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Summation
Many aspects of the behaviour of a small, but dynamic
pro-Soviet portion of the Jewish population of Poland undoubtedly
qualify as collaboration with the Soviet aggressors who, together
with Nazi Germany, invaded and divided up Poland in September 1939.
The examples provided in this compilation can be multiplied to
include virtually every town in the Eastern Borderlands. Under the
Soviet occupation, throughout this region, it was the Jews, who
lashed out at Poles and the Poles were on the defensive. In the
words of American sociologist, Tadeusz Piotrowski:
... Thousands of Polish survivors' testimonies,
memoirs, and works of history tell of Jewish celebrations, of
Jewish harassment of Poles, of Jewish collaboration (denunciations,
manhunts, and roundups of Poles for deportation), of Jewish brutality
and cold-blooded executions, of Jewish pro-Soviet "citizens'
committees" and militias, and of the high rates of Jews in the Soviet
organs of oppression after the Soviet invasion of 1939. The Poles
perceived all of this as ingratitude and betrayal; the Jews saw it
as retribution and revolution.
There is no comparable body of literature implicating
Poles in anti-Jewish excesses of this nature in Soviet-occupied Eastern
Poland, despite the fact that a small number of Poles also collaborated
with the Soviets, sometimes under duress. The fact that were some Polish
collaborators is thus irrelevant in terms of assessing Jewish conduct
towards Poles, in the same way as Jewish historiography does not give
any consideration to the existence of Jewish collaborators (e.g., the
Jewish order police and Gestapo agents operating both inside and outside
the ghettos), when assessing Polish conduct under German occupation or,
for that matter, to the fact that Polish blackmailers also targeted
fellow Poles. Yet Poles are called on to account for these transgressions
COLLECTIVELY, even though the Polish blackmailers were condemned by the
Polish underground state and punished. On the other hand, there is no
sense of responsibility on the part of the Jewish community for the
misdeeds of its own members. As we have seen, with few exceptions, even
the ardent new converts to communism continued to maintain ties with
the community and, in any event, almost all of them returned to the fold
once they became disenamored with their experiment.
Nor did Poles in German-occupied part of Poland take
matters into their own hands in 1939–1941 to target Jews in this manner,
even though they could have done so with impunity. Poles did not
participate in rounding up and mistreating Jewish prisoners of war, nor
did they vandalize synagogues and Jewish monuments. Already as early as
September 7, 1939, the first Pole, a postman from Limanowa by the name
of Jan Semik, was shot dead by the Germans for trying to stop the
execution of a group of Jewish hostages. In October 1940, a Polish woman
named Aniela Koziol was executed in Lancut for sheltering a Jewish family.
There were hundreds of such cases during the occupationeven though a
collective death penalty was imposed on the family of anyone, who dared
to defy German decrees not to help Jews.
Jews did not rush to the aid of their Polish neighbours
during the Soviet occupation. There is no record of a Jew putting his
or her life on the line for a Pole. Very little is known of Jewish
efforts to shelter endangered Poles during this period. Nor was there
any significant effort on the part of the Jewish community and its
communal and religious leadership to contain, censure or even dissociate
themselves from the frequent Jewish excesses directed blindly at
elements of the Polish population at large even though such entreaties
were not punishable by law. The impression one receives from hundreds
of recorded accounts is that members of the non-Jewish minorities
(Ukrainians and Belorussians) were more inclined to help or sympathize
with the Poles, even though the Jews were often in a better position
to do so. But perhaps this is not surprising. As we have seen, more
than anyone else, the Jews feared collaborators and betrayers from
within their own community.
This void is striking given the numerous "memorial books"
dedicated to towns in this region that have been published. Yet, those
same memorial books, and Holocaust literature in general, often condemn
Poles globally for the activities of a small number of Poles and for the
fact that not all Poles were prepared to sacrifice their lives for Jews
under the German occupation. Moreover, the evidence shows overwhelmingly
that, despite the infinitely greater risk involved, Jews were far more
likely to receive assistance from Poles in the German zone, than Poles
from Jews in the Soviet zone.
To be sure, and contrary to what some historians contend,
there were fairly frequent cases of Jews - mostly the middle-aged and
elderly, but seldom the radicalized youth - warning their grateful Polish
neighbours of impending arrests and deportations, intervening on their
behalf with Soviet officials, and providing other assistance, sometimes
for payment (though, as Jewish wartime memoirs point out, friendly advice,
the most common form of assistance, was not the same as a willingness to
offer real help). Relatively few of these cases have been recorded (they
have been culled in the annotations), even though the risk that one faced
for performing such acts of kindness was negligible. Only rarely was
temporary shelter (a much more risky undertaking) provided to Poles, who
were being hunted down by the Soviet authorities. Can anyone seriously
argue that Jews viewed Poles as being within the Jewish universe of
obligation or that the Jews lived up to the role of their brothers'
keepers vis-a-vis their Polish neighbours? (the theme that Poles excluded
Jews from the brotherhood of victims under German occupation has become a
hackneyed leitmotiv in Holocaust writing, but it is one that can
be invoked equally in the context of Soviet-occupied Eastern Poland).
The outcome of collaboration with the Soviets - as well
as the infamous Gulag - was not an unknown factor. By 1939, many millions
of innocent people had fallen victim - in deportations, executions, labour
camps and mass starvation - to the most murderous regime of the twentieth
century, and indeed in all history. Reports of these widespread Soviet
atrocities had reached Poland well before the war. On the other hand,
those Jews who had been harassed and imprisoned in Nazi Germany before
the outbreak of the war were, for the most part, released and allowed
to emigrate. Nazi Germany had not yet embarked on large-scale genocide
in the early months of the war, though there were some mass executions
- mostly of Christian Poles - in places like Piasnica and Palmiry.
In the Soviet occupation zone, the active assistance of
local collaborators (from among the non-Polish population) was crucial
to the success of the identification, arrest and deportation to the
Gulag of hundreds of thousands of victims. These deeds were carried
out on the basis of prepared lists and targeted first and foremost large
segments of the Polish population. The ghettoization and deportation of
Jews to death camps in German-occupied Poland, on the other hand, were
not dependent on similar forms of collaboration by Poles. These tasks
were assigned for the most part to the German-appointed Jewish councils
("Judenraete") and the Jewish ghetto police. The entire action was
overseen by the Germans, who employed numerous German forces and
auxiliaries of various nationalities (Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Latvian,
Estonian) brought in for this purpose. The involvement of the Polish
"Blue" police was, in the assessment of leading Jewish historians such
as Szymon Datner and Raul Hilberg, marginal.
In the cities, Jews by and large self-identified by
obeying German orders to move into ghettos before the Holocaust got
underway. In the countryside, as one Jew tells us, the task of
identifying Jews was especially easy for the Germans and did not
require much Polish assistance:
... Traveling through the Polish countryside in
the summer of 1940, the uninformed observer could get the impression
that life continued relatively peacefully in those small communities.
Most men still wore their Eastern Jewish attire; old Jews, looking
like patriarchs out of the Bible, were standing dignified in front
of their houses, the Star of David on their arms. This picture already
belonged to the past in the big cities. It was also pleasing to notice
that most Polish peasants treated the Jews in a rather friendly way.
They seemed more tolerant than gentiles in the larger centers.
Denunciations were exceptional.
Moreover, unlike the situation in the Soviet occupation
zone, in German-occupied Poland not only were rewards offered for turning
in Jews, but also, and more importantly, those who failed to do so
exposed themselves, their families, and even their community to the death
penalty. There were no such incentives in Soviet-occupied part of Poland,
nor did one risk one's freedom or life by not turning in one's neighbour.
There, collaboration was ENTIRELY GRATUITOUS.
One might thus be tempted to paraphrase, in the context
of the Soviet occupation of Eastern Poland, the oft-repeated charge,
levelled against Poles by Holocaust historians such as Lucy Dawidowicz
and Mordechai Paldiel: hunting down Poles (officers, soldiers and officials)
became a favourite pastime of the Jews - a similar phenomenon of
gratuitous collaboration (with the Soviets) was without parallel in
occupied Europe. At the same time it should be recognized that these t
ypes of statements, which abound in Holocaust literature, add little,
if anything, to our understanding of those complex historical events.
