A Tangled Web
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REVISED JANUARY 2016 A TANGLED WEB Polish-Jewish Relations in Wartime Northeastern Poland and the Aftermath (PART TWO) Mark Paul PEFINA Press Toronto 2016 © Mark Paul and Polish Educational Foundation in North America (Toronto), 2016 A Tangled Web is a revised and expanded version of an article that appeared in The Story of Two Shtetls, Brańsk and Ejszyszki, Part Two published by The Polish Educational Foundation in North America, 1998 Table of Contents Part Two: Partisan Relations and Warfare Polish Partisans, Jewish Partisans, Soviet Partisans …3 An Overview of Polish-Soviet Wartime Relations …20 Soviet Designs …60 The Spiral Begins …64 Acting on Orders to Eliminate the Polish Partisans …84 Jewish Historiography ..102 Jewish Partisans Join in Soviet Operations Against Polish Partisans ..126 German Raids, the Soviet Peril, and Inhospitable Jews ..160 Local Help, Food Forays and Pillaging ..206 Procuring Arms and Armed Raids ..248 Villagers Defend Themselves Against Raids ..272 The Raids Intensify ..282 2 Part Two: Partisan Relations and Warfare “One should not close one’s eyes to the fact that Home Army units in the Wilno area were fighting against the Soviet partisans for the liberation of Poland. And that is why the Jews who found themselves on the opposing side perished at the hands of Home Army soldiers —as enemies of Poland, and not as Jews.” Yisrael Gutman Historian, Yad Vashem Institute Polish Partisans, Jewish Partisans, Soviet Partisans According to Holocaust historians, the Jews who escaped the Nazi ghettos in northeastern Poland had to turn to the Soviet partisans for their salvation from both the Germans and the hostile local population.1 The Polish partisans of the Home Army (Armia Krajowa—AK)—or “White Poles” as they are called in the language of Soviet propaganda2—are portrayed as a “Fascist” formation who were collaborating with the 1 For a Jewish nationalist perspective on the organization of the Jewish partisan movement in northeastern Poland and its relationship with the Soviet partisans see Ainsztein, Jewish Resistance in Nazi-Occupied Europe, 302–25. The author relies exclusively on Jewish anecdotal sources and his pro-Soviet and anti-Polish bias is all too evident. 2 The designation “White Poles” (belopoliaki in Russian), which has a distinctively pejorative connotation, originated in Bolshevik propaganda during the Polish-Soviet War of 1919–1920. See Norman Davies, White Eagle, Red Star: The Polish Soviet War, 1919–20 (London: Macdonald, 1972), 89. It was intended to suggest—falsely—that the Poles were allied with the White Russian forces and foreign imperialists in the Russian Civil War. The use of the term “White Poles” in a World War II context is anachronistic. It came into vogue after the Germans uncovered, in April 1943, mass graves of Polish officers and officials murdered by the Soviets in Katyn forest in the early part of 1940. When the Poles called for an investigation by the International Red Cross, the Soviet Union formally severed diplomatic relations with the Polish government in exile in London on April 25, 1943, a step it had been planning for months. Molotov, the very person who had signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany to facilitate the invasion and partition of Poland in September 1939, issued an outrageous note stating that there was “no doubt that between the Allies’ enemies, Hitler and the Polish Government, contact and collusion exist.” The Soviets accused the Poles of acting “to please Hitler’s tyranny” and iterated that they were acting in “collusion with the Hitlerite government.” For the full text of the note see <http://web.archive.org/web/20080616072448/http://www.electronicmuseum.ca/Poland- WW2/katyn_memorial_wall/kmw_note.html>. That gave the cue as to how the Polish undeground was to be regarded. From that point, the term “White Poles” was used by the Soviets to smear the Poles—again falsely—as reactionary fascists. The Polish leader, General Władysław Sikorski, was accused of being a fascist who was collaborating with Nazi Germany (the Soviet Union’s erstwhile ally), and the Polish partisans became “White Poles,” “White bandits,” “agents of Sikorski,” or simply “Polish fascists.” Soon after the Soviet partisan command in Moscow ordered the liquidation of the Polish underground loyal to the London government. See Tadeusz Gasztold, “Sowietyzacja i rusyfikacja Wileńszczyzny i Nowogródczyzny w działalności partyzantki sowieckiej w latach 1941–1944,” in Adam Sudoł, ed., Sowietyzacja Kresów Wschodnich II Rzeczypospolitej po 17 września 1939 (Bydgoszcz: Wyższa Szkoła Pedagogiczna w Bydgoszczy, 1998), 279; Krajewski, Na Ziemi Nowogródzkiej, 143; Zygmunt Boradyn, Niemen–rzeka niezgody: Polsko-sowiecka wojna partyzancka na Nowogródczyźnie 1943–1944 (Warsaw: Rytm, 1999), 114. Israeli historian Leonid Smilovitsky notes that these as well as other epithets such as “national fascists” and “Polish-Hitlerite units” were used to describe the Home Army in Soviet documents from that era. See Leonid Smilovitskii, Katastrofa evreev v Belorussii 1941–1944 gg. (Tel Aviv: Biblioteka Matveia Chernogo, 