Translate

Saturday 26 October 2019

The Polish liked to denounce Jews.



There are countries that refuse to confront their past and many with their present.

The Turks continue to deny the Armenian genocide more than a century later, the Germans continue with much amnesia about what they knew or not in Hitler's time and the Poles present themselves as if the only ones who murdered Jews were the Germans.

Today, in the times of the Internet and instant news, the extermination of Christians in the Middle East and throughout the Muslim world goes unnoticed, in a Western world more concerned with veganism than with murdered Christian children.

Both Turkey and Poland have enacted laws trying to create a single truth, in which of course their crimes do not appear. We are going to challenge them.

A Spanish proverb says that "one button is enough to show the totality".


In his book Jan Grabowski  "Hunt for the Jews" Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland". Indiana University Press. 2013.  It deals with the hunting of Jews in an area of Poland during the German occupation. We will see if it is true, as the Poles say, that only the Germans killed Jews.




First it is necessary to know that in the occupied zones, in addition to the German gendarmes there was a Polish police, called "blue", because of the color of their uniform.
After the liquidatiion of guettos in 1942, some Jews went into hiding in Dabrowa Tarnowska county, and many others. But the book study only this county that was controled by Germans till January 1945.


Dabrowa Tarnowska
The author said that the death can come to the Jews by a German gendarm, a Blue Polish policeman or from a neighbour.

Polish “blue” policeman fines a Jew for jaywalking, . 



  We know that most humans are not heroes, so the risk of continued help to the Jews cannot be expected from the majority of the population, however there were heroes who paid with their lives, and that of their families, that help. But at least one indifference or neutrality could be expected, but on the contrary this book shows that the majority willingly collaborates in the hunt and death of the hidden Jews.

  Poles did not begin to persecute and denounce Jews suddenly when the Germans arrived, Polish anti-Semitism is very old and as strong or more than German. Already in the 1930s there were anti-Jewish pamphlets such as "Don't buy anything from a Jew," much like those of the German Nazis at the time, and riots against Jewish businesses, breaking windows, beating them, and so on. 
  Even Prime Minister Felicjan Sławoj-Składkowski, seen by many as sympathetic to the plight of minorities, declared himself in favor of an economic boycott of Jewish commerce. In his speech delivered in the Polish parliament (Sejm) on June 4, 1936, the prime minister said “yes, to economic struggle, but no to physical violence.” 



According to Grabowski, Poles were responsible, directly or indirectly, for the deaths of more than 200,000 Jews during the Holocaust. He held this estimate to be very conservative, as he did not include victims of the Polish Blue Police."The great majority of Jews in hiding perished as a consequence of betrayal. They were denounced or simply seized, tied up and delivered by locals to the nearest station of the Polish police, or to the German gendarmerie." 

 Symcha Hampel, who went into hiding in a village close to Radomsko, noted in his wartime diary: 

 "Poland is probably the only country in the world where practically the whole society betrayed and handed over to the Germans each hidden Jew, their fellow citizen. I want to stress that thousands of Jewish children have been caught this way, handed over to the German murderers. The Poles worked hard and well [to make it possible]. . . . The entire Polish society is to be blamed, and the Polish clergy most of all. Only now, living among the Poles, can I see how deeply entrenched is antisemitism in Polish society . . . the priests often discussed the Jews in church and thanked God that these parasites were gone once and for all. They were grateful to Hitler for having done the dirty work [for them].  "

I´m not sure that Poland was the only country in the world that did it, the Baltic countries and others had similar behavior.

   Grawoski ontinues : The alleged closeness between Jews and gentiles living in the rural areas did not translate, according to contemporary witnesses, into stronger empathy, better treatment, or more energetic attempts at rescue. On the contrary, many peasants, seduced by modest prizes and inducements offered by the Germans, became actively involved in hunting down the Jews. Others joined the search out of fear. In many cases, the fleeing Jews had left their belongings with trusted peasants for safekeeping. For some farmers, this was too much of a temptation, and Jewish merchandise, money, or livestock became a reason for betrayal or even murder. 
Some Jewish hunt sites



...in Borek Fałęcki, Wieliczka, Bochnia, and Swoszowice, for instance, 500 złoty and a kilogram of sugar were being offered for every captured Jew. These tactics resulted in success for the Germans. The local population in great numbers turned Jews over to the Germans, who shot these “criminals.” . . . Besides rewards, the Germans also utilized a system of punishments for hiding the Jews. Posters threatening capital punishment for this “crime” appeared before every “liquidation action” against the Jews in any given locality. 


