Poles had to respond.

Thus, by and large the conflict arose because of the open collaboration on the part of members of the ethnic minorities, among them many Jews, with the Soviet invaders at a time when the Polish Army was still fighting the Germans. Many, but certainly not all or even most of these actors were communists - many were simply pro-Soviet or anti-Polish.

However, that was not necessarily the norm for the behaviour of Jews and other minorities. In a few towns, such as Gwozdziec and Zabludow, Jews served in defence committees formed by the Polish municipal authorities to maintain order after the departure of the Polish military and police.

In the small town of Krasne, near Molodeczno, on the prewar Polish-Soviet border, one of the last acts of a local Jew was to deliver to a Polish Army commander a suitcase with a large sum of money donated by Jews for Poland’s National Defence Fund (FON - Fundusz Obrony Narodowej).

The contrast was particularly striking in Wasilkow, located in the predominantly Polish province of Bialystok. Local Poles and Jews formed a committee with representatives of both groups to prevent chaos during the period between the collapse of Polish civil authority and the arrival of the Germans. At that time its members reportedly wore a white armband to indicate their "neutrality" - no one greeted or collaborated with the German invaders. The Germans arrested a number of Jewish and Polish onlookers and looted shops in the town before they left, but the Poles were not implicated in these abuses.

However, when the Russians arrived soon after, the mood changed and the paths of the two communities - Poles and Jews - diverged radically:

... Mordechai Yurowietski the tinsmith's son, raised a red flag on top of the fire station tower.
Leaflets dropped by an aeroplane proclaimed '... brothers and sisters of West Byelo-Russia. On Comrade Stalin's instructions, the Red Army is coming to your assistance ...'
A militia was quickly established by the left wing elements in the town. The streets were full of people [Jews and some Belorussians] laughing and chattering in holiday mood. No one wanted to go home in the evening for fear of an opportunity to welcome the Red Army. Only late in the evening, did a black limousine slowly drive into town. It stopped and one of the men inside asked in Russian for directions to the house of Pan Wasilkowski. Wasilkowski worked as a machinist in a tannery factory owned by the Barasch brothers. The NKVD had a strange way of dealing with their agents.
The next morning, the army arrived. The troops were quartered on the town. Each morning, they would march through the streets to their field kitchens singing heartily. Youngsters would follow after them and sing along when they could. These songs became very popular, especially "Katiusha".
... Cultural life was regulated by an official seconded from Minsk. This was a middle aged Jewish woman ... when the Russians decided to turn the main synagogue into a club ... we protested to the cultural official who was Jewish. She insisted that she could do nothing and suggested that we approach the political commissar. He had a Jewish sounding name. He bragged that it was he who had suggested the conversion of the synagogue but he finally relented and left it untouched.

There is simply no evidence to support Dov Levin's fanciful claim that the Polish Army, in which thousands of Jews also served, seized the opportunity to 'savage' every Jew they encountered. Although individual army deserters and other undisciplined elements may well have engaged sporadically in criminal activities - primarily robberies and looting - once the Polish Army began to disintegrate and the local Polish authorities collapsed or fled in the face of an imminent foreign takeover, certainly not all or even a large number of the soldiers took part in such excesses which, in any event, targeted various groups including Poles.

A far more plausible description of the circumstances surrounding the clashes that ensued in various locations in Eastern Poland was provided in a 1988 study by Jan Tomasz Gross, though he neglected to mention the Jewish component - the actions of:

... the so-called ethnic minorities - Ukrainians and Belorussians in particular - who reportedly ambushed small groups of Polish soldiers ... and who assaulted local Polish communities and functionaries of the now defunct state administration ... provoked a backlash against these hostile elements.

Indeed, Polish accounts confirm that assaults directed at Poles were frequent. As could be expected, some Poles retaliated against such assaults and against attempts to disarm them, as would any army.

Jewish participation in such events, however, is downplayed by Gross. Moreover, some of his conclusions about Jewish conduct are tenuous at best.

For example, he contends that:

... the triumphal arches and peasant militias were not meant to spite or challenge the old regime, but rather to welcome or ingratiate with the new.

Clearly, they served both functions. The welcome extended to the Soviets was usually accompanied by anti-Polish rhetoric and spontaneous arrests of Polish officials and military personnel by local collaborators. Anti-German agitation was not to be heard.

For that reason, and for the reasons delineated by Polish historian, Teresa Prekerowa, later in the text, one must also dismiss David Engel's thesis that the Jews simply welcomed the Soviets: ... as a liberating rather than conquering force..., and that the Jewish reaction can be attributed entirely to the apprehended threat to their physical safety, represented by the Germans. The copious testimonies, gathered in this study, point to other, often more significant, factors at play.

As for the claim that the Jews formed self-defence units merely to stave off "pogroms" directed at the Jewish population, it has been noted earlier that the attacks (mostly robberies and looting) were perpetrated by various factions, mainly criminal and mostly non-Polish. They occurred during a time of strife and growing anarchy, when Poland's civil authorities and police agencies were rapidly disintegrating in the face of invasions from all sides, and targeted Poles as well as Jews.

Nor does Gross adequately address the armed rebellions and the anti-Polish excesses that the Jewish "militia" all too frequently engaged in on their own volition even before the arrival of Soviet troops.

It must be borne in mind that a great deal of the social unrest on the part of the ethnic minorities in the Eastern Borderlands was the direct result of Soviet propaganda and agitation. Thousands of leaflets were dropped and distributed urging Ukrainian and Belorussian peasants to take up: ... arms, scythes, pitchforks and axes ... against their: ... age-old enemies - the Polish Pans. Thus there was a clear signal from the Soviet invaders that Poles could be attacked with impunity.

