In the Shadow of the Polish Eagle

In the Shadow of the Polish Eagle

Also by Leo Cooper POWER AND POLITICS IN THE SOVIET UNION RUSSIA AND THE WORLD SOVIET REFORMS AND BEYOND STAKHANOVITES AND OTHERS: The Story of a Worker in the Soviet Union, 1939 1946 THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF SOVIET MILITARY POWER

In the Shadow of the Polish Eagle The Poles, the Holocaust and Beyond Leo Cooper Senior Research Associate Contemporary Europe Research Centre and Centre for Russian and Euro-Asian Studies University of Melbourne Australia

Leo Cooper 2000 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2000 978-0-333-75265-4 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 0LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2000 by PALGRAVE Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE is the new global academic imprint of St. Martin s Press LLC Scholarly and Reference Division and Palgrave Publishers Ltd (formerly Macmillan Press Ltd). ISBN 978-1-349-41279-2 ISBN 978-0-333-99262-3 (ebook) DOI 10.1057/9780333992623 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cooper, Leo. In the shadow of the Polish eagle : the Poles, the Holocaust, and beyond / Leo Cooper. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. 1. Jews Poland History 20th century. 2. Holocaust, Jewish (1939 1945) Poland. 3. Antisemitism Poland. 4. Poland Ethnic relations. 5. Holocaust survivors. I. Title. DS135.P6 C655 2000 943.8'004924 dc21 00 059125 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00

To my grandfather, father, mother, sister, and many relatives and friends, whose ashes have fertilised the soil of Poland

We, in history the most magnificent heap of bloody manure with which we have fertilised Poland, so that the bread of freedom will taste better to those who will survive us. My Żydzi Polscy ( We, Polish Jews ), Juljan Tuwim, 1942

Contents Foreword Introduction Prologue: Poland Welcomes Back Survivors May 1946 Part I: The Polish Exile 1 The Dawn of the Jewish Community in Poland 2 Jews in the Struggle for Polish Independence Part II: Before the Great Catastrophe (1918 39) 3 The Polish Eagle Spreads its Wings (1918 35) 4 Signs of Impending Disaster (1935 9) Part III: The Great Catastrophe (1939 44) 5 Onlookers Appendix: Jewish Refugees in the USSR 6 Looters 7 Polish Resistance and Collaboration Appendix: Jews in the Polish Army 8 Saviours Righteous among the Nations Part IV: Beyond the Great Catastrophe 9 The Last Blood Libel in Poland Kielce 1946 10 Between Tragedy and Infamy March 1968 11 Anti-Semitism without Jews Epilogue: Facing the Past References Index viii x 1 7 9 24 41 43 64 83 85 120 125 137 158 163 183 185 206 224 236 246 253 vii

Foreword This book was a long time in the making, or rather writing. It is the product of several decades of refreshing my memory, of research and of a great deal of soul searching. Often, I was overcome by doubts whether a work of this nature should see the light of day. Some years ago, I was told by a French publisher that it is inappropriate to extrapolate from personal memories to speak about the relations between Poles and Jews; it should be left to historians. I am not, strictly speaking, an historian, but I maintain that personal testimonies by witnesses to historical events are as relevant as documentary evidence. With the passing of time, and the emergence of a plethora of books on the Holocaust, I became convinced that it is imperative to probe into the past of the country where I was born and spent the years of my prime youth. It pained me to see that of all the European countries who subjected themselves to historical examination of the Second World War period, Poland was the only exception. For most Poles, Poland is a martyr nation with no black pages. My research proved this to be incorrect. The question of Polish Jewish relations and in particular the question of reconciliation have lately become a subject of some, albeit subdued, discussion in Poland. Some years ago, replying to my letter in which I complained about the dearth of writing about anti- Semitism in Poland, the well known Polish journalist Jerzy Turowicz, admitted that unfortunately some anti-semitism still exists in Poland, but it is a marginal phenomenon. He assured me that dozens of articles on that subject have appeared in the Polish press and referred to the commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising as proof that Poland is not indifferent to the problem of anti- Semitism. I could not find evidence of this; I believe there is a general silence which is the greatest obstacle to reconciliation between Jews and Poles. I hope the present work will make some contribution toward this objective. If I had to name the people who encouraged me to undertake this difficult task, I would have to place at the top of the list my wife, Fanny, who patiently read every bit of every draft I wrote and offered valuable advice. Encouragement came also from Leslie Holmes of Melbourne University, to whom I showed the outline of this study, viii

Foreword ix and who thought it looked terrific. My good friend Harry Redner of Monash University made a similar assessment. I received practical assistance from professor Hanoch Gutfreund, former President of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Thanks to him I obtained easy access to the vast material in the University Library where Dr Michael Rigler was of great help. My thanks must also go to Cameron Laux, one of the editors of my book at Macmillan. He warned me that a book of my sort, is likely to give rise to heated debate, scholarly or otherwise. If it does, I have achieved my objective.

