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NEIGHBOURS ON THE EVE Mark Paul
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Anti-Polish and Anti-Christian Agitation, Vandalism, and Looting Despite the propaganda claims of equal treatment of all nationalities, the Soviet Union was known to persecute various groups on ethnic grounds. The first nationality to be targeted in the 1930s was the Polish minority in Soviet Ukraine and Soviet Belorussia, who were arrested en masse and deported to the Soviet interior. Tens of thousands of them perished during that ordeal. With the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the Soviet press adopted a pro-Nazi point of view and embarked on an anti-Polish propaganda campaign which soon turned into an all-out policy of combating not only Polish institutions, schools, and organizations, but indeed all manifestations of Polishness. Hitler's speeches berating Poland and the Poles were quoted extensively. Virtually every issue of each major Soviet Russian newspaper ran at least one hostile article, with a height of thirty-nine such articles and poems in Pravda on September 19, 1939, two days after the Soviet invasion of Poland. But not only did the Soviet press appeal to, and thus perpetuate, centuries-old nationalistic hatreds - it gave a clear signal to the local Russian-speaking authorities to condone or encourage violence against Poles. This official sanctioning of violence, combined with the prewar grievances of the minorities, made Poles into scapegoats. The Soviet press encouraged hatred of "Poland of the 'Pans'", "Polish gentry", or simply "Poles", while ignoring the fact that the government of the Second Republic had abolished all titles of nobility. As historian Ewa M. Thompson explains:
Broad cross-sections of Jewish society joined in this anti-Polish campaign: On 30 September [1939], Finansovaia gazeta reported that during such festivities [of "liberation" from the oppression of the Polish overlords] in the city of Bialystok, ... a 20-year-old house painter Goldkor ... proposed that a telegram with thanks be sent to Comrade Stalin. On 20 September, Pravda described ... a meeting of the intelligentsia ... in the town of Slonim. In this town of under 20 000, 750 members of the local intelligentsia were said to have attended this meeting, among them ... Drs. Weiss and Kovarskii ..., who gave anti-Polish speeches. On 13 October in Pravda, G. Rylkin ridiculed Tomasz Kapitulko, former head of a labour union in Bialystok, only because Kapitulko was Polish. On 20 October in Pravda, A. Erlikh spoke of ... western Belorussia that had been tortured by Poles. On 29 September 1939, Pravda published a testimonial by a Mr. Prager about his stay in a "Polish concentration camp". On 10 March 1940, Pravda published an article entitled "Letters from western parts of Ukraine and Belorussia", which stated that an American Jewish daily, published in New York in Yiddish, had issued a special supplement containing letters from persons in Soviet-occupied Poland. An inhabitant of Grodno is said to have written the following to his brother in the United States: Dear brother: Now we are free. We have jobs and try to forget the terrible life in Poland in the past. The prominence given by the Soviet papers to Jewish names in the descriptions could hardly be accidental though they were likely representative. Numerous accounts found throughout this compilation attest to the frequency with which derogatory statements were made in public, especially at meetings and rallies, about Poland and the Poles. Anti-Polish agitation was also prevalent in private settings where spontaneous outbursts were the order of the day in the early period. As one Jewish witness reported:
Even religious Jews could use the prevailing political climate to disparage Poles with impunity about such things as their non-kosher diet and their Catholic beliefs. The first interwar politician to come out publicly in support of the German-Soviet partition of Poland was Jakub Wygodzki [Wygodski], a Zionist leader and former deputy to Poland's Parliament [Seym], who was to head the city's Jewish council. Wygodzki stated that ... the majority of the Jewish community expresses its satisfaction at the fact that the Lithuanians have entered Wilno, an opinion seconded in the Lithuanian press by Benjamin Bursztejn, another local Zionist activist. Examples of other forms of anti-Polish and anti-Catholic activities carried out by Jews abound: As in the village of Wielkie Oczy, near Lubaczow, noted earlier, Jewish youths who joined the "Komsomol" roamed the vicinity of Skidel, near Grodno, destroying Catholic roadside shrines. Near