As a rule, unlike Polish writings about the war, which
generally acknowledge the actions of criminal elements among the Poles,
who denounced or blackmailed Jews (indeed, the Polish underground
authorities punished such actions with death), collaboration with the
Soviets of some elements of the Jewish population is mentioned only
rarely, or is simply glossed over in Holocaust literature. Often
there are outright denials that it ever took place or that it targeted
Poles. What is more, with few notable exceptions, there is no sense of
shame or remorse for these actions even today. Even those writings
that do acknowledge some aspects of Jewish collaboration with the
Soviets, tend to explain it away by resorting to unwarranted
generalizations and oversimplifications:
... As far as the Poles were concerned, they saw that
we were enthusiastic about the arrival of their enemy! They resented
it. ... They did not understand that we were happy ONLY because we
did not want the Germans. ... The Jews were not ecstatic about the
Russians. Nor were they pleased that Poland ceased to exist. If given
a choice, most of us would have preferred Poland to Russia, but we
were afraid of the Germans.
Few, if any, knowledgeable observers would subscribe
to this view. As we have seen in countless cases, pro-Soviet
sympathies were widespread and invariably manifested themselves by a
profusion of red armbands and frequent outbursts of anti-Polish
agitation, yet there is no record of anti-German sentiments being
expressed openly at that time. Jews living under Soviet rule,
especially the bulk of native Jews, who were not at risk of being
deported to the Gulag, were far more likely to express what one
Jewish couple wrote to their son in Chicago in September 1940: ...
We are satisfied with the Soviet regime, which liberated us from
Polish enslavement. Nothing much had changed from the sentiments
first expressed in September 1939, when neither clear knowledge of
the German atrocities nor the uncertain conditions of life under
Soviet rule dampened the joy, felt by the Jewish masses in Kobryn,
Polesia:
... 20 of September [1939], in the morning
- a Russian tank entered Kobrin from the direction of Bernavitz
[Baranowicze]. The tank was followed by more tanks and soldiers.
People were ecstatic. 'The Fascist Polish kingdom has crumbled'. We
sat at night and read the pamphlets the Russians passed around. We
were full of hope for a better future. The war had lasted two weeks.
Now that the Russians were here, we were not worried about our future.
Additional counter-arguments to the claim that the Jews
greeted the Soviets ONLY because they feared the Germans have been
advanced by knowledgeable observers, and are compelling. Few Jews in
Eastern Poland were aware of how the Germans were treating their
co-religionists in Western and Central Poland when they welcomed the
Soviet invaders en masse in mid-September 1939. Indeed, as we
shall see, many Holocaust survivors from Eastern Poland professed that
same lack of knowledge even as late as the summer of 1941, when the
Germans invaded the Soviet Union. Furthermore, very many Jews, who
had fled to Eastern Poland in advance of the German army, were
prepared to risk returning to the German occupation zone once the
September 1939 campaign came to a close - first as black marketeers
and illegal returnees, and later in response to formal repatriation
programs.
In any event, the standard Jewish stance in no way
negates, justifies, or even addresses the fact - borne out by
countless eyewitness accounts - of widespread anti-Polish agitation,
extensive denunciations and other forms of collaboration with the
Soviet authorities, militia and security forces directed against
the Polish population. Clearly, no one HAD to betray their Polish
neighbours in the Soviet occupation zone to protect his or her own
skin from the new overlords. This spectacle of collective revenge
directed at downtrodden individuals, just because they were Poles,
did not only expose an ugly nationalistic streak, but also was
clearly disproportionate to any alleged wrongs experienced by the
Jews in interwar Poland. By no stretch of imagination could their
treatment be equated to the fate of the Poles, who were handed
over to the Soviet Gulag.
Teresa Prekerowa, a Polish historian who for her
rescue activities was decorated by Yad Vashem on behalf of Jews,
has made many of these very points in her important study,
The Jewish Underground and the Polish Underground. First of
all, she notes that:
... Polish-Jewish relations tend to be treated
in a one-sided way, from the standpoint of Poles and their attitude
towards the Jews, so that the converse relationship - the attitude
of the Jews towards the Poles - has been neglected.
Prekerowa also takes issue with the view, subscribed
to by many Holocaust historians, that the sole reason for the
favourable reception by many Jews of the invading Soviet forces
was their fear of Nazi Germany:
... Can the behaviour of the Jews at the beginning
of the Soviet occupation really be fully explained by their fear of
the Germans? [Shmuel] Krakowski cites a number of German
anti-Jewish decrees which testify to the terror from which the Red
Army liberated the Jewish population and which makes their joy and
gratitude readily comprehensible. However, on 17 September 1939,
the Jews could not have predicted that the Germans were going to
announce these decrees. Compulsory marks of identification were
introduced in September, but only in Krakow: the general decree
concerning them was announced by Governor [Hans] Frank only
on 23 November. The banning of Jews from travel by train was
introduced from January 1940 onwards. The confiscation of Jewish
(and indeed Polish) property in September applied only to refugees
from the territories which were incorporated into the Reich; this
was implemented more widely in the course of the following months
in the Generalgouvernement. In the middle of September [1939]
no one could foresee the tragic fate that awaited the Jews.
People knew about the "Reichskristallnacht" of November 1938 and
about the restriction of Jewish rights in Germany, but these events
aroused anxiety rather, than panic. That is why many Jews, who had
escaped eastwards from Western Poland before the German advance,
became disillusioned with the Soviet regime and tried before long
to return to the General Gouvernement.
Indeed, vast numbers of Jews, who could not adjust or
simply became homesick, were ready to leave the Soviet occupation
zone and return to their homes in the German zone which they had fled
in panic a few months earlier. Tens of thousands of Jews besieged the
German repatriation commission offices in Lwow, Bialystok, Brzesc,
Przemysl, Wlodzimierz Wolynski and elsewhere, which were established
in accordance with the terms of the German-Soviet Boundary and
Friendship Treaty. The scenes of Jews lining up in throngs in front of
German offices staffed by delegations from the Gestapo, often for days
at a time, chanting their support for Hitler and begging German
officials to be accepted back, border on the surreal. Unbeknownst to
these ardent petitioners, NKVD functionaries, who assisted the German
commission, also scrupulously recorded the names of those, who sought
to return to the German zone for their own purposes. Jewish testimonies
confirming this are plentiful.
In Horochow (Volhynia):
... Several months had passed since the arrival of
the Red Army and the Jewish refugees were still in the town. In the
course of time they managed to re-establish contact with their
families in the German-occupied zone and some of them expressed a
desire to return to their homes. With this in mind, they applied to
the local authorities and notices soon appeared in public places
calling on those, who wished to return to Poland to register at the
police station. Many refugees took advantage of this offer and one
night, several weeks later, all the men who had registered were
shipped off to forced labour camps.
The following scene took place in Lwow:
... The Germans photographed Jews swarming in front of
the premises of the repatriation commission and published the
photographs in their illustrated publications as proof that the
stories about the atrocities of the Nazi regime in the General
Gouvernement were nothing but British "Greuelpropaganda". Occasionally,
among those seeking to return were communists, tailors from Zgierz and
Pabianice, leftist writers, and even former Soviet enthusiasts.
Nikita Khrushchev, then Secretary-General of the Communist
Party in the Ukraine, recorded that, when he went to inspect the lengthy
queues from up close:
... I was astounded to see that most of the people in
the queue were Jews. They tried to bribe the Gestapo men for permission
to return to their homes.
A Jew, who lined up for permission to repatriate to the
German occupation zone, recalled:
... During the registration, after standing in line
for several hours, I finally received a card for my departure, which was
regarded at that time as a stroke of luck. A German officer turned to
the crowd and asked: 'Jews, where on earth are you going? We are going to
kill you.' ... When German commissions arrived in Lwow, Wlodzimierz and
Brzesc to allow for a return to the other side of the Bug River
[i.e., the German occupation zone], masses of Jews by the hundreds and
thousands came out to cheer Germany and Hitler. Try to imagine crowds of
Jews yelling "Heil Hitler".
Israeli historian, Ben-Cion Pinchuk records a similar
authentic story:
... At Biala Podlaska, the first station on the German
side of the border, the train carrying refugees east encountered the train
moving west. When Jews coming from Brisk [Brzesc nad Bugiem] saw
Jews going there, they shouted: 'You are insane, where are you going?'
Those, coming from Warsaw answered with equal astonishment: 'You are
insane, where are you going?'
