F or the general populace in Poland the expulsion of the German - PDF document

The Postwar Period Violence against Jews in Poland, 1944–47: The State of Research and its Presentation GRZEGORZ BERENDT F or the general populace in Poland the expulsion of the German occupying forces marked the end of an unprecedented period of persecution. However, it did not mean liberation and a return to a state of security. In the years 1944 to 1947 within the new borders of Poland, at least 30,000 people suffered violent deaths as a result of politically motivated killings or criminally motivated mur- ders. The victims included soldiers fighting for the pro-independence under- ground, functionaries and supporters of the new regime, 1 and those whom we 1 According to official publications dated before 1990 the balance sheet of irreversible losses in the years 1944–48 is as follows: officers of the State Security Service and Civic Militia, soldiers of the Internal Security Corps, Border Protection Troops and Polish Army, and members of the Civic Militia Volunteer Reserve—approx. 12,000; civilians associated with the communist regime—approx. 8000; Soviet soldiers—approx. 1,000; soldiers of the anti-communist, pro-independence underground—approx. 8,000; see Henryk Dominiczak, Ryszard Halaba, and Tadeusz Walichnowski, Z dziejów politycznych Polski 1944–1984 , [On the political history of Poland 1944 – 1984] (Warsaw: Książka i Wiedza, 1984), 171–72; Ryszard Halaba, ed., Polegli w walce o władzę ludową. Materiały i zestawienia statystyczne [Those who fell for people’s power. Materials and statistical evaluations] (Warsaw: Książka i Wiedza, 1970), 7–72; Kazimierz Chociszewski, ed., Księga pamięci poległych funkcjonariuszy SB, MO, ORMO [Memorial book of fallen functionaries of the Security Service (SB), Civic Militia (MO), Volunteer Reserve of Civic Militia (ORMO)] (Warsaw: Komitet Obchodôw 25-lecia Milicji Obywatelskiej i Służby Bezpieczen̂stwa, 1971). Today, it is estimated that the

Violence against Jews in Poland, 1944–47 443 can call the country’s ordinary citizens. The figures cited do not include soldiers fighting against the German forces until May 1945. Under these conditions, the end of the German occupation soon turned out to provide no guarantee of a peaceful life or security for the Jews. To date, the state of anomie in which the Polish populace functioned for months on end from 1944 to 1947 has been most fully described by Marcin Zaremba, who in 2012 introduced the very useful concept of the Great Fear. 2 With regard to the situation of the Jews, the most comprehensive study was produced four years earlier by Jan Tomasz Gross. 3 Today anyone who wishes to understand the situation in which the Jews found themselves in this period should first consult Zaremba’s work and only then that of Jan Tomasz Gross. Within the scope of the “final solution to the Jewish question,” the German Nazi state organized the murder of some three million Polish citizens. It was such an efficient operation that on the territories controlled by the Third Reich at most only 2 percent of Polish Jews survived. Consequently, the few survivors were all the more in need of security. As we know, it was not granted to them. Some became a target for aggression for the very same reasons as the victims of robbery, homicide, and murder of members of other ethnic groups. However, for Jews there were very often specific reasons behind the antipathy, hatred, or active hostility shown toward them. Homegrown criminals, who had been actively involved in the machin- ery of the Holocaust and were often its material beneficiaries, aimed to oblit- erate Jews who had witnessed their deeds. Others accused Jewish survivors of collaborating with the Soviets and with native communists in opposition to Polish independence. The strangest manifestation of hostility to Jews number of people killed in fighting and repression alone was as many as 50,000, though it is important to remember that this figure also includes soldiers in the Polish underground who were killed in the Eastern Borderlands following the reinvasion of the Red Army; see Marek J. Chodakiewicz, Po Zagładzie. Stosunki polsko-żydowskie 1944–1947 (Warsaw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej. Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni Przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, 2008), 36. This was originally published in English as After the Holocaust: Polish-Jewish Conflict in the Wake of World War II (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 2003). 2 Marcin Zaremba, Wielka trwoga. Polska 1944–1947 [The great fear. Poland 1944 – 1947] (Krakôw: Wydawnictwo Znak: Instytut Studiôw Politycznych Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 2012). 3 Jan Tomasz Gross, Strach. Antysemityzm w Polsce tuż po wojnie. Historia moralnej zapaści (Krakôw: Znak, 2008)—originally published in a somewhat different form in English as Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz: An Essay in Historical Interpretation (New York: Random House, 2006).

444 Part Two Historiographic Questions revived accusations of ritual murder. A transformed version of this “black legend,” whose proponents emerged in more than a dozen large cities, not to mention smaller places, was the most extreme manifestation of aggressive anti-Semitism to have cast its shadow on postwar Polish–Jewish relations. Its victims’ only “crime”—as during the German occupation—was the fact that they were born Jewish. Not surprisingly, it is the crimes that were clearly prompted by racism that have occupied and continue to occupy the attention of commentators. The conditions for conducting historical research in Poland before 1989 meant that the earliest studies on the real reasons for pogroms and other dis- plays of anti-Jewish violence were described mostly in books published outside Poland, perhaps with one exception—an essay written in 1983 by Jôzef Orlicki, a former employee of the communist security apparatus in Western Pomerania who had spent many years working on “Zionist issues.” 4 Foreign publications took a different approach. The first to write at length about such violence were journalists visiting Poland in the first few years after the war. 5 Then, in the 1950s and 1960s, one could find remarks about this question in memory-books published by emigrants from the destroyed Jewish communities of Poland. In his memoir published in 1959, Jonas Turkow detailed events from the first year after the German occupation ended. 6 So too did Salomon Strauss-Marko 7 and Yitzhak Zuckerman, 8 a few years later. Their information came from the press and accounts of Polish citizens. The fact that these first books were published in Yiddish limited their range of influence. 4 Jôzef Orlicki, Szkice z dziejów stosunków polsko-żydowskich 1918–1949 [Sketches on the history of Polish-Jewish relations 1918 – 1949] (Szczecin: Krajowa Agencja Wydawnicza, 1983). 5 For example, Ch. Szoszkes, Poyln—1946 (Eyndrukn fun a rayze) [Poland—1946 (Impressions of a journey)] (Buenos Aires: Tsentral-farband fun Poylishe Yidn in Argentine, 1946); Sz. L. Sznajderman, Tsvishn shrek un hofenung (A rayze iber dem nayem Poyln) [Between terror and hope (A journey in the New Poland)] (Buenos Aires: Tsentral- farband fun Poylishe Yidn in Argentina, 1947); P. Nowik, Oyrope tsvishn milkhome un sholem [Europe between war and peace], (New York: Ikkuf Farlag, 1948); M. Tsanin, Iber shtayn un shtok. A rayze iber hundert khoyrev-gevorene kehilot in Poyln [Over stone and branch. A jour- ney to a hundred destroyed Jewish communities in Poland] (Tel Aviv: Letste nayes, 1952). 6 Jonas Turkow, Nokh der bafrayung (Zikhroynes) [After the liberation (Memoirs)] (Buenos Aires: Tsentral farband fun Poylishe Yidn in Argentine, 1959). 7 Salomon Strauss-Marko, Di geshikhte fun yidishn yishuv in nokhmiklhomdikn Poyln [The history of the Jewish community in postwar Poland] (Tel Aviv: Aroysgegebn fun meḥaber, 1987). 8 Yitzhak Zuckerman (“Antek”), A Surplus of Memory: Chronicle of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).