Jewish pogroms in Poland. Jewish pogroms in Poland after the Second World War. Versions about provocations

The Poles are real Europeans, without deception. You can see this for yourself by reading the following two materials on the same topic. Writer Trychik is a strong person. Writing about something that an entire nation wants to forget is one thing, but admitting that you are a descendant of (possibly) a murderer and still continuing to “dig” requires great courage. The author of the book is harsh towards himself and his ancestors.

By the way, it was the Poles in 1938, in alliance with Hitler’s Germany, who simultaneously invaded the sovereign lands of the European Czechoslovak Republic, a member country of the League of Nations. The Poles adopted their own set of anti-Jewish laws, similar to the Nazi ones, which were condemned by the Nuremberg Tribunal, in mid-1920 -x - a decade earlier than the Nazis!

Not only the Jews suffered from the Poles, for example, in September 1939, the Poles committed genocide of the German population of Bromberg and Schulitz. And after the war, one and a half million Silesian Germans disappeared somewhere.

And of course, the first concentration camp on the territory of Poland was not built by the Germans, but by the Poles themselves even before the start of World War II in Bereza-Kartuzskaya, where horrors happened no worse than later in Auschwitz, Birkenau or Dachau.

How Polish peasants helped kill Jews

Published in "Die Welt", Germany.

A Canadian historian studied the question of how Catholic Poles helped the German occupiers in the hunt for hiding Jews. Rewards included sugar, vodka and used clothing.

Help out of self-interest and thirst for profit - can something like that even be called help? Isn't there at least a certain amount of altruism involved in this case? This obviously does not apply to Michal Kozik. From 1942 to 1944, this Catholic Pole hid a Jewish woman, Rywka Glueckmann, and her two sons in his home in the town of Dabrowa Tarnowska, located about 80 kilometers east of Krakow.

Kozik provided them with asylum, but demanded money for it. When the three fugitives could no longer pay, he killed them with an ax. The screams of these people were heard in several neighboring houses. Many Polish Jews sought refuge during World War II. The fact is that the German occupiers were engaged in “cleansing” the ghettos, into which they were forcibly resettled in 1939-1940, and then the ghetto residents were sent to death camps. Trying to avoid deportation, many Jews hid in the countryside. They hid in the forests or sought protection from the local population.

To locate the hiding Jews, the German police responsible for maintaining the occupation regime tried to persuade the predominantly Catholic and anti-Semitic rural population to assist in the search for the Jews. Often these searches turned into a hunt that lasted several days or even a whole week. Historian Jan Grabowski of the University of Ottawa recently presented in his book The Hunt for the Jews. Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland" (Judenjagd. Verrat und Mord im deutsch besetzten Polen) explores this aspect of the Holocaust that has been largely overlooked until recently.

In principle, the hostility towards Jews and the crimes committed against them in Poland in the 20th century are nothing new. The most famous crime against European Jews after the war took place on July 4, 1946 in the city of Kielce. During the pogrom, Polish militias and civilians attacked people who had survived the horrors of National Socialist madness, and these events were provoked by the spread of rumors about the kidnapping of a child, allegedly committed by Jews.

During the pogrom, 42 people were killed. The bloody massacre in Jedbavna is also well studied. In this small town, located northwest of Warsaw, on July 10, 1941, a crowd of Poles herded the Jewish population into the square. In the presence of the German occupiers, some Jews along the way were tortured and killed, while the rest were driven into a barn and burned alive there. A total of 340 people - men, women and children - died in the fire.

When American historian Jan Gross detailed these events in his 2001 book Neighbors, the publication attracted interest in Poland as well as other countries. According to Gross, all these atrocities were not provoked by the Germans, and they did not take part in them, and the people present in German military uniforms only filmed what was happening. Although the Polish Institute of National Remembrance was unable to refute Gross's findings, it was heavily criticized for attributing an active role to Poles in the Holocaust.

Grabowski's new research is based on Polish, Jewish and German sources, that is, on documents, testimony, and trial materials that took place after the war. His book describes specially organized searches for Jews that took place before and during the ghetto purges of 1942 and 1943. Grabowski further sharpens Gross's thesis. After all, at least “German operators” were present in Jedbawna, while, according to Grabowski, in the vicinity of the city of Dąbrowa-Tarnowska, some Poles, on their own initiative and without the participation of German units, killed Jews hiding in their area.

