Polish collaboration with Nazi Germany
During the German occupation of Poland in World War II, some Poles collaborated with the country's German Nazi occupiers.
Individual collaboration[edit]
Historians John Connelly and Leszek Gondek described Polish collaboration as having been “marginal",[1] and Connelly wrote that "only a relatively small percentage of the Polish population engaged in activities that may be described as collaboration, when seen against the backdrop of European and world history".[2] Klaus-Peter Friedrich, citing Richard C. Lukas and Czesław Madajczyk, wrote that "estimates of the number of Polish collaborators vary from seven thousand to about one million."[3] [2] [4] Also, John Connelly wrote that "Polish historiography has hesitated to view [complicity in the Holocaust of Jews] as collaboration",[2] instead preferring terms like 'social demoralization', ascribing it to a degenerate criminal element.[5] (The pre-war Second Polish Republic had a population of about 35 million, including over 3 million Polish Jews.) Whether one abides by that preference affects the estimate, as well as whether one considers only ethnic Poles or members of Poland's pre-war German minority—former Polish citizens who declared themselves to be of German ethnicity (Volksdeutsche)—members of the Blue Police and low-ranking Polish bureaucrats forced to work under the Nazi administration.[1]
Institutional collaboration[edit]
Unlike the situation in most European countries occupied by Nazi Germany where the Germans successfully installed collaborating authorities, in occupied Poland such attempts failed. Polish statesmen who refused to collaborate, such as Kazimierz Bartel,[6][7] Stanisław Estreicher,[8][9] and Wincenty Witos,[10][11] were executed or imprisoned by the Germans, who soon gave up the idea of creating a Polish puppet state.[12][13] [3][14][15] Poland as a polity never surrendered to the Germans,[16] instead evacuating its government and surviving armed forces in stages to France and Great Britain. German-occupied Polish territory was either directly annexed to Germany or placed under a German administration called the General Government.[17]
In October 1939, the Nazi authorities ordered the mobilization of the pre-war Polish police to the service of the German occupation, thus forming the "Blue Police". The policemen were to report for duty by 10 November 1939[18] or face the death penalty.[19] At its peak in 1943, the Blue Police numbered some 16,000 men.[20] Their primary task was to act as a regular police force and deal with criminal activities, but they were also used by the Germans in combating smuggling and resistance and participated in roundups of random civilians (łapanka) and in patrolling for Jewish escapees from ghettos. They also participated in "hunts for Jews" (Judenjagd); in the small town of Dąbrowa Tarnowska, 50 miles east of Kraków, the Blue Police helped murder the entire Jewish population.[21][22] Many members of the Blue Police followed German orders reluctantly and at times even risked death by acting against them.[23] [24][25] Many members of the Blue Police were in fact agents for the Polish resistance, and[26][27] some were eventually honored with Israeli Righteous among the Nations awards for saving Jews.[28][29][30]
Poles in the Wehrmacht[edit]
Following the German invasion of Poland in 1939, many former citizens of the Second Polish Republic from across the Polish territories annexed by Nazi Germany were forcibly conscripted into the Wehrmacht army in Upper Silesia and in Pomerania. They were declared citizens of the Third Reich by law and therefore subject to drumhead court-martial in case of draft evasion. Professor Ryszard Kaczmarek of the University of Silesia in Katowice, author of a monograph titled Polacy w Wehrmachcie ("Poles in the Wehrmacht") noted that the scale of this phenomenon was much larger than previously assumed, because 90% of the inhabitants of these two westernmost regions of prewar Poland were ordered to register on the Nazi Deutsche Volksliste by the invader regardless of will. The number of the conscripts is not known. The data does not exist beyond 1943.[31]
In June 1946 the British Secretary of State for War reported to parliament that among the citizens of interwar Poland who served in the Wehrmacht as foreign conscripts, a total of 68,693 men were captured by the Allies in north-west Europe. The overwhelming majority of them, 53,630, enlisted into the Polish Army under the British Command,[32] and served in the Polish Armed Forces in the West against the Germans until the end of World War II.[31]
Polish resistance and collaboration[edit]