An eyewitness from Volhynia reported:

... We soon discovered that the rumors about Bolsheviks coming to aid us were false. Even before entering the city the Soviet planes dropped leaflets (which I saw with my own eyes) inciting peasants to occupy the estates of landowners, to beat them up, etc. We stayed in our homes as the peasantry, agitated, went out looting. The Bolsheviks established order as soon as they entered.
After consolidating their power, in order to distance themselves from these acts which they had incited, the Soviet authorities issued a proclamation denouncing the activities of 'Ukrainian nationalists' who, as "enemies of Soviet authority', carried out "pogroms" against the Jews and Poles. The 'enemies', the proclamation reiterated, were 'landowners and capitalists ... of all nations'. The pattern of inciting violence and then restoring order as 'protectors' of the population was one used by both the Soviets and Nazis in September 1939 and again in June and July 1941.

In the German occupation zone at that time, German authorities also initiated and encouraged lawlessness in the early days of the occupation.

A Jew from Majdan Kolbuszewski, in south-central Poland, reported:

... When the war broke out and German planes appeared that dropped a few bombs, the village was panic-stricken. Fortunately bombs fell in the fields and they didn't damage anything in the village. Nevertheless, people were leaving the village in a state of panic, moving to other places. After a few days, Germans arrived.
Jews hid away. They ran to neighboring villages looking for hiding places with peasants they knew. The majority of Jews indeed found shelter in the villages ... We stayed there for a few days ...
Seeing that the situation is prolonging, we decided to return home at night. At home we found the doors to be open and a looted apartment. Germans took our radio, a new wardrobe, and best clothing, and they turned the whole apartment upside down.
During those few days that we spent in the countryside, Germans did things in Majdan their own way. Some most respected Jews and Poles they led out of town, and they tormented the rest of the population, dragging them to work and beating them without mercy.

In Szczebrzeszyn, a town southeast of Lublin that passed hands several times, the German authorities actively incited the local riff-raff to take part in the looting of shops and homes.

Zygmunt Klukowski described these events in his diary as follows:

[September 20, 1939] ... Yesterday, a general destruction and looting of the stores took place, Polish and Jewish. But since there are more Jewish establishments than Polish, the common statement was, 'They are plundering the Jews'.
The usual routine went like this. A few German soldiers would enter the open stores and, after taking some items for themselves, start throwing everything else out into the street. There some people waited to grab whatever they could. These people are from the city and also neighboring villages. Then they would take their loot home, and the soldiers would move on to the next store. If the doors were locked, the German soldiers broke in and the destruction went even faster.
Some private apartments [for the most part vacated, according to the Polish original - M.P.] were robbed also. The Germans would especially look for good liquor, tobacco, cigarettes, and silverware. From the pharmacy they took morphine and other narcotics.
[September 23] ... In the city looting is taking place everywhere. ... The German military police, instead of trying to prevent these crimes, seem to be on the side of the robbers and looters.

With the arrival of the Soviets in Szczebrzeszyn on September 27 and 28, 1939, the focus of the robberies shifted: the targets were now Polish soldiers who, as we have seen, were robbed by local communists (mainly Jews), and the large Polish estates.

But, one should not jump to the conclusion that looting was the exclusive domain of non-Jews. Numerous examples of Jews engaging in such activities have already been provided. Non-Jewish sources attest to the massive scale of looting on the Soviet retreat in June 1941 by members of all nationalities.

Occasionally, one may find glimpses of the true extent of this phenomenon in Jewish sources, though Jewish memoirs are on the whole reluctant to speak of such activities by co-religionists without, at the same time, justifying them:

[Bielsk Podlaski] ... When the Russians fled the town [June 1941] they left, in their great haste, storehouses filled with merchandise and foodstuffs. The Jews took from these stores various items for the hard times we all knew would come, and anyway, had we not taken these abandoned goods, they would have been looted by peasants or thieves.
[Sokoly] ... There also were Jews who carried leftovers [possessions] from the [Soviet] officers' empty houses.
[Kobryn] ... The day the Russians left, the people, Jews and non-Jews, burst open all the Russian warehouses and took all the goods and the food from there while the Germans watched.
[Slonim] ... the rabble, composed of Belorussian, Jewish and Polish dregs, rushed to rob the stores and storehouses, which was interrupted by the arrival of the German soldiers. ... They robbed everything they could, and in the horrible tumult one could make out entire caravans of robbers with stolen bundles.
[Zloczow] ... I saw a motley mob, perhaps a hundred people, rushing in and out of the government stores across the street. These were looters. There was a bearded Jew in the crowd ... A German military vehicle drove up; two noncommissioned officers jumped out, and without a word of warning one of them pulled out a revolver and started shooting at the crowd.

There are similar accounts from other places.

Reports, like this, are not at all unusual during wartime.

In WWII, looting by Allied forces began even before the German frontier was crossed in 1945. American reports confirmed that pillage of Belgian civilian property by US troops did in fact take place on a considerable scale. Once in Germany, looting became a full-blown epidemic.

Moreover, the situation in Poland (during the absence of civil authorities in September 1939) pales in comparison with the anarchy that ensued in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, which ravaged New Orleans in August 2005. There, a mass of ordinary looters and street gangs left the police helpless to cope with conditions that resembled those in the Third World.

Numerous incidents cited in this this text point to striking similarities between conditions in Soviet-occupied Eastern Poland and those prevailing in the German zone of occupation. In many ways, the role of local collaborators with the Soviets mirrored that of the German "fifth column".