At that time Germany and the Soviet Union were firm allies
and the Soviets also openly operated "repatriation commissions" in
German-occupied part of Poland. Therefore, registering for repatriation
was in no sense intended to be a political act - it was entirely legal
and invited. Those Jews, who registered, had no idea that they were
publicly voicing their dissatisfaction with the Soviet regime, nor did
they intend to convey that message to the Soviet authorities. By opting
to repatriate to the German occupation zone, and choosing not to accept
Soviet citizenship, they could not have foreseen that they would later
run afoul of the Soviet authorities. They simply wanted to return to
their families and homes in the German zone; they did not view the German
regime as a lethal threat to their existence.
In making those same points, historian Dov Levin underscores
that initially, the impugned consequences of not opting for Soviet
citizenship were not at all apparent. Once it became so, the Jewish refugees
fell in line and complied fully with what was expected of them by the Soviet
authorities, as they had never intended to openly defy those authorities.
... At this time (in early 1940), only some refugees (by no
means a majority) chose to effect their naturalization rights. Most of
the refugees, especially those with families on the German side, preferred
not to decide, thereby leaving themselves the option of obtaining temporary
haven. In part, this was owing to their reservations about accepting the
new internal passport with its restrictive clauses. However, there was
another crucial factor: by accepting the Soviet passport, they would forfeit
not only their previous Polish citizenship, but the possibility of ever
returning and being reunited with the loved ones whom they had left behind.
Some refugees, eschewed Soviet citizenship lest they not be allowed to leave
the USSR when it became practical. For the moment, those who turned down
Soviet citizenship were not penalized; for example, they could live wherever
they wished.
... After this stage ... All refugees, who had not yet exchanged their
Polish ID cards for Soviet internal passports, were ordered to report to
one of the militia stations and declare, voluntarily and under their personal
signature, either their acceptance of Soviet citizenship or their desire to
return home (to the German-occupied zone). No third option was offered.
Not surprisingly, the refugees complied ...
On the other hand, contrary to all evidence, Jan T. Gross
argues that ... this was undeniably a collective manifestation of
defiance and an open, public rejection of the Soviet regime. And it was
treated as such. Not only was there no conscious choice to defy the
Soviet authorities, nor any spirit of defiance on the part of the Jews,
but also, as noted earlier, of the 200 000 - 300 000 Jewish refugees
from the German occupation zone, no more than 43 000 were deported to the
Soviet interior. Thus, in any event, the Soviets clearly did not project
their suspicions or dissatisfaction onto the entire unwitting group of
Jewish refugees.
Indeed, many of the refugees continued to advance their
careers unobstructed, as was the case in Olyka, near Luck:
... we all attached red ribbons to our lapels; all the
Jews in town were looking forward to greeting the liberating Soviet forces
... Since I was still under the influence of the Polish army [in which
the author served since 1937], I wasn't particularly enthusiastic about
the excitement.
... As soon as the advance forces of the Soviet army arrived on bicycles,
followed by tanks, they were greeted warmly with bouquets of flowers.
... The [Jewish] youth in town, armed with pens and guns, assumed
various positions - administrative, police, governmental - in various
offices and cooperatives. I chose to register in an evening high school
program, and because I spoke Russian well, I was chosen as an activist in
many institutions (there was no shortage of them). I served as the
chairman and secretary of "Osoviarmia" [probably acronym for "Soviet
Army Society"], Mofar [probably acronym for "International
Organization of Workers Federations"] and the Red Cross, as well as the
chairman of the cooperative evaluation committee, and Plotnick was chosen
as the chairman of the Worker's Cooperative. What a "pleasure" that was.
... Soon enough they started arresting people, including Eliezer Katzavman,
Shalom Tsam and others. Jewish refugees arrived from Poland ... from
Warsaw, Lodz and other large cities. For some reason they approached me
and asked me to help them find work in our institution. I saw them as
refugees and as outstanding professionals, who could teach us a lot.
Plotnick reacted coldly and angrily, claiming there were no openings for
extra workers, and that these people would take away our jobs in no time.
His views were disclosed to the Secretary of the Party, Maksimenko, who
was the official representative. He informed us that someone speaking
that way deserved at least ten years in prison, but that this time he
forgave us, so long as we watched our words and actions. We immediately
hired four refugees, who were industrious and appropriate workers.
Indeed, the refugees didn't sit around with their arms folded. They soon
proceeded to investigate each one of us, taking advantage of their skills
and craftiness as refugees from big cities such as Warsaw and Lodz, etc.
They curried favor with the activists and Party members, and developed
relationships with [and] engaged in intrigue. They slowly started
gaining control in Olyka. They took the best positions after Aharon
Plotnick was sentenced to a year in prison, and his son Chaikel lost 25
percent of his salary for once arriving at work 16 minutes late.
... At about the same time, Party member, Maksimenko appeared at our house,
and wanted to recommend me as chairman of the Workers' Cooperative in
place of Plotnick. He promised to help me advance, and to send me to
training programs in Moscow. He said eventually I could get very high up.
... We weren't elected, and the only people elected to the Workers'
Cooperative were the refugees, who recently arrived and took over the
Workers' Cooperative. Afterwards, they took over the whole town. They
persecuted many local residents. I remember many occasions such as this.
I'll only describe a typical case: one of them, Finkelstein, who was the
manager of the restaurant in Vetalsky's building, caught a Jewish woman
fattening some geese she was going to sell, and told her to sell them to
him for 3 and a half rubles per kilo, which was the official price (the
market price was 60 rubles). He threatened to report her to the police,
and of course the Jewish woman had no choice but to give him the geese.
This is just one of many stories.
Numerous memoirs of Jews, who lived under the Soviet occupation,
attest to the fact that they knew little or nothing about the condition of
their fellow Jews in the German-occupied part of Poland at the time. What is
more, the stories that did circulate were generally disbelieved; they did
not sit well with the awe and admiration with which East European Jews
traditionally regarded the Germans and the favourable recollections of the
behaviour of the German army during the First World War. As a result,
relatively few Jews attempted to leave with the routed Soviet army in June
1941. Those who fled were, for the most part, implicated in the Soviet
regime.
In Przemysl, a border town that switched hands before being
divided up between Germany and the Soviet Union:
... According to our information, the Germans were
"reasonable" during the first two days. The optimists among the Jews saw
them at first as cultured people, and therefore believed they need not be
feared.
... Two days before the Russians entered the eastern part of the town
[on September 18, 1939], there was a sudden announcement that the Jews
must leave [German-controlled] Zasanie within 24 hours. Any Jew
found there after that time would be killed.
... The Jews, who despite the bitter experience of the past few days, had
not learned from the Germans' behavior toward them, did not believe that
the military governor would actually issue the aforementioned order, and
they decided to send a delegation to the governor ...
Jews from Zabludow, near Bialystok aver that,
... The new [Soviet] regime was a puzzle to us,
but we felt that we were saved from the Germans, without knowing exactly
from what we were saved (that we knew only in the second edition of that
world war). … Jewish refugees started coming into the town from the area
conquered by the Germans with horrible stories … It was hard to believe
that things like these actually happened, it left us with anxiety, but we
thought that maybe those descriptions were exaggerated a bit.
A Jew from Nowogrodek recalls:
... In 1940-41, Jewish refugees who had escaped from
territories held by the Germans … arrived in Novogrodek. They told tales
of German atrocities: arrests, concentration camps, executions and massacres.
We heard these accounts, but refused to believe them. The horror stories
simply didn't make sense. We went on with our lives, deluding ourselves
that it was impossible for such murderous atrocities actually to be
approved and perpetrated by the authorities. The Germans were considered
a civilised nation. Many people remembered the German army of the First
World War, which wasn't too terrible.
A Jew from Zablotow, near Kolomyja writes:
... At that time no one knew what the Germans were really
doing to the Jews. Poles, who came to Zoblotow from Warsaw or Cracow to sell
their wares told us that German soldiers were beating up Jews, that German
storm troopers with skull-and-crossbones emblems on their caps had been taking
Jews away, presumably to forced-labor camps, and that these Jews had not been
heard from since. But we refused to believe that such outrages could continue
for very long.
A Jewish woman from Kowel (Volhynia), says that after June 1940,
... My sisters and brother-in-law ... like many refugees,
they decided to register to go back to German-occupied Poland. Unfortunately,
the Kovel Jews did not show any sympathy or hospitality for the refugees -
they were unable to understand or to believe what the Nazi murderers were
capable of doing.
