NEIGHBOURS ON THE EVE OF THE HOLOCAUST

Mark Paul

Mark Paul is a contributing author of: Kielce - July 4, 1946 - Background, Context and Events [1996] and The Story of Two Shtetls - Bransk and Ejszyszki [1998]; he compiled: Wartime Rescue of Jews by the Polish Catholic Clergy - The Testimony of Survivors [forthcoming; the internet version is posted at www.savingjews.org]; his most recent (in progress) works are: Neighbours on the Eve of the Holocaust - Polish-Jewish Relations in Soviet-Occupied Eastern Poland, 1939-1941 [the internet edition posted here is an abridged version of a forthcoming publication under the same title. The copious annotations to the printed edition have not been included in the internet version] and A Tangled Web - Polish-Jewish Relations in Wartime Northeastern Poland and the Aftermath

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Foreword

On August 23, 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union entered into a Nonaggression Pact (the so-called Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact) which paved the way for the imminent invasion of Poland. A Secret Protocol to that Pact provided for the partition of Poland, as well as for Soviet domination of the Baltic States and Bessarabia. Germany attacked Poland on September 1, while the Soviet strike was delayed until September 17. Polish forces continued to fight pitched battles with the Germans until early October 1939 (the last large battle was fought at Kock on October 5), after which the struggle went underground.

After overrunning Poland, the Nazis and Soviets agreed, under the terms of a Secret Supplementary Protocol to the German-Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty of the 28 of September 1939, to a redrawn common border. Each side seized roughly half of Poland, thus ensuring that the country was once again wiped off the face of Europe. They also undertook a common struggle against the Polish independence movement - to suppress "all beginnings" of "Polish agitation" and to keep each other informed of their progress. In fact, this ushered in a period of close cooperation between the NKVD and the Gestapo. Contacts between the two organizations intensified and conferences were held to discuss how best to combat Polish resistance and eradicate Polish national existence. A joint instructional centre for officers of the NKVD and the Gestapo was opened at Zakopane in December 1939. The decision to massacre Polish officers at Katyn was taken concurrently with a conference of high officials of the Gestapo and NKVD convened in Zakopane on February 20, 1940. While the Soviets had undertaken the extermination of captured Polish officers, the Germans carried out (starting March 31) a parallel "Operation AB" aimed at destroying Poland's elites.

This partnership did not remain a secret for long. On September 19, Pravda published a Soviet-German communique confirming the joint role of Hitler's and Stalin's armies in the invasion of Poland. On September 30, Pravda proudly announced to millions of its readers that: ... German-Soviet friendship is now established forever. In a speech delivered before the Supreme Soviet on October 31, Vyacheslav Molotov, Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, openly applauded the destruction of Poland:

... A short blow at Poland from the German Army, followed by one from the Red Army was enough to reduce to nothing this monster child of the Treaty of Versailles... . One may like or dislike Hitlerism, but every sane person will understand that that ideology cannot be destroyed by force. It is, therefore, not only nonsensical, but also criminal to pursue a war for the destruction of Hitlerism.

The Nazi-Soviet alliance lasted for over a year and a half - until the 22 of June 1941, when Germany turned on its erstwhile ally. During this time, the Soviet Union was the principal supplier of much needed raw materials for the German war machine which, in the meantime, occupied Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, much of France, and smashed the Western allies.

The Soviet invaders struck a major blow not only to Polish statehood, but also to Polish institutions, cultural and religious life, state officials and military officers, as well as the civilian population. As the evidence gathered here shows, in addition to a "class" component which struck at the "enemies" of the people (i.e., the Soviet state), the assault also had a marked anti-Polish dimension. It was exacerbated by a calculated fueling of ethnic tensions which pitted Ukrainians, Belorussians, and Jews against ethnic Poles. According to historian Anna Cienciala,

... As in German-occupied Poland, Soviet policy was to liquidate the educated Poles. At first, Soviet authorities called on the peasants, who were predominantly Ukrainian or Belorussian, to "settle accounts" with Polish landlords and take what they wanted. This led to a short, but brutal period of murder and robbery perpetrated by the worst elements. At the same time, Soviet NKVD (security) officers shot many Polish landowners, officers, teachers, priests, judges, administrators, policemen, border guards, etc., out of hand, according to lists prepared beforehand... . While most of the Jewish population of eastern Poland was politically passive, some Jews, especially young men and women with communist sympathies, cooperated with the Soviets. They became prominent in the new local militia and helped Soviet authorities in hunting down Polish political leaders and administrators. Although these pro-communist Jews made up a very small minority of the total Jewish population, they were highly visible in oppressing the Poles.