A book, published early in the war for the Polish Ministry of Information, titled The German Fifth Column in Poland, documents analogous forms of conduct by members of Poland's German minority:

... It is striking that preparations for sabotage and diversionist activities were carried out everywhere in an identical manner and according to a single plan. In was so in Bydgoszcz [cf. Grodno], and also at Lodz, where, as soon as they had news of the approach of the German troops, the diversionist agents assembled in the forests of Tomaszow and fired on the Polish soldiers. The same thing occurred in Silesia and in many other localities throughout Poland.
But there was also the active contribution which the army of spies made to the Germans in this unequal struggle. These Polish citizens of German nationality were active all over the Polish territory ...
Of course, not all Germans in Poland participated in these subversive activities, but practically all the German organizations, except for certain Catholic and Socialist groups, were dominated by elements with a traitorous attitude to the Polish State.
This treachery was all the easier, since the German colonists scattered over the country were not only organized in various legal societies and bodies, but were to be found in every sphere of social life.
It is sufficient to state that in September, 1939, a certain relatively small number of Germans were shot in execution of sentences of courts martial. Those sentenced to death were not "innocent members of the German minority", as the official Nazi propaganda thesis would have it. They were spies, saboteurs, and diversionists, caught red-handed.
Thus the Polish soldiers had to fight against the invader not only on the battle-front. Wherever Germans were to be found, ... whether in large or small numbers, they fired at the Polish soldiers at night, they burned down the buildings in which the troops were quartered, they cut the telephone wires.
German diversionists organized a rising in Bydgoszcz [cf. Grodno] ... this attempt was partly suppressed the same day in the centre of the town.
The first deposition comes from an English lady, Miss Baker-Beall, who was living at Bydgoszcz at the beginning of the war:
"Evidently large quantities of arms, rifles, and machine-guns had been smuggled across the frontier and concealed in the town or its environs, for from this day on the Germans in large numbers began sniping from the windows of German houses and flats, and continued it day and night till the entry of the German forces; from the third day on they also did machine-gunning from the roofs, and fired upon everything, men, women, horses (fortunately children were seldom in the streets).
... After this the civilian guards arrested all Germans whom they found with arms in their possession and they were shot out of hand."
"Immediately after their entry [German troops into Bydgoszcz], the massacres of the Polish population commenced. Without trial, and often in a revolting manner, the Germans shot a great number of the most prominent citizens of the town, among them several women and priests, as well as the members of the civic guard organized by the population after the retreat of the Polish troops."
"In the localities of Izabelow and Annopol (close to Zdunska Wola) shots were fired by the German civilian populations against detachments of the 10th Division."
"Also in districts behind the front we were fired on at night, and always where there were German colonies, even in the neighbourhood of Warsaw."
"All these police officials, Germans who had passed themselves off as Poles, assisted the occupation authorities in the work of 'cleansing' the territory of undesirable elements by denouncing Poles living in the area."
[Another deposition mentions the names of Germans who were outstanding in this regard at Bydgoszcz]
"... Among the Germans of particular 'merit' must be mentioned the Gestapo detachment, the magistrate Lize, Burgomaster Schreiter, the former Burgomaster Heinze, who was afterwards appointed school inspector, the landowner Lorenty, the official Ischdonat."
"The German population of the district took an active part in all the persecutions. One person who particularly distinguished herself was Frau von Hofmannswaldau of Koszanowo, near Smigiel, who was continually importuning the Gestapo and the magistrate with demands to proceed to further executions."
Such examples could be added to without end. They testify to the fact that the German minority in Poland did not cease its treacherous activities when the German troops occupied Poland. Besides openly organizing themselves into the structure of the Third Reich, they proceeded to help in the extermination of the Polish population, exposing them to terrible atrocities and to the bestialities of the Gestapo.
This procedure is still going on. Though many months have passed since Germany's treacherous aggression against Poland, aided by the treachery of the German minority within Poland, not a day passes undisturbed by the groans of Poles martyred and condemned to terrible suffering by the Reich's spies and informers, citizens of the Polish State.
Since the German occupation of Poland the Reich authorities have been brutally deporting the Polish elements from their age-old homes in the 'incorporated' territories. At night the Gestapo agents drive thousands of Polish families from their houses and dwellings, allowing them to take only a small suitcase and fifty marks per person. Everything else: land, house, dwellings and all the furniture, clothing, linen, ready money, and even family keepsakes, are pillaged without compensation. The evicted people are carried in cattle trucks to the "General Gouvernement", where they are turned out at a wayside station without food, without money, and with no roof over their heads. Frequently this journey lasted several days or more; during the hard winter of 1939–40 thousands of people, especially women and children, were frozen to death on such journeys.
Throughout all occupied Poland there have been terrible massacres of innocent people, while tens of thousands of people are being tortured in prisons and concentration camps.
All Polish cultural life has been completely suppressed. The Polish universities and high schools have been closed; the Polish libraries, museums, art galleries and scientific laboratories have been stripped, and their more valuable possessions carried off to Germany. Polish national and religious monuments have been destroyed. In the 'incorporated' areas all Polish inscriptions have been removed. Both Catholic and Protestant churches have to endure terrible persecution. Hundreds of clergy have been shot or tortured to death in prisons and concentration camps.

This book also contains two photographs with captions that could, mutatis mutandis, be found in a book dealing with Soviet collaborators:

1. Leaders of the German minority in Poland decorated by Hitler with gold medals for their fifth column activities.
2. Death faces the Polish policeman, who is being pointed out to a Nazi soldier by a member of the German minority in Poland.

Some historians have attempted to advance the theory that the reason that the Poles became incensed at Jews is not so much because of the conduct and activities of all too many Jews in the service of the Soviet invaders, but simply because some Jews were given positions that previously were (allegedly) denied to them.

While playing down Jewish involvement in the Soviet takeover to a minimum, Martin Dean, a research scholar at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies (at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.) writes repeatedly:

... For many it was particularly surprising to see Jews serving as policemen on the streets. For some Poles, who had lost their former pre-eminence, this was a particular provocation and added fuel to the latent anti-Semitism of the interwar period.
Nevertheless, it was precisely the sight of a few Jews in the police and administration which rankled amongst Poles, Ukrainians and Belorussians, for whom this was previously unthinkable.
For many Poles the perception of some Jews taking their places as administrators and even policemen was a particular affront. They chose to overlook the fact that Soviet repression affected Jewish businesses, organizations and refugees as harshly as the Poles.