A memoir from Tluste, in Tarnopol province, states:
... People said various things about the Germans, but we did not
believe the stories about the atrocities, so no one tried to escape to Russia,
when the war with Germany broke out.
In Horochow (Volhynia):
... Only two young men, who worked for the NKVD, withdrew
with the retreating Red Army, the rest of the population decided to stay on,
in spite of the fact that trucks were put at the disposal of anybody who
wanted to leave.
In Czortkow, near the prewar Soviet border:
... Although the Soviet authorities had made it possible
for anyone to leave the town and join the retreating Red Army, only a few
hundred Jews, mostly young men, seized the opportunity and escaped to Soviet
Russia.
The Soviets had systematically blocked all information about
German atrocities against Jews from reaching the population. Even Jewish
newspapers fell in line by not publishing anything critical about Germany,
the Soviet Union's ally at the time. The Jewish writer, poet and playwright,
Moshe Bronderzon from Lodz, who took refuge in Soviet-occupied Bialystok,
complained bitterly (after the fact):
... A Jewish newspaper [Bialystoker Stern] in a
Jewish city, several kilometers from the German murder inferno, refuses
to devote one line, or even one word to the gruesome experiences of Jews
on the other side of the border, in Poland where Jewish blood is being
spilled with abandon.
Needless to add, the equally cruel fate of their non-Jewish
countrymen under German rule also went unreported.
Turning a blind eye to German atrocities continued to paralyze
Jewish communities long after the Soviet retreat. In Dzisna, near the prewar
Latvian border:
... On June 1, 1942, two young boys escaping from the
German atrocities in Poland arrived at Dzisna and informed the Judenrat
that the Germans were systematically killing all the Jews in every
community. They begged everyone to run and hide before it was too late.
The Judenrat threatened to turn them over to the Germans, if they continued
to tell their 'lies'. The boys pleaded with the council, trying to convince
them that they were telling the truth, but the Judenrat refused to believe
the stories. Fearing for their own lives, the two boys left Dzisna.
Prekerowa continues her analysis of Jewish attitudes as
follows:
... It appears, then, that it was not fear of the Germans
which was the chief reason for the joyous welcome extended to the invading
Red Army. The more plausible view, which is now widely accepted, is that an
important factor was the level of anti-Polish feelings, the result of the
bad relations which had existed during the preceding period, especially the
1930s, which witnessed the negative Jewish policies of the leaders of the
Second Republic, antisemitic declarations by the various political parties,
and the excesses of the nationalistic thugs. Grudges and resentments produced
a situation, where among certain sections of the Jewish community the absence
of any sense of solidarity with the Polish nation and identification with
the Polish state was being demonstratively expressed.
In reality, a similar situation prevailed in the Eastern
Borderlands (as well as in the German partition) before their restoration to
Poland in 1921, and had little to do with Polish attitudes. The Jews in the
Eastern Borderlands did not have strong ties to Poland or her culture and
language (many of them were Litvaks, Russian speaking Jews, who had fled
Russian persecution), and Polish attitudes in the interwar period, therefore,
had only a limited impact on Jewish behaviour in 1939. The fact that interwar
policies were not a determinative factor is further underscored by the fairly
frequent cases, recorded earlier, of Jews coming to the assistance of Poles
at risk of repression at the hands of the Soviets - one did not need an
excuse to behave decently.
The key to assessing Jewish conduct in Soviet-occupied Poland
lies elsewhere. Many Jews living in Poland at the time regarded themselves as
a separate, Yiddish-speaking nation with their own religion and their own
national and political aspirations, and had little sense of solidarity with
the predominantly Catholic Poles and their history, culture and traditions.
Moreover, many Jews, though not formally communists, were under the spell of
communist ideology and propaganda, or simply believed that the Soviet Union
had more to offer them than Poland. As for the confrontation with the Soviet
Union, the Jewish masses simply believed it was Poland’s war - not theirs,
and had no qualms in aligning themselves with the Soviet conquerors.
Prekerowa goes on to describe some of the tangible consequences
of that state of affairs.
... It must also be emphasized that in many diaries,
particularly those of young people, there are frequent expressions of
spontaneous joy. This mood has no rational basis. 'Today is the happiest
day of my life! We showered the approaching tanks with flowers ...', wrote
one young girl from Stanislawow in her diary.
These factors induced the Jews, who knew the local scene well and were often
in open conflict with non-Jewish segments of the population, to co-operate
with the new administration and its apparatus of repression.
The Soviets were not disappointed. Many Jews searched out and helped to
arrest Polish officers, top prewar officials, and representatives of the
intellectual elite, which was hostile to the USSR.
... The fact that at the same time Jewish cultural, religious, and social
institutions - just like Polish ones - were being liquidated, and that Jews
were also part of the mass deportations of the population of Eastern Poland,
did not really alter this situation.
American sociologist, Tadeusz Piotrowski, adds another important
dimension to this debate:
... But whether or not they [i.e., the Jews] knew, and
whether or not they welcomed the Soviets simply to protect themselves from the
Germans, are beside the point. Nothing justified the excesses of these Polish
citizens, these communist Jews [many were simply pro-Soviet - M.P.],
against the Polish population. What is worse, one can only speculate as to the
reason for the total absence of any condemnation by the Jewish community and
leaders, either then or now (one possible answer is that to condemn is to admit).
To manifest pro-Soviet sympathy was one thing; to betray, deport, abuse, and
murder neighbors, schoolmates, clients, and the soldiers of Poland under the
guise of "self-protection from the Germans" was quite another. This was not a
case of "do or die". There were no penalties for not volunteering.
After discounting the extent and impact of Jewish misconduct during
the Soviet occupation on Polish-Jewish relations, Jewish historians have attempted
to explain the Poles' reaction by pointing to interwar anti-Semitism - political,
economic, social and religious - and, in psychological terms, to the trauma of the
Soviet invasion.
Shimon Redlich, head of the Raab Centre for Holocaust Studies at
Ben-Gurion University, writes:
... An argument often cited in the literature and in public
debate is that Polish hostility toward the Jews was aroused by Jewish support
of Soviet occupation. In the Polish collective memory, Soviet occupation of the
eastern frontier of Poland in 1939 and German occupation in 1941 were conjoined.
Many Poles saw the German occupation as a kind of liberation from the Soviets.
... Gross [Jan T. - Neighbors] finds no concrete evidence of Jewish
"collaborators" working for the Soviet authorities in the district in question.
Indeed, such allegations were based more on conventions and stereotypes than actual
fact. For the Poles, Soviet occupation was a trauma and a tragedy. They desperately
needed an emotional outlet for their frustration. Venting their anger directly at
the Soviets was not sufficient.
British historian, Norman Davies, has pointed out, however that the
Polish allegations were not imagined but true (indeed, as we have seen, many Jewish
eyewitnesses voiced the same "perceptions" as Poles at the time), and cannot be not
explained away solely by confining one's examination to Polish attitudes and ignoring
the Jewish component and the general flow or dynamics of history. As Davies wrote with
great insight in The New York Review of Books (April 9, 1987):
... Generally speaking, there is a gross imbalance between the
amount of research devoted to the Nazi occupation of Eastern Europe as opposed to
the Soviet occupations; and the field awaits fuller investigation. Polish-Jewish
relations deteriorated sharply on each of the three occasions, when the Soviet
Red Army has invaded Poland: in 1919-1920, in 1939, and in 1944-1945; and it would
throw much light on the phenomenon if we could obtain a firm estimate of the
dimensions of both Polish and Jewish collaboration.
Less than twenty years earlier, when the Bolsheviks invaded Poland
and came dangerously close to destroying her newly won statehood, scenes similar to
those witnessed in 1939 had occurred throughout the Eastern Borderlands and large
portions of Central Poland. When Poland was on the brink of invasion, Jews avoided
military service and deserted from the Polish army en masse (it was in this context
that the short-lived internment camp for some 5000 Jewish soldiers was set up in
Jablonna). The larger portion of the Jewish community, including the Bundists and
many members of the educated classes, and especially the youth, greeted the invading
Bolshevik hordes in 1920 with great jubilation and fanfare and took part in massive
anti-Polish rallies in plain view of their Polish neighbours. The notable exceptions
were the Orthodox and Zionist elements, which remained loyal to and made great
sacrifices for the Polish state that had taken them in centuries earlier when they
fled "pogroms" and expulsions throughout Europe (strangely, in 1939–1941, the
Bundists had learn their lesson, whereas the Zionists started to flirt with the
Soviet authorities).