Thousands of Poles, for the most part civilians and soldiers, perished not at the Soviet invaders, but of their fellow citizens in the bloody month of September 1939 alone. A particularly heinous crime occurred in Brzostowica Mala, near Grodno, where neighbour-on-neighbour violence, which would escalate dramatically during the war, was pioneered. As many as fifty Poles were tortured and butchered in a paroxysm of violence by a Jewish-led band of local pro-communist Jews and Belorussians even BEFORE the arrival of the Red Army. Moreover, the tragedy that befell the Poles at the hands of their non-Polish neighbours in the Eastern Borderlands in September 1939, where crimes were not only tolerated, but incited by the Soviets (and therefore carried out with impunity), was a precursor to the events that ensued, when those territories were seized by Nazi Germany in June and July 1941. Astute observers of the situation on the ground, the Germans actively supported a similar policy, this time directing it against communist collaborators and Jews.

It is widely recognized by historians that the portrait of Polish-Jewish relations, presented in Holocaust historiography, is seriously flawed. Writing in The New York Review of Books, Columbia University historian, Istvan Deak stated authoritatively:

... No issue in Holocaust literature is more burdened by misunderstanding, mendacity, and sheer racial prejudice than that of Polish-Jewish relations during World War II.

This is doubly compounded in the case of the eastern half of Poland, which was occupied by the Soviet Union in 1939-1941 and where the tone of Jewish-Polish relations was set by the Jews.

For fifty years it was impossible in communist Poland to write objectively about the Soviet invasion, and silence surrounded the fate of the Polish population under Soviet rule. Abroad, Polish political emigres were consumed with more pressing matters and focused on the deeds of the principal perpetrators of Poland's wartime tragedy - the Germans and Soviets. Except for memoirs and archival records, most of which were unpublished, the deeds of local collaborators were rarely mentioned. Even with the political changes that took place in Poland in 1989, no concerted effort was made to collect and publish such materials.

This state of affairs played into the hands of Holocaust historians who, preoccupied with Jewish victimization under the Nazi regime, ignored, glossed over or simply denied the fact of Jewish collaboration with the Soviet invaders of Poland both, in 1939-1941 and again, from 1944 onward. Indeed, in recent years we have witnessed a concerted effort to relegate Jewish misconduct to the realm of unfounded perception on the part of the Poles that has no, or little, basis in fact. Thus a serious void or, worse still, denial about these thorny issues permeates Western scholarship - at most we find apologetics. The most recent, and disturbing, trend in that scholarship has been to focus on the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 and play down to the point of dismissing or obscuring the brutal Soviet occupation that preceded that event.

Even compelling reports of Jewish collaboration with the Soviet occupiers, found in key documents from that period, are ignored or discounted out of hand, such as the charge levelled by the legendary Polish courier, Jan Karski, who was made an Honorary Citizen of Israel for his role in warning the West about the Holocaust and cannot be accused of harbouring hostility toward the Jews. Writing in early 1940, at a time when the mass deportations of Poles were not yet underway, Karski reported:

... The Jews have taken over the majority of the political and administrative positions. But what is worse, they are denouncing Poles, especially students and politicians (to the secret police), are directing the work of the (communist) militia from behind the scenes, are unjustly denigrating conditions in Poland before the war. Unfortunately, one must say that these incidents are very frequent, and more common than incidents which demonstrate loyalty toward Poles or sentiment toward Poland.

A Jewish woman from Wilno concurred with that assessment, when she wrote during the war:

... Under Bolshevik rule an anti-Jewish current grew significantly. In large measure, the Jews themselves were responsible for this... . At every turn they mocked Poles, yelled out that their Poland was no more... . The Jewish communists dallied with the patriotic sentiments of Poles, denounced their illegal conversations, pointed out Polish officers and former government officials, freely worked for the NKVD, and took part in arrests... . The Bolsheviks on the whole treated Jews favourably, had complete faith in them and were confident of their devoted sympathy and trust. For that reason they put Jews in all of the leading and influential positions which they would not entrust to Poles, who formerly occupied them.

Soon thereafter Jewish collaborators, in their positions as local officials, police, and NKVD agents, played a key role in populating the Gulag with their Polish neighbours. They identified them and put them on lists of "class enemies"; they arrested them and evicted them from their homes; and they helped to dispatch them by cattle car to the far reaches of the Soviet Union. While certainly not universal, this was by no means a marginal phenomenon, and, given the lack of condemnation of such activities by Jewish leaders, Poles were entitled to assume that in fact it reflected a widespread attitude.

This book argues that the role of Soviet collaborators was analogous to that played by the German "fifth column". Indeed, as we shall see, the similarities are many and striking. The role of Jews as collaborators and, more frequently, as bystanders to the tragedy of Poles, however, was never mentioned in Western literature. This notion is widely held to be incompatible with the entrenched and comforting view that the Jews were the primary victims of the war and could only be victims. The fact that the deeds of the Soviets were overshadowed by the incomparable Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazi regime, about which there is an enormous awareness, also played a large part in shaping our view of the historical record.