Similar views have been advanced in recent years by Jan T. Gross, for whom 'alleged' Jewish collaboration is also all a matter of perception, reinforced by conventions and stereotypes on the part of Poles:

... Jews were not involved, except sporadically, in the Soviet-sponsored apparatus of administration in the villages (i.e., where the vast majority of the local population lived at the time).
... there were Jews in the Soviet administrative apparatus, in the economic bureaucracy, or in the local militia ... But that they were remembered so vividly and with such scorn does not tell us that Jews were massively involved in collaboration, but rather of how unseemly, how jarring, how offensive it was to see a Jew in any position of authority - as an engineer, a foreman, an accountant, a civil servant, a teacher, or a militiaman.

As seen in the contemporary accounts cited earlier on in the text, many Jewish eyewitnesses whose testimony is difficult to dismiss so glibly also succumbed to this same "perception". Moreover, these scholars do not appear to realize that Jews were well represented in local governments in the interwar period and occupied important positions, civic and others, in all of the towns in Eastern Poland.

For example, according to the Szczuczyn Memorial Book, Jews occupied 16 out of 24 seats in the town council. It is true, however, that few of them served as policemen and municipal clerks, but they were present there as they were in the courthouses and on the staff of schools and hospitals.

In Przemysl, for example, Jews, who had held positions in the Polish government apparatus were dismissed by the Soviets from the municipal administration along with Poles.

Moreover, Jews were especially prominent in the liberal professions and, as Jewish sources readily admit, owned most of the prosperous private businesses.

There are many Jewish accounts from Eastern Poland attesting to the fact that, for the most part, interaction between Poles and Jews was quite uneventful, even distantly cordial. Relations between Poles and Jews were not on the verge of exploding in the prewar period, nor did they in September 1939 when the Soviets invaded Eastern Poland: by and large Poles did not use either the entry of the Germans or the Soviets to strike at Jews.

A typical case is Podwoloczyska, near the Soviet border, described in that town's Memorial Book as follows:

... The Jews of the town lived harmoniously with their Polish neighbors. There were no quarrels or fights between them or public outbursts of anti-Semitism.
... The Jewish population was divided into three levels. About 15% were wealthy, about 40% were middle-class, and the remaining 45% became impoverished due to the inflation and difficult conditions of the years before World War II.
... For a long time Dr. Rosensweig was the railroad doctor for the town. Her husband, Dr. Leon Rosensweig and Dr. Bruno Perchip, a reserve army Captain, and Dr. Gabriel Friedman served the Jewish and Polish populations of the town ...
Jews and Poles would meet on the town tennis court. Dr. Perchip and his wife would meet the town officers from the border town for a game of tennis.
At the municipal courthouse ... Jewish and Polish judges and clerks worked side by side. Among them were the Jews Fogel and Ashkenazi. The Jewish notary public Landsberg was the only notary in town qualified as a court supervisor. The "Palestra" [bar] was comprised almost exclusively of Jewish attorneys: Dr. Orbach, Dr. Cohen, Dr. Gabriel Finkelstein, and Dr. Sbalter ...
The town was run by the Polish mayor Bordavcik and the vice-mayor, Dr. Leon Rosensweig. Members of the town council were democratically elected by the residents relative to their numbers. Among the Jewish clerks were Shlomo Wallach ...
The commander of the joint Russian-Polish patrol abroad, from the Polish side, was the Jewish Captain Shenkel ...
Most of the middle-class [Jewish] families were fairly well off. They did not own cars or carriages, but they owned a nice sized home and made a living. Most of the wealthy families dealt in trade.
Rabbi Babad was one of Poland's three chief rabbis. ... When he walked on the street, even the Poles would clear the way out of respect for him.

It was not, therefore, the fact that some Jews occupied some administrative positions under Soviet rule that caused widespread resentment, but rather because Jews along with other minorities had immediately flocked to occupy virtually all of the positions from which Poles were systemically removed.

Moreover, they often used their newly-acquired positions to the detriment of the Poles. In particular, Poles were incensed by the harassment and persecution meted out to them all-too-frequently by Jews serving in the "militia" and other state offices, as well as by the anti-Polish agitation, in which many Jews openly engaged. Finally, as pointed out by Jan Karski, it was the legions of denouncers among the Jews whose activities were lethal for many Poles and left an indelible mark on Polish public opinion.

As one Jewish black marketeer candidly explained to a Polish officer, who found himself in the Wilno region soon after Poland's collapse:

... They don't like Jews on the Soviet side [of the border]. They are unclean there. They denounced many Poles to the communists, a lot of Jews are now militiamen, and even reeves. The state offices are full of them.

After, what the Poles had experienced at the hands of the Soviets and their local collaborators, is it little wonder that some of them were initially prepared to greet the Germans in June 1941 (though not in September 1939) as the lesser evil, and therefore as "liberators' in a sense from those, who would ship them off to the "gulag"? At that time (June 1941) Poles in the Soviet occupation zone had little knowledge of what was going on in the German occupation zone since the Soviet media did not report on their Nazi ally's misdeeds. Moreover, the Holocaust was yet to get underway there, while the last round of deportations to the Gulag and large-scale executions of political prisoners had just taken place in the Soviet zone.

However, for those Jewish memoirists, who seek to justify Jewish behaviour at every turn and suffer from amnesia regarding conditions for Poles in the Soviet occupation zone (and the conduct of Jews in September 1939, and the role played by Jewish collaborators), it is the Poles, who are accused of about opportunism.