Deportation of Warsaw Jews to death camps

Hoping to save their lives, many local Jews fled from the ghetto to the forests and villages of this district. They hid in dugouts and other shelters, as well as in barns, stables and barracks. Sometimes they hid in basements or attics in the houses of Polish peasants. These Jews lived in constant fear of being discovered or starving to death.

Grabowski divides the “hunt for Jews” into two phases. The first was directly related to the “cleansing” of the ghetto and was carried out mainly by German special forces, the Polish construction service Baudienst and the Jewish “Order Service”. Anyone who managed to escape persecution at this stage became a target during the second phase. In addition to German units, units of the so-called “blue police” took part in it, that is, Polish police officers subordinate to the occupation authorities.

Of course, the rural population was instructed to take part in this hunt. However, this was often not necessary: ​​many civilians, as follows from the documents, participated in the organized hunt for people quite voluntarily and demonstrated zeal at the same time: they reported the hiding Jews to the police, who either immediately shot them or sent them to nearby gathering places , where they were then killed. Often the place for such gatherings was simply Jewish cemeteries.

As during the hunt for animals, Polish peasants combed the forests, using sticks so that the hiding people would ultimately end up in the hands of the militia waiting for them at the edge of the forest. Local residents set fire to huts where they thought Jews might be hiding, or threw grenades into cellars where they were hiding. They knocked down doors and windows in order to find Jews there. It is impossible to say exactly the number of Jews whom Polish peasants killed with their own hands. In Dabrowa-Tarnowska alone, 286 people died.

With the help of punishments and rewards, the occupation authorities tried to ensure the participation of the local population in the hunt they organized. For each Jew discovered or killed, a reward was given - for example, sugar, vodka, potatoes, butter or the clothes of the captured person. And the one who helped the Jews in hiding could, in the worst case, be killed.

Nevertheless, some Poles provided assistance to the Jews. But they demanded a lot of money for it. They made deals with people in desperate situations. There were also people who hid Jews in their homes out of love for their neighbors. 286 people were killed, but about 50 people in the area were saved, and they survived thanks to the support of Christian Poles. However, such cases were exceptions.

Using the example of the city of Dabrowa-Tarnowska, Grabowski shows that if there had been no participation of the local population, then more Jews would have been able to survive the Holocaust. The motives were varied: incitement on the part of the Germans, hope of receiving rewards, fear of punishment, or simply anti-Semitic prejudices that had existed for centuries and ordinary self-interest. And also, naturally, the savagery that the constant anti-Semitic propaganda of the occupiers led to.

Of course, the results of Grabowski's research change nothing about those Germans who were responsible for the deaths of millions of Jews. However, they complement the picture and make it clearer. Any attempts to cast doubt on the Holocaust by referring to the anti-Semitic sentiments of Catholic Poles completely miss the point of the issue itself.

Source:

In post-war Poland, anti-Semitic sentiments were fueled by the widespread belief that Jews were supporters of the new regime, since the post-war authorities condemned anti-Semitism, protected surviving Jews, and there were Jews among the representatives of the new government and the Polish Army. The second circumstance was the reluctance to return to the Jews property plundered by the Polish population during the war.

A memo from the Polish authorities in early 1946 stated that from November 1944 to December 1945, according to available information, 351 Jews were killed. Most of the killings took place in the Kieleck and Lublin voivodeships, the victims were returnees from concentration camps or former partisans. The report mentioned four types of attacks:

• attacks due to the spread of rumors about the murder of a Polish child (Lublin, Rzeszow, Tarnow, Sosnovichi)
• blackmail to evict Jews or seize their property
• murder for the purpose of robbery
• murders not accompanied by robberies, in most cases carried out by throwing grenades at Jewish shelters.

The largest incident was in Krakow, where on August 11, 1945, a pogrom occurred, which began with throwing stones at a synagogue and then escalated into attacks on houses and dormitories where Jews lived. Units of the Polish Army and the Soviet Army put an end to the pogrom. Among the Jews there were killed and wounded. Israel Gutman ( English) in the study “Jews in Poland after the Second World War” writes that the pogroms were not the work of individual bandits and were carefully prepared.