Jews pointed out the direction of the Polish army and led the Bolsheviks to Polish
establishments, which were pilfered, thus striking a blow at their would-be economic
competitors. As Polish historian, Janusz Szczepanski has chronicled in his
authoritative studies on this topic, "revolutionary committees" and militias composed
almost exclusively of Jews sprang up in hundreds of localities. They set about
destroying Polish state and religious emblems, denounced Polish policemen,
officers and their families, and compiled lists of Polish patriots for the Soviet
security police. In Wasilkow near Bialystok, Jewish communists were responsible for
the deportation of members of the Polish intelligentsia and abused Polish prisoners
of war. In Rozana, sixteen Poles, who had been identified by the Jewish
"revolutionary committee" as "enemies of the people", were arrested and executed
(one of the Poles managed to escape). Many young Jews volunteered for the Bolshevik
army in their war against Poland.
Jewish opposition to Polish statehood sometimes took on violent
forms in the Eastern Borderlands. Members of the Danish diplomatic staff reported
witnessing, on April 19, 1919, Jews shooting at Polish soldiers at the train station
during the battle over the predominantly Polish city of Wilno. After taking that
town in May 1919, following its brief capture by the Bolsheviks during which time
it was under the domination of Jewish, pro-Bolshevik elements, Jozef Pilsudski
(the interwar dictator of Poland, who enjoyed considerable popularity among Jews)
recorded in his diary that the Jewish civilian population had fired shots and
thrown hand grenades at Polish soldiers from windows and housetops, but he would
not permit the Poles to strike back at the Jews. Unfortunately, such occurrences
were widespread during the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1920 (for example, in Lwow,
Lida, Pinsk), and occasionally led to unwarranted and tragic retaliations.
Because of their behaviour, and not on account of the Poles' alleged
innate anti-Semitism, Jews were struck with fear at the prospect of the return of
the Polish army, and many of them fled with the Bolsheviks. However, the acts of
retaliation which invariably follow in such cases everywhere were largely contained
by the Polish authorities, though many excesses occurred targeting collaborators
for the most part. But it was the Polish retaliations that captured the attention
of the media worldwide, not the widespread Jewish collaboration.
The following descriptions, which are rather sparse about the actual
activities of the "revolutionary committees" and the militia, are from Jewish
sources.
... The Red Army captured Goniondz [Goniadz, near Lomza]
during the Russian-Polish War of 1920. During the second day of occupation,
the Russians formed a "revolutionary committee" with the abbreviated title of
"Revkam" ["Revkom"]. Only laborers were members of "Revkam", primarily Bundists.
Josef, the son of Teme-Raizel, was the committee chairman. Hanoch, the son of
Itsche the water carrier, was the education commissar. Moishe-Feivel, the son of
Chaya Vitzes, was put in charge of sanitation. He was given the title of
"Minister". Several Christians and Zeidke Rubin constituted the militia. Hanoch
used to give talks in conjunction with the Bolshevik commissar.
The "Revkam" had the authority to issue severe sentences and even the death
penalty. None of them, however, could read or write Russian. They appointed Eli
Dlugolensky as secretary. He exploited the ignorance of "Revkam" and issued
documents as he wished. The commissar would sign each and every one. ... The
"Revkam" established a cooperative which would give notes to the [Jewish]
grain merchants with which to purchase grain. Instead of one hundred thousand
pounds of corn, the secretary would give a note for three hundred thousand
pounds. The remaining two hundred thousand pounds he would sell in Bialystok
for three times the price permitted by the cooperative.
... Yoshua, the tinsmith, who lived in the valley next door to Chayim Kobrinsky
(Chayim Polak's), took the Bolshevik speeches seriously. ... Yoshua went to the
"Revkam" and asked their assistance in facilitating this revolutionary justice.
... Yoshua, the tinsmith, was enormously disappointed when the Bolsheviks were
defeated. ... When the Red Army withdrew, all the participants in "Revkam" fled.
Hanoch, the son of the water carrier, was captured by the Polish in Kniesin
[Knyszyn], and they beat him severely. Thanks to the Jews of Kniesin, who
collected a substantial sum of ransom money, he was freed.
... When the Polish Army returned to Goniondz, the priest blocked their way with
crosses. He asked the soldiers not to treat the Jews harshly. ... The Jews put
up large posters announcing that they were going to distribute bread without
cost to the Polish military. The old Polish mayor established a new town council.
He included some young Jewish men in the new council, who were with staffs for
purposes of guard duty. There were four guards assigned to each street to prevent
attacks and robbery. ... the critical transition took place without loss of life.
[In Stawiski, near Lomza] ... Many [Jews] joined up with communism
in 1921, when the Bolsheviks invaded Poland, and our town was under their rule
for a period. I remember that when they entered our town, the faithful of the
revolution, who were mostly Jews, went out to welcome them. Many of the Jewish
young people were very proud when Golda, the daughter of the teacher Hertzke
Kolinski, stood at the helm of the "Rebkum" (town council) ["Revkom" -
revolutionary committee]. The Rebkum consisted mainly of young people in their
twenties. Golda was a proud and capable girl, and Hertzke, the brother of Chaim
Kadish [and son of Rev Avraham Ber], had the characteristics of a leader,
sure of himself and quick to make decisions [elsewhere, he is referred to as
the "leader of the local communists", and when Hertzke Kolinski took control of
the government, he is said to have "treated harshly" anyone, who appeared to him
to be "counter-revolutionary". - M.P.] In the battles that took place
between the Red army and the Polish army, a general of the Red Army was killed,
and the activists of the communist movement in our town made him a state funeral.
Golda and Hertzke walked at the front of the procession, with black armbands on
their sleeves and red flags in their hands, and the band played revolutionary music.
We, children, followed after the funeral procession until it reached the military
cemetery. If my memory serves me correctly, Perlman carried the main red flag.
We were children and did not understand anything about the ideology, however we
were proud that Jews had reached such greatness.
[Also in Stawiski] ... There was a fear that the Polish army that would
come on the heels of the retreating [Red] army would see every Jew as a
communist. There would be no shortage of groups among the gentiles, who would
support this notion, in particular since the city government during the time of
the Bolsheviks was almost all Jewish.
... As the Polish army hesitated to enter the town, lest they find remnants of
the Bolshevik army in town, a delegation of Jews went out to inform them that
the town was clear of the enemy.
The Polish army entered the town in the evening, and filled up the entire Market
Square. According to an edict from the Jewish guard, all of the stores were opened
wide, and the Jews welcomed the arriving army with joy, and gave them some of the
goods that they had left.
... We were happy that we were saved from "blood of
revenge" in their anger.
But one did not have to live close to the front line during a war to
fall victim to its rage, as immigrants learned when a large anti-Greek riot broke
out in Toronto, Canada's second largest city at the time, in August 1918.
... More than 40 Greek businesses were destroyed, the city was put
under martial law, troops were brought in and it took days of street fighting to
restore order. Resentful of Greece's early absence from World War I (the country
did not enter the war until 1917), returning Canadian troops developed a vitriolic
animosity toward the Greek merchants and restaurateurs, who at that time were
clustered in the downtown area between Yonge and Church Sts.
... Then on Aug. 1, 1918, a crippled and inebriated Canadian veteran entered the
White City Cafe at Yonge and Carlton Sts. and began a dispute with the
establishment's Greek waiters. '... Well, they beat him up and threw him out of
the restaurant, and word gets out to the veterans, who tended to concentrate in
the same (downtown) area where the Greeks lived', Gallant says [Tom Gallant is
chair of modern Greek history at York University]. '... And the following
night, about 5000 people led by 1500 veterans take to the street ... and they
destroy every Greek business they come across. I mean they demolish them.' Greek
residents soon retaliated, Gallant says, and pitched battles around Yonge and
Richmond Sts. eventually involved some 10 000 people and took two days to quell.
During that war, tens of thousands of immigrants from Germany and
Austria, many of them Ukrainians and Poles, were interned in Canadian camps as "enemy
aliens".