Jacob Gerstenfeld-Maltiel from Lwow, is one such memoirist:

[June 1941] ... The population greeted the marching [German] soldiers with cries and applause and even threw flowers to them. These were not only Ukrainians. Most of the people on the streets were in fact Poles; the Ukrainians, a minority in Lvov, were lost in the crowds. It is strange how men can manage to forget so quickly, or shall we put the blame on the unconscious? National consciousness is very strong in Poles, but opportunism prefers to be on the side of the strong and to forget dreams of being a major power. The majority was opportunistic and listened to its perhaps not honourable, but surely more convenient promptings.

These ruminations ring hollow. The Soviet invasion of Eastern Poland in September 1939 and the German invasion of that same territory in June 1941 (to seize it from their erstwhile partner in crime) were hardly equivalent acts. The invasion of September 1939 was directed at the very existence of the Polish State and, at the very least, its citizens should have remained neutral, when it soon became apparent that the Soviets had entered Poland not to defend the country and her citizens from German aggression, but to enslave Poland and eradicate its officials and military.

If, later on, large cross-sections of the Jewish population, who initially greeted the Soviets had a change of heart, it was only because they too, unexpectedly, fell victim to Soviet persecution.

On the other hand, in June 1941 Poles had every right to prefer one occupier over another, given their experiences under Soviet rule.

Politically, the outbreak of a Soviet-German war was a sine qua non for the ultimate liberation of Poland, which remained the Poles' common and unrelenting goal. It did not take a particularly astute observer to realize that the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact had sealed Poland's fate, and that the German invasion of the Soviet Union now reopened it.

Moreover, the Poles did not regard as permanent overlords and their "welcome" was purely reactive and not tainted ideologically. There was no display of swastikas or pro-Nazi demonstrations by Poles similar to the profusion of red armbands and political rallies that accompanied the Soviet invasion in September 1939.

Besides, as Jan T. Gross argues:

... one should hardly expect local youth, in some godforsaken backwater, to quietly sit at home when an army goes by their little hamlet and does not kill or rob anybody!

By that time, as a number of testimonies show, even many Jews had had enough of the Bolshevik regime, which was uniformly despised by Poles, and hardly anyone anticipated the Holocaust.

A Jewish woman from Uhnow, near Lwow, recalled:

... All these restrictions so depressed the economy that they made life [under the Soviets] unbearable. Ironically, the Jewish community pinned their hopes on the Germans, because until 1941, no one knew that they - the Germans - were even worse than the Russians. Until 1941, no one was aware that the Germans were executing Jews.

The son of a well-to-do family in Lwow recalled:

... My parents' sad experience during the past two years caused them to think differently. They were happy at the sight of the Soviet retreat.
Of course, they had heard about the Nazis and their antisemitism. ... But in their minds the Germans were a civilized nation.
The German Army reached Lwow on June 28th, and on June 29th the town was theirs. They marched in singing and smiling. They were greeted with enthusiasm by an elated Ukrainian population. Girls in traditional Ukrainian dresses embraced the soldiers and showered them with flowers. After looking at the celebrations through the window for a while, my brother and I went down to the street, for a better view. A number of youths spotted us, recognized us as Jews, and greeted us with curses and stones. We retreated back home.

The wife of an attorney in Przemysl reflected on the departure of the Soviets:

... Oh, what luck that those primitives [the Soviets] are gone, now we have Kulturtrager [carrier of culture]; they can't do us any harm. Perhaps things won't be all that good, but at least we'll be dealing with people of culture.

In Tlumacz:

... Jews whispered that, with the help of the Almighty, the Germans would come and deal the "foniye" [Russians] an overwhelming blow.

A Jewish doctor in Tluste recalled that two Jewish doctors, refugees from Krakow, who had been given good positions, continually tried to return to their homes in German-occupied Poland. According to him:

... more than one person who had initially been a great enthusiast of the Soviets now thanked God that the German-Soviet war had broken out.

In Iwie, a young communist activist, who recalled the Stalinist period with fondness, was shocked to find that prewar Jewish merchants and businessmen: ... were happy about the defeat of the Red Army.
... the poor people truly believed nothing would happen to them, that they would manage.

According to a Jew from Stolpce:

... My father was in such despair over the Russians that he actually believed that things would be better if the Germans invaded eastern Poland and drove the Communists out.

In Kurzeniec:

... Some Jews observed the arrival of the German soldiers, and I was among them. The fact that they crossed town and didn't strike anyone encouraged us. Someone said: 'They passed and didn't cause us any harm; maybe the monster is not so bad'.

In Pohost Zahorodny (or Pohost Zahorodzki), in Polesia:

... There was the long-established stereotype of the Russians as a backward, anti-Semitic country, with rioting mobs, unruly Cossacks and government-instigated pogroms. Germany stood for the civilized West and the rule of law.
... Particularly among the older members of the population, the stereotypes persisted and convinced many to stay. The rich even hoped the Germans would restore their wealth and property, end the food shortages, confiscation of property and arbitrary arrests. Many looked forward to the withdrawal of the Soviets.
... Most Jews understood they would suffer under German rule, but they never considered it could mean complete annihilation.

In Drohiczyn Poleski:

... Only a few people fled - those who were specifically connected to the Soviet authorities and the NKVD ... These included the teacher Yachas (born in Svislotch [Swislocz], the photographer Yisrael Schwartz (son of Moshe Schwartz), the chairman of the shoemakers' workshop, Rubinstein, the printer Orliansky and Ukrainetz, and finally the daughter of Yeshayahu the Tailor.
... The first Jewish victims [of the German assault on the Soviets] fell by nightfall, even before the Germans were in full control. R. Yaakov Vermus (brother-in-law of Rabbi Eliyahu Velvel Altvarg) and his eldest son died on Wednesday [June 25, 1941] night in a tragic error.
A group of retreating Soviet soldiers shot them in their home as they greeted the German [sic] advance team, calling out 'Communists are kaput!'