Introduction Despite the time-lapse since those tragic events, the Holocaust continues to be the subject of research, writings and of general public interest. The trial of Papon in France, the Swiss involvement in dealing with Nazi stolen gold, the recent international Holocaust conference in Stockholm, and the probes into the attitude toward the Jews by a number of other countries during the war are but a few indications of that interest. It is rather surprising that relatively little attention has been devoted to Poland the country where Nazi extermination plans were most fully executed. Unlike Germany, France and other European countries, whose role during the Holocaust has been investigated, Poland has so far escaped historical scrutiny. This book attempts to fill that gap. The Jewish population in pre-war Poland numbered about 3.5 million. In 1944 after Poland s liberation from German occupation there were only about 80,000 survivors. An estimated 300,000 returned from the Soviet Union, but after the Kielce pogrom in July 1946 a mass exodus of Jews took place, which further reduced the size of the Jewish community. Poland is the only European country in which it can be said that Hitler s Final Solution has been successfully carried out (Poland is Judenrein). Furthermore, in contrast to other countries where Jewish life has slowly been rebuilt by the survivors after the war, the Jewish presence in Poland today is only minimal and there is no prospect that it will be revived. Compared to other countries, Poland is a special case. It was the first victim of Nazi aggression and the Poles are supposed not to have collaborated with the invaders. Poland can also boast of having the largest number of individuals who were awarded by the Israeli government the honourable title of the Righteous among the Nations for saving Jewish lives. There is, however, another, darker side of the coin Polish anti- Semitism and its role in the almost total disappearance of the Jews in Poland. This problem begs an answer to one important question: given the large Jewish community in Poland, why was the percentage of survivors in Poland relatively small compared with those in other European countries? The present work attempts to find an answer to this vital question. It x

Introduction xi tries to avoid generalisations, for not all Poles can be said to have behaved badly during the war however, only few behaved in a noble manner by saving Jews. The vast majority could be defined as onlookers, that is, indifferent to the fate of their Jewish countrymen, and a large number may be considered as perpetrators, that is, those who have personally participated in the murder of Jews and others who have contributed to the death of thousands of Jews by denouncing them to the Germans. Among the perpetrators were also members of the Polish underground movement connected to the Polish government-in-exile in London. Poland is the only country where denouncing Jews to the Germans and tracking down those who attempted to hide, were defined in wartime as a profession the so-called szmalcownik. It is for this reason that the line between Polish onlookers and perpetrators is very thin indeed. The practice of blackmail and extortion by the szmalcowniks was widespread and was well known to the majority of the Polish population. Yet, there was little attempt to stamp it out, or to discourage those who were involved. Denouncing Jews had the tacit approval of the population at large; the Polish resistance did little to stop it, and the Catholic clergy when it did not openly preach anti-jewish sentiments, kept an ominous silence about it. This period in Polish history has been swept under the carpet or simply falsified by Polish historians in Poland and elsewhere. Most Polish intellectuals assert that Polish society in its vast majority felt compassion for Jews and helped them whenever it was possible. They consider the activities of the Polish blackmailers who denounced Jews to the Germans as exceptions. The testimonies of survivors and recently found documents tell a different story. Poles in general, with a few commendable exceptions, did not show any commiseration and did not render assistance to Jews who attempted to hide. On the contrary, a Jew in hiding lived in constant fear not only of the Germans, but of his Polish neighbour or a passerby who, in contrast to a German, had an acute ability for recognising a Jewish face in the crowd. Had the Poles displayed neutrality that is, looked the other way thousands of Jews would have been saved. No act of heroism was required. Documents uncovered in the German Federal Archives in Koblenz contain correspondence between the Gestapo and the NSZ (National Armed Forces a Polish underground organisation) clearly indicating close collaboration as far as tracking Jews was concerned. Particularly active in this respect were Polish units of the so-called Świȩtokrzyska Brigade in the district of Radom, which cooperated with the Germans