The main Polish resistance organization was the Home Army (Armia Krjowa, or AK), numbering some 400,000 people. It actively fought the Germans with almost no exceptions. In 1944, the Germans clandestinely armed a few AK units operating in the Vilnius area in the hope that they would act against local Soviet partisans; soon, during Operation Ostra Brama, the AK turned these weapons against the Germans.[33] [34] Such arrangements were purely tactical and did not evince the kind of ideological collaboration shown by France's Vichy regime or Norway's Quisling regime.[23] The Poles' main motive was to gain intelligence on German morale and preparedness and to acquire much-needed equipment.[35] There were no known joint German-AK operations, and the Germans were unsuccessful in getting the Poles to fight exclusively the Soviet partisans.[23] Further, most such collaboration by local commanders with the Germans was condemned by AK headquarters.[23] Tadeusz Piotrowski quotes Joseph Rothschild as saying that "The Polish Home Army was by and large untainted by collaboration" and adds that "the honor of the AK as a whole [was] beyond reproach."[23]
A single partisan unit of the Polish right-wing National Armed Forces (Narodowe Siły Zbrojne, or NSZ), the Holy Cross Mountains Brigade, numbering between 800 and 1,500 soldiers, decided to tacitly cooperate with the Germans in late 1944.[36][37][38] It ceased hostile operations against the Germans for a few months, accepted logistical help, and—late in the war, with German approval, to avoid capture by the Soviets—withdrew from Poland into Czechoslovakia. Once there, the unit resumed hostilities against the Germans and on 5 May 1945 liberated the Holýšov concentration camp.[39]
Poles and the Holocaust[edit]
Historian Jan Grabowski estimates that some 200,000 Jews were killed directly or indirectly by Poles during the Holocaust. According to historian Gunnar S. Paulsson, in occupied Warsaw (a city of 1.3m, including 350,000 Jews before the war)[40] some 3,000–4,000 Poles functioned as blackmailers (szmalcownik) who exploited Jews, or actively collaborated with the Nazis.[41] In the eastern Polish territories, occupied by Soviet Union between 1939-1941, a significant percentage of the Polish Jews collaborated with the Soviets, implanting in the Polish collective memory the image of Jews as willing communist collaborators.[42][43] After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the hunt for collaborators, combined with the notion of Żydokomuna, Polish version of the Judeo-Communism stereotype, encouraged by the German Nazi administration supportive of extreme expressions of antisemitic attitudes, resulted in a number of massacres of Jews by Poles in Poland's northeast region, in the summer of 1941, the best known of which was the massacre at Jedwabne.[44][45] There were several similar incidents, such as the Wąsosz pogrom, Szczuczyn pogrom and the Tykocin pogrom.
Collaboration by Polish Jews[edit]
The Judenrat (Jewish council) was a Jewish-run governing body set up by the Germans in every ghetto and Jewish community across occupied Poland. The Judenrat functioned as a self-enforcing intermediary that was used by the Germans to control a ghetto's or Jewish community's inhabitants and to manage the ghetto's administration. A Judenrat collected information on the Jewish population and supervised the Jewish Ghetto Police (Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst) in helping the Germans collect Jews and load them onto transport trains bound for concentration camps.[46] In some cases, Judenrat members exploited their positions to engage in bribery and other abuses. In the Łódź Ghetto, the reign of Judenrat head Chaim Rumkowski was particularly inhumane, as he was known to get rid of his political opponents by submitting their names for deportation to concentration camps, hoard food rations, and sexually abuse girls.[47][48][46] The policemen were recruited from among Jews living within the ghettos who could be relied on to follow German orders. They were issued batons, official armbands, caps, and badges and were responsible for public order in the ghetto; they were used by the Germans for securing the deportation of other Jews to concentration camps.[49][50] Jewish Ghetto Police numbers varied greatly: the Warsaw Ghetto had some 2,500; the Łódź Ghetto, 1,200; and smaller ghettos such as that at Lwów, some 500.[51]