Lyskow, south of Wolkowysk, a roadside cross was knocked over and the figure of the crucified Jesus was removed. In Naliboki, near Stolpce in Nowogrodek province, Jews demolished a statue of St. John adorning a pond and throwing it into the water. A Jew, who prepared the market square for the erection of a statue of Stalin in Wolozyn, detonated a large cross that stood in the way. Jewish communists by the name of Schmarka Itzkovic and Yishaiau Rubin removed religious banners from the Catholic church in Wiszniew, affixed red flags to the poles, and paraded with them across town to the market square. There, they stood at the head of the committee that welcomed the Red Army and its officers with bread and salt. In Wisniowiec (Volhynia), a group of young Jews hurled rocks at the Carmelite monastery, smashing the historic stained-glass windows of the church. The local communist militia, comprised of Jews and Ukrainians, desecrated portraits in the Catholic bishop's residence in Luck by poking out the eyes with bayonets. Jews attempted unsuccessfully to seize the Catholic chapel in the colony of Szemiotowka, near Kobryn. Shortly after the Soviet entry a civilian mob of about 100 people armed with pistols and bearing red armbands, almost all of them Jews, stormed into the seminary in Pinsk and stole all the possessions in that complex of buildings. The priests and clerics were rounded up, forced into the courtyard and threatened with execution as enemies of the communist regime. A Soviet patrol, drawn there by the commotion, liberated the priests from their frenzied captors (the Soviets were not, of course, opposed to oppressing the clergy - that had after all killed off tens of thousands of Christian clergymen since the Revolution - but it were they, who were to decide when the time was right to strike, and not their overzealous lackeys). Elsewhere in that town Polish women locked themselves in a church to prevent Jewish policemen from desecrating it. A group of Jews, composed of both men and women, invaded the Catholic church and rectory in Lomazy, near Biala Podlaska. They destroyed liturgical robes, religious artifacts and church records. In Jedwabne, a local harness maker and communist sympathizer by the name of Yakov Katz, defecated in front of the church door (though not in front of the synagogue), and mocked the "stupid Polacks" for building a church that became an outhouse. In Uscilug, on the River Bug (Volhynia), local Jews organized a pro-atheist spectacle in which a horse was dressed in Christian liturgical vestments and paraded around town. The wife of the head of the "revolutionary committee", a Mrs. Kohn, also an ardent communist herself, evicted the nuns from the hospital in Sniatyn and discarded religious artifacts from the hospital chapel. It should be noted that Soviet soldiers did not take part in these sacrilegious deeds, many of which are recorded in Jewish accounts. They appear to have been an entirely local initiative, directed at the Catholic Church and mirrored the actions carried out by the Nazis in German-occupied Poland. There too the Germans destroyed countless Catholic churches, shrines and monuments and German soldiers, dressed in clerical robes and carrying banners and other religious artifacts, conducted mock processions. There is no record of similar assaults on synagogues in the Soviet zone. Bishop Franciszek Barda of Przemysl reported in November 1939 that his chancery had been taken over as a dwelling place for Jews, and that some Jewish women had attempted to occupy the episcopal residence, where the auxiliary bishop and several priests resided. In Zolkiew, militiamen, most of them Jews, expropriated a monastery in order to house Jewish refugees from the German occupation zone. A committee, consisting of Jewish communists, was put in charge of the schools of the Benedictine and Ursuline Orders in Lwow - they implemented the new, atheistic curriculum bereft of references to Polish history. A Jew by the name of Schnellig was appointed the "director" of the Catholic seminary in Lwow. Schnellig oversaw the confiscation of the furnishings of Bishop Eugeniusz Baziak, who had to leave the building, and summoned the militia to invigilate all activities at the seminary. Schnellig took every opportunity to mock Poland and the Poles. He even ordered the Franciscan Sisters of the Family of Mary (Marian Sisters), who ran a nearby nursery school, to issue sacramental wine to the children for lunch. Another Jew, who had completed his rabbinical studies, frequently stood watch outside the seminary church and attempted to engage the clerics in conversation about religion. This Jew was very malicious and aggressive