According to an account from Rokitno, in Volhynia:

... A terrible panic erupted. The Soviet government clerks packed their belongings and fled. Some Jews followed them. Unfortunately, many refused to run away since they thought their life would be better under the Germans than under the Soviets.

In Boremel (Volhynia), some Jews even gathered alongside the Ukrainians, who had erected an arc de triomphe to greet the invading Germans in June 1941, only to be driven away by the Ukrainians and Germans.

In Kamionka, a small town in Eastern Galicia, a Jewish delegation handed the following note to a visiting German dignitary, Friedrich Theodor Prince zu Sayn und Wittgenstein, in the late summer of 1941:

... We, the old, established residents of the town of Kamenka, in the name of the Jewish population, welcome your arrival, Serene Highness and heir to your ancestors, in whose shadow the Jews, our ancestors and we, have lived in the greatest welfare.
We wish you, too, long life and happiness. We hope that also in the future the Jewish population shall live on your estate in peace and quiet under your protection, considering the sympathy which the Jewish population has always extended to your most distinguished family.

Historian Raul Hilberg notes that the prince was unmoved. The Jews, he said, were a 'great evil'. Although he had no authority to impose any solutions upon his greeters, he instructed the local mayor to mark the Jews with a star and to employ them without pay in hard labour.

Another example of the distortions that abound in Jewish historiography can be found in the writings of many historians, who purge key passages from Jan Karski's famous report (reproduced and referred to above) about conditions in the Soviet occupation zone that are unfavourable to Jews, and basically strive to whitewash Jewish conduct.

On the other hand, they have no qualms about latching on to speculation (not observations), offered up by Karski about possible future revenge by Poles - a 'repayment in blood' - not as a figurative, and justified, barometer of the sense of outrage at the 'very frequent' acts of betrayal Karski reported, but as a theme by which to gauge Polish conduct under the subsequent German occupation.

However, widespread revenge by and large did not occur, even though the Poles had ample opportunity to strike at the Jews when the Soviets fled. Moreover, there is ample evidence that the Poles, as a whole, did not view the German occupation as an opportunity to even scores with the Jews for their conduct under Soviet rule.

Although tiny groups of Poles did take matters into their own hands after the Soviet retreat in June 1941, this constituted a marginal phenomenon and generally occurred in localities, where the local Polish leadership had been wiped out. It is noteworthy that there had been no violent incidents in these localities upon the German entry in September 1939.

For example, according to Nahman Rapp, a resident of Grajewo:

... During this time [September 1939] the non-Jewish population of Grayevo took no part in anti-Semitic actions.
To the contrary, there were cases in which German soldiers set fire to Jewish homes, while the Polish neighbors helped quench the flame. In this way the newly-built house of the tailor Isaac Grobgeld was saved, as well as that of Yoske Gurovske ("Yoske the Spinner").

With few exceptions, such as those in the Lomza district, the reprisals in June and July 1941 were directed against suspected collaborators regardless of their nationality, and did not target Jews indiscriminately. The local population generally could, and did, differentiate between those Jews, who openly supported the Soviet regime, and those who did not, and most Poles were not looking for revenge but a return to normalcy.

In the town of Sokoly, in the Lomza district:

... Before the German "Amstkommissar" arrived in Sokoly, a Polish lawyer [and prewar mayor of the town], Manikowski, organized a temporary town committee and militia. They requested that the Jews also participate in service in the militia, but they did not find any volunteers. In matters of economic administration, the Jews cooperated with Manikowski and contributed their share in organizing supplies, mainly in baking bread for the Jewish population, who constituted two-thirds of the town.

Moreover, the Polish population did not by and large succumb to German provocation, such as the publicity given to the large number of corpses found in Soviet jails where gruesome executions of prisoners had taken place on the eve of the Soviet retreat.

The most violent reaction came not from the Poles, the party most aggrieved by the Jews and other local collaborators, but from the Ukrainians, who perpetrated many "pogroms" (the largest in Lwow and Tarnopol), which to some degree targeted perceived Soviet collaborators. Very often, these excesses were orchestrated or at least instigated by the Germans and their collaborators, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). The Germans subsequently put a stop to the violence and assumed the role of "protectors" of the Jewish population - a pattern that was repeated throughout occupied Europe.

A frequent pretext for the "pogroms" was the opening by the Germans of the local jails, in which thousands of Poles and Ukrainians as well as some Jews were massacred just before the Soviet retreat.

The publicity, given to the gruesome executions of prisoners, incensed the local population, but few Poles took part in the attacks on Jews that ensued.

According to Jewish sources, in Glebokie (northeastern Poland), after the Germans revealed atrocities, committed by the Soviets in the prison in nearby Berezwecz (where a few local Jews had also been held): ... the provocation was not accepted by the local Christian population, which was comprised mostly of Poles. The local council spoke out against Jew-baiting and: ... called upon the population of all faiths and nationalities to unite and make peace among themselves.

The few punitive actions that followed nonetheless were not random but targeted those, who had been closely connected to the Soviet regime:

... At first the Gestapo, with the help of the local police and some other local Christians, began to search for communists and their cohorts who had worked for the Soviet occupation forces, or served them in some capacity. Almost immediately, 42 persons were arrested.
... There were also a few Christians ...
All of those arrested, except for the few, above mentioned merchants, had been officials of the Communist regime during the Soviet occupation.

As noted earlier, Jews were also among the prisoners executed by the Soviets in June 1941, though not nearly in proportion to their share of the overall population.