Progress of the pogrom

Before the outbreak of World War II, about 20,000 Jews lived in Kielce, accounting for a third of the city's population. After the end of the war, about 200 Jewish Holocaust survivors remained in Kielce, most of them former prisoners of Nazi concentration camps. Most of the Kielce Jews were housed in the building at Planty Street 7, where the Jewish Committee and the Zionist Youth organization were located.

The reason for the pogrom was the disappearance of an eight-year-old boy, Henryk Blaszczyk. He disappeared on July 1, 1946 and returned two days later, saying that Jews had kidnapped him and hid him, intending to kill him (later during the investigation it turned out that the boy was sent by his father to the village, where he was taught what he should tell).

On July 4, 1946, at 10 a.m., a pogrom began, in which many people took part, including those in military uniform. By noon, about two thousand people had gathered near the Jewish Committee building. Among the slogans heard were: “Death to the Jews!”, “Death to the killers of our children!”, “Let’s finish Hitler’s work!” At noon, a group led by police sergeant Vladislav Blahut arrived at the building and disarmed the Jews who had gathered to resist. As it turned out later, Blakhut was the only police representative among those who entered. When the Jews refused to go out into the street, Blahut began hitting them on the head with the butt of his revolver, shouting: “The Germans did not have time to destroy you, but we will finish their work.” The crowd broke down the doors and shutters, the rioters entered the building and began killing with logs, stones and prepared iron rods.

During the pogrom, from 40 to 47 Jews were killed, among them children and pregnant women, and more than 50 people were injured.

During the pogrom, two Poles who tried to resist the pogromists were also killed. Jews were beaten and killed not only at Planty 7, but also in other places in the city.

Consequences

Already on July 9, 1946, twelve people found themselves in the dock before the participants in the visiting session of the Supreme Military Court. The court's decision was read out on July 11. Nine defendants were sentenced to death, one to life imprisonment, ten years and seven years in prison. The President of the People's Republic of Poland Bierut did not exercise his right of pardon, and those sentenced to death were shot.

The pogrom in Kielce caused mass emigration of Jews from Poland. If in May 1946 3,500 Jews left Poland, in June - 8,000, then after the pogrom during July - 19,000, in August 35,000 people. By the end of 1946, the wave of departures subsided, as the situation in Poland returned to normal.

In 1996 (the 50th anniversary of the pogrom), the mayor of Kielce apologized on behalf of the townspeople. On the 60th anniversary, the ceremony was raised to the national level, with the participation of the President and ministers. Polish President Lech Kaczynski called the Kielce pogrom “a huge shame for the Poles and a tragedy for the Jews.”

During World War II, Poles committed war crimes against their Jewish neighbors in at least 24 areas of the country. This conclusion was reached by a government commission that investigated events in Poland dating back to the beginning of World War II.

Versions about provocations

The Polish authorities accused “reactionary elements” close to the opposition of provoking the pogrom. A number of leading officials in the voivodeship were replaced.

There are also a number of versions about the involvement of the Polish authorities and Soviet special services in organizing the pogrom - among the crowd of pogromists there were many soldiers and police officers, including police and public security officers (they were subsequently arrested and brought to trial: Major Sobchinsky, Colonel Kuznitsky (commandant of the voivodeship department police), Major Gvyazdovich and Lieutenant Zagursky and Sobchinsky were acquitted by the court). Supporters of these versions believe that the provocateurs benefited from discrediting the Polish opposition, which was credited with organizing the pogrom, and the pogrom itself became the reason for repression and strengthening the power of the communist government.

On July 19, 1946, former chief military prosecutor Henryk Holder wrote in a letter to the deputy commander of the Polish army, General Marian Spychalski, that “we know that the pogrom was not only the fault of the police and army who were guarding in and around the city of Kielce, but also the fault of the government member who took part in this.”