and ridiculed the Catholic faith. Student delegations were convoked to a theatre in Lwow on October 15, 1939 and informed that religious instruction and prayers were being banned at schools and crucifixes would be removed. Jewish delegates raised cheers in honour of Stalin and the Communist Party and started to sing the "Internationale". When Polish students intoned the hymns "My chcemy Boga" ("We Want God") and "Nie rzucim ziemi" ("We Will Not Forsake This Land") in protest, a scuffle broke out. As a result, many of the Polish students were arrested. Before the sham referendum held in the Fall of 1939 to secure the populace's approval to the incorporation of the southeastern Borderlands into the Ukrainian SSR, trucks decorated with red flags, banners and propaganda placards, full of mostly Jewish youths boisterously singing songs praising the Soviet Union and maligning Poland and Poles, circulated throughout Lwow. Jewish teachers took charge of the orphanage of the Sisters Servants of the Blessed Virgin Mary of the Immaculate Conception in Bilka Szlachecka near Lwow, and ardently preached atheism to the children. Young Jews distributed anti-religious leaflets during Catholic religious services. The Christmas season presented an opportunity for a Jewish teacher in Derazne, near Kostopol, to tear religious medallions off the necks of Christian children and to forbid them from wearing them. On February 22, 1940, a group of school children in Boryslaw started singing the Polish religious hymn "Boze, cos Polske" ("God, who protected Poland"), instead of the "Internationale". This led to the arrest of Monsignor Andrzej Osikowicz, who was eventually released after interventions by the Polish population. A few days later, local Jewish communists burst into the Catholic church destroying and making off with paintings and religious artifacts. In the ensuing melee with the enraged Christian population, six Jews were injured. Most of these ardent teachers were local Jews, whose educational and pedagogical qualifications were often very poor. However, the principals of many schools were Jews who had been brought in from the Soviet Union. As Dov Levin concedes, they were committed ideologues without exception. The destruction of libraries and burning of Polish books was a common spectacle under both the Nazi and Soviet rules in Poland. In Bialzorka, near Krzemieniec, where the Bolsheviks were greeted enthusiastically by Ukrainians and Jews, one of the first deeds in which the rabble joined was the destruction of the local library and the burning of Polish books. A similar fate met the Pedagogical Library, attached to the Emilia Plater High School in Grodno. A commission composed of two Jews arrived at the Library in December 1939 to examine the holdings. If a book contained the word "God", that was enough to justify its destruction - regardless of the subject matter which the inspectors did not know or care to know. Almost the entire collection was confiscated and later burned. The archives assembled in the Dominican monastery in Lwow were also ravaged. Books and documents, some of them very old and priceless, were destroyed deliberately and through neglect. The chief "custodian" was a Jew from Lodz, an NKVD informer, who kept taking over more of the building and did his utmost to try to evict the monks. Fortunately, on occasion, some people at the Municipal Office came to their aid. This Jew also played a key role in luring Father Czeslaw Kaniak, the second prior, to a meeting in the nearby arsenal ostensibly to sign a lease. Father Kaniak was arrested and taken to the NKVD prison on Pelczynska Street. He was never heard of again (there is some indication he was sentenced in Kirovograd in November 1940). On Easter Sunday in 1940, a youth brigade attached to the security services invaded the church and disrupted the mass. Upon leaving the church worshippers were confronted with the blaring music of the "Internationale". Soon after the Soviet arrival, a large rally was organized in the old market square in Lomza at which a Jew stood on a motor vehicle screaming that the Poles will now be put in their place. When word leaked out that the NKVD would be staging a public book burning, Polish students conspired to smuggle out books from their high school library. The plan was foiled by the school's new principal, Sura Malinowicz, a local Jewish woman, who promptly reported the students to the authorities. The female students were arrested and the library holdings were destroyed. As under Nazi rule, numerous Polish monuments were destroyed or desecrated throughout Eastern Poland. Polish coat of arms and emblems, as well as pictures of Polish