Some Polish Jews, belonging to the collaborationist groups Żagiew and "Group 13", inflicted considerable damage on both the Jewish and Polish underground movements. These Jewish collaborators served the German Gestapo as informers on Polish resistance efforts to hide Jews,[52] and engaged in racketeering, blackmail, and extortion in the Warsaw Ghetto.[53][54] Similar Jewish group and individual collaborators of the Gestapo operated in other towns and cities across German-occupied Poland — Abraham Gancwajch and Alfred Nossig in Warsaw,[55][56] Józef Diamand[57] in Kraków, and Szama Grajer[58] in Lublin. One of the Jewish collaborationist groups' baiting techniques was to send agents out as supposed ghetto escapees who would ask Polish families for help; if a family agreed to help, it was reported to the Germans, who—as a matter of announced policy—executed the entire family.[59][60]
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Spysz, Anna; Turek, Marta (2014-04-29). The Essential Guide to Being Polish: 50 Facts & Facets of Nationhood. Steerforth Press. ISBN 9780985062316. Search this book on
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 John Connelly, Why the Poles Collaborated so Little: And Why That Is No Reason for Nationalist Hubris, Slavic Review, Vol. 64, No. 4 (Winter, 2005), pp. 771-781, JSTOR
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Klaus-Peter Friedrich. Collaboration in a "Land without a Quisling": Patterns of Cooperation with the Nazi German Occupation Regime in Poland during World War II. Slavic Review, Vol. 64, No. 4, (Winter, 2005), pp. 711-746. JSTOR
- ↑ Chodakiewicz, Marek Jan (2004). Between Nazis and Soviets: Occupation Politics in Poland, 1939-1947. Lexington Books. ISBN 9780739104842. Search this book on
- ↑ Paczkowski, Andrzej (1996). Pół wieku dziejów Polski: 1939-1989 (Wyd. 2 ed.). Warszawa: Wydawn. Nauk. PWN. ISBN 978-83-01-11756-6. Search this book on
- ↑ Allen, Arthur (2014-07-21). The Fantastic Laboratory of Dr. Weigl: How Two Brave Scientists Battled Typhus and Sabotaged the Nazis. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 9780393244014. Search this book on
- ↑ Wells, Leon Weliczker (1995). Shattered Faith: A Holocaust Legacy. University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 0813119316. Search this book on
- ↑ Bramstedt, E. K. (2013-09-27). Dictatorship and Political Police: The Technique of Control by Fear. Routledge. ISBN 9781136230592. Search this book on
- ↑ School & Society. Science Press. 1940. Search this book on
- ↑ Mazower, Mark (2013-03-07). Hitler's Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe. Penguin UK. ISBN 9780141917504. Search this book on
- ↑ Roszkowski, Wojciech; Kofman, Jan (2016-07-08). Biographical Dictionary of Central and Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century. Routledge. ISBN 9781317475934. Search this book on
- ↑ Lee, Lily Xiao Hong (2016-09-16). World War Two: Crucible of the Contemporary World - Commentary and Readings: Crucible of the Contemporary World - Commentary and Readings. Routledge. ISBN 9781315489551. Search this book on
- ↑ Carla Tonini, The Polish underground press and the issue of collaboration with the Nazi occupiers, 1939–1944, European Review of History: Revue Europeenne d'Histoire, Volume 15, Issue 2 April 2008, pages 193 - 205
- ↑ Piotrowski, Tadeusz (1998). Poland's Holocaust: Ethnic Strife, Collaboration with Occupying Forces and Genocide in the Second Republic, 1918-1947. McFarland. ISBN 9780786403714. Search this book on
- ↑ Steinhaus, Hugo (2015-12-28). Mathematician for All Seasons: Recollections and Notes Vol. 1 (1887-1945). Birkhäuser. ISBN 9783319219844. Search this book on
- ↑ Adam Galamaga (21 May 2011). Great Britain and the Holocaust: Poland's Role in Revealing the News. GRIN Verlag. p. 15. ISBN 978-3-640-92005-1. Retrieved 30 May 2012. Search this book on
- ↑ Hugo Service (11 July 2013). Germans to Poles: Communism, Nationalism and Ethnic Cleansing After the Second World War. Cambridge University Press. p. 17. ISBN 978-1-107-67148-5. Search this book on
- ↑ Böhler, Jochen; Gerwarth, Robert (2016-12-01). The Waffen-SS: A European History. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780192507822. Search this book on
- ↑ Hempel, Adam (1987). Policja granatowa w okupacyjnym systemie administracyjnym Generalnego Gubernatorstwa: 1939–1945 (in polski). Warsaw: Instytut Wydawniczy Związków Zawodowych. p. 83. Search this book on
- ↑ Encyclopedia of the Holocaust entry on the Blue Police, Macmillan Publishing Company, New York NY, 1990. ISBN 0-02-864527-8 Search this book on ..
- ↑ Grabowski, Jan (2014). Hunt for the Jews:Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland. Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-01074-2. Search this book on
- ↑ "'Orgy of Murder': The Poles Who 'Hunted' Jews and Turned Them Over to the Nazis". Haaretz.