A frequent charge raised in relation to Jews, who were killed in Poland
in acts of revenge after the Soviet rout in June 1941 (though not in relation to
revenge perpetrated on or by any other ethnic group), is racism. Poles, as a
collective, are accused of murderous anti-Semitism by those who would ignore, or
dismiss as inconsequential, the conduct of the Jews vis-a-vis Poles during the Soviet
occupation. To tear these events from their historical context and to read into them,
as some would have it, the overriding impetus of Polish anti-Semitism, or by the same
token, anti-Polish conduct on the part of all Jews, is a dishonest and harmful
aberration that needs to be given short shrift by serious scholars.
Another dishonest and hypocritical aspect of this argument centres on
the claim that any consideration of Jewish conduct is by its very nature irrelevant,
because the only determinative factor is Polish anti-Semitism, which has a long
tradition steeped in the Poles' Catholic religion and history, with particular
emphasis being placed on the, at times, volatile interwar period. Rationally, it
would make little sense that Jews did not harbour certain feelings and preconceived
notions about Poles, just as Poles did about Jews. What were they? Rather than accept
the pundits' assurances that they were quite obviously reactive defences to innate
and irrational Polish hostility, and nothing more, let's take the trouble to look at
and listen to honest testimonies from that period before advocating selective
objections to xenophobia (a small sampling is offered below).
And let's not
assume that xenophobia, though ethically repugnant and harmful, automatically sparks
violent outburts. Xenophobic communities have managed to live side by side in
relative peace more often than waring with each other. What the careful observer
will learn is that traditional anti-Polish/Christian attitudes among Jews had a
self-perpetuating life of their own and could be every bit as harsh as Polish views
vis-a-vis Jews (this is not to say, of course, that both sides had the same
opportunity to act out their baser insticts from time to time. That dubious
privilege generally falls to the dominant group, who are often helped along by
meddling conquerors who pit one group against the other to further their goals).
Rabbi Byron L. Sherwin of Spertus College of Judaica in Chicago,
expressed the following thoughts on this topic:
... Similarly, it does not seem to occur to some Jews that
manifestations of Polish anti-Semitism might be reactions to Jewish clanishness
and parochialism. As a character in Isaac Bashevis Singer's novel "The Manor"
puts it: 'How can anyone move into someone else's home, live there in total
isolation, and expect not to suffer by it? When you despise your host's god
as a tin image, shun his wine as forbidden, condemn his daughter as unclean,
aren't you asking to be treated as an unwelcome outsider? It's as simple as
that’.
How this impacted on day-to-day life in Poland, right up to the
Second World War, is illustrated by the following testimonies. In his book
Shattered Faith, Leon Weliczker Wells, adviser to the Holocaust Library
in New York, who hails from Eastern Galicia, observed:
... Our small town, Stojanow, had about a thousand Jews and
an equal number of Poles and Ukrainians. ... We looked down on the small farmer,
whom we called Cham, which was an old traditional way of saying Am Haaretz
(people of the earth), which to us meant simpletons.
... We lived in a self-imposed ghetto without walls. The Jewish religion
fostered our living together in groups which separated us from non-Jews.
... All of these [religious] restrictions caused the Jews to live
in ghetto-like societies so that they could maintain their Jewish way of life.
... We had virtually no contact with the outside world, surely not social
contact, as our interests and responsibilities were completely different from
the goish's. ... We, young Jewish boys, did not take part in any sports as
this was considered goish. ... We Jews even tried to avoid passing a church,
and if that was impossible, we muttered an appropriate curse as we hurried by.
... We, Jews, felt superior to all others, as we were the "chosen people",
chosen by God Himself. We even repeated it in our prayers at least three
times a day, morning, afternoon, and evening ... The farmers, who, even
considering their low living standards, couldn't support an entire family,
sent their daughters to town to become servants in the Jewish households.
I never knew a Jewish girl to be a servant in a Polish household, but the
reverse was the norm. The gentile maid was referred to in negative terms
as the "shiksa" (Heb.: 'a vermin like a cockroach') [in Polish, the
term had the added etymological connotation of "urine-dripping" girl].
There was a repertoire of jokes about these girls. For example, there was
the joke about how Jewish mothers made sure that the servants were "clean",
because their sons' first sexual experience was usually with this girl.
... We were strangers to the neighboring gentiles because of our religion,
language, behavior, dress, and daily values. Poland was the only country,
where a nation lived within a nation. ... In Poland the Jew dressed
completely different from others, had beards and peyes (side curls),
spoke a different language (Yiddish), went to separate religious schools,
and sometimes even to different public schools ... Since every meal on
Sabbath and holidays started with the blessing of the wine, there was no
possibility of a pious Jew sharing a festive meal with a gentile because
the wine, once opened, became nonkosher if a gentile merely looked at it.
The laws of kashruth prevented a Jew from eating at a gentile's nonkosher
table. Thus, there was very little social intercourse between Jews and
non-Jews. We never spoke Polish at home, only Yiddish. Polish was
negatively called goish. When we spoke Polish, we had a Yiddish accent.
The newspapers and books in our homes were in Yiddish. ... We lived in a
strictly self-imposed ghetto, and it suited our requirements and wishes.
... Our parents not only praised that time [i.e., Austrian rule]
as being better for the Jews, but spoke with pride about the
superiority of German culture and its people compared to the Polish
culture. This attitude was very badly received by the Polish people.
... The belief that German culture was superior continued even to the time.
when Germany occupied Poland in 1939, and in its eastern part in 1941.
The pro-German sentiments mentioned by Weliczker Wells should
not be underestimated. Nor should religious and ethnic loyalty and
solidarity. As Prof. Yacov Talmon from the Russian partition of Poland,
acknowledged,
... many important factors infused in the Jews a spirit
of contempt and hatred towards the Poles. In contrast to the organizational
activity and capacity of the Germans, the Jews saw the Poles as failures.
The rivals most difficult to Jews, in the economic and professional fields
were the Poles, and we must not underrate the closeness of Yiddish to the
German language as well. I still remember that during my childhood the
name "goy" sounded to me as referring to Catholic Poles and not to Germans;
though I did realize that the latter were obviously not Jews, I felt that
the Germans in the vicinity were not simply Gentiles.
It would be shocking to think of it to-day, but the pre-Hitlerite relations
between Jews and Germans in our vicinity were friendly. ... In the twenties,
Jews and Germans stood together on election lists. Out of those Germans rose
such who, during the German invasion, helped in the acts of repression and
extermination as experts, who had the experience and knew the secrets.
It is not surprising, then, that in the mixed loyalties of the time Jewish
unity grew stronger and deeper, and consciousness in this direction burned
like a flame. ... the actual motherland was not a temporal one, but a
heavenly one, a vision and a dream - to the religious it was the coming of
the Messiah, to the Zionists it was a Jewish country, to the communists
and their friends it was a world revolution. And the real constitution
according to which they lived was the Shulhan Aruch, code of laws, and the
established set of virtues, or the theories of Marx, and the rules of
Zionism and the building up of a Jewish country.
Traditional values permeated the Jewish community, and these
were generally hostile towards non-Jews. There is abundant confirmation of this
in Jewish memoirs. Christian Poles were regarded as "generally an ignorant lot,
especially the peasants", states Michel Mielnicki, who hails from Wasilkow.
... But I didn't spit on the ground at the sight of a Roman Catholic nun,
as some Jews did, Mielnicki makes a point of stating. ... And I didn't
think to condemn all Christians for worshipping a false messiah and his mother.
Confirmation of these assessments can be found in many Jewish
memoirs. Halina Birenbaum concedes:
... The Poles were 'goys' ... who were regarded as pagans,
we criticized or ridiculed their tastes, customs, beliefs … We were not
taught mutual sympathy for them. They were different, foreign to us, and we to
them, often our open or hidden enemies.
When Birenbaum, who lived in Warsaw, visited her grandparents
in a small town, she was warned not to venture near a church, because that was
forbidden by the Jewish religion.
... I was eight years old then and I was taught to fear
'goys' and their distinct character. How then was I to look for or
anticipate salvation on the 'Aryan' side, when we were sentenced to
annihilation?
Anna Lanota, a psychologist who hails from Lodz, made the
following observations:
... The [Jewish] community [in which I lived]
had a somewhat unfavourable attitude toward other nations - maybe even
contemptuous. There prevailed the feeling that we were the chosen people.