leaders, were removed immediately from government offices, schools and public places. With the help of the local Jewish population, a monument honouring the Poles, who rose against the Russian occupiers in 1863–1864, was destroyed in Zambrow on orders of a Jewish commissar (local Jews, including town councillors, had vehemently opposed its erection before the war). A statue of St. John was pelted with stones and damaged during the May Day celebration in that town in 1940. In order to mark the entry of the Soviet Army, Jewish teenagers in Baranowicze converged on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier located in the centre of the town and smashed the eagle - the Polish national emblem - that adorned that monument, with their axes. In Dzisna, in the evening of September 17, a group of Jews together with a few Belorussians set out with torches to demolish a bust of Marshal Jozef Pilsudski - widely revered as having saved Poland from the Bolshevik onslaught in 1921 - located in the centre of Jozef Poniatowski Avenue. Singing the "Internationale", they hacked the monument to pieces with crowbars and axes. A memorial tablet commemorating the Polish students, who fell in defence of Lwow in 1918–1919, was blotted out by Jews in that city. Polish high school students, who were taken to cinemas to watch Soviet film chronicles in October 1939, and mocked the alleged accomplishments of Soviet learning and technology, were fingered by Jews and escorted out by the NKVD. They were soon dispatched to the Gulag. That these actions were not motivated solely by communist zeal, but had a distinct anti-Polish and anti-Catholic edge, is underscored by the fact that there is no record of Jewish monuments and synagogues being vandalized or profaned. It is noteworthy that the anti-religious policies and anti-Church activities of the Soviet regime were overseen (until his death in 1943) by Yemelian Yaroslavsky (actually Miney Israilevich Gubelman), a Jew who had started up the powerful Association of Atheists. Yaroslavsky attracted many fanatical followers among Jews, who vigorously persecuted and virtually destroyed the Catholic Church, which was mostly Polish, in the Soviet Union before the outbreak of World War II. The first Christmas under Soviet rule was marred by Adam Wazyk (Wagman), a Jewish literary figure in prewar Poland, who railed against the Catholic clergy in the communist daily Czerwony Sztandar, for spreading religious propaganda ... around the Christmas tree. As one shall see, in their role as members of the militia and in other official capacities, Jews engaged in widespread pilfering of property belonging to Poles. The initial stages of the Soviet occupation also presented an opportunity for Jewish gangs, and others, to loot Polish estates. An estate in Podweryszki, near Bieniakonie (southeast of Wilno), owned by the Kiersnowski family, was totally stripped of its belongings. One of the gangs who plundered the mansion was led by a local Jew. Poles also felt Jewish wrath in their day-to-day lives: Jewish shops in Dzisna remained closed and goods were not allowed to be purchased until the new Soviet authorities arrived. The Jews thereby left their Christian neighbours, their long-time clients, to fend for themselves. The local Polish school was soon turned into a Russian one, even though there were extremely few Russians in the area. A Polish student recalls being reproached by her teacher, a Jewish friend of her mother's and a graduate of the Stefan Batory University in Wilno, in Russian:
Chaim Chomski [Chomsky], the head of the municipal administration ("Gorsovet") in Slonim and an ardent opponent of Polish statehood, forbade the use of the Polish language in public. In Szumsk, near Krzemieniec,
Symbolic funerals were held throughout Eastern Poland to mark the destruction of the Polish state. An eyewitness reported on such an event staged in Boryslaw, in which, to their credit, not all Jews rejoiced:
A coffin with "Poland" inscribed on it was also paraded around in Lwow, and doubtless in many other localities. The new authorities also used every opportunity to foster hatred for Poland. In the largely Jewish town of Zofiowka (or Zofjowka), near Luck, anti-Polish posters were plastered on many homes. At the start of the new school year (delayed until October 1939), the NKVD further poisoned the atmosphere by inciting students to recall incidents of harassment of ethnic minorities in independent Poland. This call was taken up by a portion of the Jewish youth, even though relations among students of various ethnic and religious backgrounds in prewar Polish schools had been proper. Their conduct and taunts caused many Polish