In 2007, former high-ranking Polish counterintelligence officer and prisoner of Auschwitz Michal (Moshe) Henczynski published an autobiographical book “The Eleventh Commandment: Do not Forget” in which he cites the version that the pogrom in Kielce was a provocation of Soviet intelligence. To support his version, he writes that “a few days before the pogrom, Mikhail Aleksandrovich Demin, a high-ranking Soviet intelligence officer, arrived in Kielce as an adviser. The head of the city’s Polish security forces during the days of the pogrom was Major Wladyslaw Sobczynski, a Polish communist who was a career officer in the Soviet secret services before and during the war.” According to Khenczynski, such a provocation could serve as a justification for strengthening Soviet influence in Poland. A similar opinion is shared by Tadeusz Piotrowski, Abel Kainer (Stanislav Krajewski) and Jan Śledzianowski.

Russian scientists and FSB officers V. G. Makarov and V. S. Khristoforov consider this version unreliable.

Investigations in the 21st century

In 1991-2004. The investigation into the Kielce pogrom was carried out by the Commission for the Investigation of Crimes against the Polish People of the Polish Institute of National Remembrance. The Commission (2004) found " lack of evidence of the Soviet side's interest in provoking events».

Polish writer Włodzimierz Kalicki, based on the materials of B. Szaynok’s dissertation on the reconstruction of the events of the pogrom, writes that three versions can actually be considered:

• NKVD-controlled conspiracy involving the Polish leadership
• No conspiracy at all
• The joining of intelligence officers in a pogrom that began spontaneously, without political provocation

In his opinion, the latest version looks the most realistic.

Based on materials from the FSB archive about the pogrom in Kielce in 2009, copies of the official investigation materials translated into Russian were published. However, as Oleg Budnitsky, Doctor of Historical Sciences, said at a lecture at Harvard University on December 8, 2009, the materials on this case in the FSB archive are still classified, and he was denied access to the originals.

On October 20, 2008, the Kielce newspaper “Echo of the Day” published information from one of the city residents, who wished to remain anonymous, that on July 4, 1946, during the pogrom at Planty 7, uniformed soldiers killed 7 more Jews in Kielce (including at least one woman ) at the address st. Petrikovska, 72 and their corpses were taken away by car. However, residents of neighboring houses heard nothing about this. Prosecutor Krzysztof Falkiewicz said the report would be verified.

Igor Gusev believes that ancient people did not know about the existence of Jews, and therefore all the troubles that happened to them were attributed to the dark forces of nature...

Although the Old Testament presents it differently.
However, this has no direct relation to pogroms and the Holocaust.
What does it have?
Jewish pogroms in Poland after World War II.
You may ask: wait, but the Nazis have already been defeated. Who carried out the pogroms?
But now you will learn from I. Gusev’s article “KILLED BY COMMATRIOTS: ON THE 60TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE POGROM IN KIELC,” which he wrote in 2011. You will find out and understand why the Jews who survived after the Great War fled Poland.

What happened?
Something similar to the murders in Odessa on the Kulikovo Field on May 2, 2014.
___

Foreigners visiting Poland are sometimes surprised that “Po Kielcach są w Polsce żydzi” (“after Kielce there are Jews in Poland”). What was supposed to happen in this city, which the world still remembers with a shudder?

Rafael Blumenfeld, a graduate of the famous yeshiva “Chachmei Lublin”, now chairman of the All-Israel Association of Yiddish Lovers, remembers well this dark day in the history of Polish Jewry. During the war, Rafael was a prisoner in the ghetto in Kielce and survived all the horrors of the Nazi occupation. On July 4, 1946, in the same Kielce, he had the opportunity to take a sip from his Polish compatriots...

In July 1946, a nine-year-old boy disappeared from one of the Catholic families. A rumor spread throughout the city that the child was the victim of a ritual murder committed by Jews. Residents of Kielce began to gather near the “Jewish” house, throwing stones at the windows. The police called by the Jews were on the side of the pogromists and did not act. The Jews left the building, but outside they began to be beaten with sticks and stones. Plants and factories stopped, crowds of workers rushed to the ill-fated house. If they met a Jew on the road, they did not hesitate to kill him. In total, 42 Jews died in the city on July 4, 1946. Rafael Blumenfeld himself was seriously wounded. He was hospitalized along with other victims, but local nurses mocked the wounded and tore off their bandages. The guilty were able to receive normal medical care without guilt only in the Lodz hospital, where they were transferred.