In school, there was that same atmosphere that Jews were the chosen people.
We did not pay attention to what others might be saying about us.
Samuel Oliner, a Jewish scholar, recalled his childhood days
in a village in southern Poland:
... Since I was illiterate at seven, my education was not off
to a very good start. 'Shmulek will grow up to be a stupid goy!' lamented
my grandmother. ... My father put down his pencil and glanced at me, '...
The Poles are not the chosen people of God.' ... One day I rode with Mendel
to get farm supplies in Dukla. On the way home, he whipped up the horse as
we passed the gypsy camp. The frown on his face showed exactly how he felt
... The presence of a gentile defiled the home of a Jew, and no good was
certain to come of it. ... some Jews regarded the Poles with contempt and
caution, but we had still been on good terms.
Dora Kacnelson, who lived in Bialystok before the war, said:
... There are tolerant Jews, like my father for instance,
but there are also fanatical ones, holding on tight to old traditions.
... The orthodox Jews considered Christians to be beneath them.
Irena Kisielewska, born into a middle class family in Piotrkow,
a fairly large city in Central Poland, recalled:
... And what did I know about the other, non-Jewish world?
In my home we spoke about goys with a certain irony and aversion which found
its strongest expression in my grandmother's saying 'Meine shlekhte khulims
of ale goims kieps', which roughly means 'May my worse dreams fall on their
heads'. But I do not recall any conflict except for one incident, when someone
threw a stone into the prayer house on the Feast of Tabernacles during prayers.
Generally, the tenants in our home opened their windows to hear these prayers.
My grandfather had a beautiful voice and apparently I wasn't the only one, who
enjoyed listening to him. I was warned about hooligans who attacked Jewish
children on their way from school, but I do not recall ever having encountered
something like that. ... I don't think that I ever asked myself before the war
whether I was Polish or Jewish. I was Jewish, and that was obvious. My
Polishness was accidental since some of my ancestors had settled here, but
could just as well have settled elsewhere. ... My father spoke Polish poorly,
but my mother spoke it impeccably. My parents spoke Yiddish between themselves
but spoke to [the children] in Polish. Neither I nor Ala knew Yiddish.
My means of expression was therefore the Polish language, but it didn't mean
anything special to me. ... Polish literature had no appeal for me nor did it
have any impact on my state of mind ... I do not recall ever being moved by
the partitions of Poland or the country's loss of independence. That was not
part of my history. I knew only too well that none of my ancestors had taken
part in any Polish uprising. ... In my family - and I'm thinking here above all
about my grandparents, goys were spoken of with a certain disdain. They were
the ones, who didn't know that Christ was not the Messiah. Moreover, just like
the pagans, they prayed to pictures. ... the boundary between our world and
their strange world was laden with an entire system of taboos. I knew that
the worst, the most unimaginable sin was to convert. It was not permissible
even to assume a kneeling position, even through inadvertence.
According to Lucien Steinberg:
... The non-Jews were not wholly responsible for [the]
inevitable barrier [between them], even though they might greet any
friendly advance with reserve. The Jews themselves distrusted those of their
own kind who tried to strike up a relationship with 'the others' and there was
always that underlying fear of losing substance.
A Jew from the city of Konin, remarked in retrospect:
... You need to look at it both ways. The Jews never mixed
with their neighbours. The community tried to separate itself. ... I think the
Jews could have mixed more with their neighbours and still kept their identity.
Another testimony of a Jewish woman from Konin states:
... Jewish parents discouraged their children from forming
friendships with Polish children. 'My father would not let me bring shikses
[a derogatory term for young female Christians] into the house and he would
not let me go to their homes ...' Socializing between unmarried Jews and
Christians of the opposite sex was taboo. ... Thus Jewish apartheid ...
persisted not solely as a result of Christian prejudice but through choice.
A Jewish woman, who lived in a tenement in Minsk Mazowiecki,
near Warsaw, has similar recollections:
... Our neighbors were the Izbrechts, a Polish family ...
The youngest girl was named Jozka, and I played with her all the time despite
the fact that my grandmother beat me good so that I would not play with her.
My grandmother did not allow me to play with Jozka Izbrecht because she was
Polish and she feared that if I went to her home I would eat something with
pork in it. So my grandmother beat me, but I still played with Jozka.
Fanya Gottesfeld Heler, who grew up in Skala, in southeastern
Poland, recalled:
... We knew little about the gentiles; they lived their lives
and we lived our lives. ... Business was the main contact between us. ... One of
my fellow pupils was the grandson of the manager of the count's estate ... As
children, this boy and I played hide-and-seek in the estate's huge and beautiful
park ... His family would invite me at Christmas to see the tree ... But typical
of our relationship with the gentiles, we never invited them to our home for
Chanukah.
Sally Grubman recalled her childhood in the large industrial city
of Lodz:
... It was one of those integrated areas, where Jews clung
together and had nothing to do with the gentiles. We never visited our gentile
neighbors and they didn't visit us. The children didn't play together. I
remember once there was some Easter celebration and the girl next door wanted
to show me the beautiful table. She sneaked me in for a moment, when no one was
looking - just to look - and then I left.
Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, one of the members of the wartime Council
for Aid to Jews (Zegota), stated that, when he was growing up in a tenement-house
in a primarily Jewish area of prewar Warsaw, the mothers of the Jewish children
often scolded their children for playing with "that stupid, Polish goy".
Martin Zaidenstadt, from Jedwabne, remembered his father's disapproval of his
playing soccer with the Polish boys in town. On one occasion he was whacked
thrice with a thick leather strap for the specific misdeed of playing soccer
with the shaigitzi and for missing temple.
And, as candid Jewish witnesses (such as Joanna Wiszniewicz) admit, even
culturally assimilated Jews from the educated classes - doctors, lawyers,
professors - who spoke only Polish, generally considered themselves to be
Jews, not Poles, and shunned personal contacts with Poles. But societal
pressures were especially strong in small towns and villages where breaches
of traditional norms were treated mercilessly.
In Baranowicze, Sara Bytenski, the daughter of a pious Jew, was
spotted one afternoon behind some trees kissing her Christian boyfriend. A
group of teenaged Jewish boys spontaneously rallied to her "defence":
... When the man turned his head, our horror turned to outrage.
He was a "goy" - a Gentile! For us, it was not only sin, it was mortal sin
- a Jewish soul was in danger of being lost! We looked at each other,
wild-eyed. She had to be saved - it was our sacred duty!
There were plenty of stones lying around; collecting pocketfuls of them
we stormed forward, valiant saviours, hurling our weapons of destruction
at the infamous desecrators ... A few months later we all had a second
shock. The poor girl had had no success in convincing her family that
her lover was willing to convert to our faith in order to marry her,
so she ran away with him. The shame of it was too much for her father,
a poor but well-respected tailor. He declared a whole year of mourning,
closed his shop and sat, all day long on the floor, wearing a torn black
garment praying loudly and begging the Almighty for forgiveness for the
daughter, now dead to him, who had brought such shame and humiliation on
her parents and her people alike.
Needless to add, Jews who embraced Christianity were treated
with particular aversion.
In the small town of Ejszyszki, near Wilno, ... the Jewish
community lost no opportunity to express its revulsion toward [Goldke],
who had converted to Catholicism to marry a Catholic man.
When Meir Hilke converted to Catholicism in 1921 to marry a Catholic woman,
... Not a single Jew was to be found on the streets ... and all the doors
and windows were shut against the terrible sight.
But such attitudes were also common in large centres.
Maurice Shainberg, a Jew from a well-to-do Orthodox family
from Warsaw, faced universal ostracism on the part of his family, friends
and community for courting a Polish Christian girl from his own neighbourhood.
Some of his acquaintances were very frank about the consequences:
... How can you walk down the street with her? You'll be
ostracized, beaten, ridiculed. Your own people are going to hate you ...
What's going to happen, when your father finds out? You may give him a
heart attack.
To escape the harassment, they frequented one of the better
Polish restaurants: ... I didn't have to worry about being heckled for
dating a Polish girl. No one paid any attention to us. Eventually, he
... started calling for her at her apartment, and her parents didn't
seem to mind.
Paradoxically, anti-assimilationist attitudes were promoted
in Poland by Jews, who had settled in the United States and Western Europe,
even though they would never have advocated the same stance there.