In Lwow, for example, some 44 Jews were killed in the Lacki Street prison, or about 8 percent of recorded executions were recorded, whereas in the Zamarstynowska Street prison 16 Jews were killed, or about 3.5 percent of the total.

There is no record of Jews being executed in the prisons in Tarnopol and Czortkow.

By and large, the average Pole had no involvement in the persecution or harassment of Jews in Eastern Poland, nor did they support Nazi-German genocidal policies.

When rumours of impending measures set off, panic among the Jews of Slonim, large numbers of Jews went to stay with their Christian acquaintances every night.

Herman Kruk, the chronicler of the Wilno "ghetto", describes the reaction of the largely Polish population of that city to the "ghettoization" of the Jews in September 1941 and later events:

... Today [September 8], at Ostra Brama [the chapel, located above this ancient gate was the holiest Catholic shrine in Wilno, which housed the icon of the revered Madonna of Ostra Brama - M.P.], there was a prayer in honor of the martyrdom of the Jews. People say that Jews are now bringing in full bundles, which they got in the city as gifts from Christians in the street.
In the street, at a Maistas [meat cooperative established by the Soviet authorities], masses of Christians brought packages of meat and distributed them to the Jewish workers marching to the ghetto.
The sympathy of the Christian population, more precisely of the Polish population, is extraordinary.
[September 15th] ... Christians come to the ghetto. People say that Christian friends and acquaintances often come. Today a priest came to me, looking for his Jewish friends.
[May 6, 1942] ... From Vilna [Wilno] and the whole area, masses of young men are being taken for work in Germany. Yesterday one of those groups was led through Szawelska Street and a lot of Jews saw them. In the street, guarded by Lithuanians, they stormily sang the national battle song [actually, the Polish national anthem - M.P.], "Poland Is Not Yet Lost", and as they approached the Jewish ghetto, they shouted slogans: 'Long live the Jews! ...'
A mood I only want to note here.

Historian Nathan Cohen noted that other contemporary diaries reinforced Herman Kruk's observations:

... It is possible to find in diaries ... quotes such as 'Christians came to help', 'Good friends came to give a hand ...' , 'Christians were helpful, they bought things for us, sold our possessions outside the ghetto (and brought us the money)', 'Christians are crying more than Jews', etc.
It is significant that these sayings refer to 'Christians'.
Who were these 'Christians'? Herman Kruk answers this question by saying: 'The sympathy shown by the Christian population, to be more precise, by the POLISH population, is excellent'.
Dr. [Lazar] Epstein expressed himself with almost the same words.

Finally, before assessing the acts of vengeance, perpetrated on Jews in June and July 1941, one should consider how Jews reacted to collaborators or those, perceived to have been such under the German occupation.

Not only did many Jews enter the NKVD and form death squads to settle scores after the Soviet 'liberation' of Poland, but already during the German occupation they took every opportunity to exact revenge. There are hundreds of examples of murders perpetrated on those believed to have harmed Jews; in some cases entire families and even villages (e.g., Naliboki and Koniuchy), including women, children and the elderly, were massacred.

Moreover, these activities were carried out with virtual impunity. Once the Stalinist regime was installed, many Jews had recourse to the legal system and courts, such as they were, to see that those guilty of misdeeds against Jews were punished.

It is important to bear in mind that, as the war drew to a close and occupying powers retreated, people across Europe wanted to settle scores.

In France, eight to nine thousand real or alleged collaborators were lynched during the last months of the war or at the moment of liberation.
As many fell victim to spontaneous and/or organized eruptions of popular violence in Italy.
Tito's partisans killed tens of thousands of people in Yugoslavia.
The 'savage purging' in Bulgaria claimed between 30 000 and 40 000.

Courts and tribunals were also overburdened.

In France, 350 000 people were investigated, 45 000 convicted, and 1500 executed.
In Holland, 120 000 to 150,000 people were arrested, 50 000 sentenced, 152 of them to death (40 of these were executed). Tens of thousands were fired from their jobs.
In Belgium, dossiers were opened on 405 067 persons accused of collaboration, and 57 254 were prosecuted. Of these, 2940 were sentenced to death (of whom 242 were executed); 2340 were sentenced to life imprisonment.

Vengeance against perceived or potential collaborators also swept North America. Even though Japanese immigrants and their descendants posed no real threat and did not agitate on behalf of Japan during the Second World War, the Canadian and United States governments, with the support of the citizenry, uprooted the Japanese populations from the West Coast, confiscated their property and interned them in concentration camps for the duration of the war. The postwar process of rehabilitation, and obtaining a small measure of redress for their material losses and mistreatment in the most democratic and wealthiest nations on earth, was a tedious and protracted one.

The Twentieth Century was not one known for the tolerance of most of its societies, even Western ones. The American media, popular opinion and, indeed, national memory, recoil at the notion that for black Americans it was not only a time of state-sanctioned segregation and discrimination but also of frequent lynchings and "pogroms".

In 1917, one of the bloodiest race riots in American history took place in East St. Louis, Illionis. It was started by white workers, who were protesting the hiring of African Americans. By the time the violence ended, 39 blacks had been murdered and nearly 6000 others had been driven from their homes. During the "The Red Summer of 1919" alone, there were 26 race riots in which the white population turned on black Americans and destroyed their communities, murdering and injuring thousands of blacks. The authorities made little effort to stem this tide.

As a report, submitted on December 22, 1993 to the Florida Board of Regents, reveals:

... Racial unrest and violence against African Americans permeated domestic developments in the United States during the post-World War I era. From individual lynchings to massive violence against entire black communities, whites in both the North and the South lashed out against black Americans with a rage that knew few bounds.
From Chicago to Tulsa, to Omaha, East St. Louis, and many communities in between, and finally to Rosewood, white mobs pursued what can only be described as a reign of terror against African Americans during the period from 1917 to 1923.
In Chicago, Illinois, for example, law and order was suspended for 13 days in July 1919 as white mobs made foray after foray into black neighborhoods, killings and wounding 365 black residents and leaving another 1,000 homeless.
In June 1921, the black section of Tulsa, Oklahoma, was almost burned out and thousands were left homeless following racial violence by white residents.