- ↑ 23.0 23.1 23.2 23.3 23.4 Tadeusz Piotrowski, Poland's Holocaust, McFarland & Company, 1997, ISBN 0-7864-0371-3 Search this book on .. ISBN 0786403713 [https://www.amazon.com/gp/search?ie=UTF8&tag=everybodywikien-20&index=books&keywords=0786403713 Search this book on .&id=A4FlatJCro4C&pg=PA88&lpg=PA88&dq=holocaust+in+Poland&vq=wilno&sig=8H45HLJILfGXRoOg3WdVDDjJ9Q4 Google Print, p.88], ISBN 0786403713 [https://www.amazon.com/gp/search?ie=UTF8&tag=everybodywikien-20&index=books&keywords=0786403713 Search this book on .&id=A4FlatJCro4C&vq=wilno&dq=holocaust+in+Poland&lpg=PA88&pg=PA89&sig=LHllmtARMayj58PX49-zSFPXcXI p.89], ISBN 0786403713 [https://www.amazon.com/gp/search?ie=UTF8&tag=everybodywikien-20&index=books&keywords=0786403713 Search this book on .&id=A4FlatJCro4C&pg=PA90&lpg=PA90&dq=holocaust+in+Poland&vq=%22only+a+third+of+the+available+AK+forces%22&sig=6wXjIU3xa5VvtLvquNZcIXLi2VA p.90]
- ↑ Gunnar S. Paulsson (2004). "The Demography of Jews in Hiding in Warsaw". The Holocaust: Critical Concepts in Historical Studies. London: Routledge. p. 118. ISBN 0-415-27509-1. Search this book on
- ↑ Hempel, Adam (1990). Pogrobowcy klęski: rzecz o policji "granatowej" w Generalnym Gubernatorstwie 1939-1945 (in polski). Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe. p. 435. ISBN 83-01-09291-2. Search this book on
- ↑ Paczkowski (op.cit., p.60) cites 10% of policemen and 20% of officers
- ↑ "Policja Polska Generalnego Gubernatorstwa". Encyklopedia Internetowa PWN (in polski). Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwa Naukowe. 2005. Retrieved 10 August 2013.
- ↑ IAR (corporate author) (2005-07-24). "Sprawiedliwy Wśród Narodów Świata 2005". Forum Żydzi - Chrześcijanie - Muzułmanie (in Polish). Fundacja Kultury Chrześcijańskiej Znak. Retrieved 20 February 2007.CS1 maint: Unrecognized language (link)
- ↑ The Righteous Among The Nations - Polish rescuer Waclaw Nowinski
- ↑ Institute of National Remembrance (2008). Polacy ratujący Żydów w latach II wojny światowej. Drukarnia Dimograf. p.7 ISBN 987-83-7629-008-9
- ↑ 31.0 31.1 Kaczmarek, Ryszard (2010), Polacy w Wehrmachcie [Poles in the Wehrmacht] (in Polish), Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, first paragraph, ISBN 978-83-08-04494-0, retrieved June 28, 2014,
Paweł Dybicz for Tygodnik "Przegląd" 38/2012.
CS1 maint: Unrecognized language (link) - ↑ German Army Service (Volume 423 ed.). Hansard. 4 June 1946. p. cc307-8W. Retrieved 28 July 2011. Search this book on
- ↑ Bubnys, Arūnas (1998). Vokiečių okupuota Lietuva (1941-1944). Vilnius: Lietuvos gyventojų genocido ir rezistencijos tyrimo centras. ISBN 9986-757-12-6. Search this book on
- ↑ (in Lithuanian) Rimantas Zizas. Armijos Krajovos veikla Lietuvoje 1942–1944 metais (Acitivies of Armia Krajowa in Lithuania in 1942–1944). Armija Krajova Lietuvoje, pp. 14–39. A. Bubnys, K. Garšva, E. Gečiauskas, J. Lebionka, J. Saudargienė, R. Zizas (editors). Vilnius – Kaunas, 1995.
- ↑ Review by John Radzilowski of Yaffa Eliach's There Once Was a World: A 900-Year Chronicle of the Shtetl of Eishyshok, Journal of Genocide Research, vol. 1, no. 2 (June 1999), City University of New York.