students to drop out of school. In a Pinsk school, Jewish students called their Polish colleagues "Polish dogs". Public meetings, rallies and assemblies inevitably became forums for anti-Polish agitation. Independent Poland was accused of outrageous acts of oppression, directed at just about everyone - minorities, workers, peasants, military servicemen, children of school age, etc. Jews were particularly prominent at political rallies, where they relished taking crude swipes at Poland and Poles: Nu, Poland's finally gone to the devil. Poland is in a sack held by Hitler at one end and by Stalin at the other. It was an atmosphere in which denunciations abounded. At a public meeting held in Wolozyn, the participants were invited to tell about their life under the Polish regime. A Jew ascended the stage and, turning his face to the wall, showed a hole in his torn pants, and then said: Our whole life under the Polacks was like my pants. At a meeting organized by the Soviet authorities in Ustrzyki Dolne, Szmyrko Bergenbaum, an affluent Jew from Sanok who owned a store, restaurant and skittle-alley, and whose children had completed their higher education under Polish rule, screamed out: To hell with Poland! as he held a Polish flag in his hand. He then took the flag, smashed it and trampled it. During the 1940 May Day rally in Wizna, Lejb Guzowski, who held the position of political agitator at the school and secretary of the local communist organization, stood on the base of the destroyed Polish military monument and railed at the Polish population, who had been instructed to assemble for the event: You have to remember once and for all that Poland will never return. The great Soviet Union and we are the masters of this land. The Jews in the crowd yelled out: Long live the Red Army! Long live our great leader and father Stalin! The Poles were dejected and enraged at the conduct of the occupiers and their collaborators. That June Guzowski was executed by the Polish underground. At times, Jews competed with one another in fabricating charges against the Polish State. One young Jew in Lwow railed on how every Polish count, officer and landowner had the right to cast from six to ten votes in Polish elections, whereas a peasant or worker did not have even one vote. A Jewish professor noted, with shame, that Jewish speakers dominated a special meeting called at the University of Lwow to greet the new Soviet rulers:
Poles were also compelled to attend these spectacles and anyone, who dared to question the malicious and humiliating attacks, was soon arrested and given a harsh prison term. Needless to say, prewar communists and the radicalized Jewish youth did not need much encouragement to jump on the bandwagon. But this circus also attracted masses of noncommunist Jews, who were consumed by the Soviet propaganda. As one teenage resident of Grodno from a prominent, well-to-do family recalls:
The People's Assemblies of Western Belorussia and Western Ukraine, convoked at the end of October 1939, provided a forum for local delegates to show their new loyalties. One Jewish speaker, who had completed teachers' college in Poland, speaking in Yiddish, claimed that in Poland: ... schools were a rare exception and consisted of one or two classes. He called on the delegates to incorporate the region into Soviet Belorussia. Another speaker, a Jewish deputy from Boryslaw, maintained that under Polish rule more than 20 000 people in his city of 45 000 were starving. He exalted the Soviet invaders for their concern for the workers and urged that the region be incorporated into Soviet Ukraine. Loyalties changed overnight. A Jewish lawyer from Central Poland by the name of Henoch Korngold had always distanced himself from his Jewish colleagues in Wilno, the "Litvaks", who spoke Russian among themselves, underscoring that he was a Pole of the Jewish religion. After Poland's defeat, however, he expressed to a former Polish judge his delight that the Polish rule had finally come to an end. One Jew recalled, shortly after, typical scenes he had witnessed:
A Jew from Mir expressed the sentiments of many of his compatriots, when he commented about the transformed relations between Poles and Jews:
There was precious little brotherhood to be had. This state of affairs was not to the liking of all Jews, however. A faculty colleague of Wanda Pomykalska's father, who had taken refuge in Stanislawow, confided:
Of course, the communists should not shoulder all the blame. Without a multitude of willing players, scenes as those described above could not have occurred.
POLISH-JEWISH RELATIONS UNDER SOVIET
OCCUPATION, 1939-1941
Last modified December 14, 2009 1:20 PM |