Lucy Dawidowicz, who before the war paid an extended visit to
Wilno, where most Jews spoke Yiddish and knew little, if any, Polish, wrote:
... Not knowing Polish, I didn't get to meet many of those
Polish-speaking university-educated Jews. That didn't bother me, for I had
somehow come to believe that they weren't my kind of people and didn't live
in my kind of world. ... The other Polish speakers whom I met, yet barely
knew, I labeled as "assimilated", even "assimilationist", that is, advocates
of assimilation. Those were a Yiddishist's pejorative words, darkly
intimating that to speak Polish instead of Yiddish was a public act of
betrayal, an abandonment of one's people.
Another extreme manifestation of Jewish anti-Christian attitudes,
though certainly not unusual, was recorded by Dr. Abraham Sterzer from Eastern
Galicia:
... I received the traditional Jewish education in a
"heder" (religious school). Our rabbi insisted that we, Jewish children, spit
on the ground and utter curses while passing near a cross, or whenever we
encountered a Christian priest or religious procession. Our shopkeepers used
to say that "it is a Mitzveh (blessed deed) to cheat a Goy (gentile)".
Indeed, the sight of Jews, spitting when passing a roadside cross
or deliberately avoiding a church, was commonplace in prewar Poland.
Another Jew, Benjamin Bender, recalled the stern admonition he
received as a boy in Czestochowa:
... My grandfather admonished me to stay away from the church,
promising harsh heavenly punishment in the event I didn't heed his warning.
The Brzozow Memorial Book, published in 1984, records the
following testimony, not realizing the irony of those words and admonitions:
... The oldsters of the former generation had a long account
with the Church and always tried to bypass it when in the neighbourhood,
turning their heads away so as not to see it. ... so, too, in the matter of
the Church, we saw just how right they had been. The very name of the
Church aroused not only the fears buried in the sub-conscious and
associations ... it also stood for all the evils of the present ... It was
not love of man that emanated from it but hatred. Ignorant priests,
hoodlums in vestments, used its "sacred pulpits" to preach sermons that
incited brutish masses. Possessed by a fathomless hatred of the Jews,
they could not rest until their dream of a "Juden-rein" Poland was so
monstrously realized before their very eyes. ... The Church - that was
the source of this evil, the fountain-head that nourished it all.
Yet we also learn, from the testimony of a Jew from Brzozow,
who served in the Polish army and was taken prisoner by the Germans in the
September 1939 campaign, that Polish nuns in Rzeszow brought food and
encouragement to both Polish and Jewish prisoners of war alike.
Rachmiel Frydland, who grew up among Christians in the Chelm
region and was educated in a yeshiva, wrote:
... Our relations with the non-Jewish population were
never very good ... There were the Polish-speaking Gentiles, who were Roman
Catholics, some more pious than others. We were most afraid of them. We
considered them idol worshipers. My parents were proud to point out to me
that they taught their children to consider the images on their walls as
gods. There was not a home without at least three images: one of Jesus,
with His heart showing; one of the "matka boska", the "mother of God";
and one of Joseph, the husband of Mary. The priest would come to the
village at times and bring the "transubstantiated" wafer, which they
believed became the flesh and blood of the Messiah. But at that time
the priest's coming only hardened our hearts. We knew we worshiped the
only true God, and not priests and images.
... In these early years, I had few contacts of any sort with Christianity.
At about this time I learned the stories of Jesus from the Jewish point of
view. They are given in the infamous book of legends composed in the
Middle Ages and entitled Toledot Yeshu (The History of Jesus). Some of
the material is already embodied in the Talmud: that Jesus was born an
illegitimate child and He forced Mary, His mother, to admit it; how He
learned sorcery in Egypt; how He made Himself fly up into the sky by
sewing the ineffable name of Jehovah into the skin of his leg, but a
famous rabbi did the same and brought Jesus down!
... Thus in the yeshiva, the Talmud reigned supreme. The Old Testament
Bible could be used only for reference and there were no secular studies
whatsoever.
I had no contacts with Christianity at all. On the way to school we passed
a Roman Catholic church and a Russian Orthodox church, and we spat,
pronouncing the words found in Deuteronomy 7:26, '… thou shalt utterly
detest it, and thou shalt utterly abhor it; for it is a cursed thing'.
I said it halfheartedly, because of my previous favorable contact with
Christianity and because some questions were beginning to creep into
my mind. Why should we say such horrible words? The people looked pious.
They came from surrounding villages to worship, and they never bothered
us.
As I continued studying the Talmud, I came to a passage that told of a
cruel punishment for that Sinner of Israel, meaning Jesus. For one sin
of deriding the rabbis, He was punished forever and ever with cruelty
as to be "judged in boiling excrement". I did not like this story at
all. Did it really mean what it said? Could I possibly be in full
agreement with this? Did not I also have doubts about the rabbis' claims
that their teachings were given to Moses on Mount Sinai? What then
would MY punishment be? It was many years before I dared to proclaim
these doubts openly.
The hatred toward Christianity ran deep, was undoubtedly
palpable to the Poles, and was enduring. The cross was particularly loathed
as an evil omen.
Albin (Tobiasz) Koc from Nowy Sacz recalled how rascally Jewish children
from religious schools (heders) would beset pious, elderly Jews,
cross two fingers, and taunt them by calling out, "a tsailim" (Heb.:
"crucifix"). The enraged, elderly Jews would respond with dire warnings,
the traditional spitting, chasing, and even rock throwing.
There were, of course, Jews who tried to shake off this
legacy. One witness (Rabbi Abraham D. Feffer) recalls his father telling
him and his siblings
... to respect Gentiles, especially good Christians.
[He] ... did not want us to refer to them in the derisive word 'goy',
but that it should rather be "Krist" for a man and "Kristen" for a woman.
As could be expected, there was also an infusion of racist
stereotyping on the part of the Jews that accentuated, beyond all proportion,
certain negative qualities found in Polish society. For example,
British-Jewish intellectual Rafael F. Scharf recalls a Jewish song from his
youth spent in Krakow that
... ran something like this: 'Shiker is a goy - Shiker
is ertrinken miz er - weil er is a goy' (A goy is a drunkard - but drink
he must - because he is a goy).
Scharf also underscored the sense of self-imposed
separateness and isolation that, on the whole, historically divided the
Polish and Jewish communities:
... many Jews, if they spoke Polish at all, spoke with
a funny accent.
... Even in a small place like Cracow, where Kazimierz, the Jewish quarter,
existed cheek by jowl with the non-Jewish, the lives of those neighbouring
communities were, in many important senses, separate. It was possible for
a Jew to grow up in a family circle, study, or prepare for a trade yet not
cross the border dividing the Polish and Jewish communities. A great many
Jews, in the district of Nalewki in Warsaw, in the hundreds of "shtetlach",
besides a sporadic contact with a supplier or a client lived thus - not
together, but next to each other, on parallel lines, in a natural,
contended isolation. During my whole life in Cracow, till my departure
before the war, I was never inside a truly Polish home, whose smell, caught
in passing, was somehow different, strange. I did not miss it, considered
this division natural. I also do not remember whether in our home, always
full of people, guests, visitors, passers-by, friends of my parents, my
brother's and mine, there ever was a non-Jew, except for one neighbour
and the caretaker, who would come to collect his tips, and, of course,
the maid who inhabited the kitchen.
Are we to disbelieve these testimonies or reject them as
irrelevant or insignificant? If not, what was the impact of that legacy
on Polish-Jewish relations? We need not look to the pundits for any
enlightenment on this topic. In short, there are many testimonies attesting
to the fact that Jews displayed as broad a range of attitudes and emotions
concerning the Poles, as undoubtedly Poles did toward the Jews. Because of
their traditional upbringing, often these were very negative. It would fly
in the face of reason and common sense to conclude that these did not carry
over into the wartime period, both under Soviet and German occupation, and
that they would not have been exacerbated by the devastating and intrusive
policies of the two most murderous totalitarian regimes of the Twentieth
Century. But to assign to them an overriding role without first carefully
examining and analyzing the impact of actual events as they unfolded is a
foolhardy venture. That approach does not befit a serious observer of those
troubling times.
POLISH-JEWISH RELATIONS UNDER SOVIET
OCCUPATION, 1939-1941
POLAND'S ETHNIC MINORITIES AND THE NAZI-SOVIET
OCCUPATION OF POLAND
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