xii Introduction during the occupation and withdrew from Poland together with the German army in January 1945. It is rather surprising that the NSZ has been awarded the highest honour for resisting the Germans by the former President, Lech Wal / ęsa. The controversy has been, and still is, a subject of fierce discussions among historians. The accusations directed against the Polish nation for its behaviour during the Holocaust have, so far, not been convincingly refuted. Polish apologists are constantly devising ways of absolving the Polish nation of any responsibility. They tend to exaggerate the assistance rendered to the Jews by the Poles during the war. It is true that many Poles have indeed saved Jews, but the percentage of those saved by the Poles relative to the entire Jewish population in Poland was very low the lowest of any European country. One of the darkest pages in Polish history, however, consists of events which took place long after the chimneys of the Nazi crematoria ceased to smoke. On 4 July 1946, the word spread over the town of Kielce in Poland: the Jews had kidnapped a Polish boy in order to kill him for ritual purposes. Within hours a large crowd gathered in front of a tenement housing about 200 Jews many survivors of the Nazi extermination camps and some who returned from the Soviet Union. They were all about to leave Poland due to the hostile environment in the country at the time. The mob attacked the house. Jews were thrown out of the windows, trampled underfoot by the bystanders and beaten with metal rods. The participants in the killings were civilians, workers of the neighbouring steel mill, soldiers of the Polish army and militiamen. According to some estimates half of the Kielce population of 50,000 took part in the disorder it was a public outburst of hatred directed against the Jews and of a sort unseen since the dark ages. What was significant in all the material published in Poland about this event is the variety of theories on the identity of the instigators. Among the suspects were the Communists, the Zionists and the Jews themselves. So far, not one Polish historian has considered Polish anti-semitism as a catalyst of a spontaneous eruption of nationalism and religious zeal. To this day any reference to this tragic event is met by hostility from Poles who claim that it denigrates the honour of the Polish nation. Polish hostility against Jews did not begin and did not end with the Kielce pogrom. Killing of Jews took place in many towns and villages in liberated Poland before the pogrom, and in 1968, after a vigorous anti-jewish campaign by the Polish government, most Jews left Poland. Only a tiny community, mostly of old Jews, remained.

Introduction xiii This book is not only a survey of the Holocaust period in Poland and beyond, but goes one step further it attempts to uncover the sources and origins of Polish animosity toward the Jews. To understand what happened during the war one must go back to pre-war Poland. Polish anti-semitism did not begin with the German occupation. It existed in Poland for a long time, but came to the surface when Poland regained her independence in 1918 after 150 years of foreign rule. It was during the period 1918 39 that Polish anti-semitism grew in intensity not only among the population at large, but also became official government policy. Restrictive laws were introduced in the early thirties and a numerus clausus at Polish universities preceded similar restrictions in Germany by a number of years. Anti-Semitism expressed itself in the persecution of Polish Jews long before Hitler came to power in Germany. Poland was the theatre of numerous pogroms in which Jews were killed or wounded long before the Kristalnacht in Germany. Anti-Semitic propaganda was spread by almost every Polish newspaper and there were calls for the expulsion of the Jews from Poland. This period is well documented and there is no shortage of evidence of a virulent anti-semitism as a precursor to Polish behaviour during the Holocaust. In this respect Poland must be singled out for yet another reason. In Germany and France, for example, there has been much soul-searching about this matter over the years. Poland is the only country which refuses to come to terms with its past. There were numerous, albeit feeble, attempts by some more enlightened Poles to probe into the dark pages of Poland s history; but faced with general hostility, these attempts came to nought. Little of that part of the Polish past can be found in Polish literature. In fact, Jewish presence in Poland, which goes back 1,000 years, occupies only a few paragraphs in Polish history text books. The history of Polish Jewry was, and is still being, written almost exclusively by authors of Jewish descent. It represents a topic important to Jews, above all, and is one that is most familiar to them. It seems that Polish anti-semites, when writing history, are capable only of producing contemptible misrepresentations. Polish non-jewish authors who are not anti-semites prefer to avoid the subject altogether. Generally, Polish authors who maintain the taboo on unpleasant subjects believe that they are acting in the national interest. They want to construct a blameless historical past for their native land, free of any stain (Lewandowski, 1987, p. 69). It is only in the last few years that some Polish intellectuals have

xiv Introduction been brave enough to face the past. They are encouraged by the present Polish president Kwaśniewski, who on several occasions has indicated a genuine desire for Jewish Polish reconciliation. Is Polish Jewish reconciliation possible? That this question should be under discussion is a clear indication that there are problems affecting Jewish Polish relations. It was debated in May 1987 during the Fifth World Congress of Polish Jews in Israel. Hundreds of representatives from 15 countries, including a six-man delegation headed by a member of the Polish parliament, participated in the Congress, whose theme was 1000 Years of Polish Jewry. Most delegates were in favour of reconciliation between the two nations, while others argued that Polish behaviour during the Holocaust and lack of repentance afterwards makes an improvement in Polish Jewish relations unlikely. Jewish and some Polish commentators saw the root of the problem in the unwillingness of Polish society to look closely into its past, especially at the behaviour of many Poles prior to, during and after the German occupation of Poland (Jerusalem Post, 13 April 1987). This book is an attempt to convey the latter message to Poles who lived through and know what took place in Poland during the period in question, as well as to the younger generation, so that they may reflect upon the dark moments of Polish history. Perhaps, given enough time, such reflections may lead to a genuine reconciliation.