Another factor that came into play was that in the West, for a variety of reasons, the crimes of communism were downplayed or shrugged off as less important than those of the Nazi regime. There was nothing remotely similar to the vast array of historical works, memoirs, popular literature, journalistic writings, documentaries, films, educational programs, and even institutions that deal with the Holocaust. A fuller appreciation of the enormity of communist crimes is just beginning to make inroads into the consciousness of the West with the publication of books such as The Black Book of Communism. And, as in the case of Nazi German crimes, Soviet crimes could not have taken place without large numbers of collaborators coming forward in the conquered nations.

The present work draws on, but is not restricted to, the efforts of scholars, who have treated the topic of Jewish-Polish relations under the Soviet occupation. These include: Jan Tomasz Gross, Norman Davies, Antony Polonsky, Ben-Cion Pinchuk, Dov Levin, Keith Sword, Ryszard Szawlowski, Tadeusz Piotrowski, Bogdan Musial, Marek Wierzbicki, Tomasz Strzembosz, Jerzy Robert Nowak, and Andrzej Zbikowski. Altogether, more than eight hundred accounts - a significant number of them Jewish - provide the evidentiary basis for the conclusions contained in this study. These accounts are representative of what occurred in hundreds of cities and towns in Eastern Poland.

While the gathering of accounts is still in its infancy, like many aspects of wartime Polish-Jewish relations, a fairly clear outline emerges of some aspects of Jewish conduct vis-a-vis Poles under Soviet rule. It is an immensely important story that has never before been told and one that redefines the history of wartime Polish-Jewish relations. There is overwhelming evidence that Jews played an important, at times pivotal, role in arresting hundreds of Polish officers and officials in the aftermath of the September 1939 campaign and in deporting thousands of Poles to the Gulag. Collaboration in the destruction of the Polish State and in the killing of its officials and military, constituted de facto collaboration and treason on behalf of a foreign power and aided, both directly and indirectly, the two totalitarian powers - Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, which shared a common, criminal purpose and agenda in 1939-1945. As such, it is an integral and important aspect of the study of wartime collaboration.

In some respects, Jewish conduct under the Soviet regime mirrored and at times foreshadowed and even provoked similar conduct toward Jews on the part of some Poles vis-a-vis the Jews under German rule - a point that is repeatedly stressed throughout this publication. It is important, however, to bear in mind that such collaboration, although a force to be reckoned with, was unrepresentative of the overall behaviour of both communities. It was the work of a small minority, but given the dire consequences, one cannot turn a blind eye to this phenomenon. Apart from collaborators drawn from the margins of society, there were also Jews who assisted Poles (many examples of such help are also cited in the annotations), and, far more often, those who stood by for various reasons (fear, helplessness, indifference, etc.) - the so-called bystanders. Neither the Poles nor the Jews as a collective can be charged with complicity in the atrocities designed and carried out by the Nazi and Soviet regimes.

Hopefully, Neighbours on the Eve of the Holocaust will help to reinforce the gradual and painstaking evolution that has been taking place among some probing scholars in recent years in assessing wartime Polish-Jewish relations in a much more balanced way. As noted by Istvan Deak,

... The Polish Jews were killed by the Germans and not by the Poles, and several million Poles were also killed, in their case by both Germany and the Soviet Union. It is true that some Poles made life very difficult for Jews in the interwar era, and that some Polish people helped the German Nazis to hunt down Jews or hunted them down on their own. But it is also true that, between 1939 and 1941 in Soviet-occupied Eastern Poland as well as after 1944 in all of Poland, some Jews in Soviet or Polish communist police uniform hunted down Christian Poles. Poles accused and often still accuse the Jews of being communists at the service of a monstrous foreign power; Jews accused and often still accuse the Poles of being anti-Semites and fascists. Yet the criminals in both camps were only a minority; most people were victims. It is wrong to strictly separate the two groups and view them as opposed to each other when thousands of Jews served in the Polish army, and when many Jews considered themselves both good Poles and good Jews.

With the publication of Neighbours on the Eve of the Holocaust, the history of Polish-Jewish relations during the Second World War can never again revert to the simplistic patterns of the past, which focused exclusively on Polish conduct against the backdrop of Jewish victimization. It is safe to say, however, that there will be no improvement in understanding Polish-Jewish wartime relations until the events that occurred in Eastern Poland under the occupation of Hitler's erstwhile ally, the Soviet Union, become part of the Holocaust and World War II curriculum in North American schools.

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

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