Kurek - Polish-Jewish relations 1939 - 1945 : 1939 - 1945 ; beyond the limits of solidarity

Polish-Jewish Relations 1939-1945

BEYOND THE LIMITS OF SOLIDARITY

EWA KUREK

iUniverse, Inc.
Bloomington

Polish-Jewish Relations 1939-1945

Beyond the limits of solidarity

Copyright 2012 by Ewa Kurek

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

First published in Poland in 2006 by:

Wydawnictwo

Wyszej Szkoy Umiejtnoci - Kielce

Second publishing in Poland in 2008 by:

Wydawnictwo CLIO - Lublin

Cover design: Karolina Matjunin

Translated by:

Magorzata Kurek

Katarzyna Bednarska

David Dastych

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ISBN: 978-1-4759-3831-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-3832-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012912874

iUniverse rev. date: 08/01/2012

CONTENTS

Chapter III Surrounding Stereotypes: Judas And Haman
Stood Under One Roof

Chapter IV 1939-1942: The Underground Polish State, The Openness
Of Ukrainian And Bielorussian National Structures
And Jewish Autonomous Provinces

There exists a solidarity among men

as human beings that makes each co-responsible

for every wrong and every injustice

in the world

Karl Jaspers

Acknowledgements

This book could not have been written without
the help of

SOCIETE HISTORIQUE et LITTERAIRE in Paris

THE BARBARA PIASECKA-JOHNSON FOUNDATION

Grants by these Institutions enabled

me to conduct research on Polish-Jewish
relations during WW II

With special thanks for their generous contribution to the
translation of this book to the Polish Army Veterans
Association of America District No. 2, Inc. New York City, N. Y.
Commander Antoni Chroscielewski

My thanks also to

Bozenna Urbanowicz Gilbride

for raising the funds and assistance

in seeing this book come to fruition.

Ewa Kurek

PREFACE

By the Author

F or more than twenty years, with short breaks, I have been doing research on Polish-Jewish relations, trying to resolve the puzzles of the reality of the Second World War and the Holocaust in Poland. Its not an easy task. As time goes by I discover, every now and again, new aspects of the problem and new realms of Polish-Jewish terra incognita, and the endeavor becomes ever more difficult.

Research on Polish-Jewish relations in post-war Poland was difficult because political conditions in a communist-ruled state were not favorable for normal development of this type of historiography. For the most of the forty four years of the communist government in Poland neither Jews nor Poles were free to conduct historical research or even to contact each other. Szewach Weiss, Israeli ambassador to Poland, said: We have lost almost two generations of our dialogue. In the 1970s, if anybody wanted to come over here [to Poland], just to visit a graveyard where his family members lay, he had no such possibility. And here [in Poland] remained our friends and family members, living and dead.

A separate question is a problem of myths and distortions, sometimes purposeful manipulations of the truth, charging the Poles with responsibility for the Holocaust, originating not so much from the side of the Germans, what could be even somehow justifiable, but from Jewish sources. About one of the reason of manipulation of the truth by the Jews, Marek Edelman said: When at the beginning of the 1950s, Antek [Cukierman] went to the United States for the first time to collect funds for a Memory Museum he wanted to build in a kibbutz, he attacked American Jews for not having sent money to Poland during the war, for not putting pressure on President Roosevelt to act against the mass-murder of Jews in Europe. They got angry with him and said they wouldnt give a dime. And Antek understood continued Edelman he shouldnt have said what was on his mind. At the next meeting he didnt shout [] but perhaps it should be like that: if one wants money from someone, better not provoke him ?

Among other reasons, the problem of Polish-Jewish relations during the Second World War is a subject where particular facts are not unequivocally assessed and defined, provoking many disputes and emotionally engaging both Poles and Jews. Its a subject wherein every Jew and every Pole seems to become an expert. For these reasons, some results of my research probably will arouse the indignation of a Jewish reader, and other results will outrage a Polish reader. Some Jews probably will accuse me of anti-Semitism, and some Poles will say I slander my own nation. I just cant help it. Its always been so.

Over forty years ago, Hannah Arendt wrote to one of her opponents very often people who are just relating some unpleasant facts are being accused of lack of spirit or of lack of that thing you call Herzenstakt. In other words, [] these emotions are being often used to hide the real truth.

In my book I, too, only relate some unpleasant facts, in order to discover the real truth. Facts always will remain facts. Once they come into being, facts are not to be changed. Therefore, as one cant change them, Poles and Jews should strive to finally reconstruct these facts and to explain them, also to familiarize themselves with them and to accept their existence for the sake of almost a thousand years of Polish and Jewish cohabitation on Polands soil. Even if the two nations had no perspective of a common future, the real truth should become the foundation of common Polish-Jewish reconciliation and of mutual support. Ambassador Szewach Weiss once said: we lived in peace side by side for 900 years. I say side by side, because our Polish-Jewish life ran on separate tracks. You were following your course, and we were following our own. We were not thwarting your designs and we lived more or less peacefully for centuries. Poles never built ghettos for Jews. In Poland only Germans built them. And they also built the concentration camps, where they murdered Poles and Jews .

Because the Polish-Jewish past, marked by living side by side, preconditioned the behaviour and the mutual relationships of the two nations during the Second World War, I dedicate the two initial chapters of my book to the problem of cohabitation, trying to find answers to the many questions pertaining to living conditions and mutual relations between Poles and Jews in the time before the Holocaust. The next chapters are dedicated to the most unpleasant facts of Polish-Jewish relations during the Second World War. For the last sixty years, since the end of WW II, these facts have been burdened with most of the controversy arising between Poles and Jews. Therefore, these chapters deal with the attitudes of Poles and Jews toward the mass murder of Jews, the Holocaust, carried out by the Germans in the years 1942-1945. To use more precise language, the particularly unpleasant fact for both nations is the participation of Poles and Jews in the execution of the Final Solution of the Jewish Question ( Endlsung der Judenfrage) , the participation of some members of both nations in the crime of the annihilation of the Jews by the Germans. The scope of this participation, though not yet finally recognized and known, may be more or less precisely defined from the existing and credible historical sources. It may yet be cleared up who among the Poles and the Jews, collaborated with the Germans and why, and what were the political, religious and national reasons for this collaboration.