Circumstances of Death of Jews in Hiding, Dąbrowa Tarnowska County 

Killed by the German police (gendarmerie)—own action........................... 7 
Killed by the German police (gendarmerie)—denounced by the locals,,,, 98 
Killed by the locals ......................................................................................7 
Killed by the “blue” Polish police—own action ..........................................13 
Killed by the “blue” Polish police..............................................................102
Denounced by the locals 102 Unknown circumstances............................ 59 

Victims (total)........................................................................................ 286 


As we can see, most of the murders are committed by the Polish blue police or by denunciations from Poles to Germans.

 One testimony :

In one of the Jewish testimonies we read that “in 1942, Rywka Glückmann and her two sons found shelter in the house of one Michał Kozik from Dąbrowa Tarnowska (Ruda Zazamcze). He kept them from 1942 until 1944 (three months before the Russians arrived), as long as they paid him. Once the money was gone, Kozik murdered all three of them with an axe. Jews hiding across the street (Chaskiel Gruszow with his mother, Berker’s sister and Aron Berker) heard the howls of the murdered, and the next day learned that the Glückmanns were dead.”

Another one:

Sometime in 1942 or 1943 “unknown Jewboys came during the night to the farm of Andrzej Łach, trying to steal some apples from the trees.” 23 The “unknown Jew-boys” actually proved to be two young Jewish girls, who were soon caught by the peasants. “Later the persons who were caught,” testified one of the witnesses, “asked to be let go,” but they asked in vain, and both were brought to the village elder. He, in turn, asked the village “section leader” and two other peasants to deliver the girls to the police detachment in Bolesław. Once in Bolesław, the peasants surrendered the Jewish girls into the custody of German gendarme Richard Keter, who—later that day—shot them in a nearby field.
German police officer searches a peasant’s hut. 1942. 


Number of people in hiding (countywide) *

% of the known cases of help       % [number] of people who survived the war. 

Paid help                112 [70%]                   9% [10] 
Altruistic help**         48 [30%]                 56% [27] 
No precise data      177                             8% [14] 

Total                       337                           15% [51] 


*Grabowski, Jan. Hunt for the Jews (p. 137). Indiana University Press.
**The category “altruistic help” also includes those helpers who initially offered shelter for money but once their"guests” ran out of financial resources, decided to keep the Jews for free



Grabowski continues :

In the summer of 2009 the influential German weekly Der Spiegel published a front-page article entitled “Dark Continent: Hitler’s European Helpers.” According to its authors, the extermination of European Jews was not only a German deed, but also a result of the involvement of many other nationalities, allies, sympathizers and fellow travelers. The extermination of the Jews was possible with the participation of Latvian policemen, Lithuanian “shooters” ( shaulai), Ukrainian militias and guardsmen, Polish mobs from Jedwabne or Radziłów, French or Belgian volunteers for the SS, but also their civilian and uniformed fellow citizens, who robbed Jews and locked them in prisons. One could carry this list on and on. In Poland, Der Spiegel ’s article raised some ire, mostly among politicians and journalists, who accused the German authors (not without some justification) of trying to share the blame for the Shoah with the rest of Europe. Maybe so, but the question raised by Der Spiegel still requires an answer: would the Germans have succeeded as completely as they did in exterminating the European Jews without the often unforced, and sometimes enthusiastic, support of non-German volunteers and helpers? In light of the evidence presented in this book, it can be argued that the attitudes of the local population had, at least for some Jews, fundamental and existential importance. 

Nothing more to add.

No comments:

Post a Comment