After the pogrom, over 800 thousand Jews fled Poland within a few months. The resonance was enormous: just a year after the Holocaust, such an atrocity was committed! Poland was looked upon with contempt; the government even had to turn to the leadership of the Jewish community with a request to “whiten” the country’s reputation before the world community.

The funeral of forty victims of the pogrom took place on July 8, 1946 at 15:00, at the Jewish cemetery in Pakosha. Following the guard of honor of the Polish Army were delegates from political parties, public organizations, and city authorities. Forty coffins were transported on 20 trucks. Behind them were delegations of Polish and foreign Jews, the Government of National Unity, representatives of the command of the Kielce units of the Polish Army, the police and the UB, Soviet officers who were in Kielce, Polish and foreign journalists. The funeral procession stretched for almost 2 km.

Before me is an article by Dr. Jerzy Dabrowski “ Reflections on the 1946 Jewish pogrom in Kielce" The researcher describes the tragic events in many ways differently than Blumenfeld. The scientist also believes that the reason for the pogrom was the disappearance of a Catholic child, but clarifies: by the time the crowd gathered in front of the house 7/9 on the street. Planty, “the missing boy returned home,” but this “no longer mattered.” A bloodthirsty crowd burst into the house. Jews, including children, women and old people, were thrown out of windows. Outside, they, the wounded, were finished off with iron rods, clubs and hammers. According to witnesses, “in the afternoon the street in front of the house was covered with a sticky, bloody human mess.” The figure of brutally murdered Jews in Dabrovsky’s estimate does not differ from the one given - 42 people.

One of the leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, Isaac Zuckerman, left for Kielce immediately after receiving news of the massacre. In his autobiography, Zuckerman writes that the bodies of those killed were terribly mutilated; he even saw the corpses of pregnant women with their bellies torn open.

Even before the Kielce tragedy, Jewish passengers were thrown out of trains while they were moving. But after the pogrom, such cases became more frequent. The poet Julian Tuwim wrote in July 1946 to his friend I. Staudinger: “... I wanted to go by train to Lodz, but in connection with the events known to you, it is safer for me to postpone the trip to a more favorable time...” One of the most famous Polish poets of the 20th century, the Jew Julian Tuwim was afraid to get on the train. He is the author of the lament-manifesto “We, Polish Polish people...” Remember: “The two eat the blood: the one in the veins and the other z lived” (“there is blood in the veins and blood flowing from the veins”)? Less known is that the second paragraph of this work begins with the phrase: “ Jestem polakiem, bo mi się tak podoba» (« I'm Polish because I like it»)...

There was fear among the Jews living in Poland. Polish Minister of Security Stanislaw Radkiewicz met with representatives of the Central Committee of Polish Jews, who demanded that the government take energetic and effective measures. The minister said: “ Perhaps you want me to exile 18 million Poles to Siberia?“18 million Poles... It turns out that the words of the Minister of Security should be understood as follows: 18 million Poles, the rest are you, the Jews, whom the Poles cannot stand. And no “Jestem polakiem, bo mi się tak podoba”! You are not a Pole, no matter how much you like it, you are a foreign body in the body of the country. I will also cite the opinion of the head of the Polish Catholic Church, Cardinal Hlond. The cardinal laid the blame for the deterioration of relations between Poles and Jews “to a large extent... on the Jews who occupy leadership positions in Poland today and are trying to introduce structures and orders that are rejected by the majority of the Polish people.”

Jerzy Dabrowski does not indicate the number of Jews who left Poland after the pogrom, but believes that they made up more than half of the Jewish population at the beginning of July 1946. Let’s take a look at the encyclopedic dictionary “Jewish Civilization”: “About 1,200,000 Jews who survived the genocide and went into hiding wandered throughout Europe. 200 thousand came to Poland, but after the pogrom in Kielce, 100 thousand Jews immediately left the country and rushed to camps for displaced persons created by the Allies in Germany and Austria, some tried to secretly leave for Palestine.”

Poland remained silent for a long time regarding the events described. But 10 years ago, in 1996, in connection with the 50th anniversary of the Kielce massacre, Foreign Minister Dariusz Rosati sent a letter to the World Jewish Congress, in which he stated, in part: “... We will mourn the victims of the pogrom in Kielce. We must view this act of Polish anti-Semitism as our common tragedy. We are ashamed that Poland committed this crime. We ask for your forgiveness."