2000), 141. This book is available online in English translation as Leonid Smilovitsky, Holocaust in Belorussia, 1941–1944, Internet: <http://www.jewishgen.org/Yizkor/belarus/Belarus.html#TOC102>. Stalin did not shy away from making such charges 3 Germans and engaged in a war directed primarily against the Jews and Soviets. Soviet historiography paints a remarkably similar picture with the focus, of course, being on the Soviet partisans. Typical of Jewish ethno-nationalist historians, Yaffa Eliach repeatedly accuses the Home Army of hunting down and killing Jews hiding in the forest as well as those who were active in partisan groups. Another example is Howard L Adelson, who charges that The Polish Home Army, the Armja Krajova [sic], which was supposedly struggling against the Nazis, pursued the slaughter of the Jews with greater vigor than the war against the German conquerors.3 Many Jewish historians share these views. Yitzhak Arad provides the following synopsis: In Poland, the Home Army (A.K.—Armia Krajowa), the general Polish Partisan Movement, was not open to Jews. Moreover, thousands of Jews were murdered by the rightist factions of the official Polish underground. In eastern Poland, in Byelorussia, and sometimes in other areas as well, groups of Polish rightist guerillas took an active role in the killing of many Jewish families and partisans in the forest.4 openly in his dealings with Western leaders. In an outburst at the Tehran Conference in 1943, the man who approved the Katyn massacre hurled accusation after accusation at the London Poles, calling them cowards, Hitler’s accomplices, and murderers. See Lynne Olson and Stanley Cloud, A Question of Honor. The Kościuszko Squadron: Forgotten Heroes of World War II (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003), 296. Curiously, the term “White Poles” was also borrowed by Nazi German propaganda. The relentless repetition of this hateful propaganda doubtless had a considerable effect on how Soviet-Jewsh partisans came to view Polish partisans. Today, the term “White Poles” retains currency only in Holocaust historiography. The anti-Polish propaganda renewed in 1943 was in fact a continuation of the anti-Polish campaign that became widespread at the time of the Soviet invasion of Poland in September 1939. For a description of that campaign, see Ewa M. Thompson, Imperial Knowledge: Russian Literature and Colonialism (Westport, Connecticut and London: Greenpoint Press, 2000), 163–81; Ewa M. Thompson, “Nationalist Propaganda in the Soviet Russian Press, 1939–1941,” Slavic Review, vol. 50, no. 2 (Summer 1991): 385– 99. In spite of all this Soviet agitation, intensive efforts on the part of the Germans, starting in 1943, to win over the Poles to the “anti-Bolshevik front” met with a complete fiasco. See Czesław Brzoza and Andrzej Sowa, Historia Polski 1918–1945 (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2006), 609–10, 639–40. 3 Actually, this is part of a long litany of charges often hurled at Poles. In his introduction to a Holocaust memoir cited in this book, Howard L. Adelson, professor of history at the City University of New York, writes: “It was not by chance that the inhuman Nazi murderers chose Poland as the charnel house for European Jewry. With forethought they recognized that within Poland the neighbors of the Jews would assist in the slaughter … Even the Home Army, the Armja Krajova [sic], which was supposedly struggling against the Nazis, pursued the slaughter of the Jews with greater vigor than the war against the German conquerors. The local peasantry displayed an atavistic savagery that is unequalled in the annals of human history. Jews died while their neighbors exulted in their suffering.” See Samuel Gruber, as told to Gertrude Hirschler, I Chose Life (New York: Shengold, 1978), 6. 4 Yitzhak Arad, “Jewish Armed Resistance in Eastern Europe,” in Yisrael Gutman and Livia Rothkirchen, eds., The Catastrophe of European Jews: Antecedents, History, Reflections: Selected Papers (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1976), 509. The charge that the Home Army did not accept Jews into its ranks was dealt with earlier in this essay. Arad also refers to a group Jewish ghetto fighters from Warsaw who made it to the forest and were allegedly killed by the Home Army. The events in Wyszków forest are dealt with in Part Three of this book. Moshe Kahanowitz has made even stronger accusations, alleging that “the majority” of Poland’s Christian population “willingly collaborated with the Germans in the extermination of the Jews. Many of them indeed, exceeded even the Germans in their bloodlust and their insensate hatred of Jews. … The ‘good friends’, who for a time agreed to help the Jews to hide, sooner or later murdered them in cold blood after first robbing them of whatever possessions they had. … The ‘A.K.’ refused to accept Jews in its ranks. Moreover one of its objectives was to exterminate the Jewish survivors who had sought refuge in the 4 In 1943, armed anti-Soviet groups belonging to … the Polish AK began operating in the forests of western Byelorussia … They were diehard anti-Semites, identifying the Jews with the hated Soviet rule.