- ↑ Instytut Pamięci Narodowej--Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu. Biuro Edukacji Publicznej (2007). Biuletyn Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej. Instytut. p. 73. Search this book on
- ↑ Wozniak, Albion (2003). The Polish Studies Newsletter. Albin Wozniak. Search this book on
- ↑ Żebrowski, Leszek (1994). Brygada Świętokrzyska NSZ (in polski). Gazeta Handlowa. Search this book on
- ↑ Stefan Korbonski, "The Polish Underground State", pg. 7
- ↑ "Warsaw". www.ushmm.org. Retrieved 2018-03-02.
- ↑ Marci Shore. "Gunnar S. Paulsson Secret City: The Hidden Jews of Warsaw 1940–1945". The American Association for Polish-Jewish Studies. Retrieved 17 February 2014.
- ↑ (in Polish) Krzysztof Jasiewicz, Opór przed rzeczywistością, Rzeczpospolita, 24-01-2009
- ↑ (in English) Tadeusz Piotrowski (1997). Poland's Holocaust: Ethnic Strife, Collaboration with Occupying Forces and Genocide... McFarland & Company. pp. 49–65. ISBN 0-7864-0371-3. Search this book on
- ↑ Joanna B. Michlic (2006). Poland's Threatening Other: The Image of the Jew from 1880 to the Present. University of Nebraska Press. p. 180. ISBN 0-8032-5637-X. Retrieved 16 January 2016. Search this book on
- ↑ Richard S. Levy (2005). Antisemitism: A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution. ABC-CLIO. p. 556. ISBN 978-1-85109-439-4. Search this book on
- ↑ 46.0 46.1 Hannah Arendt (2006). Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. The Wannsee Conference, or Pontius Pilate. Penguin. pp. 117–118. ISBN 1101007168. Retrieved 16 June 2015. Search this book on
- ↑ Rees, Laurence,Auschwitz: The Nazis and the "Final Solution", especially the testimony of Lucille Eichengreen, pp. 105-131. BBC Books. ISBN 978-0-563-52296-6 Search this book on ..
- ↑ Rees, Laurence."Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi state". BBC/KCET, 2005. Retrieved: 01.10.2011.
- ↑ "Judischer Ordnungsdienst". Museum of Tolerance. Simon Wiesenthal Center. Retrieved 14 January 2008.
- ↑ Collins, Jeanna R. "Am I a Murderer?: Testament of a Jewish Ghetto Policeman (review)". Mandel Fellowship Book Reviews. Kellogg Community College. Retrieved 13 January 2008.
- ↑ Raul Hilberg: The Destruction of the European Jews, Quadrangle Books, Chicago 1961, p. 310.
- ↑ Henryk Piecuch, Syndrom tajnych służb: czas prania mózgów i łamania kości, Published by Agencja Wydawnicza CB, 1999; ISBN 83-86245-66-2 Search this book on ., 362 pages.
- ↑ Israel Gutman, The Jews of Warsaw, 1939–1943: Ghetto, Underground, Revolt, Indiana University Press, 1982, ISBN 0-253-20511-5 Search this book on ., pp. 90–94.
- ↑ Itamar Levin, Walls Around: The Plunder of Warsaw Jewry during World War II and Its Aftermath, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2004, ISBN 0-275-97649-1 Search this book on ., pp. 94–98.
- ↑ Marrus, Michael Robert (1989-01-01). The Nazi Holocaust. Part 6: The Victims of the Holocaust. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 9783110968736. Search this book on
- ↑ "Nossig, Alfred". www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org. Retrieved 2018-03-02.
- ↑ Dąbrowa-Kostka, Stanisław (1972). W okupowanym Krakowie: 6.IX.1939 - 18.I.1945 (in polski). Wydaw. Min. Obrony Nar. Search this book on
- ↑ Radzik, Tadeusz (2007). Extermination of the Lublin ghetto (in polski). Wydawn. Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej. Search this book on
- ↑ Woydak, Mark. "Jak Żydzi Kolaborowali z Niemcami" Money.pl. Retrieved 2018-02-19.
- ↑ Bodakowski, Jan. "Żydowscy kolaboranci Hitlera" "Żydowscy agenci gestapo z Żagwi udawali poza gettem żydowskich uciekinierów, by wydawać Niemcom Polaków pomagających Żydom, partyzantów i autentycznych uciekinierów żydowskich." Salon24. Retrieved 2018-02-19.
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