By the way, I wonder how the Poles would react to the idea that the Volyn tragedy is a common misfortune of the Poles and Banderaites, who mourn the fact that they killed a hundred thousand Poles?

For whom did the Polish minister ask for forgiveness? He asked for forgiveness for the grinder Marek from the metallurgical plant, who, along with hundreds of other workers, ended up at 7/9 Planty Street with the sole purpose of killing Jews. He asked for forgiveness for the lady Asya and her fiancé Khenryk, who threw stones at the people being dragged out of the house. He asked forgiveness for Mrs. Chezia, who was returning from the market, but for some reason also found herself in the crowd of rioters. Her hand did not waver as she raised the stick to crush the head of the Jewish girl thrown out of the second-story window, who was still showing signs of life. He asked for forgiveness for the shoemaker Jurek, who, having hammered the soles of the shoes that were being repaired with a hammer, hastily locked the workshop and rushed to Planty Street, where with the same hammer he smashed the heads of innocent people. He asked forgiveness for the greengrocer Janusz, who left his shop armed with an iron rod, only to return three hours later covered in the blood of the victims. He asked for forgiveness for the millions of Poles who did not directly participate in the beating, but remained indifferently silent after the incident.

The newly elected President of Poland, Lech Kaczynski, met in Washington with a group of leaders of the American Jewish Committee. The guest from Warsaw guaranteed the safety and prosperity of the Jewish community in Poland. He also noted that the anti-Semitic history of the Polish state was a “hard truth,” but citizens of modern Poland must resist anti-Semitism.

IGOR GUSEV

www.jewukr.org/observer/eo2003/page_show _ru.php
The feature film “From Hell to Hell” was made about this tragedy.

Director: Dmitry Astrakhan
Year of manufacture: 1997
Cast: Valeria Valeeva, Anna Klint, Alla Klyuka, Gennady Nazarov, Gennady Svir, Jacob Bodo, Vladimir Kabalin, Gennady Garbuk, Mark Goronok, Oleg Korchikov, Anatoly Kotenev, Arnold Pomazan, Victor Rybchinsky, Pyotr Yurchenkov (senior)

Description: The film is based on real events that occurred in the Polish city of Kielce on July 4, 1946. This is the story of two young families - Jewish and Polish. There are no children in a Polish family. In Jewish - a girl. While the Germans are driving the Jews into the camp, the Poles are hiding a Jewish child. The war ends, and the girl’s mother returns in an unusual way. The former Jewish houses are occupied by Poles, my daughter is sure that she is Polish... The attitude of the Poles towards those few Jews who survived and returned from the other world to their home is an attitude that has developed into a pogrom...

This pogrom was not the only one. Here's another:

in Bialystok 1946 April - 3 killed,
Kielce - pogroms in 1945 from April to September - 47 killed, in 1946 from February to July - 57 killed.
in Krakow in 1945 May, August - 2 killed, in 1946 from February to June 44 killed.. in Lublin in 1945 from March to December - 33 killed, in 1946 from February to September 27 killed..
in Lodz in 1945 from May to August - 17 killed, in 1946 from February to June - 8 killed.
in Reszczow / Rzeszów in 1945 June, August 23 killed.
in Warsaw in 1945 from April to August - 23 killed, in 1946 July 3 killed
and in a number of towns and villages in 1945-46 there were 30 people.
You can remember that in Poland in the period 1940-1941, Polish workers and peasants also staged pogroms against Jews - for example in Jedwabnia on July 10, 1941 - about 2 thousand killed

Have you seen this ditch? You found out everything:
And the burned city grinned,
And the black mouth of a murdered baby,
And a towel rusty with blood.
Be silent - words cannot soften the trouble.
You're thirsty, but don't look for water.
You were given neither wax nor marble. Remember -
We are the homeless of all the tramps in this world.
Don’t be deceived by the flower: it’s in the blood too.
YOU SAW EVERYTHING. REMEMBER AND LIVE.

I. Ehrenburg

“Fools do not forgive and do not forget, the naive forgive and forget, the wise forgive but do not forget.”