Yet, as Columbia University historian, Istvan Deak, recently pointed out in conjunction with the debate over the massacre at Jedwabne:

... until recent stories were published, I wonder how many Americans had ever heard of what happened in Tulsa, Oklahoma, at the end of May 1921, when the city's whites, incited by the press and by politicians, massacred several hundred innocent blacks. Although I am a professional historian, I heard of this atrocity only last year, forty-four years after I arrived in the US. The Tulsa massacre, moreover, took place when the United States was at peace, whereas Jedwabne occurred during a terrible war, under alternating cruel occupations, and in the midst of total administrative and political chaos.

Less than two years later, in January 1923, mobs of white Americans descended on a black community in Rosewood, Florida, massacring between 40 and 150 people. Houses were torched and looted, and the community was eradicated. Black churches were set on fire throughout the state. For many whites, the removal of their black neighbours - a "Florida without Blacks" - was a dream fulfilled. Tellingly, not one person was ever convicted for this heinous crime, because of 'insufficient evidence'. These events have been essentially erased from American national consciousness.

Violent manifestations of hatred have occurred, and continue to occur, throughout the entire world.

In April 1948, Jewish "freedom fighters" annihilated the innocent Arab population of the peaceful Palestinian village of Deir Yassin because their mere presence was considered to be an obstacle to the political aspirations of Jewish settlers intent on creating a Jewish state free of Arabs. Unprovoked flare-ups have repeatedly ignited that troubled land.

According to a Jerusalem Post foreign service report, filed on May 24, 1996:

... Jerusalem. Hundreds of Jewish worshippers went on a rampage in the Old City Friday morning, attacking Arab bystanders and damaging Arab property, following all-night prayers for the Shavuot holiday at the Western Wall.
'The rioting was unprovoked, and we still haven't figured out what motivated it', Jerusalem Police spokesperson Shmuel Ben-Ruby said.
The rioters broke windows and damaged merchandise at stores just inside Damascus Gate. They also turned over vendors' stalls and pushed and shoved Arab bystanders. Many merchants quickly closed the shutters on their stores to avoid damage. Ben-Ruby said no injuries were reported.
The Jewish rioters also threw stones at Arab vehicles on Sultan Suleiman Street, outside Damascus Gate. About 25 complaints were filed with police for damage caused by rioting, representing only a small number of the actual instances, Ben-Ruby said.
The unrest caught police by surprise, coming after a quiet all-night study-and-prayer service at the Western Wall, attended by thousands.
The vandalism broke out about 8 a.m., as a crowd of worshippers leaving the Western Wall made its way through the Old City.
Dozens of police were called to the scene and clashed with rioters. There were no arrests.
Police sources said the rioting was apparently provoked by a group of right-wing Jewish extremists in the crowd of worshippers, who began attacking Arab targets.

Even in prosperous, highly-developed, long-standing democracies not much is needed, seemingly, for racial strife to flare up on a massive scale in the Twenty-first Century, as the events in Australia show.

According to an Agence France-Presse report, published in the National Post (Toronto) on December 12, 2005 ("Race riots erupt on Australian beach: Mobs of youths attack people of Mideast origin"):

... Twenty-five people were injured and 16 were arrested as race riots on a Sydney beach spread overnight to several suburbs, police said today.
Islamic and political leaders condemned the violence, which was launched by mobs of youths who attacked people of Middle Eastern appearance on Cronulla beach in south Sydney yesterday.
More than 5000 people gathered at the beach after e-mail and mobile phone messages called on local residents to beat-up "Lebs and wogs" - racial slurs for people of Lebanese and Middle Eastern origin.
The move followed assaults a week ago on two volunteer lifeguards at the beach, which is a popular gathering place for Muslims from inner-city suburbs, and allegations that local women were being harassed.
Chanting 'No more Lebs' and 'Aussie, Aussie, Aussie ... Oi, Oi, Oi' mobs of drunken young men waving Australian flags attacked anyone suspected of having a Middle Eastern background.
One Muslim woman had her headscarf ripped off and another was chased into a beach kiosk, local media reported.
Six police officers were injured as they tried to quell the violence, and two ambulance officers were also hurt.
Later, a gang of some 60 men reportedly of Middle Eastern appearance launched a series of apparent revenge attacks in nearby suburbs, smashing more than 40 cars with baseball bats and stabbing two youths.
New South Wales state Premier Morris Iemma described the violence at Cronulla beach as 'stomach turning'.
'I saw yesterday people trying to hide behind the Australian flag; well they are cowards whose behaviour will not be tolerated', Mr. Iemma told Channel Nine television.
Mr. Iemma said he planned to bring together community leaders for discussions about how to prevent further violence.
Police Commissioner Ken Moroney said he was disgusted by the violence.

Had these events occurred in Eastern Europe, the Western media would have called them a "pogrom", especially since Australia has witnessed a rash of synagogue burnings in recent years.

Unfortunately, systemic forms of discrimination permeate the fabric of almost all nations including Western ones. In Louisiana, 1916 witnessed an assault on the native Cajun culture, when the use of French was banned in all schools and government agencies. Strict quotas for Jews were also introduced at leading American universities after World War I and did not disappear until the 1960s. The exploitation of Blacks and native Americans has continued to this day.

POLISH-JEWISH RELATIONS UNDER SOVIET OCCUPATION, 1939-1941
POLAND'S ETHNIC MINORITIES AND THE NAZI-SOVIET OCCUPATION OF POLAND

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